The American

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Title: The American
Author: Henry James
Release Date: January 2, 2007 [EBook #177]
Last Updated: September 17, 2019
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN ***
Produced by Pauline J. Iacono, John Hamm and David Widger
cover
The American
by Henry James
1877
Contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER I
On a brilliant day in May, in the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining
at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied
the centre of the Salon Carré, in the Museum of the Louvre. This
commodious ottoman has since been removed, to the extreme regret of all
weak-kneed lovers of the fine arts, but the gentleman in question had
taken serene possession of its softest spot, and, with his head thrown
back and his legs outstretched, was staring at Murillo’s beautiful
moon-borne Madonna in profound enjoyment of his posture. He had removed
his hat, and flung down beside him a little red guide-book and an
opera-glass. The day was warm; he was heated with walking, and he
repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat
wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was
familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that
is commonly known as “toughness.” But his exertions on this particular
day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical
feats which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the
Louvre. He had looked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was
affixed in those formidable pages of fine print in his Bädeker; his
attention had been strained and his eyes dazzled, and he had sat down
with an æsthetic headache. He had looked, moreover, not only at all the
pictures, but at all the copies that were going forward around them, in
the hands of those innumerable young women in irreproachable toilets
who devote themselves, in France, to the propagation of masterpieces,
and if the truth must be told, he had often admired the copy much more
than the original. His physiognomy would have sufficiently indicated
that he was a shrewd and capable fellow, and in truth he had often sat
up all night over a bristling bundle of accounts, and heard the cock
crow without a yawn. But Raphael and Titian and Rubens were a new kind
of arithmetic, and they inspired our friend, for the first time in his
life, with a vague self-mistrust.
An observer with anything of an eye for national types would have had
no difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped
connoisseur, and indeed such an observer might have felt a certain
humorous relish of the almost ideal completeness with which he filled
out the national mould. The gentleman on the divan was a powerful
specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine American; he was in
the first place, physically, a fine man. He appeared to possess that
kind of health and strength which, when found in perfection, are the
most impressive—the physical capital which the owner does nothing to
“keep up.” If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without knowing
it. If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked, but he had
never known himself to “exercise.” He had no theory with regard to cold
bathing or the use of Indian clubs; he was neither an oarsman, a
rifleman, nor a fencer—he had never had time for these amusements—and
he was quite unaware that the saddle is recommended for certain forms
of indigestion. He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had
supped the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Café
Anglais—someone had told him it was an experience not to be omitted—and
he had slept none the less the sleep of the just. His usual attitude
and carriage were of a rather relaxed and lounging kind, but when under
a special inspiration, he straightened himself, he looked like a
grenadier on parade. He never smoked. He had been assured—such things
are said—that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite
capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about
homœopathy. He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical
balance of the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal
of straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his
nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray,
and save for a rather abundant moustache he was clean-shaved. He had
the flat jaw and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type;
but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even more
than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend’s
countenance was supremely eloquent. The discriminating observer we have
been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its
expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it. It had that
typical vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not
simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of
standing in an attitude of general hospitality to the chances of life,
of being very much at one’s own disposal so characteristic of many
American faces. It was our friend’s eye that chiefly told his story; an
eye in which innocence and experience were singularly blended. It was
full of contradictory suggestions, and though it was by no means the
glowing orb of a hero of romance, you could find in it almost anything
you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet
credulous, positive yet sceptical, confident yet shy, extremely
intelligent and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely
defiant in its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its
reserve. The cut of this gentleman’s moustache, with the two premature
wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in
which an exposed shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps an
obtrusive part, completed the conditions of his identity. We have
approached him, perhaps, at a not especially favorable moment; he is by
no means sitting for his portrait. But listless as he lounges there,
rather baffled on the æsthetic question, and guilty of the damning
fault (as we have lately discovered it to be) of confounding the merit
of the artist with that of his work (for he admires the squinting
Madonna of the young lady with the boyish coiffure, because he thinks
the young lady herself uncommonly taking), he is a sufficiently
promising acquaintance. Decision, salubrity, jocosity, prosperity, seem
to hover within his call; he is evidently a practical man, but the idea
in his case, has undefined and mysterious boundaries, which invite the
imagination to bestir itself on his behalf.
As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and
then a responsive glance toward her admirer. The cultivation of the
fine arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of
by-play, a great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from
side to side, stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing
and frowning and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses
for wandering hair-pins. These performances were accompanied by a
restless glance, which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the
gentleman we have described. At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat,
and approached the young lady. He placed himself before her picture and
looked at it for some moments, during which she pretended to be quite
unconscious of his inspection. Then, addressing her with the single
word which constituted the strength of his French vocabulary, and
holding up one finger in a manner which appeared to him to illuminate
his meaning, “_Combien?_” he abruptly demanded.
The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders,
put down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.
“How much?” said our friend, in English. “_Combien?_”
“Monsieur wishes to buy it?” asked the young lady in French.
“Very pretty, _splendide. Combien?_” repeated the American.
“It pleases monsieur, my little picture? It’s a very beautiful
subject,” said the young lady.
“The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.
_Combien?_ Write it here.” And he took a pencil from his pocket and
showed her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and
scratching her chin with the pencil. “Is it not for sale?” he asked.
And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye
which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a
very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid
he had offended her. She was simply trying to look indifferent, and
wondering how far she might go. “I haven’t made a mistake—_pas
insulté_, no?” her interlocutor continued. “Don’t you understand a
little English?”
The young lady’s aptitude for playing a part at short notice was
remarkable. She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye and asked
him if he spoke no French. Then, “_Donnez!_” she said briefly, and took
the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf she traced a
number, in a minute and extremely neat hand. Then she handed back the
book and took up her palette again.
Our friend read the number: “2,000 francs.” He said nothing for a time,
but stood looking at the picture, while the copyist began actively to
dabble with her paint. “For a copy, isn’t that a good deal?” he asked
at last. “_Pas beaucoup?_”
The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head
to foot, and alighted with admirable sagacity upon exactly the right
answer. “Yes, it’s a good deal. But my copy has remarkable qualities,
it is worth nothing less.”
The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I
have said he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it. He
apprehended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the young woman’s
phrase, and it gratified him to think that she was so honest. Beauty,
talent, virtue; she combined everything! “But you must finish it,” he
said. “_finish_, you know;” and he pointed to the unpainted hand of the
figure.
“Oh, it shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of
perfections!” cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she
deposited a rosy blotch in the middle of the Madonna’s cheek.
But the American frowned. “Ah, too red, too red!” he rejoined. “Her
complexion,” pointing to the Murillo, “is—more delicate.”
“Delicate? Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sèvres
_biscuit_. I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my
art. And where will you allow us to send it to you? Your address?”
“My address? Oh yes!” And the gentleman drew a card from his
pocket-book and wrote something upon it. Then hesitating a moment he
said, “If I don’t like it when it it’s finished, you know, I shall not
be obliged to take it.”
The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself. “Oh, I am very sure
that monsieur is not capricious,” she said with a roguish smile.
“Capricious?” And at this monsieur began to laugh. “Oh no, I’m not
capricious. I am very faithful. I am very constant. _Comprenez?_”
“Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly. It’s a rare virtue. To
recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day;
next week—as soon as it is dry. I will take the card of monsieur.” And
she took it and read his name: “Christopher Newman.” Then she tried to
repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent. “Your English names are
so droll!”
“Droll?” said Mr. Newman, laughing too. “Did you ever hear of
Christopher Columbus?”
“_Bien sûr!_ He invented America; a very great man. And is he your
patron?”
“My patron?”
“Your patron-saint, in the calendar.”
“Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him.”
“Monsieur is American?”
“Don’t you see it?” monsieur inquired.
“And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?” and she
explained her phrase with a gesture.
“Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures—_beaucoup, beaucoup_,” said
Christopher Newman.
“The honor is not less for me,” the young lady answered, “for I am sure
monsieur has a great deal of taste.”
“But you must give me your card,” Newman said; “your card, you know.”
The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said, “My father
will wait upon you.”
But this time Mr. Newman’s powers of divination were at fault. “Your
card, your address,” he simply repeated.
“My address?” said mademoiselle. Then with a little shrug, “Happily for
you, you are an American! It is the first time I ever gave my card to a
gentleman.” And, taking from her pocket a rather greasy portemonnaie,
she extracted from it a small glazed visiting card, and presented the
latter to her patron. It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great
many flourishes, “Mlle. Noémie Nioche.” But Mr. Newman, unlike his
companion, read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him
were equally droll.
“And precisely, here is my father, who has come to escort me home,”
said Mademoiselle Noémie. “He speaks English. He will arrange with
you.” And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came
shuffling up, peering over his spectacles at Newman.
M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural color which overhung his
little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive
than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in
the barber’s window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His
scant ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly
polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story of a person who
had “had losses” and who clung to the spirit of nice habits even though
the letter had been hopelessly effaced. Among other things M. Nioche
had lost courage. Adversity had not only ruined him, it had frightened
him, and he was evidently going through his remnant of life on tiptoe,
for fear of waking up the hostile fates. If this strange gentleman was
saying anything improper to his daughter, M. Nioche would entreat him
huskily, as a particular favor, to forbear; but he would admit at the
same time that he was very presumptuous to ask for particular favors.
“Monsieur has bought my picture,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “When it’s
finished you’ll carry it to him in a cab.”
“In a cab!” cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way, as if
he had seen the sun rising at midnight.
“Are you the young lady’s father?” said Newman. “I think she said you
speak English.”
“Speak English—yes,” said the old man slowly rubbing his hands. “I will
bring it in a cab.”
“Say something, then,” cried his daughter. “Thank him a little—not too
much.”
“A little, my daughter, a little?” said M. Nioche perplexed. “How
much?”
“Two thousand!” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “Don’t make a fuss or he’ll
take back his word.”
“Two thousand!” cried the old man, and he began to fumble for his
snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot; he looked at his
daughter and then at the picture. “Take care you don’t spoil it!” he
cried almost sublimely.
“We must go home,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “This is a good day’s
work. Take care how you carry it!” And she began to put up her
utensils.
“How can I thank you?” said M. Nioche. “My English does not suffice.”
“I wish I spoke French as well,” said Newman, good-naturedly. “Your
daughter is very clever.”
“Oh, sir!” and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful eyes
and nodded several times with a world of sadness. “She has had an
education—_très-supérieure!_ Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at
ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn’t look
at the francs then. She’s an _artiste_, eh?”
“Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?” asked Newman.
“Reverses? Oh, sir, misfortunes—terrible.”
“Unsuccessful in business, eh?”
“Very unsuccessful, sir.”
“Oh, never fear, you’ll get on your legs again,” said Newman cheerily.
The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an
expression of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.
“What does he say?” demanded Mademoiselle Noémie.
M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. “He says I will make my fortune
again.”
“Perhaps he will help you. And what else?”
“He says thou art very clever.”
“It is very possible. You believe it yourself, my father?”
“Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!” And the old man turned
afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the
easel.
“Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French.”
“To learn French?”
“To take lessons.”
“To take lessons, my daughter? From thee?”
“From you!”
“From me, my child? How should I give lessons?”
“_Pas de raisons!_ Ask him immediately!” said Mademoiselle Noémie, with
soft brevity.
M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter’s eye he collected his
wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her
commands. “Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful
language?” he inquired, with an appealing quaver.
“To study French?” asked Newman, staring.
M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his
shoulders. “A little conversation!”
“Conversation—that’s it!” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie, who had caught
the word. “The conversation of the best society.”
“Our French conversation is famous, you know,” M. Nioche ventured to
continue. “It’s a great talent.”
“But isn’t it awfully difficult?” asked Newman, very simply.
“Not to a man of _esprit_, like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every
form!” and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter’s
Madonna.
“I can’t fancy myself chattering French!” said Newman with a laugh.
“And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better.”
“Monsieur expresses that very happily. _Hélas, oui!_”
“I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris, to know
the language.”
“Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say: difficult
things!”
“Everything I want to say is difficult. But you give lessons?”
Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly. “I am not a
regular professor,” he admitted. “I can’t nevertheless tell him that
I’m a professor,” he said to his daughter.
“Tell him it’s a very exceptional chance,” answered Mademoiselle
Noémie; “an _homme du monde_—one gentleman conversing with another!
Remember what you are—what you have been!”
“A teacher of languages in neither case! Much more formerly and much
less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?”
“He won’t ask it,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
“What he pleases, I may say?”
“Never! That’s bad style.”
“If he asks, then?”
Mademoiselle Noémie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons.
She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward. “Ten
francs,” she said quickly.
“Oh, my daughter! I shall never dare.”
“Don’t dare, then! He won’t ask till the end of the lessons, and then I
will make out the bill.”
M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood rubbing
his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which was not
intenser only because it was habitually so striking. It never occurred
to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his skill in imparting
instruction; he supposed of course M. Nioche knew his own language, and
his appealing forlornness was quite the perfection of what the
American, for vague reasons, had always associated with all elderly
foreigners of the lesson-giving class. Newman had never reflected upon
philological processes. His chief impression with regard to
ascertaining those mysterious correlatives of his familiar English
vocables which were current in this extraordinary city of Paris was,
that it was simply a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather
ridiculous muscular effort on his own part. “How did you learn
English?” he asked of the old man.
“When I was young, before my miseries. Oh, I was wide awake, then. My
father was a great _commerçant_; he placed me for a year in a
counting-house in England. Some of it stuck to me; but much I have
forgotten!”
“How much French can I learn in a month?”
“What does he say?” asked Mademoiselle Noémie.
M. Nioche explained.
“He will speak like an angel!” said his daughter.
But the native integrity which had been vainly exerted to secure M.
Nioche’s commercial prosperity flickered up again. “_Dame_, monsieur!”
he answered. “All I can teach you!” And then, recovering himself at a
sign from his daughter, “I will wait upon you at your hotel.”
“Oh yes, I should like to learn French,” Newman went on, with
democratic confidingness. “Hang me if I should ever have thought of it!
I took for granted it was impossible. But if you learned my language,
why shouldn’t I learn yours?” and his frank, friendly laugh drew the
sting from the jest. “Only, if we are going to converse, you know, you
must think of something cheerful to converse about.”
“You are very good, sir; I am overcome!” said M. Nioche, throwing out
his hands. “But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!”
“Oh no,” said Newman more seriously. “You must be bright and lively;
that’s part of the bargain.”
M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart. “Very well, sir; you have
already made me lively.”
“Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it, and we will
talk about that. That will be a cheerful subject!”
Mademoiselle Noémie had collected her accessories, and she gave the
precious Madonna in charge to her father, who retreated backwards out
of sight, holding it at arm’s-length and reiterating his obeisance. The
young lady gathered her shawl about her like a perfect Parisienne, and
it was with the smile of a Parisienne that she took leave of her
patron.
CHAPTER Ii
He wandered back to the divan and seated himself on the other side, in
view of the great canvas on which Paul Veronese had depicted the
marriage-feast of Cana. Wearied as he was he found the picture
entertaining; it had an illusion for him; it satisfied his conception,
which was ambitious, of what a splendid banquet should be. In the
left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman with yellow tresses
confined in a golden head-dress; she is bending forward and listening,
with the smile of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor.
Newman detected her in the crowd, admired her, and perceived that she
too had her votive copyist—a young man with his hair standing on end.
Suddenly he became conscious of the germ of the mania of the
“collector;” he had taken the first step; why should he not go on? It
was only twenty minutes before that he had bought the first picture of
his life, and now he was already thinking of art-patronage as a
fascinating pursuit. His reflections quickened his good-humor, and he
was on the point of approaching the young man with another “_Combien?_”
Two or three facts in this relation are noticeable, although the
logical chain which connects them may seem imperfect. He knew
Mademoiselle Nioche had asked too much; he bore her no grudge for doing
so, and he was determined to pay the young man exactly the proper sum.
At this moment, however, his attention was attracted by a gentleman who
had come from another part of the room and whose manner was that of a
stranger to the gallery, although he was equipped with neither
guide-book nor opera-glass. He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with
blue silk, and he strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely
looking at it, but much too near to see anything but the grain of the
canvas. Opposite to Christopher Newman he paused and turned, and then
our friend, who had been observing him, had a chance to verify a
suspicion aroused by an imperfect view of his face. The result of this
larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang to his feet, strode across
the room, and, with an outstretched hand, arrested the gentleman with
the blue-lined umbrella. The latter stared, but put out his hand at a
venture. He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance, which
was ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard, carefully divided in the
middle and brushed outward at the sides, was not remarkable for
intensity of expression, he looked like a person who would willingly
shake hands with anyone. I know not what Newman thought of his face,
but he found a want of response in his grasp.
“Oh, come, come,” he said, laughing; “don’t say, now, you don’t know
me—if I have _not_ got a white parasol!”
The sound of his voice quickened the other’s memory, his face expanded
to its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh. “Why,
Newman—I’ll be blowed! Where in the world—I declare—who would have
thought? You know you have changed.”
“You haven’t!” said Newman.
“Not for the better, no doubt. When did you get here?”
“Three days ago.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I had no idea _you_ were here.”
“I have been here these six years.”
“It must be eight or nine since we met.”
“Something of that sort. We were very young.”
“It was in St. Louis, during the war. You were in the army.”
“Oh no, not I! But you were.”
“I believe I was.”
“You came out all right?”
“I came out with my legs and arms—and with satisfaction. All that seems
very far away.”
“And how long have you been in Europe?”
“Seventeen days.”
“First time?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“Made your everlasting fortune?”
Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil smile
he answered, “Yes.”
“And come to Paris to spend it, eh?”
“Well, we shall see. So they carry those parasols here—the men-folk?”
“Of course they do. They’re great things. They understand comfort out
here.”
“Where do you buy them?”
“Anywhere, everywhere.”
“Well, Tristram, I’m glad to get hold of you. You can show me the
ropes. I suppose you know Paris inside out.”
Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. “Well, I guess
there are not many men that can show me much. I’ll take care of you.”
“It’s a pity you were not here a few minutes ago. I have just bought a
picture. You might have put the thing through for me.”
“Bought a picture?” said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the
walls. “Why, do they sell them?”
“I mean a copy.”
“Oh, I see. These,” said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and
Vandykes, “these, I suppose, are originals.”
“I hope so,” cried Newman. “I don’t want a copy of a copy.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, “you can never tell. They
imitate, you know, so deucedly well. It’s like the jewellers, with
their false stones. Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see
‘Imitation’ on half the windows. The law obliges them to stick it on,
you know; but you can’t tell the things apart. To tell the truth,” Mr.
Tristram continued, with a wry face, “I don’t do much in pictures. I
leave that to my wife.”
“Ah, you have got a wife?”
“Didn’t I mention it? She’s a very nice woman; you must know her. She’s
up there in the Avenue d’Iéna.”
“So you are regularly fixed—house and children and all.”
“Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters.”
“Well,” said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little, with a
sigh, “I envy you.”
“Oh no! you don’t!” answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a little poke
with his parasol.
“I beg your pardon; I do!”
“Well, you won’t, then, when—when—”
“You don’t certainly mean when I have seen your establishment?”
“When you have seen Paris, my boy. You want to be your own master
here.”
“Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I’m tired of it.”
“Well, try Paris. How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“_C’est le bel âge_, as they say here.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that a man shouldn’t send away his plate till he has eaten
his fill.”
“All that? I have just made arrangements to take French lessons.”
“Oh, you don’t want any lessons. You’ll pick it up. I never took any.”
“I suppose you speak French as well as English?”
“Better!” said Mr. Tristram, roundly. “It’s a splendid language. You
can say all sorts of bright things in it.”
“But I suppose,” said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire for
information, “that you must be bright to begin with.”
“Not a bit; that’s just the beauty of it.”
The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing
where they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the
pictures. Mr. Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with
fatigue and should be happy to sit down. Newman recommended in the
highest terms the great divan on which he had been lounging, and they
prepared to seat themselves. “This is a great place; isn’t it?” said
Newman, with ardor.
“Great place, great place. Finest thing in the world.” And then,
suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him. “I suppose they
won’t let you smoke here.”
Newman stared. “Smoke? I’m sure I don’t know. You know the regulations
better than I.”
“I? I never was here before!”
“Never! in six years?”
“I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris,
but I never found my way back.”
“But you say you know Paris so well!”
“I don’t call this Paris!” cried Mr. Tristram, with assurance. “Come;
let’s go over to the Palais Royal and have a smoke.”
“I don’t smoke,” said Newman.
“A drink, then.”
And Mr. Tristram led his companion away. They passed through the
glorious halls of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool, dim
galleries of sculpture, and out into the enormous court. Newman looked
about him as he went, but he made no comments, and it was only when
they at last emerged into the open air that he said to his friend, “It
seems to me that in your place I should have come here once a week.”
“Oh, no you wouldn’t!” said Mr. Tristram. “You think so, but you
wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have had time. You would always mean to go, but
you never would go. There’s better fun than that, here in Paris.
Italy’s the place to see pictures; wait till you get there. There you
have to go; you can’t do anything else. It’s an awful country; you
can’t get a decent cigar. I don’t know why I went in there, to-day; I
was strolling along, rather hard up for amusement. I sort of noticed
the Louvre as I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was
going on. But if I hadn’t found you there I should have felt rather
sold. Hang it, I don’t care for pictures; I prefer the reality!” And
Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance which the
numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose of “culture” might
have envied him.
The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais
Royal, where they seated themselves at one of the little tables
stationed at the door of the café which projects into the great open
quadrangle. The place was filled with people, the fountains were
spouting, a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath
all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the
benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities
for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gaiety in the whole scene, and
Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.
“And now,” began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which
he had caused to be served to them, “now just give an account of
yourself. What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come
from and where are you going? In the first place, where are you
staying?”
“At the Grand Hotel,” said Newman.
Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage. “That won’t do! You must
change.”
“Change?” demanded Newman. “Why, it’s the finest hotel I ever was in.”
“You don’t want a ‘fine’ hotel; you want something small and quiet and
elegant, where your bell is answered and you—your person is
recognized.”
“They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the
bell,” said Newman “and as for my person they are always bowing and
scraping to it.”
“I suppose you are always tipping them. That’s very bad style.”
“Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then
stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him
if he wouldn’t sit down. Was that bad style?”
“Very!”
“But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your
elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last
night until two o’clock in the morning, watching the coming and going,
and the people knocking about.”
“You’re easily pleased. But you can do as you choose—a man in your
shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?”
“I have made enough.”
“Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?”
“Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about
me, to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and, if
the fancy takes me, to marry a wife.” Newman spoke slowly, with a
certain dryness of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his
habitual mode of utterance, but it was especially marked in the words I
have just quoted.
“Jupiter! There’s a programme!” cried Mr. Tristram. “Certainly, all
that takes money, especially the wife; unless indeed she gives it, as
mine did. And what’s the story? How have you done it?”
Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms, and
stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at
the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the
babies. “I have worked!” he answered at last.
Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes to
measure his friend’s generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably
contemplative face. “What have you worked at?” he asked.
“Oh, at several things.”
“I suppose you’re a smart fellow, eh?”
Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the
scene a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. “Yes,” he said at
last, “I suppose I am.” And then, in answer to his companion’s
inquiries, he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It
was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it
will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman had come
out of the war with a brevet of brigadier-general, an honor which in
this case—without invidious comparisons—had lighted upon shoulders
amply competent to bear it. But though he could manage a fight, when
need was, Newman heartily disliked the business; his four years in the
army had left him with an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious
things—life and time and money and “smartness” and the early freshness
of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with
passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he
plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only
capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and his lively
perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as natural to
him as respiration; a more completely healthy mortal had never trod the
elastic soil of the West. His experience, moreover, was as wide as his
capacity; when he was fourteen years old, necessity had taken him by
his slim young shoulders and pushed him into the street, to earn that
night’s supper. He had not earned it but he had earned the next
night’s, and afterwards, whenever he had had none, it was because he
had gone without it to use the money for something else, a keener
pleasure or a finer profit. He had turned his hand, with his brain in
it, to many things; he had been enterprising, in an eminent sense of
the term; he had been adventurous and even reckless, and he had known
bitter failure as well as brilliant success; but he was a born
experimentalist, and he had always found something to enjoy in the
pressure of necessity, even when it was as irritating as the haircloth
shirt of the mediæval monk. At one time failure seemed inexorably his
portion; ill-luck became his bed-fellow, and whatever he touched he
turned, not to gold, but to ashes. His most vivid conception of a
supernatural element in the world’s affairs had come to him once when
this pertinacity of misfortune was at its climax; there seemed to him
something stronger in life than his own will. But the mysterious
something could only be the devil, and he was accordingly seized with
an intense personal enmity to this impertinent force. He had known what
it was to have utterly exhausted his credit, to be unable to raise a
dollar, and to find himself at nightfall in a strange city, without a
penny to mitigate its strangeness. It was under these circumstances
that he made his entrance into San Francisco, the scene, subsequently,
of his happiest strokes of fortune. If he did not, like Dr. Franklin in
Philadelphia, march along the street munching a penny-loaf, it was only
because he had not the penny-loaf necessary to the performance. In his
darkest days he had had but one simple, practical impulse—the desire,
as he would have phrased it, to see the thing through. He did so at
last, buffeted his way into smooth waters, and made money largely. It
must be admitted, rather nakedly, that Christopher Newman’s sole aim in
life had been to make money; what he had been placed in the world for
was, to his own perception, simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the
better, from defiant opportunity. This idea completely filled his
horizon and satisfied his imagination. Upon the uses of money, upon
what one might do with a life into which one had succeeded in injecting
the golden stream, he had up to his thirty-fifth year very scantily
reflected. Life had been for him an open game, and he had played for
high stakes. He had won at last and carried off his winnings; and now
what was he to do with them? He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the
question was sure to present itself, and the answer to it belongs to
our story. A vague sense that more answers were possible than his
philosophy had hitherto dreamt of had already taken possession of him,
and it seemed softly and agreeably to deepen as he lounged in this
brilliant corner of Paris with his friend.
“I must confess,” he presently went on, “that here I don’t feel at all
smart. My remarkable talents seem of no use. I feel as simple as a
little child, and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me
about.”
“Oh, I’ll be your little child,” said Tristram, jovially; “I’ll take
you by the hand. Trust yourself to me.”
“I am a good worker,” Newman continued, “but I rather think I am a poor
loafer. I have come abroad to amuse myself, but I doubt whether I know
how.”
“Oh, that’s easily learned.”
“Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by
rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn’t
lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take
it that you are.”
“Yes,” said Tristram, “I suppose I am original; like all those immoral
pictures in the Louvre.”
“Besides,” Newman continued, “I don’t want to work at pleasure, any
more than I played at work. I want to take it easily. I feel
deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months as I am now,
sitting under a tree and listening to a band. There’s only one thing; I
want to hear some good music.”
“Music and pictures! Lord, what refined tastes! You are what my wife
calls intellectual. I ain’t, a bit. But we can find something better
for you to do than to sit under a tree. To begin with, you must come to
the club.”
“What club?”
“The Occidental. You will see all the Americans there; all the best of
them, at least. Of course you play poker?”
“Oh, I say,” cried Newman, with energy, “you are not going to lock me
up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven’t come all this
way for that.”
“What the deuce _have_ you come for! You were glad enough to play poker
in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out.”
“I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can. I want to
see all the great things, and do what the clever people do.”
“The clever people? Much obliged. You set me down as a blockhead,
then?”
Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow on the back
and his head leaning on his hand. Without moving he looked a while at
his companion with his dry, guarded, half-inscrutable, and yet
altogether good-natured smile. “Introduce me to your wife!” he said at
last.
Tristram bounced about in his chair. “Upon my word, I won’t. She
doesn’t want any help to turn up her nose at me, nor do you, either!”
“I don’t turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at anyone, or
anything. I’m not proud, I assure you I’m not proud. That’s why I am
willing to take example by the clever people.”
“Well, if I’m not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it. I
can show you some clever people, too. Do you know General Packard? Do
you know C. P. Hatch? Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?”
“I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate
society.”
Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance,
and then, “What are you up to, anyway?” he demanded. “Are you going to
write a book?”
Christopher Newman twisted one end of his moustache a while, in
silence, and at last he made answer. “One day, a couple of months ago,
something very curious happened to me. I had come on to New York on
some important business; it was rather a long story—a question of
getting ahead of another party, in a certain particular way, in the
stock-market. This other party had once played me a very mean trick. I
owed him a grudge, I felt awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that,
when I got a chance, I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out
of joint. There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake.
If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel, and he
really deserved no quarter. I jumped into a hack and went about my
business, and it was in this hack—this immortal, historical hack—that
the curious thing I speak of occurred. It was a hack like any other,
only a trifle dirtier, with a greasy line along the top of the drab
cushions, as if it had been used for a great many Irish funerals. It is
possible I took a nap; I had been traveling all night, and though I was
excited with my errand, I felt the want of sleep. At all events I woke
up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind of a reverie, with the most
extraordinary feeling in the world—a mortal disgust for the thing I was
going to do. It came upon me like _that!_” and he snapped his
fingers—“as abruptly as an old wound that begins to ache. I couldn’t
tell the meaning of it; I only felt that I loathed the whole business
and wanted to wash my hands of it. The idea of losing that sixty
thousand dollars, of letting it utterly slide and scuttle and never
hearing of it again, seemed the sweetest thing in the world. And all
this took place quite independently of my will, and I sat watching it
as if it were a play at the theatre. I could feel it going on inside of
me. You may depend upon it that there are things going on inside of us
that we understand mighty little about.”
“Jupiter! you make my flesh creep!” cried Tristram. “And while you sat
in your hack, watching the play, as you call it, the other man marched
in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?”
“I have not the least idea. I hope so, poor devil! but I never found
out. We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street,
but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down
off his seat to see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse.
I couldn’t have got out, any more than if I had been a corpse. What was
the matter with me? Momentary idiocy, you’ll say. What I wanted to get
out of was Wall Street. I told the man to drive down to the Brooklyn
ferry and to cross over. When we were over, I told him to drive me out
into the country. As I had told him originally to drive for dear life
down town, I suppose he thought me insane. Perhaps I was, but in that
case I am insane still. I spent the morning looking at the first green
leaves on Long Island. I was sick of business; I wanted to throw it all
up and break off short; I had money enough, or if I hadn’t I ought to
have. I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin, and I longed for a
new world. When you want a thing so very badly you had better treat
yourself to it. I didn’t understand the matter, not in the least; but I
gave the old horse the bridle and let him find his way. As soon as I
could get out of the game I sailed for Europe. That is how I come to be
sitting here.”
“You ought to have bought up that hack,” said Tristram; “it isn’t a
safe vehicle to have about. And you have really sold out, then; you
have retired from business?”
“I have made over my hand to a friend; when I feel disposed, I can take
up the cards again. I dare say that a twelvemonth hence the operation
will be reversed. The pendulum will swing back again. I shall be
sitting in a gondola or on a dromedary, and all of a sudden I shall
want to clear out. But for the present I am perfectly free. I have even
bargained that I am to receive no business letters.”
“Oh, it’s a real _caprice de prince_,” said Tristram. “I back out; a
poor devil like me can’t help you to spend such very magnificent
leisure as that. You should get introduced to the crowned heads.”
Newman looked at him a moment, and then, with his easy smile, “How does
one do it?” he asked.
“Come, I like that!” cried Tristram. “It shows you are in earnest.”
“Of course I am in earnest. Didn’t I say I wanted the best? I know the
best can’t be had for mere money, but I rather think money will do a
good deal. In addition, I am willing to take a good deal of trouble.”
“You are not bashful, eh?”
“I haven’t the least idea. I want the biggest kind of entertainment a
man can get. People, places, art, nature, everything! I want to see the
tallest mountains, and the bluest lakes, and the finest pictures and
the handsomest churches, and the most celebrated men, and the most
beautiful women.”
“Settle down in Paris, then. There are no mountains that I know of, and
the only lake is in the Bois du Boulogne, and not particularly blue.
But there is everything else: plenty of pictures and churches, no end
of celebrated men, and several beautiful women.”
“But I can’t settle down in Paris at this season, just as summer is
coming on.”
“Oh, for the summer go up to Trouville.”
“What is Trouville?”
“The French Newport. Half the Americans go.”
“Is it anywhere near the Alps?”
“About as near as Newport is to the Rocky Mountains.”
“Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc,” said Newman, “and Amsterdam, and the
Rhine, and a lot of places. Venice in particular. I have great ideas
about Venice.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, rising, “I see I shall have to introduce you
to my wife!”
CHAPTER III
He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
Christopher Newman went to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived
behind one of those chalk-colored façades which decorate with their
pompous sameness the broad avenues manufactured by Baron Haussmann in
the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe. Their apartment was rich in
the modern conveniences, and Tristram lost no time in calling his
visitor’s attention to their principal household treasures, the
gas-lamps and the furnace-holes. “Whenever you feel homesick,” he said,
“you must come up here. We’ll stick you down before a register, under a
good big burner, and—”
“And you will soon get over your homesickness,” said Mrs. Tristram.
Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found
inscrutable he could not tell for his life whether she was in jest or
in earnest. The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate
in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points
differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent
concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always
graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she
meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile,
nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by instalments.
It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception, that
her little scheme of independence did not definitely involve the
assistance of another person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving
up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation. For this there were
various reasons. To begin with, she had a very plain face and she was
entirely without illusions as to her appearance. She had taken its
measure to a hair’s breadth, she knew the worst and the best, she had
accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a struggle. As a
young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her
eyes out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the
habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women, in order
that she might—as in common politeness was inevitable—be contradicted
and reassured. It was since she had come to live in Europe that she had
begun to take the matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely
exercised here, had suggested to her that a woman’s first duty is not
to be beautiful, but to be pleasing, and she encountered so many women
who pleased without beauty that she began to feel that she had
discovered her mission. She had once heard an enthusiastic musician,
out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is
really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her that it
might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to
the acquisition of charming manners. Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to
be exquisitely agreeable, and she brought to the task a really touching
devotion. How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say;
unfortunately she broke off in the middle. Her own excuse was the want
of encouragement in her immediate circle. But I am inclined to think
that she had not a real genius for the matter, or she would have
pursued the charming art for itself. The poor lady was very incomplete.
She fell back upon the harmonies of the toilet, which she thoroughly
understood, and contented herself with dressing in perfection. She
lived in Paris, which she pretended to detest, because it was only in
Paris that one could find things to exactly suit one’s complexion.
Besides out of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get
ten-button gloves. When she railed at this serviceable city and you
asked her where she would prefer to reside, she returned some very
unexpected answer. She would say in Copenhagen, or in Barcelona;
having, while making the tour of Europe, spent a couple of days at each
of these places. On the whole, with her poetic furbelows and her
misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her, a
decidedly interesting woman. She was naturally shy, and if she had been
born a beauty, she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.
Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers. She
despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly
at liberty not to marry him. She had been in love with a clever man who
had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the hope that this
thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no
appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing
that she cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without
personal ambitions, but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was,
as I have said before, eminently incomplete. She was full—both for good
and for ill—of beginnings that came to nothing; but she had
nevertheless, morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women, and
now that he was out of his native element and deprived of his habitual
interests, he turned to it for compensation. He took a great fancy to
Mrs. Tristram; she frankly repaid it, and after their first meeting he
passed a great many hours in her drawing-room. After two or three talks
they were fast friends. Newman’s manner with women was peculiar, and it
required some ingenuity on a lady’s part to discover that he admired
her. He had no gallantry, in the usual sense of the term; no
compliments, no graces, no speeches. Very fond of what is called
chaffing, in his dealings with men, he never found himself on a sofa
beside a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious. He
was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with
shyness, he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive, often
silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect. This
emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high degree
sentimental; he had thought very little about the “position” of women,
and he was not familiar either sympathetically or otherwise, with the
image of a President in petticoats. His attitude was simply the flower
of his general good-nature, and a part of his instinctive and genuinely
democratic assumption of everyone’s right to lead an easy life. If a
shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and a vote, women,
of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose physical tissue was
in itself an appeal, should be maintained, sentimentally, at the public
expense. Newman was willing to be taxed for this purpose, largely, in
proportion to his means. Moreover, many of the common traditions with
regard to women were with him fresh personal impressions; he had never
read a novel! He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety,
their tact, their felicity of judgment. They seemed to him exquisitely
organized. If it is true that one must always have in one’s work here
below a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found his
metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final responsibility
to some illumined feminine brow.
He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs.
Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He
would have been incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of
difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex
Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an
immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor
irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on
good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great
many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristram’s
“advice” was a part of the show, and a more entertaining element, in
her abundant gossip, than the others. He enjoyed her talking about
himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made
an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away
from her. For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most
interesting thing she had had to think about in many a month. She
wished to do something with him—she hardly knew what. There was so much
of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed,
that he kept her fancy constantly on the alert. For the present, the
only thing she could do was to like him. She told him that he was
“horribly Western,” but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with
insincerity. She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty
people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted
every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed
equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram
complained of his wife’s avidity, and declared that he could never have
a clear five minutes with his friend. If he had known how things were
going to turn out, he never would have brought him to the Avenue
d’Iéna. The two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman
remembered his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram,
who had by no means taken him into her confidence, but whose secret he
presently discovered, the justice to admit that her husband was a
rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and
in this respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one expected
something more. People said he was sociable, but this was as much a
matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a
high order of sociability. He was a great gossip and tattler, and to
produce a laugh would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged
mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it
impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light
weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club, to
know the names of all the _cocottes_, to shake hands all round, to ply
his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create
uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of
the American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual,
snobbish. He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their
native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United
States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very
conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little
better than a vulgar smell in his friend’s nostrils, and he finally
broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world,
that they could put all Europe into their breeches’ pockets, and that
an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and
compelled to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very
vindictively.) Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no
malice, and he continued to insist on Newman’s finishing his evening at
the Occidental Club.
Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d’Iéna, and his
host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs.
Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his
ingenuity in trying to displease her.
“Oh no, I never try, my love,” he answered. “I know you loathe me quite
enough when I take my chance.”
Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure
one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram.
Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the
June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say
that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed
plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the
Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer
starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His
hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this
subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called
subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made
an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had
done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from
Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a
languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the
tale, by no means always to his advantage; and Newman’s own emotions
were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether
he had ever been in love—seriously, passionately—and, failing to gather
any satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired. He
hesitated a while, and at last he said, “No!” She declared that she was
delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he
was a man of no feeling.
“Really?” he asked, very gravely. “Do you think so? How do you
recognize a man of feeling?”
“I can’t make out,” said Mrs. Tristram, “whether you are very simple or
very deep.”
“I’m very deep. That’s a fact.”
“I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have
no feeling, you would implicitly believe me.”
“A certain air?” said Newman. “Try it and see.”
“You would believe me, but you would not care,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldn’t
believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things. I have
had to _do_ them, to make myself felt.”
“I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes.”
“Yes, there’s no mistake about that.”
“When you are in a fury it can’t be pleasant.”
“I am never in a fury.”
“Angry, then, or displeased.”
“I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that
I have quite forgotten it.”
“I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man
ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad
enough always to keep your temper.”
“I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
“The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have
known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
“Do you mean to put me into one?”
“I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me.
And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable
thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure
beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you
in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman, meditatively.
“You have been odiously successful.”
“Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a
hopeless fizzle in oil.”
“It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
“Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of
having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am
not intellectual.”
“One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a
moment, “Besides, you are!”
“Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am
not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history,
or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not
a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by
the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he
added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering,
a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
“Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great
Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a
while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am
very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
“I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket
and feathers. There are different shades.”
“I am a highly civilized man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you
don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. “I should like to make you prove it,”
she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
“Pray do,” said Newman.
“That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
“Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
“I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will.” And Mrs.
Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying
to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded;
but as he was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was
very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost
tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you,
Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
“Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
“Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not
understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a
declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what
you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit
would increase insufferably.”
Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
“Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very
silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are
embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you
are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
“I shall remember everything you have told me,” said Newman. “There are
so many forms and ceremonies over here—”
“Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.”
“Ah, but I want to observe them,” said Newman. “Haven’t I as good a
right as another? They don’t scare me, and you needn’t give me leave to
violate them. I won’t take it.”
“That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle
nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it, as you choose.”
“Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!” said Newman.
The next time that he dined in the Avenue d’Iéna was a Sunday, a day on
which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled, so that there was a trio
in the evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last
Mrs. Tristram suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high
time he should take a wife.
“Listen to her; she has the audacity!” said Tristram, who on Sunday
evenings was always rather acrimonious.
“I don’t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?” Mrs.
Tristram continued.
“Heaven forbid!” cried Newman. “I am sternly resolved on it.”
“It’s very easy,” said Tristram; “fatally easy!”
“Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.”
“On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.”
“One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose
to you?”
“No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.”
“Tell me some of your thoughts.”
“Well,” said Newman, slowly, “I want to marry very well.”
“Marry a woman of sixty, then,” said Tristram.
“‘Well’ in what sense?”
“In every sense. I shall be hard to please.”
“You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
girl in the world can give but what she has.”
“Since you ask me,” said Newman, “I will say frankly that I want
extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with: before I know it I shall
be forty. And then I’m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry
now, so long as I didn’t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must
do it with my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I do
not only want to make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I
want to take my pick. My wife must be a magnificent woman.”
“_Voilà ce qui s’appelle parler!_” cried Mrs. Tristram.
“Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.”
“Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in love.”
“When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife
shall be very comfortable.”
“You are superb! There’s a chance for the magnificent women.”
“You are not fair.” Newman rejoined. “You draw a fellow out and put him
off guard, and then you laugh at him.”
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious. To prove
it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here,
to marry you?”
“To hunt up a wife for me?”
“She is already found. I will bring you together.”
“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau. He will
think you want your commission.”
“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I
will marry her tomorrow.”
“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you. I
didn’t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.”
Newman was silent a while. “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great
woman. I stick to that. That’s one thing I _can_ treat myself to, and
if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and
struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to
do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a
beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She
must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I
can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal
myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even
object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than
I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to
possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?” Tristram
demanded. “I have been trying so to make you fond of _me!_”
“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram. “I like to see a man
know his own mind.”
“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on. “I made up my mind
tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth
having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When
I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in
person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if
he can. He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such
wits as he has, and to try.”
“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”
“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and
admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”
“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”
“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”
“I see you have a taste for splendor.”
Newman hesitated a little; and then, “I honestly believe I have!” he
said.
“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”
“A good deal, according to opportunity.”
“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”
“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that
I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”
“You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and
Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in
this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I
should like to help you.”
“Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?”
Tristram cried. “We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but
magnificent women are not so common.”
“Have you any objections to a foreigner?” his wife continued,
addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on
a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking
at the stars.
“No Irish need apply,” said Tristram.
Newman meditated a while. “As a foreigner, no,” he said at last; “I
have no prejudices.”
“My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!” cried Tristram. “You don’t
know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the
‘magnificent’ ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a
dagger in her belt?”
Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. “I would marry a
Japanese, if she pleased me,” he affirmed.
“We had better confine ourselves to Europe,” said Mrs. Tristram. “The
only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?”
“She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!” Tristram
groaned.
“Assuredly. I won’t deny that, other things being equal, I should
prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language,
and that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner.
Besides, I rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges
the field of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can
bring your choice to a finer point!”
“You talk like Sardanapalus!” exclaimed Tristram.
“You say all this to the right person,” said Newman’s hostess. “I
happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world.
Neither more nor less. I don’t say a very charming person or a very
estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest
woman in the world.”
“The deuce!” cried Tristram, “you have kept very quiet about her. Were
you afraid of me?”
“You have seen her,” said his wife, “but you have no perception of such
merit as Claire’s.”
“Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up.”
“Does your friend wish to marry?” asked Newman.
“Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will
not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of
the species.”
“Oh, she is a widow, then?” said Newman.
“Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents,
in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good
taste to die a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five.”
“So she is French?”
“French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more
English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I—or
rather much better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they
say here. Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her
mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead,
and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married
brother. There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild. They
have an old hotel in the Rue de l’Université, but their fortune is
small, and they make a common household, for economy’s sake. When I was
a girl I was put into a convent here for my education, while my father
made the tour of Europe. It was a silly thing to do with me, but it had
the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire de Bellegarde. She
was younger than I but we became fast friends. I took a tremendous
fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far as she could. They
kept such a tight rein on her that she could do very little, and when I
left the convent she had to give me up. I was not of her _monde_; I am
not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her
_monde_; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long
in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old _noblesse_. Do you
know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de
Cintré’s drawing-room some afternoon, at five o’clock, and you will see
the best preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who
can’t show his fifty quarterings.”
“And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?” asked Newman. “A
lady I can’t even approach?”
“But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles.”
Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his moustache. “Is she
a beauty?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Oh, then it’s no use—”
“She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
have faults that only deepen its charm.”
“I remember Madame de Cintré, now,” said Tristram. “She is as plain as
a pike-staff. A man wouldn’t look at her twice.”
“In saying that _he_ would not look at her twice, my husband
sufficiently describes her,” Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
“Is she good; is she clever?” Newman asked.
“She is perfect! I won’t say more than that. When you are praising a
person to another who is to know her, it is bad policy to go into
details. I won’t exaggerate. I simply recommend her. Among all women I
have known she stands alone; she is of a different clay.”
“I should like to see her,” said Newman, simply.
“I will try to manage it. The only way will be to invite her to dinner.
I have never invited her before, and I don’t know that she will come.
Her old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand,
and allows her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit
only in a certain sacred circle. But I can at least ask her.”
At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out
upon the balcony and announced that there were visitors in the
drawing-room. When Newman’s hostess had gone in to receive her friends,
Tom Tristram approached his guest.
“Don’t put your foot into _this_, my boy,” he said, puffing the last
whiffs of his cigar. “There’s nothing in it!”
Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive. “You tell another story,
eh?”
“I say simply that Madame de Cintré is a great white doll of a woman,
who cultivates quiet haughtiness.”
“Ah, she’s haughty, eh?”
“She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares for you
about as much.”
“She is very proud, eh?”
“Proud? As proud as I’m humble.”
“And not good-looking?”
Tristram shrugged his shoulders: “It’s a kind of beauty you must be
_intellectual_ to understand. But I must go in and amuse the company.”
Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into the
drawing-room. When he at last made his appearance there he remained but
a short time, and during this period sat perfectly silent, listening to
a lady to whom Mrs. Tristram had straightway introduced him and who
chattered, without a pause, with the full force of an extraordinarily
high-pitched voice. Newman gazed and attended. Presently he came to bid
good-night to Mrs. Tristram.
“Who is that lady?” he asked.
“Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her?”
“She’s too noisy.”
“She is thought so bright! Certainly, you are fastidious,” said Mrs.
Tristram.
Newman stood a moment, hesitating. Then at last, “Don’t forget about
your friend,” he said, “Madame What’s-her-name? the proud beauty. Ask
her to dinner, and give me a good notice.” And with this he departed.
Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon. He found Mrs.
Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor, a woman young and
pretty, dressed in white. The two ladies had risen and the visitor was
apparently taking her leave. As Newman approached, he received from
Mrs. Tristram a glance of the most vivid significance, which he was not
immediately able to interpret.
“This is a good friend of ours,” she said, turning to her companion,
“Mr. Christopher Newman. I have spoken of you to him and he has an
extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come
and dine, I should have offered him an opportunity.”
The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile. He was not
embarrassed, for his unconscious _sang-froid_ was boundless; but as he
became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintré,
the loveliest woman in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed
ideal, he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had a sense of a
long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both brilliant and mild.
“I should have been most happy,” said Madame de Cintré. “Unfortunately,
as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go on Monday to the country.”
Newman had made a solemn bow. “I am very sorry,” he said.
“Paris is getting too warm,” Madame de Cintré added, taking her
friend’s hand again in farewell.
Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome
resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women do when they take
such resolution. “I want Mr. Newman to know you,” she said, dropping
her head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintré’s bonnet ribbons.
Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native penetration
admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to
address him a word of encouragement which should be more than one of
the common formulas of politeness; and if she was prompted by charity,
it was by the charity that begins at home. Madame de Cintré was her
dearest Claire, and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintré had
found it impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintré should for
once be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.
“It would give me great pleasure,” she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.
“That’s a great deal,” cried the latter, “for Madame de Cintré to say!”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram can speak
better for me than I can speak for myself.”
Madame de Cintré looked at him again, with the same soft brightness.
“Are you to be long in Paris?” she asked.
“We shall keep him,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“But you are keeping _me!_” and Madame de Cintré shook her friend’s
hand.
“A moment longer,” said Mrs. Tristram.
Madame de Cintré looked at Newman again; this time without her smile.
Her eyes lingered a moment. “Will you come and see me?” she asked.
Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her
leave. Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a
moment. Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. “It was a fortunate
chance,” she said. “She had come to decline my invitation. You
triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes,
to her house.”
“It was you who triumphed,” said Newman. “You must not be too hard upon
her.”
Mrs. Tristram stared. “What do you mean?”
“She did not strike me as so proud. I should say she was shy.”
“You are very discriminating. And what do you think of her face?”
“It’s handsome!” said Newman.
“I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.”
“To-morrow!” cried Newman.
“No, not to-morrow; the next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
on Monday. If you don’t see her; it will at least be a beginning.” And
she gave him Madame de Cintré’s address.
He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his
way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain
whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as
suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of
Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to
live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid façade diffusing its
brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he
had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open
in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, gravelled court,
surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway
facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin
canopy. The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman’s
conception of a convent. The portress could not tell him whether Madame
de Cintré was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door. He
crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of
the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer. He rose as Newman
approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell, said with a smile,
in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting; the
servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn’t know
what the deuce was in them. He was a young man, his English was
excellent, and his smile very frank. Newman pronounced the name of
Madame de Cintré.
“I think,” said the young man, “that my sister is visible. Come in, and
if you will give me your card I will carry it to her myself.”
Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight
sentiment, I will not say of defiance—a readiness for aggression or
defence, as they might prove needful—but of reflection, good-humored
suspicion. He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a
card upon which, under his name, he had written the words “San
Francisco,” and while he presented it he looked warily at his
interlocutor. His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young
man’s face; it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintré. He was
evidently her brother. The young man, on his side, had made a rapid
inspection of Newman’s person. He had taken the card and was about to
enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the
threshold—an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress. He
looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him. “Madame de Cintré,”
the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor. The other
took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at
Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely
but urbanely, “Madame de Cintré is not at home.”
The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, “I am very
sorry, sir,” he said.
Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and
retraced his steps. At the porter’s lodge he stopped; the two men were
still standing on the portico.
“Who is the gentleman with the dog?” he asked of the old woman who
reappeared. He had begun to learn French.
“That is Monsieur le Comte.”
“And the other?”
“That is Monsieur le Marquis.”
“A marquis?” said Christopher in English, which the old woman
fortunately did not understand. “Oh, then he’s not the butler!”
CHAPTER IV
Early one morning, before Christopher Newman was dressed, a little old
man was ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse,
bearing a picture in a brilliant frame. Newman, among the distractions
of Paris, had forgotten M. Nioche and his accomplished daughter; but
this was an effective reminder.
“I am afraid you had given me up, sir,” said the old man, after many
apologies and salutations. “We have made you wait so many days. You
accused us, perhaps, of inconstancy, of bad faith. But behold me at
last! And behold also the pretty Madonna. Place it on a chair, my
friend, in a good light, so that monsieur may admire it.” And M.
Nioche, addressing his companion, helped him to dispose the work of
art.
It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick and its frame,
of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide. It glittered and
twinkled in the morning light, and looked, to Newman’s eyes,
wonderfully splendid and precious. It seemed to him a very happy
purchase, and he felt rich in the possession of it. He stood looking at
it complacently, while he proceeded with his toilet, and M. Nioche, who
had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near, smiling and rubbing his
hands.
“It has wonderful _finesse_,” he murmured, caressingly. “And here and
there are marvelous touches, you probably perceive them, sir. It
attracted great attention on the Boulevard, as we came along. And then
a gradation of tones! That’s what it is to know how to paint. I don’t
say it because I am her father, sir; but as one man of taste addressing
another I cannot help observing that you have there an exquisite work.
It is hard to produce such things and to have to part with them. If our
means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I really may say, sir—”
and M. Nioche gave a little feebly insinuating laugh—“I really may say
that I envy you! You see,” he added in a moment, “we have taken the
liberty of offering you a frame. It increases by a trifle the value of
the work, and it will save you the annoyance—so great for a person of
your delicacy—of going about to bargain at the shops.”
The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which I
shrink from the attempt to reproduce in its integrity. He had
apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his
accent was oddly tinged with the cockneyism of the British metropolis.
But his learning had grown rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was
defective and capricious. He had repaired it with large patches of
French, with words anglicized by a process of his own, and with native
idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which he in all
humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader,
so that I have ventured to trim and sift it. Newman only half
understood it, but it amused him, and the old man’s decent forlornness
appealed to his democratic instincts. The assumption of a fatality in
misery always irritated his strong good nature—it was almost the only
thing that did so; and he felt the impulse to wipe it out, as it were,
with the sponge of his own prosperity. The papa of Mademoiselle Noémie,
however, had apparently on this occasion been vigorously indoctrinated,
and he showed a certain tremulous eagerness to cultivate unexpected
opportunities.
“How much do I owe you, then, with the frame?” asked Newman.
“It will make in all three thousand francs,” said the old man, smiling
agreeably, but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
“Can you give me a receipt?”
“I have brought one,” said M. Nioche. “I took the liberty of drawing it
up, in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his debt.”
And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his
patron. The document was written in a minute, fantastic hand, and
couched in the choicest language.
Newman laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by
one, solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
“And how is your young lady?” asked Newman. “She made a great
impression on me.”
“An impression? Monsieur is very good. Monsieur admires her
appearance?”
“She is very pretty, certainly.”
“Alas, yes, she is very pretty!”
“And what is the harm in her being pretty?”
M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot on the carpet and shook his head.
Then looking up at Newman with a gaze that seemed to brighten and
expand, “Monsieur knows what Paris is. She is dangerous to beauty, when
beauty hasn’t the sou.”
“Ah, but that is not the case with your daughter. She is rich, now.”
“Very true; we are rich for six months. But if my daughter were a plain
girl I should sleep better all the same.”
“You are afraid of the young men?”
“The young and the old!”
“She ought to get a husband.”
“Ah, monsieur, one doesn’t get a husband for nothing. Her husband must
take her as she is; I can’t give her a sou. But the young men don’t see
with that eye.”
“Oh,” said Newman, “her talent is in itself a dowry.”
“Ah, sir, it needs first to be converted into specie!” and M. Nioche
slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away. “The operation
doesn’t take place every day.”
“Well, your young men are very shabby,” said Newman; “that’s all I can
say. They ought to pay for your daughter, and not ask money
themselves.”
“Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have? They are
not the ideas of this country. We want to know what we are about when
we marry.”
“How big a portion does your daughter want?”
M. Nioche stared, as if he wondered what was coming next; but he
promptly recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that he knew a
very nice young man, employed by an insurance company, who would
content himself with fifteen thousand francs.
“Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me, and she shall
have her dowry.”
“Half a dozen pictures—her dowry! Monsieur is not speaking
inconsiderately?”
“If she will make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty as
that Madonna, I will pay her the same price,” said Newman.
Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement and gratitude,
and then he seized Newman’s hand, pressed it between his own ten
fingers, and gazed at him with watery eyes. “As pretty as that? They
shall be a thousand times prettier—they shall be magnificent, sublime.
Ah, if I only knew how to paint, myself, sir, so that I might lend a
hand! What can I do to thank you? _Voyons!_” And he pressed his
forehead while he tried to think of something.
“Oh, you have thanked me enough,” said Newman.
“Ah, here it is, sir!” cried M. Nioche. “To express my gratitude, I
will charge you nothing for the lessons in French conversation.”
“The lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Listening to your English,”
added Newman, laughing, “is almost a lesson in French.”
“Ah, I don’t profess to teach English, certainly,” said M. Nioche. “But
for my own admirable tongue I am still at your service.”
“Since you are here, then,” said Newman, “we will begin. This is a very
good hour. I am going to have my coffee; come every morning at
half-past nine and have yours with me.”
“Monsieur offers me my coffee, also?” cried M. Nioche. “Truly, my
_beaux jours_ are coming back.”
“Come,” said Newman, “let us begin. The coffee is almighty hot. How do
you say that in French?”
Every day, then, for the following three weeks, the minutely
respectable figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of
little inquiring and apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of
Newman’s morning beverage. I don’t know how much French our friend
learned, but, as he himself said, if the attempt did him no good, it
could at any rate do him no harm. And it amused him; it gratified that
irregularly sociable side of his nature which had always expressed
itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation, and which often,
even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit on rail fences
in young Western towns, in the twilight, in gossip hardly less than
fraternal with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers. He had
notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had been
assured, and his judgment approved the advice, that in traveling abroad
it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country. M.
Nioche was very much of a native and, though his life might not be
particularly worth looking into, he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded
unit in that picturesque Parisian civilization which offered our hero
so much easy entertainment and propounded so many curious problems to
his inquiring and practical mind. Newman was fond of statistics; he
liked to know how things were done; it gratified him to learn what
taxes were paid, what profits were gathered, what commercial habits
prevailed, how the battle of life was fought. M. Nioche, as a reduced
capitalist, was familiar with these considerations, and he formulated
his information, which he was proud to be able to impart, in the
neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and
thumb. As a Frenchman—quite apart from Newman’s napoleons—M. Nioche
loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not grown
rusty. As a Frenchman, too, he could give a clear account of things,
and—still as a Frenchman—when his knowledge was at fault he could
supply its lapses with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses.
The little shrunken financier was intensely delighted to have questions
asked him, and he scraped together information, by frugal processes,
and took notes, in his little greasy pocket-book, of incidents which
might interest his munificent friend. He read old almanacs at the
book-stalls on the quays, and he began to frequent another _café_,
where more newspapers were taken and his postprandial _demitasse_ cost
him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered sheets for
curious anecdotes, freaks of nature, and strange coincidences. He would
relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years of
age had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh
sixty ounces—the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame
P—, _charcutière_ in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an
old petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had
lost five years before. He pronounced his words with great distinctness
and sonority, and Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the
French tongue was very superior to the bewildering chatter that he
heard in other mouths. Upon this M. Nioche’s accent became more finely
trenchant than ever, he offered to read extracts from Lamartine, and he
protested that, although he did endeavor according to his feeble lights
to cultivate refinement of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real
thing, should go to the Théâtre Français.
Newman took an interest in French thriftiness and conceived a lively
admiration for Parisian economies. His own economic genius was so
entirely for operations on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease, he
needed so imperatively the sense of great risks and great prizes, that
he found an ungrudging entertainment in the spectacle of fortunes made
by the aggregation of copper coins, and in the minute subdivision of
labor and profit. He questioned M. Nioche about his own manner of life,
and felt a friendly mixture of compassion and respect over the recital
of his delicate frugalities. The worthy man told him how, at one
period, he and his daughter had supported existence comfortably upon
the sum of fifteen sous _per diem_; recently, having succeeded in
hauling ashore the last floating fragments of the wreck of his fortune,
his budget had been a trifle more ample. But they still had to count
their sous very narrowly, and M. Nioche intimated with a sigh that
Mademoiselle Noémie did not bring to this task that zealous cooperation
which might have been desired.
“But what will you have?”’ he asked, philosophically. “One is young,
one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can’t wear
shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre.”
“But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes,” said
Newman.
M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes. He would have liked
to be able to say that his daughter’s talents were appreciated, and
that her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a
scandal to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who,
without a suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social
rights. He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious that
Mademoiselle Noémie’s reproductions of the old masters had only to be
seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their
altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them
had kept purchasers at a respectful distance. “Poor little one!” said
M. Nioche, with a sigh; “it is almost a pity that her work is so
perfect! It would be in her interest to paint less well.”
“But if Mademoiselle Noémie has this devotion to her art,” Newman once
observed, “why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of
the other day?”
M. Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it
made him chronically uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy
the goose with the golden eggs—Newman’s benevolent confidence—he felt a
tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble. “Ah, she is an artist,
my dear sir, most assuredly,” he declared. “But, to tell you the truth,
she is also a _franche coquette_. I am sorry to say,” he added in a
moment, shaking his head with a world of harmless bitterness, “that she
comes honestly by it. Her mother was one before her!”
“You were not happy with your wife?” Newman asked.
M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head. “She was
my purgatory, monsieur!”
“She deceived you?”
“Under my nose, year after year. I was too stupid, and the temptation
was too great. But I found her out at last. I have only been once in my
life a man to be afraid of; I know it very well; it was in that hour!
Nevertheless I don’t like to think of it. I loved her—I can’t tell you
how much. She was a bad woman.”
“She is not living?”
“She has gone to her account.”
“Her influence on your daughter, then,” said Newman encouragingly, “is
not to be feared.”
“She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe! But
Noémie has no need of influence. She is sufficient to herself. She is
stronger than I.”
“She doesn’t obey you, eh?”
“She can’t obey, monsieur, since I don’t command. What would be the
use? It would only irritate her and drive her to some _coup de tête_.
She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it.
As a child—when I was happy, or supposed I was—she studied drawing and
painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a
talent. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I
used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round
to the company. I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them
for sale, and I took it very ill. We don’t know what we may come to!
Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche. Noémie had
no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew
older, and it became highly expedient that she should do something that
would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and
brushes. Some of our friends in the _quartier_ pronounced the idea
fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a
situation in a shop, or—if she was more ambitious—to advertise for a
place of _dame de compagnie_. She did advertise, and an old lady wrote
her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked her, and
offered her her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noémie
discovered that she passed her life in her armchair and had only two
visitors, her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and
the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government
clerkship of two thousand francs. She threw her old lady over, bought a
paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress, and went and set up her easel in
the Louvre. There in one place and another, she has passed the last two
years; I can’t say it has made us millionaires. But Noémie tells me
that Rome was not built in a day, that she is making great progress,
that I must leave her to her own devices. The fact is, without
prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea of burying herself alive.
She likes to see the world, and to be seen. She says, herself, that she
can’t work in the dark. With her appearance it is very natural. Only, I
can’t help worrying and trembling and wondering what may happen to her
there all alone, day after day, amid all that coming and going of
strangers. I can’t be always at her side. I go with her in the morning,
and I come to fetch her away, but she won’t have me near her in the
interval; she says I make her nervous. As if it didn’t make me nervous
to wander about all day without her! Ah, if anything were to happen to
her!” cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his
head again, portentously.
“Oh, I guess nothing will happen,” said Newman.
“I believe I should shoot her!” said the old man, solemnly.
“Oh, we’ll marry her,” said Newman, “since that’s how you manage it;
and I will go and see her tomorrow at the Louvre and pick out the
pictures she is to copy for me.”
M. Nioche had brought Newman a message from his daughter, in acceptance
of his magnificent commission, the young lady declaring herself his
most devoted servant, promising her most zealous endeavor, and
regretting that the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in
person. The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman
reverted to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noémie at the Louvre.
M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes
unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique,
appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when he was
taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with
his calico pocket-handkerchief, with his small, pale eyes fixed
strangely upon Newman.
“What’s the matter?” our hero demanded.
“Excuse the solicitude of a father’s heart!” said M. Nioche. “You
inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can’t help giving you a
warning. After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty. Let me
beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!”
Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh.
He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck him as
the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the
young girl with nothing less than veneration. He found her waiting for
him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carré. She was not in her
working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her
parasol, in honor of the occasion. These articles had been selected
with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image of youthful
alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived. She made
Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude for his
liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech. It annoyed him to
have a charming young girl stand there thanking him, and it made him
feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her
excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally in his
pay. He assured her, in such French as he could muster, that the thing
was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her services a great
favor.
“Whenever you please, then,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “we will pass
the review.”
They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and
strolled about for half an hour. Mademoiselle Noémie evidently relished
her situation, and had no desire to bring her public interview with her
striking-looking patron to a close. Newman perceived that prosperity
agreed with her. The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she
had addressed her father on the occasion of their former meeting had
given place to the most lingering and caressing tones.
“What sort of pictures do you desire?” she asked. “Sacred, or profane?”
“Oh, a few of each,” said Newman. “But I want something bright and
gay.”
“Something gay? There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre.
But we will see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm.
My father has done wonders.”
“Oh, I am a bad subject,” said Newman. “I am too old to learn a
language.”
“Too old? _Quelle folie!_” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, with a clear,
shrill laugh. “You are a very young man. And how do you like my
father?”
“He is a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders.”
“He is very _comme il faut_, my papa,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “and
as honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could trust him
with millions.”
“Do you always obey him?” asked Newman.
“Obey him?”
“Do you do what he bids you?”
The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in
either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too
much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. “Why do
you ask me that?” she demanded.
“Because I want to know.”
“You think me a bad girl?” And she gave a strange smile.
Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was
not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche’s solicitude for
her “innocence,” and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the
oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow her
searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous
intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father
nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot
to affirm that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had
any; she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and
he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her
long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St.
Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature
around her, and she had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it
seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do
something very audacious, but she would never do anything foolish.
Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried
utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself,
now, what she was looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that
she would like him to confess that he did think her a bad girl.
“Oh, no,” he said at last; “it would be very bad manners in me to judge
you that way. I don’t know you.”
“But my father has complained to you,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
“He says you are a coquette.”
“He shouldn’t go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don’t
believe it?”
“No,” said Newman gravely, “I don’t believe it.”
She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to
a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. “How should you
like that?” she asked.
“It doesn’t please me,” said Newman. “The young lady in the yellow
dress is not pretty.”
“Ah, you are a great connoisseur,” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie.
“In pictures? Oh, no; I know very little about them.”
“In pretty women, then.”
“In that I am hardly better.”
“What do you say to that, then?” the young girl asked, indicating a
superb Italian portrait of a lady. “I will do it for you on a smaller
scale.”
“On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?”
Mademoiselle Noémie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian
masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head. “I don’t like that
woman. She looks stupid.”
“I do like her,” said Newman. “Decidedly, I must have her, as large as
life. And just as stupid as she is there.”
The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile,
“It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!” she
said.
“What do you mean?” asked Newman, puzzled.
She gave another little shrug. “Seriously, then, you want that
portrait—the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two
magnificent arms?”
“Everything—just as it is.”
“Would nothing else do, instead?”
“Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too.”
Mademoiselle Noémie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of
the hall, and stood there, looking vaguely about her. At last she came
back. “It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate.
Venetian portraits, as large as life! You go at it _en prince_. And you
are going to travel about Europe that way?”
“Yes, I intend to travel,” said Newman.
“Ordering, buying, spending money?”
“Of course I shall spend some money.”
“You are very happy to have it. And you are perfectly free?”
“How do you mean, free?”
“You have nothing to bother you—no family, no wife, no _fiancée?_”
“Yes, I am tolerably free.”
“You are very happy,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, gravely.
“_Je le veux bien!_” said Newman, proving that he had learned more
French than he admitted.
“And how long shall you stay in Paris?” the young girl went on.
“Only a few days more.”
“Why do you go away?”
“It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland.”
“To Switzerland? That’s a fine country. I would give my new parasol to
see it! Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks! Oh, I
congratulate you. Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all the hot
summer, daubing at your pictures.”
“Oh, take your time about it,” said Newman. “Do them at your
convenience.”
They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things. Newman pointed
out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noémie generally criticised it,
and proposed something else. Then suddenly she diverged and began to
talk about some personal matter.
“What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carré?” she
abruptly asked.
“I admired your picture.”
“But you hesitated a long time.”
“Oh, I do nothing rashly,” said Newman.
“Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never supposed you were going to
speak to me. I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you
to-day. It’s very curious.”
“It is very natural,” observed Newman.
“Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me. Coquette as you think me, I have
never walked about in public with a gentleman before. What was my
father thinking of, when he consented to our interview?”
“He was repenting of his unjust accusations,” replied Newman.
Mademoiselle Noémie remained silent; at last she dropped into a seat.
“Well then, for those five it is fixed,” she said. “Five copies as
brilliant and beautiful as I can make them. We have one more to choose.
Shouldn’t you like one of those great Rubenses—the marriage of Marie de
Médicis? Just look at it and see how handsome it is.”
“Oh, yes; I should like that,” said Newman. “Finish off with that.”
“Finish off with that—good!” And she laughed. She sat a moment, looking
at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him, with her hands
hanging and clasped in front of her. “I don’t understand you,” she said
with a smile. “I don’t understand how a man can be so ignorant.”
“Oh, I am ignorant, certainly,” said Newman, putting his hands into his
pockets.
“It’s ridiculous! I don’t know how to paint.”
“You don’t know how?”
“I paint like a cat; I can’t draw a straight line. I never sold a
picture until you bought that thing the other day.” And as she offered
this surprising information she continued to smile.
Newman burst into a laugh. “Why do you tell me this?” he asked.
“Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so. My pictures
are grotesque.”
“And the one I possess—”
“That one is rather worse than usual.”
“Well,” said Newman, “I like it all the same!”
She looked at him askance. “That is a very pretty thing to say,” she
answered; “but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther. This
order of yours is impossible, you know. What do you take me for? It is
work for ten men. You pick out the six most difficult pictures in the
Louvre, and you expect me to go to work as if I were sitting down to
hem a dozen pocket handkerchiefs. I wanted to see how far you would
go.”
Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the
ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from
being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle
Noémie’s sudden frankness was not essentially more honest than her
leaving him in error would have been. She was playing a game; she was
not simply taking pity on his æsthetic verdancy. What was it she
expected to win? The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize
therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting that the prize
might be great, Newman could not resist a movement of admiration for
his companion’s intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand,
whatever she might intend to do with the other, a very handsome sum of
money.
“Are you joking,” he said, “or are you serious?”
“Oh, serious!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, but with her extraordinary
smile.
“I know very little about pictures or how they are painted. If you
can’t do all that, of course you can’t. Do what you can, then.”
“It will be very bad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
“Oh,” said Newman, laughing, “if you are determined it shall be bad, of
course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?”
“I can do nothing else; I have no real talent.”
“You are deceiving your father, then.”
The young girl hesitated a moment. “He knows very well!”
“No,” Newman declared; “I am sure he believes in you.”
“He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want
to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place
to come to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp
room, on a court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter.”
“Of course it is much more amusing,” said Newman. “But for a poor girl
isn’t it rather an expensive amusement?”
“Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that,” said Mademoiselle
Noémie. “But rather than earn my living as some girls do—toiling with a
needle, in little black holes, out of the world—I would throw myself
into the Seine.”
“There is no need of that,” Newman answered; “your father told you my
offer?”
“Your offer?”
“He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance to
earn your _dot_.”
“He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it! Why
should you take such an interest in my marriage?”
“My interest was in your father. I hold to my offer; do what you can,
and I will buy what you paint.”
She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground. At
last, looking up, “What sort of a husband can you get for twelve
thousand francs?” she asked.
“Your father tells me he knows some very good young men.”
“Grocers and butchers and little _maîtres de cafés!_ I will not marry
at all if I can’t marry well.”
“I would advise you not to be too fastidious,” said Newman. “That’s all
the advice I can give you.”
“I am very much vexed at what I have said!” cried the young girl. “It
has done me no good. But I couldn’t help it.”
“What good did you expect it to do you?”
“I couldn’t help it, simply.”
Newman looked at her a moment. “Well, your pictures may be bad,” he
said, “but you are too clever for me, nevertheless. I don’t understand
you. Good-bye!” And he put out his hand.
She made no response, and offered him no farewell. She turned away and
seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back of her
hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures. Newman stood a
moment and then turned on his heel and retreated. He had understood her
better than he confessed; this singular scene was a practical
commentary upon her father’s statement that she was a frank coquette.
CHAPTER V
When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit to Madame de
Cintré, she urged him not to be discouraged, but to carry out his plan
of “seeing Europe” during the summer, and return to Paris in the autumn
and settle down comfortably for the winter. “Madame de Cintré will
keep,” she said; “she is not a woman who will marry from one day to
another.” Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back
to Paris; he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from
professing any especial interest in Madame de Cintré’s continued
widowhood. This circumstance was at variance with his habitual
frankness, and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the
incipient stage of that passion which is more particularly known as the
mysterious one. The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes that
were at once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory,
and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect of never
looking into them again. He communicated to Mrs. Tristram a number of
other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose; but on this
particular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave of M.
Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the
blue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at his interview
with Mademoiselle Noémie; and left the old man nursing his
breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might have
been defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his travels, with all
his usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential
directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet
no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical
instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He
found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent
when once his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged
from dialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not
understood a word, in full possession of the particular fact he had
desired to ascertain. His appetite for facts was capacious, and
although many of those which he noted would have seemed woefully dry
and colorless to the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful
inspection of the list would have shown that he had a soft spot in his
imagination. In the charming city of Brussels—his first stopping-place
after leaving Paris—he asked a great many questions about the
street-cars, and took extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this
familiar symbol of American civilization; but he was also greatly
struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hôtel de Ville, and
wondered whether it would not be possible to “get up” something like it
in San Francisco. He stood for half an hour in the crowded square
before this edifice, in imminent danger from carriage-wheels, listening
to a toothless old cicerone mumble in broken English the touching
history of Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names of these
gentlemen—for reasons best known to himself—on the back of an old
letter.
At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been
intense; passive entertainment, in the Champs Élysées and at the
theatres, seemed about as much as he need expect of himself, and
although, as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious,
satisfying _best_, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his
conscience, and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the
hour. He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe.
He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt
a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even—a false shame,
possibly—if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the
mirror. Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high
sense of responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a man’s life
should be easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into a
matter of course. The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar, where
one might stroll about and purchase handsome things; but he was no more
conscious, individually, of social pressure than he admitted the
existence of such a thing as an obligatory purchase. He had not only a
dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust, of uncomfortable thoughts, and
it was both uncomfortable and slightly contemptible to feel obliged to
square one’s self with a standard. One’s standard was the ideal of
one’s own good-humored prosperity, the prosperity which enabled one to
give as well as take. To expand, without bothering about it—without
shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other—to
the full compass of what he would have called a “pleasant” experience,
was Newman’s most definite programme of life. He had always hated to
hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had always caught them; and
just so an undue solicitude for “culture” seemed a sort of silly
dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined to women,
foreigners, and other unpractical persons. All this admitted, Newman
enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current, as
profoundly as the most zealous _dilettante_. One’s theories, after all,
matter little; it is one’s humor that is the great thing. Our friend
was intelligent, and he could not help that. He lounged through Belgium
and Holland and the Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy,
planning about nothing, but seeing everything. The guides and _valets
de place_ found him an excellent subject. He was always approachable,
for he was much addicted to standing about in the vestibules and
porticos of inns, and he availed himself little of the opportunities
for impressive seclusion which are so liberally offered in Europe to
gentlemen who travel with long purses. When an excursion, a church, a
gallery, a ruin, was proposed to him, the first thing Newman usually
did, after surveying his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was
to sit down at a little table and order something to drink. The
cicerone, during this process, usually retreated to a respectful
distance; otherwise I am not sure that Newman would not have bidden him
sit down and have a glass also, and tell him as an honest fellow
whether his church or his gallery was really worth a man’s trouble. At
last he rose and stretched his long legs, beckoned to the man of
monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his adversary.
“What is it?” he asked. “How far?” And whatever the answer was,
although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never declined. He stepped
into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him to answer
questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular aversion to
slow driving) and rolled, in all probability through a dusty suburb, to
the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was a disappointment, if the
church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish, Newman never
protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with an impartial eye upon
great monuments and small, made the guide recite his lesson, listened
to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else to be seen in the
neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace. It is to be
feared that his perception of the difference between good architecture
and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been seen
gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions. Ugly churches
were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well as beautiful ones, and
his tour was altogether a pastime. But there is sometimes nothing like
the imagination of these people who have none, and Newman, now and
then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign city, before some lonely,
sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who had rendered civic
service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward tremor. It was
not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid, fathomless sense of
diversion.
He encountered by chance in Holland a young American, with whom, for a
time, he formed a sort of traveler’s partnership. They were men of a
very different cast, but each, in his way, was so good a fellow that,
for a few weeks at least, it seemed something of a pleasure to share
the chances of the road. Newman’s comrade, whose name was Babcock, was
a young Unitarian minister, a small, spare, neatly-attired man, with a
strikingly candid physiognomy. He was a native of Dorchester,
Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small congregation in
another suburb of the New England metropolis. His digestion was weak
and he lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy—a regimen to which he
was so much attached that his tour seemed to him destined to be
blighted when, on landing on the Continent, he found that these
delicacies did not flourish under the _table d’hôte_ system. In Paris
he had purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment which called
itself an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers
were also to be procured, and he had carried it about with him, and
shown extreme serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position
of having his hominy prepared for him and served at anomalous hours, at
the hotels he successively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in
the course of business, at Mr. Babcock’s birthplace, and, for reasons
too recondite to unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a
jocular cast. To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long
as it is not explained, he used often to address his companion as
“Dorchester.” Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it is highly
improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar characters would
have found any very convenient points of contact. They were, indeed, as
different as possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters,
accepted the situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to
meditate over it privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room
early in the evening for the express purpose of considering it
conscientiously and impartially. He was not sure that it was a good
thing for him to associate with our hero, whose way of taking life was
so little his own. Newman was an excellent, generous fellow; Mr.
Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a _noble_ fellow, and,
certainly, it was impossible not to like him. But would it not be
desirable to try to exert an influence upon him, to try to quicken his
moral life and sharpen his sense of duty? He liked everything, he
accepted everything, he found amusement in everything; he was not
discriminating, he had not a high tone. The young man from Dorchester
accused Newman of a fault which he considered very grave, and which he
did his best to avoid: what he would have called a want of “moral
reaction.” Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and
churches, and carried Mrs. Jameson’s works about in his trunk; he
delighted in æsthetic analysis, and received peculiar impressions from
everything he saw. But nevertheless in his secret soul he detested
Europe, and he felt an irritating need to protest against Newman’s
gross intellectual hospitality. Mr. Babcock’s moral _malaise_, I am
afraid, lay deeper than where any definition of mine can reach it. He
mistrusted the European temperament, he suffered from the European
climate, he hated the European dinner-hour; European life seemed to him
unscrupulous and impure. And yet he had an exquisite sense of beauty;
and as beauty was often inextricably associated with the above
displeasing conditions, as he wished, above all, to be just and
dispassionate, and as he was, furthermore, extremely devoted to
“culture,” he could not bring himself to decide that Europe was utterly
bad. But he thought it was very bad indeed, and his quarrel with Newman
was that this unregulated epicure had a sadly insufficient perception
of the bad. Babcock himself really knew as little about the bad, in any
quarter of the world, as a nursing infant, his most vivid realization
of evil had been the discovery that one of his college classmates, who
was studying architecture in Paris had a love affair with a young woman
who did not expect him to marry her. Babcock had related this incident
to Newman, and our hero had applied an epithet of an unflattering sort
to the young girl. The next day his companion asked him whether he was
very sure he had used exactly the right word to characterize the young
architect’s mistress. Newman stared and laughed. “There are a great
many words to express that idea,” he said; “you can take your choice!”
“Oh, I mean,” said Babcock, “was she possibly not to be considered in a
different light? Don’t you think she _really_ expected him to marry
her?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Newman. “Very likely she did; I have no
doubt she is a grand woman.” And he began to laugh again.
“I didn’t mean that either,” said Babcock, “I was only afraid that I
might have seemed yesterday not to remember—not to consider; well, I
think I will write to Percival about it.”
And he had written to Percival (who answered him in a really impudent
fashion), and he had reflected that it was somehow, raw and reckless in
Newman to assume in that off-hand manner that the young woman in Paris
might be “grand.” The brevity of Newman’s judgments very often shocked
and discomposed him. He had a way of damning people without farther
appeal, or of pronouncing them capital company in the face of
uncomfortable symptoms, which seemed unworthy of a man whose conscience
had been properly cultivated. And yet poor Babcock liked him, and
remembered that even if he was sometimes perplexing and painful, this
was not a reason for giving him up. Goethe recommended seeing human
nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe
perfectly splendid. He often tried, in odd half-hours of conversation
to infuse into Newman a little of his own spiritual starch, but
Newman’s personal texture was too loose to admit of stiffening. His
mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He
admired principles extremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little
fellow for having so many. He accepted all that his high-strung
companion offered him, and put them away in what he supposed to be a
very safe place; but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts
among the articles that Newman had in daily use.
They traveled together through Germany and into Switzerland, where for
three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue
lakes. At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice.
Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable; he seemed
moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle, and talked
one moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another. Newman led
his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries and
churches, spent an unconscionable amount of time in strolling in the
Piazza San Marco, bought a great many bad pictures, and for a fortnight
enjoyed Venice grossly. One evening, coming back to his inn, he found
Babcock waiting for him in the little garden beside it. The young man
walked up to him, looking very dismal, thrust out his hand, and said
with solemnity that he was afraid they must part. Newman expressed his
surprise and regret, and asked why a parting had become necessary.
“Don’t be afraid I’m tired of you,” he said.
“You are not tired of me?” demanded Babcock, fixing him with his clear
gray eye.
“Why the deuce should I be? You are a very plucky fellow. Besides, I
don’t grow tired of things.”
“We don’t understand each other,” said the young minister.
“Don’t I understand you?” cried Newman. “Why, I hoped I did. But what
if I don’t; where’s the harm?”
“I don’t understand _you_,” said Babcock. And he sat down and rested
his head on his hand, and looked up mournfully at his immeasurable
friend.
“Oh Lord, I don’t mind that!” cried Newman, with a laugh.
“But it’s very distressing to me. It keeps me in a state of unrest. It
irritates me; I can’t settle anything. I don’t think it’s good for me.”
“You worry too much; that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Newman.
“Of course it must seem so to you. You think I take things too hard,
and I think you take things too easily. We can never agree.”
“But we have agreed very well all along.”
“No, I haven’t agreed,” said Babcock, shaking his head. “I am very
uncomfortable. I ought to have separated from you a month ago.”
“Oh, horrors! I’ll agree to anything!” cried Newman.
Mr. Babcock buried his head in both hands. At last looking up, “I don’t
think you appreciate my position,” he said. “I try to arrive at the
truth about everything. And then you go too fast. For me, you are too
passionate, too extravagant. I feel as if I ought to go over all this
ground we have traversed again, by myself, alone. I am afraid I have
made a great many mistakes.”
“Oh, you needn’t give so many reasons,” said Newman. “You are simply
tired of my company. You have a good right to be.”
“No, no, I am not tired!” cried the pestered young divine. “It is very
wrong to be tired.”
“I give it up!” laughed Newman. “But of course it will never do to go
on making mistakes. Go your way, by all means. I shall miss you; but
you have seen I make friends very easily. You will be lonely yourself;
but drop me a line, when you feel like it, and I will wait for you
anywhere.”
“I think I will go back to Milan. I am afraid I didn’t do justice to
Luini.”
“Poor Luini!” said Newman.
“I mean that I am afraid I overestimated him. I don’t think that he is
a painter of the first rank.”
“Luini?” Newman exclaimed; “why, he’s enchanting—he’s magnificent!
There is something in his genius that is like a beautiful woman. It
gives one the same feeling.”
Mr. Babcock frowned and winced. And it must be added that this was, for
Newman, an unusually metaphysical flight; but in passing through Milan
he had taken a great fancy to the painter. “There you are again!” said
Mr. Babcock. “Yes, we had better separate.” And on the morrow he
retraced his steps and proceeded to tone down his impressions of the
great Lombard artist.
A few days afterwards Newman received a note from his late companion
which ran as follows:—
My Dear Mr. Newman,—I am afraid that my conduct at Venice, a week ago,
seemed to you strange and ungrateful, and I wish to explain my
position, which, as I said at the time, I do not think you appreciate.
I had long had it on my mind to propose that we should part company,
and this step was not really so abrupt as it seemed. In the first
place, you know, I am traveling in Europe on funds supplied by my
congregation, who kindly offered me a vacation and an opportunity to
enrich my mind with the treasures of nature and art in the Old World. I
feel, therefore, as if I ought to use my time to the very best
advantage. I have a high sense of responsibility. You appear to care
only for the pleasure of the hour, and you give yourself up to it with
a violence which I confess I am not able to emulate. I feel as if I
must arrive at some conclusion and fix my belief on certain points. Art
and life seem to me intensely serious things, and in our travels in
Europe we should especially remember the immense seriousness of Art.
You seem to hold that if a thing amuses you for the moment, that is all
you need ask for it, and your relish for mere amusement is also much
higher than mine. You put, however, a kind of reckless confidence into
your pleasure which at times, I confess, has seemed to me—shall I say
it?—almost cynical. Your way at any rate is not my way, and it is
unwise that we should attempt any longer to pull together. And yet, let
me add that I know there is a great deal to be said for your way; I
have felt its attraction, in your society, very strongly. But for this
I should have left you long ago. But I was so perplexed. I hope I have
not done wrong. I feel as if I had a great deal of lost time to make
up. I beg you take all this as I mean it, which, Heaven knows, is not
invidiously. I have a great personal esteem for you and hope that some
day, when I have recovered my balance, we shall meet again. I hope you
will continue to enjoy your travels, only _do_ remember that Life and
Art _are_ extremely serious. Believe me your sincere friend and
well-wisher,
BENJAMIN BABCOCK
P. S. I am greatly perplexed by Luini.
This letter produced in Newman’s mind a singular mixture of
exhilaration and awe. At first, Mr. Babcock’s tender conscience seemed
to him a capital farce, and his traveling back to Milan only to get
into a deeper muddle appeared, as the reward of his pedantry,
exquisitely and ludicrously just. Then Newman reflected that these are
mighty mysteries, that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and
barely mentionable thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering
the treasures of art and the privileges of life was probably very base
and immoral. Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that
evening, for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the
warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to
answer Babcock’s letter. His good nature checked his resenting the
young minister’s lofty admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of
humor forbade his taking them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but
a day or two afterward he found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little
statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to
Babcock without a commentary. It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking
monk, in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and
pulling a portentously long face. It was a wonderfully delicate piece
of carving, and in a moment, through one of the rents of his gown, you
espied a fat capon hung round the monk’s waist. In Newman’s intention
what did the figure symbolize? Did it mean that he was going to try to
be as “high-toned” as the monk looked at first, but that he feared he
should succeed no better than the friar, on a closer inspection, proved
to have done? It is not supposable that he intended a satire upon
Babcock’s own asceticism, for this would have been a truly cynical
stroke. He made his late companion, at any rate, a very valuable little
present.
Newman, on leaving Venice, went through the Tyrol to Vienna, and then
returned westward, through Southern Germany. The autumn found him at
Baden-Baden, where he spent several weeks. The place was charming, and
he was in no hurry to depart; besides, he was looking about him and
deciding what to do for the winter. His summer had been very full, and
he sat under the great trees beside the miniature river that trickles
past the Baden flower-beds, he slowly rummaged it over. He had seen and
done a great deal, enjoyed and observed a great deal; he felt older,
and yet he felt younger too. He remembered Mr. Babcock and his desire
to form conclusions, and he remembered also that he had profited very
little by his friend’s exhortation to cultivate the same respectable
habit. Could he not scrape together a few conclusions? Baden-Baden was
the prettiest place he had seen yet, and orchestral music in the
evening, under the stars, was decidedly a great institution. This was
one of his conclusions! But he went on to reflect that he had done very
wisely to pull up stakes and come abroad; this seeing of the world was
a very interesting thing. He had learned a great deal; he couldn’t say
just what, but he had it there under his hat-band. He had done what he
wanted; he had seen the great things, and he had given his mind a
chance to “improve,” if it would. He cheerfully believed that it had
improved. Yes, this seeing of the world was very pleasant, and he would
willingly do a little more of it. Thirty-six years old as he was, he
had a handsome stretch of life before him yet, and he need not begin to
count his weeks. Where should he take the world next? I have said he
remembered the eyes of the lady whom he had found standing in Mrs.
Tristram’s drawing-room; four months had elapsed, and he had not
forgotten them yet. He had looked—he had made a point of looking—into a
great many other eyes in the interval, but the only ones he thought of
now were Madame de Cintré’s. If he wanted to see more of the world,
should he find it in Madame de Cintré’s eyes? He would certainly find
something there, call it this world or the next. Throughout these
rather formless meditations he sometimes thought of his past life and
the long array of years (they had begun so early) during which he had
had nothing in his head but “enterprise.” They seemed far away now, for
his present attitude was more than a holiday, it was almost a rupture.
He had told Tristram that the pendulum was swinging back and it
appeared that the backward swing had not yet ended. Still “enterprise,”
which was over in the other quarter wore to his mind a different aspect
at different hours. In its train a thousand forgotten episodes came
trooping back into his memory. Some of them he looked complacently
enough in the face; from some he averted his head. They were old
efforts, old exploits, antiquated examples of “smartness” and
sharpness. Some of them, as he looked at them, he felt decidedly proud
of; he admired himself as if he had been looking at another man. And,
in fact, many of the qualities that make a great deed were there: the
decision, the resolution, the courage, the celerity, the clear eye, and
the strong hand. Of certain other achievements it would be going too
far to say that he was ashamed of them for Newman had never had a
stomach for dirty work. He was blessed with a natural impulse to
disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of
temptation. And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have
been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a
glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a great many
moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of his memories
seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it
struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never,
on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful. He had spent
his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and,
now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-getting
appeared tolerably dry and sterile. It is very well to sneer at
money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may be
said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately.
To this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if
he chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing. It
had come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer
was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made
by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.
During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the
Avenue d’Iéna, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not
concocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was
coming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the
world. Newman’s answer ran as follows:—
“I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn’t expect
anything of me. I don’t think I have written twenty letters of pure
friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have
got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to know
everything that has happened to me these three months. The best way to
tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen guide-books, with
my pencil-marks in the margin. Wherever you find a scratch or a cross,
or a ‘Beautiful!’ or a ‘So true!’ or a ‘Too thin!’ you may know that I
have had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about my
history, ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany,
Italy—I have been through the whole list, and I don’t think I am any
the worse for it. I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than I
supposed any man could. I have seen some very pretty things, and shall
perhaps talk them over this winter, by your fireside. You see, my face
is not altogether set against Paris. I have had all kinds of plans and
visions, but your letter has blown most of them away. ‘_L’appétit vient
en mangeant_,’ says the French proverb, and I find that the more I see
of the world the more I want to see. Now that I am in the shafts, why
shouldn’t I trot to the end of the course? Sometimes I think of the far
East, and keep rolling the names of Eastern cities under my tongue:
Damascus and Bagdad, Medina and Mecca. I spent a week last month in the
company of a returned missionary, who told me I ought to be ashamed to
be loafing about Europe when there are such big things to be seen out
there. I do want to explore, but I think I would rather explore over in
the Rue de l’Université. Do you ever hear from that pretty lady? If you
can get her to promise she will be at home the next time I call, I will
go back to Paris straight. I am more than ever in the state of mind I
told you about that evening; I want a first-class wife. I have kept an
eye on all the pretty girls I have come across this summer, but none of
them came up to my notion, or anywhere near it. I should have enjoyed
all this a thousand times more if I had had the lady just mentioned by
my side. The nearest approach to her was a Unitarian minister from
Boston, who very soon demanded a separation, for incompatibility of
temper. He told me I was low-minded, immoral, a devotee of ‘art for
art’—whatever that is: all of which greatly afflicted me, for he was
really a sweet little fellow. But shortly afterwards I met an
Englishman, with whom I struck up an acquaintance which at first seemed
to promise well—a very bright man, who writes in the London papers and
knows Paris nearly as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a week
together, but he very soon gave me up in disgust. I was too virtuous by
half; I was too stern a moralist. He told me, in a friendly way, that I
was cursed with a conscience; that I judged things like a Methodist and
talked about them like an old lady. This was rather bewildering. Which
of my two critics was I to believe? I didn’t worry about it and very
soon made up my mind they were both idiots. But there is one thing in
which no one will ever have the impudence to pretend I am wrong, that
is, in being your faithful friend,
CHAPTER VI
Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before the
autumn was over. He established himself in some rooms selected for him
by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter’s estimate of what he
called his social position. When Newman learned that his social
position was to be taken into account, he professed himself utterly
incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care. “I didn’t
know I had a social position,” he said, “and if I have, I haven’t the
smallest idea what it is. Isn’t a social position knowing some two or
three thousand people and inviting them to dinner? I know you and your
wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French lessons last spring.
Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other? If I can, you must come
to-morrow.”
“That is not very grateful to me,” said Mrs. Tristram, “who introduced
you last year to every creature I know.”
“So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought you wanted me to
forget,” said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which
frequently marked his utterance, and which an observer would not have
known whether to pronounce a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection
of ignorance or a modest aspiration to knowledge; “you told me you
disliked them all.”
“Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering. But
in future,” added Mrs. Tristram, “pray forget all the wicked things and
remember only the good ones. It will be easily done, and it will not
fatigue your memory. But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to
pick out your rooms, you are in for something hideous.”
“Hideous, darling?” cried Tristram.
“To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger
language.”
“What do you think she would say, Newman?” asked Tristram. “If she
really tried, now? She can express displeasure, volubly, in two or
three languages; that’s what it is to be intellectual. It gives her the
start of me completely, for I can’t swear, for the life of me, except
in English. When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother
tongue. There’s nothing like it, after all.”
Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs, and that
he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything
that Tristram should offer him. This was partly veracity on our hero’s
part, but it was also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and
look at rooms, and make people open windows, and poke into sofas with
his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask who lived above and who
below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram’s
heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way as he was
conscious that, as regards his obliging friend, he had suffered the
warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate. Besides, he had no
taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite sense of comfort or
convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but it was
satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair
from a soft one, and he possessed a talent for stretching his legs
which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities. His idea of comfort
was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of them, and be
conscious of their possessing a number of patented mechanical
devices—half of which he should never have occasion to use. The
apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once said
that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on. For the
rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person
that everything was “handsome.” Tristram accordingly secured for him an
apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied. It was
situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor, and consisted
of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped
in various light shades of satin, and chiefly furnished with mirrors
and clocks. Newman thought them magnificent, thanked Tristram heartily,
immediately took possession, and had one of his trunks standing for
three months in his drawing-room.
One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de
Cintré, had returned from the country; that she had met her three days
before, coming out of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having
journeyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender,
of whose skill she had heard high praise.
“And how were those eyes?” Newman asked.
“Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!” said Mrs. Tristram.
“She had been to confession.”
“It doesn’t tally with your account of her,” said Newman, “that she
should have sins to confess.”
“They were not sins; they were sufferings.”
“How do you know that?”
“She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning.”
“And what does she suffer from?”
“I didn’t ask her. With her, somehow, one is very discreet. But I
guessed, easily enough. She suffers from her wicked old mother and her
Grand Turk of a brother. They persecute her. But I can almost forgive
them, because, as I told you, she is a saint, and a persecution is all
that she needs to bring out her saintliness and make her perfect.”
“That’s a comfortable theory for her. I hope you will never impart it
to the old folks. Why does she let them bully her? Is she not her own
mistress?”
“Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no. In France you must never say
nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most
abominable old woman in the world, and make your life a purgatory; but,
after all, she is _ma mère_, and you have no right to judge her. You
have simply to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintré
bows her head and folds her wings.”
“Can’t she at least make her brother leave off?”
“Her brother is the _chef de la famille_, as they say; he is the head
of the clan. With those people the family is everything; you must act,
not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family.”
“I wonder what _my_ family would like me to do!” exclaimed Tristram.
“I wish you had one!” said his wife.
“But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?” Newman asked.
“Another marriage. They are not rich, and they want to bring more money
into the family.”
“There’s your chance, my boy!” said Tristram.
“And Madame de Cintré objects,” Newman continued.
“She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again. It
appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain; M. de
Cintré left a scanty property.”
“And to whom do they want to marry her now?”
“I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke.”
“There’s Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!” cried her husband. “Observe
the richness of her imagination. She has not a single question—it’s
vulgar to ask questions—and yet she knows everything. She has the
history of Madame de Cintré’s marriage at her fingers’ ends. She has
seen the lovely Claire on her knees, with loosened tresses and
streaming eyes, and the rest of them standing over her with spikes and
goads and red-hot irons, ready to come down on her if she refuses the
tipsy duke. The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her
milliner’s bill or refused her an opera-box.”
Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust in each
direction. “Do you really mean,” he asked of Mrs. Tristram, “that your
friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?”
“I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that
sort of thing.”
“It is like something in a play,” said Newman; “that dark old house
over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be
done again.”
“They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintré
tells me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been
hatched.”
“_Must_ have been; mind that!” said Tristram.
“After all,” suggested Newman, after a silence, “she may be in trouble
about something else.”
“If it is something else, then it is something worse,” said Mrs.
Tristram, with rich decision.
Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation. “Is it
possible,” he asked at last, “that they do that sort of thing over
here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?”
“Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,” said Mrs.
Tristram. “There is plenty of bullying everywhere.”
“A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,” said
Tristram. “Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three
together, into marrying nasty fellows. There is no end of that always
going on in the Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The
Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue! Someone ought to show them up.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Newman, very gravely. “I don’t believe that,
in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion. I don’t believe
there have been a dozen cases of it since the country began.”
“Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!” cried Tristram.
“The spread eagle ought to use his wings,” said Mrs. Tristram. “Fly to
the rescue of Madame de Cintré!”
“To her rescue?”
“Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off. Marry her
yourself.”
Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, “I should
suppose she had heard enough of marrying,” he said. “The kindest way to
treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it. But
that sort of thing is infamous,” he added; “it makes me feel savage to
hear of it.”
He heard of it, however, more than once afterward. Mrs. Tristram again
saw Madame de Cintré, and again found her looking very sad. But on
these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear
and still. “She is cold, calm, and hopeless,” Mrs. Tristram declared,
and she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was
again in Paris and was faithful in his desire to make Madame de
Cintré’s acquaintance, this lovely woman had found a smile in her
despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed his visit in
the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage. “I told her
something about you,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“That’s a comfort,” said Newman, placidly. “I like people to know about
me.”
A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again to the
Rue de l’Université. The early evening had closed in as he applied for
admittance at the stoutly guarded _Hôtel de Bellegarde_. He was told
that Madame de Cintré was at home; he crossed the court, entered the
farther door, and was conducted through a vestibule, vast, dim, and
cold, up a broad stone staircase with an ancient iron balustrade, to an
apartment on the second floor. Announced and ushered in, he found
himself in a sort of paneled boudoir, at one end of which a lady and
gentleman were seated before the fire. The gentleman was smoking a
cigarette; there was no light in the room save that of a couple of
candles and the glow from the hearth. Both persons rose to welcome
Newman, who, in the firelight, recognized Madame de Cintré. She gave
him her hand with a smile which seemed in itself an illumination, and,
pointing to her companion, said softly, “My brother.” The gentleman
offered Newman a frank, friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived
him to be the young man who had spoken to him in the court of the hotel
on his former visit and who had struck him as a good fellow.
“Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,” said Madame de
Cintré gently, as she resumed her former place.
Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what, in truth,
was his errand. He had an unusual, unexpected sense of having wandered
into a strange corner of the world. He was not given, as a general
thing, to anticipating danger, or forecasting disaster, and he had had
no social tremors on this particular occasion. He was not timid and he
was not impudent. He felt too kindly toward himself to be the one, and
too good-naturedly toward the rest of the world to be the other. But
his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease of temper at its mercy;
with every disposition to take things simply, it was obliged to
perceive that some things were not so simple as others. He felt as one
does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it.
This strange, pretty woman, sitting in fire-side talk with her brother,
in the gray depths of her inhospitable-looking house—what had he to say
to her? She seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what
grounds had he pulled away the curtain? For a moment he felt as if he
had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean, and as if he must
exert himself to keep from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame
de Cintré, and she was settling herself in her chair and drawing in her
long dress and turning her face towards him. Their eyes met; a moment
afterwards she looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on
the fire. But the moment, and the glance which traversed it, had been
sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of personal
embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement which was
so frequent with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his
taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his legs. The
impression Madame de Cintré had made upon him on their first meeting
came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She was
pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book and the first lines
held his attention.
She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there,
how he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with
that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had
struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women, he
had come to like extremely. Here and there Madame de Cintré’s utterance
had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten minutes Newman
found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses. He enjoyed them, and
he marveled to see that gross thing, error, brought down to so fine a
point.
“You have a beautiful country,” said Madame de Cintré, presently.
“Oh, magnificent!” said Newman. “You ought to see it.”
“I shall never see it,” said Madame de Cintré with a smile.
“Why not?” asked Newman.
“I don’t travel; especially so far.”
“But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?”
“I go away in summer, a little way, to the country.”
Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
knew what. “Don’t you find it rather—rather quiet here?” he said; “so
far from the street?” Rather “gloomy,” he was going to say, but he
reflected that that would be impolite.
“Yes, it is very quiet,” said Madame de Cintré; “but we like that.”
“Ah, you like that,” repeated Newman, slowly.
“Besides, I have lived here all my life.”
“Lived here all your life,” said Newman, in the same way.
“I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my
grandfather, and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?” and
she appealed to her brother.
“Yes, it’s a family habit to be born here!” the young man said with a
laugh, and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire,
and then remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would
have perceived that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he
covertly examined, while he stood stroking his moustache.
“Your house is tremendously old, then,” said Newman.
“How old is it, brother?” asked Madame de Cintré.
The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted one
high in each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room, above
the chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment was of white
marble, and in the familiar rococo style of the last century; but above
it was a paneling of an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted white,
and gilded here and there. The white had turned to yellow, and the
gilding was tarnished. On the top, the figures ranged themselves into a
sort of shield, on which an armorial device was cut. Above it, in
relief, was a date—1627. “There you have it,” said the young man. “That
is old or new, according to your point of view.”
“Well, over here,” said Newman, “one’s point of view gets shifted round
considerably.” And he threw back his head and looked about the room.
“Your house is of a very curious style of architecture,” he said.
“Are you interested in architecture?” asked the young man at the
chimney-piece.
“Well, I took the trouble, this summer,” said Newman, “to examine—as
well as I can calculate—some four hundred and seventy churches. Do you
call that interested?”
“Perhaps you are interested in theology,” said the young man.
“Not particularly. Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?” And he turned to
Madame de Cintré.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, gravely.
Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw back his head
and began to look round the room again. “Had you never noticed that
number up there?” he presently asked.
She hesitated a moment, and then, “In former years,” she said.
Her brother had been watching Newman’s movement. “Perhaps you would
like to examine the house,” he said.
Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to
irony. He was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his moustaches
were curled up at the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his
eye. “Damn his French impudence!” Newman was on the point of saying to
himself. “What the deuce is he grinning at?” He glanced at Madame de
Cintré; she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor. She raised
them, they met his, and she looked at her brother. Newman turned again
to this young man and observed that he strikingly resembled his sister.
This was in his favor, and our hero’s first impression of the Count
Valentin, moreover, had been agreeable. His mistrust expired, and he
said he would be very glad to see the house.
The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of the
candlesticks. “Good, good!” he exclaimed. “Come, then.”
But Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm, “Ah, Valentin!”
she said. “What do you mean to do?”
“To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very amusing.”
She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile. “Don’t
let him take you,” she said; “you will not find it amusing. It is a
musty old house, like any other.”
“It is full of curious things,” said the count, resisting. “Besides, I
want to do it; it is a rare chance.”
“You are very wicked, brother,” Madame de Cintré answered.
“Nothing venture, nothing have!” cried the young man. “Will you come?”
Madame de Cintré stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands and
smiling softly. “Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire, to
stumbling about dark passages after my brother?”
“A hundred times!” said Newman. “We will see the house some other day.”
The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and,
shaking his head, “Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!” he said.
“A scheme? I don’t understand,” said Newman.
“You would have played your part in it all the better. Perhaps some day
I shall have a chance to explain it.”
“Be quiet, and ring for the tea,” said Madame de Cintré.
The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought in the tea,
placed the tray on a small table, and departed. Madame de Cintré, from
her place, busied herself with making it. She had but just begun when
the door was thrown open and a lady rushed in, making a loud rustling
sound. She stared at Newman, gave a little nod and a “Monsieur!” and
then quickly approached Madame de Cintré and presented her forehead to
be kissed. Madame de Cintré saluted her, and continued to make tea. The
new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman; she wore her
bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions. She began to talk
rapidly in French. “Oh, give me some tea, my beautiful one, for the
love of God! I’m exhausted, mangled, massacred.” Newman found himself
quite unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly than M.
Nioche.
“That is my sister-in-law,” said the Count Valentin, leaning towards
him.
“She is very pretty,” said Newman.
“Exquisite,” answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman
suspected him of irony.
His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her cup
of tea in her hand, holding it out at arm’s-length, so that she might
not spill it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm. She
placed the cup on the mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil and pull
off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman.
“Is there anything I can do for you, my dear lady?” the Count Valentin
asked, in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
“Present monsieur,” said his sister-in-law.
The young man answered, “Mr. Newman!”
“I can’t courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea,” said the
lady. “So Claire receives strangers, like that?” she added, in a low
voice, in French, to her brother-in-law.
“Apparently!” he answered with a smile. Newman stood a moment, and then
he approached Madame de Cintré. She looked up at him as if she were
thinking of something to say. But she seemed to think of nothing; so
she simply smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of
tea. For a few moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked
at her. He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her
“perfection” and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant
things that he dreamed of finding. This made him observe her not only
without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from
the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor. And yet, if
she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty. She was tall and
moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair, a wide forehead, and
features with a sort of harmonious irregularity. Her clear gray eyes
were strikingly expressive; they were both gentle and intelligent, and
Newman liked them immensely; but they had not those depths of
splendor—those many-colored rays—which illumine the brows of famous
beauties. Madame de Cintré was rather thin, and she looked younger than
probably she was. In her whole person there was something both youthful
and subdued, slender and yet ample, tranquil yet shy; a mixture of
immaturity and repose, of innocence and dignity. What had Tristram
meant, Newman wondered, by calling her proud? She was certainly not
proud now, to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon
him; she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was
a beautiful woman, and it was very easy to get on with her. Was she a
countess, a _marquise_, a kind of historical formation? Newman, who had
rarely heard these words used, had never been at pains to attach any
particular image to them; but they occurred to him now and seemed
charged with a sort of melodious meaning. They signified something fair
and softly bright, that had easy motions and spoke very agreeably.
“Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?” asked Madame de
Cintré, who had at last thought of something to say.
“Do you mean do I dance, and all that?”
“Do you go _dans le monde_, as we say?”
“I have seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram has taken me about. I do
whatever she tells me.”
“By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?”
“Oh yes, of some sorts. I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of
thing; I am too old and sober. But I want to be amused; I came to
Europe for that.”
“But you can be amused in America, too.”
“I couldn’t; I was always at work. But after all, that was my
amusement.”
At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
accompanied by the Count Valentin. Madame de Cintré, when she had
served her, began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had
last said, “In your own country you were very much occupied?” she
asked.
“I was in business. I have been in business since I was fifteen years
old.”
“And what was your business?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, who was
decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintré.
“I have been in everything,” said Newman. “At one time I sold leather;
at one time I manufactured wash-tubs.”
Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace. “Leather? I don’t like
that. Wash-tubs are better. I prefer the smell of soap. I hope at least
they made your fortune.” She rattled this off with the air of a woman
who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head,
and with a strong French accent.
Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde’s
tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light
grimness of jocularity. “No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out
pretty square on leather.”
“I have made up my mind, after all,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “that
the great point is—how do you call it?—to come out square. I am on my
knees to money; I don’t deny it. If you have it, I ask no questions.
For that I am a real democrat—like you, monsieur. Madame de Cintré is
very proud; but I find that one gets much more pleasure in this sad
life if one doesn’t look too close.”
“Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it,” said the Count Valentin,
lowering his voice.
“He’s a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him,”
the lady answered. “Besides, it’s very true; those are my ideas.”
“Ah, you call them ideas,” murmured the young man.
“But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army—in your war,” said
Madame de Cintré.
“Yes, but that is not business!” said Newman.
“Very true!” said M. de Bellegarde. “Otherwise perhaps I should not be
penniless.”
“Is it true,” asked Newman in a moment, “that you are so proud? I had
already heard it.”
Madame de Cintré smiled. “Do you find me so?”
“Oh,” said Newman, “I am no judge. If you are proud with me, you will
have to tell me. Otherwise I shall not know it.”
Madame de Cintré began to laugh. “That would be pride in a sad
position!” she said.
“It would be partly,” Newman went on, “because I shouldn’t want to know
it. I want you to treat me well.”
Madame de Cintré, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head
half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
“Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth,” he went on; “I want very
much to know you. I didn’t come here simply to call to-day; I came in
the hope that you might ask me to come again.”
“Oh, pray come often,” said Madame de Cintré.
“But will you be at home?” Newman insisted. Even to himself he seemed a
trifle “pushing,” but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
“I hope so!” said Madame de Cintré.
Newman got up. “Well, we shall see,” he said smoothing his hat with his
coat-cuff.
“Brother,” said Madame de Cintré, “invite Mr. Newman to come again.”
The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his
peculiar smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly
commingled. “Are you a brave man?” he asked, eying him askance.
“Well, I hope so,” said Newman.
“I rather suspect so. In that case, come again.”
“Ah, what an invitation!” murmured Madame de Cintré, with something
painful in her smile.
“Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come—particularly,” said the young man. “It
will give me great pleasure. I shall be desolate if I miss one of his
visits. But I maintain he must be brave. A stout heart, sir!” And he
offered Newman his hand.
“I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de Cintré,”
said Newman.
“You will need all the more courage.”
“Ah, Valentin!” said Madame de Cintré, appealingly.
“Decidedly,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “I am the only person here
capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you will need no
courage,” she said.
Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his
leave. Madame de Cintré did not take up her sister’s challenge to be
gracious, but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating
guest.
CHAPTER VII
One evening very late, about a week after his visit to Madame de
Cintré, Newman’s servant brought him a card. It was that of young M. de
Bellegarde. When, a few moments later, he went to receive his visitor,
he found him standing in the middle of his great gilded parlor and
eying it from cornice to carpet. M. de Bellegarde’s face, it seemed to
Newman, expressed a sense of lively entertainment. “What the devil is
he laughing at now?” our hero asked himself. But he put the question
without acrimony, for he felt that Madame de Cintré’s brother was a
good fellow, and he had a presentiment that on this basis of good
fellowship they were destined to understand each other. Only, if there
was anything to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.
“To begin with,” said the young man, as he extended his hand, “have I
come too late?”
“Too late for what?” asked Newman.
“To smoke a cigar with you.”
“You would have to come early to do that,” said Newman. “I don’t
smoke.”
“Ah, you are a strong man!”
“But I keep cigars,” Newman added. “Sit down.”
“Surely, I may not smoke here,” said M. de Bellegarde.
“What is the matter? Is the room too small?”
“It is too large. It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church.”
“That is what you were laughing at just now?” Newman asked; “the size
of my room?”
“It is not size only,” replied M. de Bellegarde, “but splendor, and
harmony, and beauty of detail. It was the smile of admiration.”
Newman looked at him a moment, and then, “So it _is_ very ugly?” he
inquired.
“Ugly, my dear sir? It is magnificent.”
“That is the same thing, I suppose,” said Newman. “Make yourself
comfortable. Your coming to see me, I take it, is an act of friendship.
You were not obliged to. Therefore, if anything around here amuses you,
it will be all in a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like
to see my visitors cheerful. Only, I must make this request: that you
explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak. I don’t want to lose
anything, myself.”
M. de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity. He laid
his hand on Newman’s sleeve and seemed on the point of saying
something, but he suddenly checked himself, leaned back in his chair,
and puffed at his cigar. At last, however, breaking
silence,—“Certainly,” he said, “my coming to see you is an act of
friendship. Nevertheless I was in a measure obliged to do so. My sister
asked me to come, and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was
near you, and I observed lights in what I supposed were your rooms. It
was not a ceremonious hour for making a call, but I was not sorry to do
something that would show I was not performing a mere ceremony.”
“Well, here I am as large as life,” said Newman, extending his legs.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the young man went on “by giving me
unlimited leave to laugh. Certainly I am a great laugher, and it is
better to laugh too much than too little. But it is not in order that
we may laugh together—or separately—that I have, I may say, sought your
acquaintance. To speak with almost impudent frankness, you interest
me!” All this was uttered by M. de Bellegarde with the modulated
smoothness of the man of the world, and in spite of his excellent
English, of the Frenchman; but Newman, at the same time that he sat
noting its harmonious flow, perceived that it was not mere mechanical
urbanity. Decidedly, there was something in his visitor that he liked.
M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner to his finger-tips, and if Newman had
met him on a Western prairie he would have felt it proper to address
him with a “How-d’ye-do, Mosseer?” But there was something in his
physiognomy which seemed to cast a sort of aerial bridge over the
impassable gulf produced by difference of race. He was below the middle
height, and robust and agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman
afterwards learned, had a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the
agility; he was afraid of growing stout; he was too short, as he said,
to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with
unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a “How well you are
looking” he started and turned pale. In your _well_ he read a grosser
monosyllable. He had a round head, high above the ears, a crop of hair
at once dense and silky, a broad, low forehead, a short nose, of the
ironical and inquiring rather than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast,
and a moustache as delicate as that of a page in a romance. He
resembled his sister not in feature, but in the expression of his
clear, bright eye, completely void of introspection, and in the way he
smiled. The great point in his face was that it was intensely
alive—frankly, ardently, gallantly alive. The look of it was like a
bell, of which the handle might have been in the young man’s soul: at a
touch of the handle it rang with a loud, silver sound. There was
something in his quick, light brown eye which assured you that he was
not economizing his consciousness. He was not living in a corner of it
to spare the furniture of the rest. He was squarely encamped in the
centre and he was keeping open house. When he smiled, it was like the
movement of a person who in emptying a cup turns it upside down: he
gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with
something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his
earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and
clever tricks—make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the
back of their mouths.
“My sister told me,” M. de Bellegarde continued, “that I ought to come
and remove the impression that I had taken such great pains to produce
upon you; the impression that I am a lunatic. Did it strike you that I
behaved very oddly the other day?”
“Rather so,” said Newman.
“So my sister tells me.” And M. de Bellegarde watched his host for a
moment through his smoke-wreaths. “If that is the case, I think we had
better let it stand. I didn’t try to make you think I was a lunatic, at
all; on the contrary, I wanted to produce a favorable impression. But
if, after all, I made a fool of myself, it was the intention of
Providence. I should injure myself by protesting too much, for I should
seem to set up a claim for wisdom which, in the sequel of our
acquaintance, I could by no means justify. Set me down as a lunatic
with intervals of sanity.”
“Oh, I guess you know what you are about,” said Newman.
“When I am sane, I am very sane; that I admit,” M. de Bellegarde
answered. “But I didn’t come here to talk about myself. I should like
to ask you a few questions. You allow me?”
“Give me a specimen,” said Newman.
“You live here all alone?”
“Absolutely. With whom should I live?”
“For the moment,” said M. de Bellegarde with a smile “I am asking
questions, not answering them. You have come to Paris for your
pleasure?”
Newman was silent a while. Then, at last, “Everyone asks me that!” he
said with his mild slowness. “It sounds so awfully foolish.”
“But at any rate you had a reason.”
“Oh, I came for my pleasure!” said Newman. “Though it is foolish, it is
true.”
“And you are enjoying it?”
Like any other good American, Newman thought it as well not to truckle
to the foreigner. “Oh, so-so,” he answered.
M. de Bellegarde puffed his cigar again in silence. “For myself,” he
said at last, “I am entirely at your service. Anything I can do for you
I shall be very happy to do. Call upon me at your convenience. Is there
anyone you desire to know—anything you wish to see? It is a pity you
should not enjoy Paris.”
“Oh, I do enjoy it!” said Newman, good-naturedly. “I’m much obliged to
you.”
“Honestly speaking,” M. de Bellegarde went on, “there is something
absurd to me in hearing myself make you these offers. They represent a
great deal of goodwill, but they represent little else. You are a
successful man and I am a failure, and it’s a turning of the tables to
talk as if I could lend you a hand.”
“In what way are you a failure?” asked Newman.
“Oh, I’m not a tragical failure!” cried the young man with a laugh. “I
have fallen from a height, and my fiasco has made no noise. You,
evidently, are a success. You have made a fortune, you have built up an
edifice, you are a financial, commercial power, you can travel about
the world until you have found a soft spot, and lie down in it with the
consciousness of having earned your rest. Is not that true? Well,
imagine the exact reverse of all that, and you have me. I have done
nothing—I can do nothing!”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story. Some day I will tell you. Meanwhile, I’m right, eh?
You are a success? You have made a fortune? It’s none of my business,
but, in short, you are rich?”
“That’s another thing that it sounds foolish to say,” said Newman.
“Hang it, no man is rich!”
“I have heard philosophers affirm,” laughed M. de Bellegarde, “that no
man was poor; but your formula strikes me as an improvement. As a
general thing, I confess, I don’t like successful people, and I find
clever men who have made great fortunes very offensive. They tread on
my toes; they make me uncomfortable. But as soon as I saw you, I said
to myself. ‘Ah, there is a man with whom I shall get on. He has the
good-nature of success and none of the _morgue_; he has not our
confoundedly irritable French vanity.’ In short, I took a fancy to you.
We are very different, I’m sure; I don’t believe there is a subject on
which we think or feel alike. But I rather think we shall get on, for
there is such a thing, you know, as being too different to quarrel.”
“Oh, I never quarrel,” said Newman.
“Never! Sometimes it’s a duty—or at least it’s a pleasure. Oh, I have
had two or three delicious quarrels in my day!” and M. de Bellegarde’s
handsome smile assumed, at the memory of these incidents, an almost
voluptuous intensity.
With the preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment of
dialogue, he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat with their
heels on Newman’s glowing hearth, they heard the small hours of the
morning striking larger from a far-off belfry. Valentin de Bellegarde
was, by his own confession, at all times a great chatterer, and on this
occasion he was evidently in a particularly loquacious mood. It was a
tradition of his race that people of its blood always conferred a favor
by their smiles, and as his enthusiasms were as rare as his civility
was constant, he had a double reason for not suspecting that his
friendship could ever be importunate. Moreover, the flower of an
ancient stem as he was, tradition (since I have used the word) had in
his temperament nothing of disagreeable rigidity. It was muffled in
sociability and urbanity, as an old dowager in her laces and strings of
pearls. Valentin was what is called in France a _gentilhomme_, of the
purest source, and his rule of life, so far as it was definite, was to
play the part of a _gentilhomme_. This, it seemed to him, was enough to
occupy comfortably a young man of ordinary good parts. But all that he
was he was by instinct and not by theory, and the amiability of his
character was so great that certain of the aristocratic virtues, which
in some aspects seem rather brittle and trenchant, acquired in his
application of them an extreme geniality. In his younger years he had
been suspected of low tastes, and his mother had greatly feared he
would make a slip in the mud of the highway and bespatter the family
shield. He had been treated, therefore, to more than his share of
schooling and drilling, but his instructors had not succeeded in
mounting him upon stilts. They could not spoil his safe spontaneity,
and he remained the least cautious and the most lucky of young nobles.
He had been tied with so short a rope in his youth that he had now a
mortal grudge against family discipline. He had been known to say,
within the limits of the family, that, light-headed as he was, the
honor of the name was safer in his hands than in those of some of its
other members, and that if a day ever came to try it, they should see.
His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of the
reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed to
Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to
him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature. In America,
Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty have old heads and
young hearts, or at least young morals; here they have young heads and
very aged hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.
“What I envy you is your liberty,” observed M. de Bellegarde, “your
wide range, your freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of
people, who take themselves awfully seriously, expecting something of
you. I live,” he added with a sigh, “beneath the eyes of my admirable
mother.”
“It is your own fault; what is to hinder your ranging?” said Newman.
“There is a delightful simplicity in that remark! Everything is to
hinder me. To begin with, I have not a penny.”
“I had not a penny when I began to range.”
“Ah, but your poverty was your capital. Being an American, it was
impossible you should remain what you were born, and being born poor—do
I understand it?—it was therefore inevitable that you should become
rich. You were in a position that makes one’s mouth water; you looked
round you and saw a world full of things you had only to step up to and
take hold of. When I was twenty, I looked around me and saw a world
with everything ticketed ‘Hands off!’ and the deuce of it was that the
ticket seemed meant only for me. I couldn’t go into business, I
couldn’t make money, because I was a Bellegarde. I couldn’t go into
politics, because I was a Bellegarde—the Bellegardes don’t recognize
the Bonapartes. I couldn’t go into literature, because I was a dunce. I
couldn’t marry a rich girl, because no Bellegarde had ever married a
_roturière_, and it was not proper that I should begin. We shall have
to come to it, yet. Marriageable heiresses, _de notre bord_, are not to
be had for nothing; it must be name for name, and fortune for fortune.
The only thing I could do was to go and fight for the Pope. That I did,
punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-wound at Castlefidardo.
It did neither the Holy Father nor me any good, that I could see. Rome
was doubtless a very amusing place in the days of Caligula, but it has
sadly fallen off since. I passed three years in the Castle of St.
Angelo, and then came back to secular life.”
“So you have no profession—you do nothing,” said Newman.
“I do nothing! I am supposed to amuse myself, and, to tell the truth, I
have amused myself. One can, if one knows how. But you can’t keep it up
forever. I am good for another five years, perhaps, but I foresee that
after that I shall lose my appetite. Then what shall I do? I think I
shall turn monk. Seriously, I think I shall tie a rope round my waist
and go into a monastery. It was an old custom, and the old customs were
very good. People understood life quite as well as we do. They kept the
pot boiling till it cracked, and then they put it on the shelf
altogether.”
“Are you very religious?” asked Newman, in a tone which gave the
inquiry a grotesque effect.
M. de Bellegarde evidently appreciated the comical element in the
question, but he looked at Newman a moment with extreme soberness. “I
am a very good Catholic. I respect the Church. I adore the blessed
Virgin. I fear the Devil.”
“Well, then,” said Newman, “you are very well fixed. You have got
pleasure in the present and religion in the future; what do you
complain of?”
“It’s a part of one’s pleasure to complain. There is something in your
own circumstances that irritates me. You are the first man I have ever
envied. It’s singular, but so it is. I have known many men who, besides
any factitious advantages that I may possess, had money and brains into
the bargain; but somehow they have never disturbed my good-humor. But
you have got something that I should have liked to have. It is not
money, it is not even brains—though no doubt yours are excellent. It is
not your six feet of height, though I should have rather liked to be a
couple of inches taller. It’s a sort of air you have of being
thoroughly at home in the world. When I was a boy, my father told me
that it was by such an air as that that people recognized a Bellegarde.
He called my attention to it. He didn’t advise me to cultivate it; he
said that as we grew up it always came of itself. I supposed it had
come to me, because I think I have always had the feeling. My place in
life was made for me, and it seemed easy to occupy it. But you who, as
I understand it, have made your own place, you who, as you told us the
other day, have manufactured wash-tubs—you strike me, somehow, as a man
who stands at his ease, who looks at things from a height. I fancy you
going about the world like a man traveling on a railroad in which he
owns a large amount of stock. You make me feel as if I had missed
something. What is it?”
“It is the proud consciousness of honest toil—of having manufactured a
few wash-tubs,” said Newman, at once jocose and serious.
“Oh no; I have seen men who had done even more, men who had made not
only wash-tubs, but soap—strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars;
and they never made me the least uncomfortable.”
“Then it’s the privilege of being an American citizen,” said Newman.
“That sets a man up.”
“Possibly,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “But I am forced to say that I
have seen a great many American citizens who didn’t seem at all set up
or in the least like large stock-holders. I never envied them. I rather
think the thing is an accomplishment of your own.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman, “you will make me proud!”
“No, I shall not. You have nothing to do with pride, or with
humility—that is a part of this easy manner of yours. People are proud
only when they have something to lose, and humble when they have
something to gain.”
“I don’t know what I have to lose,” said Newman, “but I certainly have
something to gain.”
“What is it?” asked his visitor.
Newman hesitated a while. “I will tell you when I know you better.”
“I hope that will be soon! Then, if I can help you to gain it, I shall
be happy.”
“Perhaps you may,” said Newman.
“Don’t forget, then, that I am your servant,” M. de Bellegarde
answered; and shortly afterwards he took his departure.
During the next three weeks Newman saw Bellegarde several times, and
without formally swearing an eternal friendship the two men established
a sort of comradeship. To Newman, Bellegarde was the ideal Frenchman,
the Frenchman of tradition and romance, so far as our hero was
concerned with these mystical influences. Gallant, expansive, amusing,
more pleased himself with the effect he produced than those (even when
they were well pleased) for whom he produced it; a master of all the
distinctively social virtues and a votary of all agreeable sensations;
a devotee of something mysterious and sacred to which he occasionally
alluded in terms more ecstatic even than those in which he spoke of the
last pretty woman, and which was simply the beautiful though somewhat
superannuated image of _honor_; he was irresistibly entertaining and
enlivening, and he formed a character to which Newman was as capable of
doing justice when he had once been placed in contact with it, as he
was unlikely, in musing upon the possible mixtures of our human
ingredients, mentally to have foreshadowed it. Bellegarde did not in
the least cause him to modify his needful premise that all Frenchmen
are of a frothy and imponderable substance; he simply reminded him that
light materials may be beaten up into a most agreeable compound. No two
companions could be more different, but their differences made a
capital basis for a friendship of which the distinctive characteristic
was that it was extremely amusing to each.
Valentin de Bellegarde lived in the basement of an old house in the Rue
d’Anjou St. Honoré, and his small apartments lay between the court of
the house and an old garden which spread itself behind it—one of those
large, sunless humid gardens into which you look unexpectingly in Paris
from back windows, wondering how among the grudging habitations they
find their space. When Newman returned Bellegarde’s visit, he hinted
that _his_ lodging was at least as much a laughing matter as his own.
But its oddities were of a different cast from those of our hero’s
gilded saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann: the place was low, dusky,
contracted, and crowded with curious bric-à-brac. Bellegarde, penniless
patrician as he was, was an insatiable collector, and his walls were
covered with rusty arms and ancient panels and platters, his doorways
draped in faded tapestries, his floors muffled in the skins of beasts.
Here and there was one of those uncomfortable tributes to elegance in
which the upholsterer’s art, in France, is so prolific; a curtain
recess with a sheet of looking-glass in which, among the shadows, you
could see nothing; a divan on which, for its festoons and furbelows,
you could not sit; a fireplace draped, flounced, and frilled to the
complete exclusion of fire. The young man’s possessions were in
picturesque disorder, and his apartment was pervaded by the odor of
cigars, mingled with perfumes more inscrutable. Newman thought it a
damp, gloomy place to live in, and was puzzled by the obstructive and
fragmentary character of the furniture.
Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very
generously about himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private
history with an unsparing hand. Inevitably, he had a vast deal to say
about women, and he used frequently to indulge in sentimental and
ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys and woes. “Oh, the
women, the women, and the things they have made me do!” he would
exclaim with a lustrous eye. “_C’est égal_, of all the follies and
stupidities I have committed for them I would not have missed one!” On
this subject Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate
largely upon it had always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely analogous
to the cooing of pigeons and the chattering of monkeys, and even
inconsistent with a fully developed human character. But Bellegarde’s
confidences greatly amused him, and rarely displeased him, for the
generous young Frenchman was not a cynic. “I really think,” he had once
said, “that I am not more depraved than most of my contemporaries. They
are tolerably depraved, my contemporaries!” He said wonderfully pretty
things about his female friends, and, numerous and various as they had
been, declared that on the whole there was more good in them than harm.
“But you are not to take that as advice,” he added. “As an authority I
am very untrustworthy. I’m prejudiced in their favor; I’m an
_idealist!_” Newman listened to him with his impartial smile, and was
glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings; but he mentally
repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered any merit in the
amiable sex which he himself did not suspect. M. de Bellegarde,
however, did not confine his conversation to the autobiographical
channel; he questioned our hero largely as to the events of his own
life, and Newman told him some better stories than any that Bellegarde
carried in his budget. He narrated his career, in fact, from the
beginning, through all its variations, and whenever his companion’s
credulity, or his habits of gentility, appeared to protest, it amused
him to heighten the color of the episode. Newman had sat with Western
humorists in knots, round cast-iron stoves, and seen “tall” stories
grow taller without toppling over, and his own imagination had learned
the trick of piling up consistent wonders. Bellegarde’s regular
attitude at last became that of laughing self-defense; to maintain his
reputation as an all-knowing Frenchman, he doubted of everything,
wholesale. The result of this was that Newman found it impossible to
convince him of certain time-honored verities.
“But the details don’t matter,” said M. de Bellegarde. “You have
evidently had some surprising adventures; you have seen some strange
sides of life, you have revolved to and fro over a whole continent as I
walked up and down the Boulevard. You are a man of the world with a
vengeance! You have spent some deadly dull hours, and you have done
some extremely disagreeable things: you have shoveled sand, as a boy,
for supper, and you have eaten roast dog in a gold-diggers’ camp. You
have stood casting up figures for ten hours at a time, and you have sat
through Methodist sermons for the sake of looking at a pretty girl in
another pew. All that is rather stiff, as we say. But at any rate you
have done something and you are something; you have used your will and
you have made your fortune. You have not stupified yourself with
debauchery and you have not mortgaged your fortune to social
conveniences. You take things easily, and you have fewer prejudices
even than I, who pretend to have none, but who in reality have three or
four. Happy man, you are strong and you are free. But what the deuce,”
demanded the young man in conclusion, “do you propose to do with such
advantages? Really to use them you need a better world than this. There
is nothing worth your while here.”
“Oh, I think there is something,” said Newman.
“What is it?”
“Well,” murmured Newman, “I will tell you some other time!”
In this way our hero delayed from day to day broaching a subject which
he had very much at heart. Meanwhile, however, he was growing
practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again,
three times, on Madame de Cintré. On only two of these occasions had he
found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors. Her
visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious, and they exacted much
of their hostess’s attention. She found time, however, to bestow a
little of it on Newman, in an occasional vague smile, the very
vagueness of which pleased him, allowing him as it did to fill it out
mentally, both at the time and afterwards, with such meanings as most
pleased him. He sat by without speaking, looking at the entrances and
exits, the greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintré’s visitors.
He felt as if he were at the play, and as if his own speaking would be
an interruption; sometimes he wished he had a book, to follow the
dialogue; he half expected to see a woman in a white cap and pink
ribbons come and offer him one for two francs. Some of the ladies
looked at him very hard—or very soft, as you please; others seemed
profoundly unconscious of his presence. The men looked only at Madame
de Cintré. This was inevitable; for whether one called her beautiful or
not, she entirely occupied and filled one’s vision, just as an
agreeable sound fills one’s ear. Newman had but twenty distinct words
with her, but he carried away an impression to which solemn promises
could not have given a higher value. She was part of the play that he
was seeing acted, quite as much as her companions; but how she filled
the stage and how much better she did it! Whether she rose or seated
herself; whether she went with her departing friends to the door and
lifted up the heavy curtain as they passed out, and stood an instant
looking after them and giving them the last nod; or whether she leaned
back in her chair with her arms crossed and her eyes resting, listening
and smiling; she gave Newman the feeling that he should like to have
her always before him, moving slowly to and fro along the whole scale
of expressive hospitality. If it might be _to_ him, it would be well;
if it might be _for_ him, it would be still better! She was so tall and
yet so light, so active and yet so still, so elegant and yet so simple,
so frank and yet so mysterious! It was the mystery—it was what she was
off the stage, as it were—that interested Newman most of all. He could
not have told you what warrant he had for talking about mysteries; if
it had been his habit to express himself in poetic figures he might
have said that in observing Madame de Cintré he seemed to see the vague
circle which sometimes accompanies the partly-filled disk of the moon.
It was not that she was reserved; on the contrary, she was as frank as
flowing water. But he was sure she had qualities which she herself did
not suspect.
He had abstained for several reasons from saying some of these things
to Bellegarde. One reason was that before proceeding to any act he was
always circumspect, conjectural, contemplative; he had little
eagerness, as became a man who felt that whenever he really began to
move he walked with long steps. And then, it simply pleased him not to
speak—it occupied him, it excited him. But one day Bellegarde had been
dining with him, at a restaurant, and they had sat long over their
dinner. On rising from it, Bellegarde proposed that, to help them
through the rest of the evening, they should go and see Madame
Dandelard. Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a
Frenchman who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her
life. Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means
of obtaining more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours,
to beating her. She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to
several persons, including Bellegarde. She had obtained a separation
from her husband, collected the scraps of her fortune (they were very
meagre) and come to live in Paris, where she was staying at a _hôtel
garni_. She was always looking for an apartment, and visiting,
inquiringly, those of other people. She was very pretty, very
childlike, and she made very extraordinary remarks. Bellegarde had made
her acquaintance, and the source of his interest in her was, according
to his own declaration, a curiosity as to what would become of her.
“She is poor, she is pretty, and she is silly,” he said, “it seems to
me she can go only one way. It’s a pity, but it can’t be helped. I will
give her six months. She has nothing to fear from me, but I am watching
the process. I am curious to see just how things will go. Yes, I know
what you are going to say: this horrible Paris hardens one’s heart. But
it quickens one’s wits, and it ends by teaching one a refinement of
observation! To see this little woman’s little drama play itself out,
now, is, for me, an intellectual pleasure.”
“If she is going to throw herself away,” Newman had said, “you ought to
stop her.”
“Stop her? How stop her?”
“Talk to her; give her some good advice.”
Bellegarde laughed. “Heaven deliver us both! Imagine the situation! Go
and advise her yourself.”
It was after this that Newman had gone with Bellegarde to see Madame
Dandelard. When they came away, Bellegarde reproached his companion.
“Where was your famous advice?” he asked. “I didn’t hear a word of it.”
“Oh, I give it up,” said Newman, simply.
“Then you are as bad as I!” said Bellegarde.
“No, because I don’t take an ‘intellectual pleasure’ in her prospective
adventures. I don’t in the least want to see her going down hill. I had
rather look the other way. But why,” he asked, in a moment, “don’t you
get your sister to go and see her?”
Bellegarde stared. “Go and see Madame Dandelard—my sister?”
“She might talk to her to very good purpose.”
Bellegarde shook his head with sudden gravity. “My sister can’t see
that sort of person. Madame Dandelard is nothing at all; they would
never meet.”
“I should think,” said Newman, “that your sister might see whom she
pleased.” And he privately resolved that after he knew her a little
better he would ask Madame de Cintré to go and talk to the foolish
little Italian lady.
After his dinner with Bellegarde, on the occasion I have mentioned, he
demurred to his companion’s proposal that they should go again and
listen to Madame Dandelard describe her sorrows and her bruises.
“I have something better in mind,” he said; “come home with me and
finish the evening before my fire.”
Bellegarde always welcomed the prospect of a long stretch of
conversation, and before long the two men sat watching the great blaze
which scattered its scintillations over the high adornments of Newman’s
ball-room.
CHAPTER VIII
“Tell me something about your sister,” Newman began abruptly.
Bellegarde turned and gave him a quick look. “Now that I think of it,
you have never yet asked me a question about her.”
“I know that very well.”
“If it is because you don’t trust me, you are very right,” said
Bellegarde. “I can’t talk of her rationally. I admire her too much.”
“Talk of her as you can,” rejoined Newman. “Let yourself go.”
“Well, we are very good friends; we are such a brother and sister as
have not been seen since Orestes and Electra. You have seen her; you
know what she is: tall, thin, light, imposing, and gentle, half a
_grande dame_ and half an angel; a mixture of pride and humility, of
the eagle and the dove. She looks like a statue which had failed as
stone, resigned itself to its grave defects, and come to life as flesh
and blood, to wear white capes and long trains. All I can say is that
she really possesses every merit that her face, her glance, her smile,
the tone of her voice, lead you to expect; it is saying a great deal.
As a general thing, when a woman seems very charming, I should say
‘Beware!’ But in proportion as Claire seems charming you may fold your
arms and let yourself float with the current; you are safe. She is so
good! I have never seen a woman half so perfect or so complete. She has
everything; that is all I can say about her. There!” Bellegarde
concluded; “I told you I should rhapsodize.”
Newman was silent a while, as if he were turning over his companion’s
words. “She is very good, eh?” he repeated at last.
“Divinely good!”
“Kind, charitable, gentle, generous?”
“Generosity itself; kindness double-distilled!”
“Is she clever?”
“She is the most intelligent woman I know. Try her, some day, with
something difficult, and you will see.”
“Is she fond of admiration?”
“_Parbleu!_” cried Bellegarde; “what woman is not?”
“Ah, when they are too fond of admiration they commit all kinds of
follies to get it.”
“I did not say she was too fond!” Bellegarde exclaimed. “Heaven forbid
I should say anything so idiotic. She is not _too_ anything! If I were
to say she was ugly, I should not mean she was too ugly. She is fond of
pleasing, and if you are pleased she is grateful. If you are not
pleased, she lets it pass and thinks the worst neither of you nor of
herself. I imagine, though, she hopes the saints in heaven are, for I
am sure she is incapable of trying to please by any means of which they
would disapprove.”
“Is she grave or gay?” asked Newman.
“She is both; not alternately, for she is always the same. There is
gravity in her gaiety, and gaiety in her gravity. But there is no
reason why she should be particularly gay.”
“Is she unhappy?”
“I won’t say that, for unhappiness is according as one takes things,
and Claire takes them according to some receipt communicated to her by
the Blessed Virgin in a vision. To be unhappy is to be disagreeable,
which, for her, is out of the question. So she has arranged her
circumstances so as to be happy in them.”
“She is a philosopher,” said Newman.
“No, she is simply a very nice woman.”
“Her circumstances, at any rate, have been disagreeable?”
Bellegarde hesitated a moment—a thing he very rarely did. “Oh, my dear
fellow, if I go into the history of my family I shall give you more
than you bargain for.”
“No, on the contrary, I bargain for that,” said Newman.
“We shall have to appoint a special séance, then, beginning early.
Suffice it for the present that Claire has not slept on roses. She made
at eighteen a marriage that was expected to be brilliant, but that
turned out like a lamp that goes out; all smoke and bad smell. M. de
Cintré was sixty years old, and an odious old gentleman. He lived,
however, but a short time, and after his death his family pounced upon
his money, brought a lawsuit against his widow, and pushed things very
hard. Their case was a good one, for M. de Cintré, who had been trustee
for some of his relatives, appeared to have been guilty of some very
irregular practices. In the course of the suit some revelations were
made as to his private history which my sister found so displeasing
that she ceased to defend herself and washed her hands of the property.
This required some pluck, for she was between two fires, her husband’s
family opposing her and her own family forcing her. My mother and my
brother wished her to cleave to what they regarded as her rights. But
she resisted firmly, and at last bought her freedom—obtained my
mother’s assent to dropping the suit at the price of a promise.”
“What was the promise?”
“To do anything else, for the next ten years, that was asked of
her—anything, that is, but marry.”
“She had disliked her husband very much?”
“No one knows how much!”
“The marriage had been made in your horrible French way,” Newman
continued, “made by the two families, without her having any voice?”
“It was a chapter for a novel. She saw M. de Cintré for the first time
a month before the wedding, after everything, to the minutest detail,
had been arranged. She turned white when she looked at him, and white
she remained till her wedding-day. The evening before the ceremony she
swooned away, and she spent the whole night in sobs. My mother sat
holding her two hands, and my brother walked up and down the room. I
declared it was revolting and told my sister publicly that if she would
refuse, downright, I would stand by her. I was told to go about my
business, and she became Comtesse de Cintré.”
“Your brother,” said Newman, reflectively, “must be a very nice young
man.”
“He is very nice, though he is not young. He is upward of fifty,
fifteen years my senior. He has been a father to my sister and me. He
is a very remarkable man; he has the best manners in France. He is
extremely clever; indeed he is very learned. He is writing a history of
The Princesses of France Who Never Married.” This was said by
Bellegarde with extreme gravity, looking straight at Newman, and with
an eye that betokened no mental reservation; or that, at least, almost
betokened none.
Newman perhaps discovered there what little there was, for he presently
said, “You don’t love your brother.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Bellegarde, ceremoniously; “well-bred people
always love their brothers.”
“Well, I don’t love him, then!” Newman answered.
“Wait till you know him!” rejoined Bellegarde, and this time he smiled.
“Is your mother also very remarkable?” Newman asked, after a pause.
“For my mother,” said Bellegarde, now with intense gravity, “I have the
highest admiration. She is a very extraordinary woman. You cannot
approach her without perceiving it.”
“She is the daughter, I believe, of an English nobleman.”
“Of the Earl of St. Dunstan’s.”
“Is the Earl of St. Dunstan’s a very old family?”
“So-so; the sixteenth century. It is on my father’s side that we go
back—back, back, back. The family antiquaries themselves lose breath.
At last they stop, panting and fanning themselves, somewhere in the
ninth century, under Charlemagne. That is where we begin.”
“There is no mistake about it?” said Newman.
“I’m sure I hope not. We have been mistaken at least for several
centuries.”
“And you have always married into old families?”
“As a rule; though in so long a stretch of time there have been some
exceptions. Three or four Bellegardes, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, took wives out of the _bourgeoisie_—married
lawyers’ daughters.”
“A lawyer’s daughter; that’s very bad, is it?” asked Newman.
“Horrible! one of us, in the Middle Ages, did better: he married a
beggar-maid, like King Cophetua. That was really better; it was like
marrying a bird or a monkey; one didn’t have to think about her family
at all. Our women have always done well; they have never even gone into
the _petite noblesse_. There is, I believe, not a case on record of a
misalliance among the women.”
Newman turned this over for a while, and, then at last he said, “You
offered, the first time you came to see me to render me any service you
could. I told you that some time I would mention something you might
do. Do you remember?”
“Remember? I have been counting the hours.”
“Very well; here’s your chance. Do what you can to make your sister
think well of me.”
Bellegarde stared, with a smile. “Why, I’m sure she thinks as well of
you as possible, already.”
“An opinion founded on seeing me three or four times? That is putting
me off with very little. I want something more. I have been thinking of
it a good deal, and at last I have decided to tell you. I should like
very much to marry Madame de Cintré.”
Bellegarde had been looking at him with quickened expectancy, and with
the smile with which he had greeted Newman’s allusion to his promised
request. At this last announcement he continued to gaze; but his smile
went through two or three curious phases. It felt, apparently, a
momentary impulse to broaden; but this it immediately checked. Then it
remained for some instants taking counsel with itself, at the end of
which it decreed a retreat. It slowly effaced itself and left a look of
seriousness modified by the desire not to be rude. Extreme surprise had
come into the Count Valentin’s face; but he had reflected that it would
be uncivil to leave it there. And yet, what the deuce was he to do with
it? He got up, in his agitation, and stood before the chimney-piece,
still looking at Newman. He was a longer time thinking what to say than
one would have expected.
“If you can’t render me the service I ask,” said Newman, “say it out!”
“Let me hear it again, distinctly,” said Bellegarde. “It’s very
important, you know. I shall plead your cause with my sister, because
you want—you want to marry her? That’s it, eh?”
“Oh, I don’t say plead my cause, exactly; I shall try and do that
myself. But say a good word for me, now and then—let her know that you
think well of me.”
At this, Bellegarde gave a little light laugh.
“What I want chiefly, after all,” Newman went on, “is just to let you
know what I have in mind. I suppose that is what you expect, isn’t it?
I want to do what is customary over here. If there is anything
particular to be done, let me know and I will do it. I wouldn’t for the
world approach Madame de Cintré without all the proper forms. If I
ought to go and tell your mother, why I will go and tell her. I will go
and tell your brother, even. I will go and tell anyone you please. As I
don’t know anyone else, I begin by telling you. But that, if it is a
social obligation, is a pleasure as well.”
“Yes, I see—I see,” said Bellegarde, lightly stroking his chin. “You
have a very right feeling about it, but I’m glad you have begun with
me.” He paused, hesitated, and then turned away and walked slowly the
length of the room. Newman got up and stood leaning against the
mantel-shelf, with his hands in his pockets, watching Bellegarde’s
promenade. The young Frenchman came back and stopped in front of him.
“I give it up,” he said; “I will not pretend I am not surprised. I
am—hugely! _Ouf!_ It’s a relief.”
“That sort of news is always a surprise,” said Newman. “No matter what
you have done, people are never prepared. But if you are so surprised,
I hope at least you are pleased.”
“Come!” said Bellegarde. “I am going to be tremendously frank. I don’t
know whether I am pleased or horrified.”
“If you are pleased, I shall be glad,” said Newman, “and I shall
be—encouraged. If you are horrified, I shall be sorry, but I shall not
be discouraged. You must make the best of it.”
“That is quite right—that is your only possible attitude. You are
perfectly serious?”
“Am I a Frenchman, that I should not be?” asked Newman. “But why is it,
by the bye, that you should be horrified?”
Bellegarde raised his hand to the back of his head and rubbed his hair
quickly up and down, thrusting out the tip of his tongue as he did so.
“Why, you are not noble, for instance,” he said.
“The devil I am not!” exclaimed Newman.
“Oh,” said Bellegarde a little more seriously, “I did not know you had
a title.”
“A title? What do you mean by a title?” asked Newman. “A count, a duke,
a marquis? I don’t know anything about that, I don’t know who is and
who is not. But I say I am noble. I don’t exactly know what you mean by
it, but it’s a fine word and a fine idea; I put in a claim to it.”
“But what have you to show, my dear fellow, what proofs?”
“Anything you please! But you don’t suppose I am going to undertake to
prove that I am noble. It is for you to prove the contrary.”
“That’s easily done. You have manufactured wash-tubs.”
Newman stared a moment. “Therefore I am not noble? I don’t see it. Tell
me something I have _not_ done—something I cannot do.”
“You cannot marry a woman like Madame de Cintré for the asking.”
“I believe you mean,” said Newman slowly, “that I am not good enough.”
“Brutally speaking—yes!”
Bellegarde had hesitated a moment, and while he hesitated Newman’s
attentive glance had grown somewhat eager. In answer to these last
words he for a moment said nothing. He simply blushed a little. Then he
raised his eyes to the ceiling and stood looking at one of the rosy
cherubs that was painted upon it. “Of course I don’t expect to marry
any woman for the asking,” he said at last; “I expect first to make
myself acceptable to her. She must like me, to begin with. But that I
am not good enough to make a trial is rather a surprise.”
Bellegarde wore a look of mingled perplexity, sympathy, and amusement.
“You should not hesitate, then, to go up to-morrow and ask a duchess to
marry you?”
“Not if I thought she would suit me. But I am very fastidious; she
might not at all.”
Bellegarde’s amusement began to prevail. “And you should be surprised
if she refused you?”
Newman hesitated a moment. “It sounds conceited to say yes, but
nevertheless I think I should. For I should make a very handsome
offer.”
“What would it be?”
“Everything she wishes. If I get hold of a woman that comes up to my
standard, I shall think nothing too good for her. I have been a long
time looking, and I find such women are rare. To combine the qualities
I require seems to be difficult, but when the difficulty is vanquished
it deserves a reward. My wife shall have a good position, and I’m not
afraid to say that I shall be a good husband.”
“And these qualities that you require—what are they?”
“Goodness, beauty, intelligence, a fine education, personal
elegance—everything, in a word, that makes a splendid woman.”
“And noble birth, evidently,” said Bellegarde.
“Oh, throw that in, by all means, if it’s there. The more the better!”
“And my sister seems to you to have all these things?”
“She is exactly what I have been looking for. She is my dream
realized.”
“And you would make her a very good husband?”
“That is what I wanted you to tell her.”
Bellegarde laid his hand on his companion’s arm a moment, looked at him
with his head on one side, from head to foot, and then, with a loud
laugh, and shaking the other hand in the air, turned away. He walked
again the length of the room, and again he came back and stationed
himself in front of Newman. “All this is very interesting—it is very
curious. In what I said just now I was speaking, not for myself, but
for my tradition, my superstitions. For myself, really, your proposal
tickles me. It startled me at first, but the more I think of it the
more I see in it. It’s no use attempting to explain anything; you won’t
understand me. After all, I don’t see why you need; it’s no great
loss.”
“Oh, if there is anything more to explain, try it! I want to proceed
with my eyes open. I will do my best to understand.”
“No,” said Bellegarde, “it’s disagreeable to me; I give it up. I liked
you the first time I saw you, and I will abide by that. It would be
quite odious for me to come talking to you as if I could patronize you.
I have told you before that I envy you; _vous m’imposez_, as we say. I
didn’t know you much until within five minutes. So we will let things
go, and I will say nothing to you that, if our positions were reversed,
you would not say to me.”
I do not know whether in renouncing the mysterious opportunity to which
he alluded, Bellegarde felt that he was doing something very generous.
If so, he was not rewarded; his generosity was not appreciated. Newman
quite failed to recognize the young Frenchman’s power to wound his
feelings, and he had now no sense of escaping or coming off easily. He
did not thank his companion even with a glance. “My eyes are open,
though,” he said, “so far as that you have practically told me that
your family and your friends will turn up their noses at me. I have
never thought much about the reasons that make it proper for people to
turn up their noses, and so I can only decide the question off-hand.
Looking at it in that way I can’t see anything in it. I simply think,
if you want to know, that I’m as good as the best. Who the best are, I
don’t pretend to say. I have never thought much about that either. To
tell the truth, I have always had rather a good opinion of myself; a
man who is successful can’t help it. But I will admit that I was
conceited. What I don’t say yes to is that I don’t stand high—as high
as anyone else. This is a line of speculation I should not have chosen,
but you must remember you began it yourself. I should never have
dreamed that I was on the defensive, or that I had to justify myself;
but if your people will have it so, I will do my best.”
“But you offered, a while ago, to make your court as we say, to my
mother and my brother.”
“Damn it!” cried Newman, “I want to be polite.”
“Good!” rejoined Bellegarde; “this will go far, it will be very
entertaining. Excuse my speaking of it in that cold-blooded fashion,
but the matter must, of necessity, be for me something of a spectacle.
It’s positively exciting. But apart from that I sympathize with you,
and I shall be actor, so far as I can, as well as spectator. You are a
capital fellow; I believe in you and I back you. The simple fact that
you appreciate my sister will serve as the proof I was asking for. All
men are equal—especially men of taste!”
“Do you think,” asked Newman presently, “that Madame de Cintré is
determined not to marry?”
“That is my impression. But that is not against you; it’s for you to
make her change her mind.”
“I am afraid it will be hard,” said Newman, gravely.
“I don’t think it will be easy. In a general way I don’t see why a
widow should ever marry again. She has gained the benefits of
matrimony—freedom and consideration—and she has got rid of the
drawbacks. Why should she put her head into the noose again? Her usual
motive is ambition: if a man can offer her a great position, make her a
princess or an ambassadress she may think the compensation sufficient.”
“And—in that way—is Madame de Cintré ambitious?”
“Who knows?” said Bellegarde, with a profound shrug. “I don’t pretend
to say all that she is or all that she is not. I think she might be
touched by the prospect of becoming the wife of a great man. But in a
certain way, I believe, whatever she does will be the _improbable_.
Don’t be too confident, but don’t absolutely doubt. Your best chance
for success will be precisely in being, to her mind, unusual,
unexpected, original. Don’t try to be anyone else; be simply yourself,
out and out. Something or other can’t fail to come of it; I am very
curious to see what.”
“I am much obliged to you for your advice,” said Newman. “And,” he
added with a smile, “I am glad, for your sake, I am going to be so
amusing.”
“It will be more than amusing,” said Bellegarde; “it will be inspiring.
I look at it from my point of view, and you from yours. After all,
anything for a change! And only yesterday I was yawning so as to
dislocate my jaw, and declaring that there was nothing new under the
sun! If it isn’t new to see you come into the family as a suitor, I am
very much mistaken. Let me say that, my dear fellow; I won’t call it
anything else, bad or good; I will simply call it _new_.” And overcome
with a sense of the novelty thus foreshadowed, Valentin de Bellegarde
threw himself into a deep armchair before the fire, and, with a fixed,
intense smile, seemed to read a vision of it in the flame of the logs.
After a while he looked up. “Go ahead, my boy; you have my good
wishes,” he said. “But it is really a pity you don’t understand me,
that you don’t know just what I am doing.”
“Oh,” said Newman, laughing, “don’t do anything wrong. Leave me to
myself, rather, or defy me, out and out. I wouldn’t lay any load on
your conscience.”
Bellegarde sprang up again; he was evidently excited; there was a
warmer spark even than usual in his eye. “You never will understand—you
never will know,” he said; “and if you succeed, and I turn out to have
helped you, you will never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you
should be. You will be an excellent fellow always, but you will not be
grateful. But it doesn’t matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it.”
And he broke into an extravagant laugh. “You look puzzled,” he added;
“you look almost frightened.”
“It _is_ a pity,” said Newman, “that I don’t understand you. I shall
lose some very good jokes.”
“I told you, you remember, that we were very strange people,”
Bellegarde went on. “I give you warning again. We are! My mother is
strange, my brother is strange, and I verily believe that I am stranger
than either. You will even find my sister a little strange. Old trees
have crooked branches, old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd
secrets. Remember that we are eight hundred years old!”
“Very good,” said Newman; “that’s the sort of thing I came to Europe
for. You come into my programme.”
“_Touchez-là_, then,” said Bellegarde, putting out his hand. “It’s a
bargain: I accept you; I espouse your cause. It’s because I like you,
in a great measure; but that is not the only reason!” And he stood
holding Newman’s hand and looking at him askance.
“What is the other one?”
“I am in the Opposition. I dislike someone else.”
“Your brother?” asked Newman, in his unmodulated voice.
Bellegarde laid his fingers upon his lips with a whispered _hush!_ “Old
races have strange secrets!” he said. “Put yourself into motion, come
and see my sister, and be assured of my sympathy!” And on this he took
his leave.
Newman dropped into a chair before his fire, and sat a long time
staring into the blaze.
CHAPTER IX
He went to see Madame de Cintré the next day, and was informed by the
servant that she was at home. He passed as usual up the large, cold
staircase and through a spacious vestibule above, where the walls
seemed all composed of small door panels, touched with long-faded
gilding; whence he was ushered into the sitting-room in which he had
already been received. It was empty, and the servant told him that
Madame la Comtesse would presently appear. He had time, while he
waited, to wonder whether Bellegarde had seen his sister since the
evening before, and whether in this case he had spoken to her of their
talk. In this case Madame de Cintré’s receiving him was an
encouragement. He felt a certain trepidation as he reflected that she
might come in with the knowledge of his supreme admiration and of the
project he had built upon it in her eyes; but the feeling was not
disagreeable. Her face could wear no look that would make it less
beautiful, and he was sure beforehand that however she might take the
proposal he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony.
He had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his heart
and measure the extent of his good will toward her, she would be
entirely kind.
She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether
she had been hesitating. She smiled with her usual frankness, and held
out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous
eyes, and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see
him and that she hoped he was well. He found in her what he had found
before—that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact
with the world, but the more perceptible the more closely you
approached her. This lingering diffidence seemed to give a peculiar
value to what was definite and assured in her manner; it made it seem
like an accomplishment, a beautiful talent, something that one might
compare to an exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, in fact, Madame de
Cintré’s “authority,” as they say of artists, that especially impressed
and fascinated Newman; he always came back to the feeling that when he
should complete himself by taking a wife, that was the way he should
like his wife to interpret him to the world. The only trouble, indeed,
was that when the instrument was so perfect it seemed to interpose too
much between you and the genius that used it. Madame de Cintré gave
Newman the sense of an elaborate education, of her having passed
through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture in her youth, of
her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain exalted social
needs. All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem rare and precious—a
very expensive article, as he would have said, and one which a man with
an ambition to have everything about him of the best would find it
highly agreeable to possess. But looking at the matter with an eye to
private felicity, Newman wondered where, in so exquisite a compound,
nature and art showed their dividing line. Where did the special
intention separate from the habit of good manners? Where did urbanity
end and sincerity begin? Newman asked himself these questions even
while he stood ready to accept the admired object in all its
complexity; he felt that he could do so in profound security, and
examine its mechanism afterwards, at leisure.
“I am very glad to find you alone,” he said. “You know I have never had
such good luck before.”
“But you have seemed before very well contented with your luck,” said
Madame de Cintré. “You have sat and watched my visitors with an air of
quiet amusement. What have you thought of them?”
“Oh, I have thought the ladies were very elegant and very graceful, and
wonderfully quick at repartee. But what I have chiefly thought has been
that they only helped me to admire you.” This was not gallantry on
Newman’s part—an art in which he was quite unversed. It was simply the
instinct of the practical man, who had made up his mind what he wanted,
and was now beginning to take active steps to obtain it.
Madame de Cintré started slightly, and raised her eyebrows; she had
evidently not expected so fervid a compliment. “Oh, in that case,” she
said with a laugh, “your finding me alone is not good luck for me. I
hope someone will come in quickly.”
“I hope not,” said Newman. “I have something particular to say to you.
Have you seen your brother?”
“Yes, I saw him an hour ago.”
“Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?”
“He said so.”
“And did he tell you what we had talked about?”
Madame de Cintré hesitated a moment. As Newman asked these questions
she had grown a little pale, as if she regarded what was coming as
necessary, but not as agreeable. “Did you give him a message to me?”
she asked.
“It was not exactly a message—I asked him to render me a service.”
“The service was to sing your praises, was it not?” And she accompanied
this question with a little smile, as if to make it easier to herself.
“Yes, that is what it really amounts to,” said Newman. “Did he sing my
praises?”
“He spoke very well of you. But when I know that it was by your special
request, of course I must take his eulogy with a grain of salt.”
“Oh, that makes no difference,” said Newman. “Your brother would not
have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying. He is too
honest for that.”
“Are you very deep?” said Madame de Cintré. “Are you trying to please
me by praising my brother? I confess it is a good way.”
“For me, any way that succeeds will be good. I will praise your brother
all day, if that will help me. He is a noble little fellow. He has made
me feel, in promising to do what he can to help me, that I can depend
upon him.”
“Don’t make too much of that,” said Madame de Cintré. “He can help you
very little.”
“Of course I must work my way myself. I know that very well; I only
want a chance to. In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you
almost seem to be giving me a chance.”
“I am seeing you,” said Madame de Cintré, slowly and gravely, “because
I promised my brother I would.”
“Blessings on your brother’s head!” cried Newman. “What I told him last
evening was this: that I admired you more than any woman I had ever
seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife.” He uttered
these words with great directness and firmness, and without any sense
of confusion. He was full of his idea, he had completely mastered it,
and he seemed to look down on Madame de Cintré, with all her gathered
elegance, from the height of his bracing good conscience. It is
probable that this particular tone and manner were the very best he
could have hit upon. Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with
which his companion had listened to him died away, and she sat looking
at him with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.
There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene to which
he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found no angry
voice. Newman wondered whether he was hurting her; he could not imagine
why the liberal devotion he meant to express should be disagreeable. He
got up and stood before her, leaning one hand on the chimney-piece. “I
know I have seen you very little to say this,” he said, “so little that
it may make what I say seem disrespectful. That is my misfortune! I
could have said it the first time I saw you. Really, I had seen you
before; I had seen you in imagination; you seemed almost an old friend.
So what I say is not mere gallantry and compliments and nonsense—I
can’t talk that way, I don’t know how, and I wouldn’t, to you, if I
could. It’s as serious as such words can be. I feel as if I knew you
and knew what a beautiful, admirable woman you are. I shall know
better, perhaps, some day, but I have a general notion now. You are
just the woman I have been looking for, except that you are far more
perfect. I won’t make any protestations and vows, but you can trust me.
It is very soon, I know, to say all this; it is almost offensive. But
why not gain time if one can? And if you want time to reflect—of course
you do—the sooner you begin, the better for me. I don’t know what you
think of me; but there is no great mystery about me; you see what I am.
Your brother told me that my antecedents and occupations were against
me; that your family stands, somehow, on a higher level than I do. That
is an idea which of course I don’t understand and don’t accept. But you
don’t care anything about that. I can assure you that I am a very solid
fellow, and that if I give my mind to it I can arrange things so that
in a very few years I shall not need to waste time in explaining who I
am and what I am. You will decide for yourself whether you like me or
not. What there is you see before you. I honestly believe I have no
hidden vices or nasty tricks. I am kind, kind, kind! Everything that a
man can give a woman I will give you. I have a large fortune, a very
large fortune; some day, if you will allow me, I will go into details.
If you want brilliancy, everything in the way of brilliancy that money
can give you, you shall have. And as regards anything you may give up,
don’t take for granted too much that its place cannot be filled. Leave
that to me; I’ll take care of you; I shall know what you need. Energy
and ingenuity can arrange everything. I’m a strong man! There, I have
said what I had on my heart! It was better to get it off. I am very
sorry if it’s disagreeable to you; but think how much better it is that
things should be clear. Don’t answer me now, if you don’t wish it.
Think about it, think about it as slowly as you please. Of course I
haven’t said, I can’t say, half I mean, especially about my admiration
for you. But take a favorable view of me; it will only be just.”
During this speech, the longest that Newman had ever made, Madame de
Cintré kept her gaze fixed upon him, and it expanded at the last into a
sort of fascinated stare. When he ceased speaking she lowered her eyes
and sat for some moments looking down and straight before her. Then she
slowly rose to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally keen eyes would
have perceived that she was trembling a little in the movement. She
still looked extremely serious. “I am very much obliged to you for your
offer,” she said. “It seems very strange, but I am glad you spoke
without waiting any longer. It is better the subject should be
dismissed. I appreciate all you say; you do me great honor. But I have
decided not to marry.”
“Oh, don’t say that!” cried Newman, in a tone absolutely _naïf_ from
its pleading and caressing cadence. She had turned away, and it made
her stop a moment with her back to him. “Think better of that. You are
too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others
happy. If you are afraid of losing your freedom, I can assure you that
this freedom here, this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what
I will offer you. You shall do things that I don’t think you have ever
thought of. I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you
propose. Are you unhappy? You give me a feeling that you _are_ unhappy.
You have no right to be, or to be made so. Let me come in and put an
end to it.”
Madame de Cintré stood there a moment longer, looking away from him. If
she was touched by the way he spoke, the thing was conceivable. His
voice, always very mild and interrogative, gradually became as soft and
as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talking to a much-loved
child. He stood watching her, and she presently turned round again, but
this time she did not look at him, and she spoke in a quietness in
which there was a visible trace of effort.
“There are a great many reasons why I should not marry,” she said,
“more than I can explain to you. As for my happiness, I am very happy.
Your offer seems strange to me, for more reasons also than I can say.
Of course you have a perfect right to make it. But I cannot accept
it—it is impossible. Please never speak of this matter again. If you
cannot promise me this, I must ask you not to come back.”
“Why is it impossible?” Newman demanded. “You may think it is, at
first, without its really being so. I didn’t expect you to be pleased
at first, but I do believe that if you will think of it a good while,
you may be satisfied.”
“I don’t know you,” said Madame de Cintré. “Think how little I know
you.”
“Very little, of course, and therefore I don’t ask for your ultimatum
on the spot. I only ask you not to say no, and to let me hope. I will
wait as long as you desire. Meanwhile you can see more of me and know
me better, look at me as a possible husband—as a candidate—and make up
your mind.”
Something was going on, rapidly, in Madame de Cintré’s thoughts; she
was weighing a question there, beneath Newman’s eyes, weighing it and
deciding it. “From the moment I don’t very respectfully beg you to
leave the house and never return,” she said, “I listen to you, I seem
to give you hope. I _have_ listened to you—against my judgment. It is
because you are eloquent. If I had been told this morning that I should
consent to consider you as a possible husband, I should have thought my
informant a little crazy. I _am_ listening to you, you see!” And she
threw her hands out for a moment and let them drop with a gesture in
which there was just the slightest expression of appealing weakness.
“Well, as far as saying goes, I have said everything,” said Newman. “I
believe in you, without restriction, and I think all the good of you
that it is possible to think of a human creature. I firmly believe that
in marrying me you will be _safe_. As I said just now,” he went on with
a smile, “I have no bad ways. I can _do_ so much for you. And if you
are afraid that I am not what you have been accustomed to, not refined
and delicate and punctilious, you may easily carry that too far. I _am_
delicate! You shall see!”
Madame de Cintré walked some distance away, and paused before a great
plant, an azalea, which was flourishing in a porcelain tub before her
window. She plucked off one of the flowers and, twisting it in her
fingers, retraced her steps. Then she sat down in silence, and her
attitude seemed to be a consent that Newman should say more.
“Why should you say it is impossible you should marry?” he continued.
“The only thing that could make it really impossible would be your
being already married. Is it because you have been unhappy in marriage?
That is all the more reason! Is it because your family exert a pressure
upon you, interfere with you, annoy you? That is still another reason;
you ought to be perfectly free, and marriage will make you so. I don’t
say anything against your family—understand that!” added Newman, with
an eagerness which might have made a perspicacious observer smile.
“Whatever way you feel toward them is the right way, and anything that
you should wish me to do to make myself agreeable to them I will do as
well as I know how. Depend upon that!”
Madame de Cintré rose again and came toward the fireplace, near which
Newman was standing. The expression of pain and embarrassment had
passed out of her face, and it was illuminated with something which,
this time at least, Newman need not have been perplexed whether to
attribute to habit or to intention, to art or to nature. She had the
air of a woman who has stepped across the frontier of friendship and,
looking around her, finds the region vast. A certain checked and
controlled exaltation seemed mingled with the usual level radiance of
her glance. “I will not refuse to see you again,” she said, “because
much of what you have said has given me pleasure. But I will see you
only on this condition: that you say nothing more in the same way for a
long time.”
“For how long?”
“For six months. It must be a solemn promise.”
“Very well, I promise.”
“Good-bye, then,” she said, and extended her hand.
He held it a moment, as if he were going to say something more. But he
only looked at her; then he took his departure.
That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin de Bellegarde. After
they had exchanged greetings, Newman told him that he had seen Madame
de Cintré a few hours before.
“I know it,” said Bellegarde. “I dined in the Rue de l’Université.” And
then, for some moments, both men were silent. Newman wished to ask
Bellegarde what visible impression his visit had made and the Count
Valentin had a question of his own. Bellegarde spoke first.
“It’s none of my business, but what the deuce did you say to my
sister?”
“I am willing to tell you,” said Newman, “that I made her an offer of
marriage.”
“Already!” And the young man gave a whistle. “‘Time is money!’ Is that
what you say in America? And Madame de Cintré?” he added, with an
interrogative inflection.
“She did not accept my offer.”
“She couldn’t, you know, in that way.”
“But I’m to see her again,” said Newman.
“Oh, the strangeness of woman!” exclaimed Bellegarde. Then he stopped,
and held Newman off at arms’-length. “I look at you with respect!” he
exclaimed. “You have achieved what we call a personal success!
Immediately, now, I must present you to my brother.”
“Whenever you please!” said Newman.
CHAPTER X
Newman continued to see his friends the Tristrams with a good deal of
frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram’s account of the
matter you would have supposed that they had been cynically repudiated
for the sake of grander acquaintance. “We were all very well so long as
we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you have
become the fashion, and have your pick every day of three invitations
to dinner, we are tossed into the corner. I am sure it is very good of
you to come and see us once a month; I wonder you don’t send us your
cards in an envelope. When you do, pray have them with black edges; it
will be for the death of my last illusion.” It was in this incisive
strain that Mrs. Tristram moralized over Newman’s so-called neglect,
which was in reality a most exemplary constancy. Of course she was
joking, but there was always something ironical in her jokes, as there
was always something jocular in her gravity.
“I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,” Newman had
said, “than the fact that you make so free with my character.
Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a
little proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to
dinner say I was going to the Princess Borealska’s. But I have not any
pride where my pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to
see me—if you must see me only to call me bad names—I will agree to
anything you choose; I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris.”
Newman, in fact, had declined an invitation personally given by the
Princess Borealska, an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been
presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at
Mrs. Tristram’s; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his
hostess of the Avenue d’Iéna that he was faithless to his early
friendships. She needed the theory to explain a certain moral
irritation by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation
was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having
launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly
along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had
succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished
to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her
friend was “satisfactory.” The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs.
Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that, in essentials, the
feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity
with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and
inscrutable, that issued from Newman’s half-closed eyes as he leaned
his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent
attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. Newman
was, according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense,
but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor
which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before. She now
seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintré, and
wished to have it understood that she did not in the least answer for
her being a compendium of all the virtues. “No woman was ever so good
as that woman seems,” she said. “Remember what Shakespeare calls
Desdemona; ‘a supersubtle Venetian.’ Madame de Cintré is a supersubtle
Parisian. She is a charming woman, and she has five hundred merits; but
you had better keep that in mind.” Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out
that she was jealous of her dear friend on the other side of the Seine,
and that in undertaking to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had
counted too much on her own disinterestedness? We may be permitted to
doubt it. The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d’Iéna had an
insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually. She had a
lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times, of imagining
the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs, with a vividness more
intense than that of conviction. She got tired of thinking aright; but
there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking
wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable
flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman related to her
that he had made a formal proposal to Madame de Cintré. He repeated in
a few words what he had said, and in a great many what she had
answered. Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.
“But after all,” said Newman, “there is nothing to congratulate me
upon. It is not a triumph.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Tristram; “it is a great triumph. It is
a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word, and
request you never to speak to her again.”
“I don’t see that,” observed Newman.
“Of course you don’t; Heaven forbid you should! When I told you to go
on your own way and do what came into your head, I had no idea you
would go over the ground so fast. I never dreamed you would offer
yourself after five or six morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to
make her like you? You had simply sat—not very straight—and stared at
her. But she does like you.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“No, that is proved. What will come of it remains to be seen. That you
should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never have come
into her head. You can form very little idea of what passed through her
mind as you spoke; if she ever really marries you, the affair will be
characterized by the usual justice of all human beings towards women.
You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin
to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she
accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she
plunged into it. She said ‘Why not?’ to something which, a few hours
earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand
gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she
had never looked hitherto. When I think of it—when I think of Claire de
Cintré and all that she represents, there seems to me something very
fine in it. When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of
course thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still.
But I confess I don’t see quite what you are and what you have done, to
make such a woman do this sort of thing for you.”
“Oh, there is something very fine in it!” said Newman with a laugh,
repeating her words. He took an extreme satisfaction in hearing that
there was something fine in it. He had not the least doubt of it
himself, but he had already begun to value the world’s admiration of
Madame de Cintré, as adding to the prospective glory of possession.
It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de Bellegarde
came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l’Université to present him to
the other members of his family. “You are already introduced,” he said,
“and you have begun to be talked about. My sister has mentioned your
successive visits to my mother, and it was an accident that my mother
was present at none of them. I have spoken of you as an American of
immense wealth, and the best fellow in the world, who is looking for
something very superior in the way of a wife.”
“Do you suppose,” asked Newman, “that Madame de Cintré has related to
your mother the last conversation I had with her?”
“I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel.
Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family. Thus much
is known about you: you have made a great fortune in trade, you are a
little eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire. My
sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Madame de Cintré’s
sitting-room, took, it appears, a fancy to you; she has described you
as having _beaucoup de cachet_. My mother, therefore, is curious to see
you.”
“She expects to laugh at me, eh?” said Newman.
“She never laughs. If she does not like you, don’t hope to purchase
favor by being amusing. Take warning by me!”
This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later
Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house of the
Rue de l’Université into which he had not yet penetrated, the salon of
the dowager Marquise de Bellegarde. It was a vast, high room, with
elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a whitish gray, along the
upper portion of the walls and the ceiling; with a great deal of faded
and carefully repaired tapestry in the doorways and chair-backs; a
Turkey carpet in light colors, still soft and deep, in spite of great
antiquity, on the floor, and portraits of each of Madame de
Bellegarde’s children, at the age of ten, suspended against an old
screen of red silk. The room was illumined, exactly enough for
conversation, by half a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a
great distance apart. In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old
lady in black; at the other end of the room another person was seated
at the piano, playing a very expressive waltz. In this latter person
Newman recognized the young Marquise de Bellegarde.
Valentin presented his friend, and Newman walked up to the old lady by
the fire and shook hands with her. He received a rapid impression of a
white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a
pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth.
Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake
with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the
daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan’s. Her daughter-in-law stopped
playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked
about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the young
marquise.
“I ought to have seen you before,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You have
paid several visits to my daughter.”
“Oh, yes,” said Newman, smiling; “Madame de Cintré and I are old
friends by this time.”
“You have gone fast,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“Not so fast as I should like,” said Newman, bravely.
“Oh, you are very ambitious,” answered the old lady.
“Yes, I confess I am,” said Newman, smiling.
Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes, and he
returned her gaze, reflecting that she was a possible adversary and
trying to take her measure. Their eyes remained in contact for some
moments. Then Madame de Bellegarde looked away, and without smiling, “I
am very ambitious, too,” she said.
Newman felt that taking her measure was not easy; she was a formidable,
inscrutable little woman. She resembled her daughter, and yet she was
utterly unlike her. The coloring in Madame de Cintré was the same, and
the high delicacy of her brow and nose was hereditary. But her face was
a larger and freer copy, and her mouth in especial a happy divergence
from that conservative orifice, a little pair of lips at once plump and
pinched, that looked, when closed, as if they could not open wider than
to swallow a gooseberry or to emit an “Oh, dear, no!” which probably
had been thought to give the finishing touch to the aristocratic
prettiness of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as represented, forty years
before, in several Books of Beauty. Madame de Cintré’s face had, to
Newman’s eye, a range of expression as delightfully vast as the
wind-streaked, cloud-flecked distance on a Western prairie. But her
mother’s white, intense, respectable countenance, with its formal gaze,
and its circumscribed smile, suggested a document signed and sealed; a
thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines. “She is a woman of
conventions and proprieties,” he said to himself as he looked at her;
“her world is the world of things immutably decreed. But how she is at
home in it, and what a paradise she finds it. She walks about in it as
if it were a blooming park, a Garden of Eden; and when she sees ‘This
is genteel,’ or ‘This is improper,’ written on a mile-stone she stops
ecstatically, as if she were listening to a nightingale or smelling a
rose.” Madame de Bellegarde wore a little black velvet hood tied under
her chin, and she was wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl.
“You are an American?” she said presently. “I have seen several
Americans.”
“There are several in Paris,” said Newman jocosely.
“Oh, really?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “It was in England I saw
these, or somewhere else; not in Paris. I think it must have been in
the Pyrenees, many years ago. I am told your ladies are very pretty.
One of these ladies was very pretty! such a wonderful complexion! She
presented me a note of introduction from someone—I forgot whom—and she
sent with it a note of her own. I kept her letter a long time
afterwards, it was so strangely expressed. I used to know some of the
phrases by heart. But I have forgotten them now, it is so many years
ago. Since then I have seen no more Americans. I think my
daughter-in-law has; she is a great gad-about, she sees everyone.”
At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very
slender waist, and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of
her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a
singular way, at once ugly and pretty; she had protuberant eyes, and
lips strangely red. She reminded Newman of his friend, Mademoiselle
Nioche; this was what that much-obstructed young lady would have liked
to be. Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance, hopping
about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress.
“You ought to show more of your shoulders behind,” he said very
gravely. “You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as
that.”
The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece,
and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin’s assertion. The mirror
descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh
surface. The young marquise put her hands behind her and gave a
downward pull to the waist of her dress. “Like that, you mean?” she
asked.
“That is a little better,” said Bellegarde in the same tone, “but it
leaves a good deal to be desired.”
“Oh, I never go to extremes,” said his sister-in-law. And then, turning
to Madame de Bellegarde, “What were you calling me just now, madame?”
“I called you a gad-about,” said the old lady. “But I might call you
something else, too.”
“A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?”
“A very beautiful person,” Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was
in French.
“That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,” said the young
marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, “Do you dance?”
“Not a step.”
“You are very wrong,” she said, simply. And with another look at her
back in the mirror she turned away.
“Do you like Paris?” asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering
what was the proper way to talk to an American.
“Yes, rather,” said Newman. And then he added with a friendly
intonation, “Don’t you?”
“I can’t say I know it. I know my house—I know my friends—I don’t know
Paris.”
“Oh, you lose a great deal,” said Newman, sympathetically.
Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had
been condoled with on her losses.
“I am content with what I have,” she said with dignity.
Newman’s eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room, which
struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements,
with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or
three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between
them. He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his
hostess was quite natural—she had a great deal; but the idea did not
occur to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
“Well, my dear mother,” said Valentin, coming and leaning against the
chimney-piece, “what do you think of my dear friend Newman? Is he not
the excellent fellow I told you?”
“My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,” said Madame de
Bellegarde. “I can as yet only appreciate his great politeness.”
“My mother is a great judge of these matters,” said Valentin to Newman.
“If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph.”
“I hope I shall satisfy you, some day,” said Newman, looking at the old
lady. “I have done nothing yet.”
“You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble. He is a
sad scatterbrain.”
“Oh, I like him—I like him,” said Newman, genially.
“He amuses you, eh?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Do you hear that, Valentin?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You amuse Mr.
Newman.”
“Perhaps we shall all come to that!” Valentin exclaimed.
“You must see my other son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He is much
better than this one. But he will not amuse you.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know!” murmured Valentin, reflectively. “But we
shall very soon see. Here comes _Monsieur mon frère_.”
The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped
forward and whose face Newman remembered. He had been the author of our
hero’s discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to
Madame de Cintré. Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother,
looked at him a moment, and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to
Newman.
“This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman,” he said very blandly. “You
must know him.”
“I am delighted to know Mr. Newman,” said the marquis with a low bow,
but without offering his hand.
“He is the old woman at second-hand,” Newman said to himself, as he
returned M. de Bellegarde’s greeting. And this was the starting-point
of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late marquis had been a
very amiable foreigner, with an inclination to take life easily and a
sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady
by the fire to do so. But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he
had taken much in his two younger children, who were after his own
heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
“My brother has spoken to me of you,” said M. de Bellegarde; “and as
you are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet.” He
turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with
his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece.
With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque
eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and
glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in
the middle of his handsome chin. He was “distinguished” to the tips of
his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine,
perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never
yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking one’s
self seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do
to get a view of a great façade.
“Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been
waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, “I call your attention
to the fact that I am dressed.”
“That is a good idea,” murmured Valentin.
“I am at your orders, my dear friend,” said M. de Bellegarde. “Only,
you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with Mr.
Newman.”
“Oh, if you are going to a party, don’t let me keep you,” objected
Newman. “I am very sure we shall meet again. Indeed, if you would like
to converse with me I will gladly name an hour.” He was eager to make
it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all
exactions.
M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire,
caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands, and
looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular ray
of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile. “It is
very kind of you to make such an offer,” he said. “If I am not
mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious. You
are in—a—as we say, _dans les affaires_.”
“In business, you mean? Oh no, I have thrown business overboard for the
present. I am ‘loafing,’ as _we_ say. My time is quite my own.”
“Ah, you are taking a holiday,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “‘Loafing.’
Yes, I have heard that expression.”
“Mr. Newman is American,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“My brother is a great ethnologist,” said Valentin.
“An ethnologist?” said Newman. “Ah, you collect negroes’ skulls, and
that sort of thing.”
The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his other
whisker. Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity, “You are
traveling for your pleasure?” he asked.’
“Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I
get a good deal of pleasure out of it.”
“What especially interests you?” inquired the marquis.
“Well, everything interests me,” said Newman. “I am not particular.
Manufactures are what I care most about.”
“That has been your specialty?”
“I can’t say I have any specialty. My specialty has been to make the
largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time.” Newman made
this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it
were necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. “I hope you have succeeded,” he
said.
“Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you
see.”
“Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great
enjoyment of yours.” And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and
began to put them on.
Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the
white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de
Bellegarde’s good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of
his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of
snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was
being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce
a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in
personal contact with the forces with which his friend Valentin had
told him that he would have to contend, and he became sensible of their
intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch
himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of
_his_ scale. It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or
malicious, it was by no means void of humorous expectancy. Newman was
quite as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his, if
his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from deliberately
planning to shock them.
“Paris is a very good place for idle people,” he said, “or it is a very
good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and
you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you
have got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother
and sister, and everything comfortable. I don’t like that way of living
all in rooms next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to
be, but I can’t manage it; it goes against the grain. My business
habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven’t any house to call my own,
or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles
away, my mother died when I was a youngster, and I haven’t any wife; I
wish I had! So, you see, I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. I
am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out
and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see, I began
to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago
I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant leisure comes hard.”
This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the
part of Newman’s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly,
with his hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling
motion, went out of the door. The marquis continued to draw on his
gloves and to smile benignantly.
“You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?” said the
marquise.
“Hardly more—a small boy.”
“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you
must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were
interrupted early.”
“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I
thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information
afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.
“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”
“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”
“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in
our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest
india-rubber house in the West.”
“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.
“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de
Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in
which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that
he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when
they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,” said the young
marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.”
“Very likely,” said Newman; “if he did, you may be very sure they are
well made.”
“Well, you must not be discouraged,” said M. de Bellegarde, with vague
urbanity.
“Oh, I don’t mean to be. I have a project which gives me plenty to
think about, and that is an occupation.” And then Newman was silent a
moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point,
and yet to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable
to him. Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de
Bellegarde, “I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I
want to take a wife.”
“It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,” said the old lady.
Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity, “I
should have thought you were,” he declared.
Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured
something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this
moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step
Valentin reappeared.
“I have a message for you,” he said to his sister-in-law. “Claire bids
me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go with you.”
“Claire will go with us!” cried the young marquise. “_En voilà, du
nouveau!_”
“She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is
sticking the last diamond into her hair,” said Valentin.
“What has taken possession of my daughter?” demanded Madame de
Bellegarde, sternly. “She has not been into the world these three
years. Does she take such a step at half an hour’s notice, and without
consulting me?”
“She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,” said Valentin,
“and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she is beautiful, you will
see—had no right to bury herself alive.”
“You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,” said M. de
Bellegarde, in French. “This is very strange.”
“I refer her to the whole company!” said Valentin. “Here she comes!”
And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the threshold,
took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in
white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was
fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it
back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense,
fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and,
Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her, and, when she
saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her tremendously
handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the face, for she
stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently, what
she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her
mother, who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de
Cintré almost fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de
Cintré held her cloak apart to show her dress.
“What do you think of me?” she asked.
“I think you are audacious,” said the marquise. “It was but three days
ago, when I asked you, as a particular favor to myself, to go to the
Duchess de Lusignan’s, that you told me you were going nowhere and that
one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you
distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?”
“I wish to please myself, dear mother,” said Madame de Cintré. And she
bent over and kissed the old lady.
“I don’t like surprises, my sister,” said Urbain de Bellegarde;
“especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room.”
Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. “Oh, if you are going
into a room with Madame de Cintré, you needn’t be afraid of being
noticed yourself!”
M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be
easy. “I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your
brother’s expense,” he said. “Come, come, madame.” And offering Madame
de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered
the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been
reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was
much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute
comfort from the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the
complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and
perceiving in them a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not
improbable that she may have flattered herself she had found it.
Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a
few moments in silence. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said at
last.
“She is very strange,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“I am glad to hear it,” Newman rejoined, smiling. “It makes me hope.”
“Hope what?”
“That she will consent, some day, to marry me.”
The old lady slowly rose to her feet. “That really is your project,
then?”
“Yes; will you favor it?”
“Favor it?” Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then shook
her head. “No!” she said, softly.
“Will you suffer it, then? Will you let it pass?”
“You don’t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old
woman.”
“Well, I am very rich,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it
probable she was weighing the reasons in favor of resenting the
brutality of this remark. But at last, looking up, she said simply,
“How rich?”
Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent
sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are
translated into francs. He added a few remarks of a financial
character, which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his
resources.
Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence. “You are very frank,” she
said finally. “I will be the same. I would rather favor you, on the
whole, than suffer you. It will be easier.”
“I am thankful for any terms,” said Newman. “But, for the present, you
have suffered me long enough. Good night!” And he took his leave.
CHAPTER XI
Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French
conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses
for his time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having
learned his whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron
never obtained the key. The shrunken little capitalist repeated his
visit more than once. He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of
having been overpaid, and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the
offer of grammatical and statistical information in small installments.
He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before; a
few months more or less of brushing could make little difference in the
antique lustre of his coat and hat. But the poor old man’s spirit was a
trifle more threadbare; it seemed to have received some hard rubs
during the summer. Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle
Noémie; and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him in
lachrymose silence.
“Don’t ask me, sir,” he said at last. “I sit and watch her, but I can
do nothing.”
“Do you mean that she misconducts herself?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. I can’t follow her. I don’t understand her.
She has something in her head; I don’t know what she is trying to do.
She is too deep for me.”
“Does she continue to go to the Louvre? Has she made any of those
copies for me?”
“She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies. She has
something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you
ordered. Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But
she is not in earnest. I can’t say anything to her; I am afraid of her.
One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs
Élysées, she said some things to me that frightened me.”
“What were they?”
“Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,” said M. Nioche, unfolding
his calico pocket-handkerchief.
Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noémie another visit at the
Louvre. He was curious about the progress of his copies, but it must be
added that he was still more curious about the progress of the young
lady herself. He went one afternoon to the great museum, and wandered
through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her. He was bending
his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters, when suddenly he
found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde. The young
Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he was a
godsend. He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted someone to
contradict.
“In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?” said Newman. “I
thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones.
There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits.”
“Oh, to-day,” answered Valentin, “I am not in a mood for pictures, and
the more beautiful they are the less I like them. Their great staring
eyes and fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big,
dull party, in a room full of people I shouldn’t wish to speak to. What
should I care for their beauty? It’s a bore, and, worse still, it’s a
reproach. I have a great many _ennuis_; I feel vicious.”
“If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world did you
come here?” Newman asked.
“That is one of my _ennuis_. I came to meet my cousin—a dreadful
English cousin, a member of my mother’s family—who is in Paris for a
week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the ‘principal
beauties.’ Imagine a woman who wears a green crape bonnet in December
and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots! My
mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I have undertaken to
play _valet de place_ this afternoon. They were to have met me here at
two o’clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty minutes. Why
doesn’t she arrive? She has at least a pair of feet to carry her. I
don’t know whether to be furious at their playing me false, or
delighted to have escaped them.”
“I think in your place I would be furious,” said Newman, “because they
may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you. Whereas
if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up, you might
not know what to do with your delight.”
“You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better. I will be
furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself will go with
you—unless by chance you too have a rendezvous.”
“It is not exactly a rendezvous,” said Newman. “But I have in fact come
to see a person, not a picture.”
“A woman, presumably?”
“A young lady.”
“Well,” said Valentin, “I hope for you with all my heart that she is
not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much out of
focus.”
“I don’t know much about her feet, but she has very pretty hands.”
Valentin gave a sigh. “And on that assurance I must part with you?”
“I am not certain of finding my young lady,” said Newman, “and I am not
quite prepared to lose your company on the chance. It does not strike
me as particularly desirable to introduce you to her, and yet I should
rather like to have your opinion of her.”
“Is she pretty?”
“I guess you will think so.”
Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion. “Conduct me to
her on the instant! I should be ashamed to make a pretty woman wait for
my verdict.”
Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction in
which he had been walking, but his step was not rapid. He was turning
something over in his mind. The two men passed into the long gallery of
the Italian masters, and Newman, after having scanned for a moment its
brilliant vista, turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the
same school, on the left. It contained very few persons, but at the
farther end of it sat Mademoiselle Nioche, before her easel. She was
not at work; her palette and brushes had been laid down beside her, her
hands were folded in her lap, and she was leaning back in her chair and
looking intently at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with
their backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures.
These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion; they were dressed
with great splendor, and their long silken trains and furbelows were
spread over the polished floor. It was at their dresses Mademoiselle
Noémie was looking, though what she was thinking of I am unable to say.
I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself that to be able
to drag such a train over a polished floor was a felicity worth any
price. Her reflections, at any rate, were disturbed by the advent of
Newman and his companion. She glanced at them quickly, and then,
coloring a little, rose and stood before her easel.
“I came here on purpose to see you,” said Newman in his bad French,
offering to shake hands. And then, like a good American, he introduced
Valentin formally: “Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte
Valentin de Bellegarde.”
Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noémie quite
in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful
brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise.
She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing
its delicately-felt roughness. Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas
that was on her easel over upon its face. “You have not forgotten me?”
she asked.
“I shall never forget you,” said Newman. “You may be sure of that.”
“Oh,” said the young girl, “there are a great many different ways of
remembering a person.” And she looked straight at Valentin de
Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman may when a “verdict”
is expected of him.
“Have you painted anything for me?” said Newman. “Have you been
industrious?”
“No, I have done nothing.” And taking up her palette, she began to mix
her colors at hazard.
“But your father tells me you have come here constantly.”
“I have nowhere else to go! Here, all summer, it was cool, at least.”
“Being here, then,” said Newman, “you might have tried something.”
“I told you before,” she answered, softly, “that I don’t know how to
paint.”
“But you have something charming on your easel, now,” said Valentin,
“if you would only let me see it.”
She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back
of the canvas—those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which, in
spite of several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire. “My painting
is not charming,” she said.
“It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,” quoth
Valentin, gallantly.
She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him. He looked
at it, and in a moment she said, “I am sure you are a judge.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I am.”
“You know, then, that that is very bad.”
“_Mon Dieu_,” said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders “let us
distinguish.”
“You know that I ought not to attempt to paint,” the young girl
continued.
“Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not.”
She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again—a
point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk
another. While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de
Bellegarde. He, at all events, was seeing her. He put down the
roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed a little click with his tongue,
accompanied by an elevation of the eyebrows, to Newman.
“Where have you been all these months?” asked Mademoiselle Noémie of
our hero. “You took those great journeys, you amused yourself well?”
“Oh, yes,” said Newman. “I amused myself well enough.”
“I am very glad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie with extreme gentleness, and
she began to dabble in her colors again. She was singularly pretty,
with the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to his
companion. He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the
same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He
was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noémie extremely interesting; the
blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear.
“Tell me something about your travels,” murmured the young girl.
“Oh, I went to Switzerland,—to Geneva and Zermatt and Zürich and all
those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and
down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium—the regular round. How do
you say that, in French—the regular round?” Newman asked of Valentin.
Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde, and then
with a little smile, “I don’t understand monsieur,” she said, “when he
says so much at once. Would you be so good as to translate?”
“I would rather talk to you out of my own head,” Valentin declared.
“No,” said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, “you must not talk
to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things. You ought
to tell her to work, to persevere.”
“And we French, mademoiselle,” said Valentin, “are accused of being
false flatterers!”
“I don’t want any flattery, I want only the truth. But I know the
truth.”
“All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can do
better than paint,” said Valentin.
“I know the truth—I know the truth,” Mademoiselle Noémie repeated. And,
dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great horizontal
daub across her unfinished picture.
“What is that?” asked Newman.
Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub, in a vertical
direction, down the middle of her canvas, and so, in a moment,
completed the rough indication of a cross. “It is the sign of the
truth,” she said at last.
The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another
flash of physiognomical eloquence. “You have spoiled your picture,”
said Newman.
“I know that very well. It was the only thing to do with it. I had sat
looking at it all day without touching it. I had begun to hate it. It
seemed to me something was going to happen.”
“I like it better that way than as it was before,” said Valentin. “Now
it is more interesting. It tells a story. Is it for sale?”
“Everything I have is for sale,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
“How much is this thing?”
“Ten thousand francs,” said the young girl, without a smile.
“Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in
advance,” said Newman. “It makes part of an order I gave her some
months ago. So you can’t have this.”
“Monsieur will lose nothing by it,” said the young girl, looking at
Valentin. And she began to put up her utensils.
“I shall have gained a charming memory,” said Valentin. “You are going
away? your day is over?”
“My father is coming to fetch me,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her, which opens on
one of the great white stone staircases of the Louvre, M. Nioche made
his appearance. He came in with his usual even, patient shuffle, and he
made a low salute to the two gentlemen who were standing before his
daughter’s easel. Newman shook his hands with muscular friendliness,
and Valentin returned his greeting with extreme deference. While the
old man stood waiting for Noémie to make a parcel of her implements, he
let his mild, oblique gaze hover toward Bellegarde, who was watching
Mademoiselle Noémie put on her bonnet and mantle. Valentin was at no
pains to disguise his scrutiny. He looked at a pretty girl as he would
have listened to a piece of music. Attention, in each case, was simple
good manners. M. Nioche at last took his daughter’s paint-box in one
hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giving it a solemn, puzzled stare,
in the other, and led the way to the door. Mademoiselle Noémie made the
young men the salute of a duchess, and followed her father.
“Well,” said Newman, “what do you think of her?”
“She is very remarkable. _Diable, diable, diable!_” repeated M. de
Bellegarde, reflectively; “she is very remarkable.”
“I am afraid she is a sad little adventuress,” said Newman.
“Not a little one—a great one. She has the material.” And Valentin
began to walk away slowly, looking vaguely at the pictures on the
walls, with a thoughtful illumination in his eye. Nothing could have
appealed to his imagination more than the possible adventures of a
young lady endowed with the “material” of Mademoiselle Nioche. “She is
very interesting,” he went on. “She is a beautiful type.”
“A beautiful type? What the deuce do you mean?” asked Newman.
“I mean from the artistic point of view. She is an artist,—outside of
her painting, which obviously is execrable.”
“But she is not beautiful. I don’t even think her very pretty.”
“She is quite pretty enough for her purposes, and it is a face and
figure on which everything tells. If she were prettier she would be
less intelligent, and her intelligence is half of her charm.”
“In what way,” asked Newman, who was much amused at his companion’s
immediate philosophisation of Mademoiselle Nioche, “does her
intelligence strike you as so remarkable?”
“She has taken the measure of life, and she has determined to _be_
something—to succeed at any cost. Her painting, of course, is a mere
trick to gain time. She is waiting for her chance; she wishes to launch
herself, and to do it well. She knows her Paris. She is one of fifty
thousand, so far as the mere ambition goes; but I am very sure that in
the way of resolution and capacity she is a rarity. And in one
gift—perfect heartlessness—I will warrant she is unsurpassed. She has
not as much heart as will go on the point of a needle. That is an
immense virtue. Yes, she is one of the celebrities of the future.”
“Heaven help us!” said Newman, “how far the artistic point of view may
take a man! But in this case I must request that you don’t let it take
you too far. You have learned a wonderful deal about Mademoiselle
Noémie in a quarter of an hour. Let that suffice; don’t follow up your
researches.”
“My dear fellow,” cried Bellegarde with warmth, “I hope I have too good
manners to intrude.”
“You are not intruding. The girl is nothing to me. In fact, I rather
dislike her. But I like her poor old father, and for his sake I beg you
to abstain from any attempt to verify your theories.”
“For the sake of that seedy old gentleman who came to fetch her?”
demanded Valentin, stopping short. And on Newman’s assenting, “Ah no,
ah no,” he went on with a smile. “You are quite wrong, my dear fellow;
you needn’t mind him.”
“I verily believe that you are accusing the poor gentleman of being
capable of rejoicing in his daughter’s dishonor.”
“_Voyons!_” said Valentin; “who is he? what is he?”
“He is what he looks like: as poor as a rat, but very high-toned.”
“Exactly. I noticed him perfectly; be sure I do him justice. He has had
losses, _des malheurs_, as we say. He is very low-spirited, and his
daughter is too much for him. He is the pink of respectability, and he
has sixty years of honesty on his back. All this I perfectly
appreciate. But I know my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I
will make a bargain with you.” Newman gave ear to his bargain and he
went on. “He would rather his daughter were a good girl than a bad one,
but if the worst comes to the worst, the old man will not do what
Virginius did. Success justifies everything. If Mademoiselle Noémie
makes a figure, her papa will feel—well, we will call it relieved. And
she will make a figure. The old gentleman’s future is assured.”
“I don’t know what Virginius did, but M. Nioche will shoot Miss
Noémie,” said Newman. “After that, I suppose his future will be assured
in some snug prison.”
“I am not a cynic; I am simply an observer,” Valentin rejoined.
“Mademoiselle Noémie interests me; she is extremely remarkable. If
there is a good reason, in honor or decency, for dismissing her from my
thoughts forever, I am perfectly willing to do it. Your estimate of the
papa’s sensibilities is a good reason until it is invalidated. I
promise you not to look at the young girl again until you tell me that
you have changed your mind about the papa. When he has given distinct
proof of being a philosopher, you will raise your interdict. Do you
agree to that?”
“Do you mean to bribe him?”
“Oh, you admit, then, that he is bribable? No, he would ask too much,
and it would not be exactly fair. I mean simply to wait. You will
continue, I suppose, to see this interesting couple, and you will give
me the news yourself.”
“Well,” said Newman, “if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do
what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself,
you may be at rest. I don’t know what harm she may do to me, but I
certainly can’t hurt her. It seems to me,” said Newman, “that you are
very well matched. You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I
believe, are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris.”
Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity,
received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument. Turning
quickly round he found the weapon to be a parasol wielded by a lady in
green gauze bonnet. Valentin’s English cousins had been drifting about
unpiloted, and evidently deemed that they had a grievance. Newman left
him to their mercies, but with a boundless faith in his power to plead
his cause.
CHAPTER XII
Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintré,
Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table the card of the
Marquis de Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note
informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde would be grateful for the
honor of his company at dinner.
He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement to do it.
He was ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received
him before, and here he found his venerable hostess, surrounded by her
entire family. The room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which
illuminated the very small pink slippers of a lady who, seated in a low
chair, was stretching out her toes before it. This lady was the younger
Madame de Bellegarde. Madame de Cintré was seated at the other end of
the room, holding a little girl against her knee, the child of her
brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story.
Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law, into whose
ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense. The marquis was
stationed before the fire, with his head erect and his hands behind
him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.
Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting, and
there was that in the way she did so which seemed to measure narrowly
the extent of her condescension. “We are all alone, you see, we have
asked no one else,” she said austerely.
“I am very glad you didn’t; this is much more sociable,” said Newman.
“Good evening, sir,” and he offered his hand to the marquis.
M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was
restless. He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the
long windows, he took up books and laid them down again. Young Madame
de Bellegarde gave Newman her hand without moving and without looking
at him.
“You may think that is coldness,” exclaimed Valentin; “but it is not,
it is warmth. It shows she is treating you as an intimate. Now she
detests me, and yet she is always looking at me.”
“No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!” cried the lady.
“If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it
again.”
But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already
making his way across the room to Madame de Cintré. She looked at him
as she shook hands, but she went on with the story she was telling her
little niece. She had only two or three phrases to add, but they were
apparently of great moment. She deepened her voice, smiling as she did
so, and the little girl gazed at her with round eyes.
“But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,”
said Madame de Cintré, “and carried her off to live with him in the
Land of the Pink Sky. There she was so happy that she forgot all her
troubles, and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach
drawn by five hundred white mice. Poor Florabella,” she exclaimed to
Newman, “had suffered terribly.”
“She had had nothing to eat for six months,” said little Blanche.
“Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as
that ottoman,” said Madame de Cintré. “That quite set her up again.”
“What a checkered career!” said Newman. “Are you very fond of
children?” He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say
it.
“I like to talk with them,” she answered; “we can talk with them so
much more seriously than with grown persons. That is great nonsense
that I have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious
than most of what we say in society.”
“I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche’s age,” said
Newman, laughing. “Were you happy at your ball the other night?”
“Ecstatically!”
“Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society,” said
Newman. “I don’t believe that.”
“It was my own fault if I was not happy. The ball was very pretty, and
everyone very amiable.”
“It was on your conscience,” said Newman, “that you had annoyed your
mother and your brother.”
Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment without answering. “That is
true,” she replied at last. “I had undertaken more than I could carry
out. I have very little courage; I am not a heroine.” She said this
with a certain soft emphasis; but then, changing her tone, “I could
never have gone through the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella,”
she added, not even for her prospective rewards.
Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side of the old
Madame de Bellegarde. The dining-room, at the end of a cold corridor,
was vast and sombre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent.
Newman wondered whether Madame de Cintré had had something to do with
ordering the repast and greatly hoped she had. Once seated at table,
with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde around him,
he asked himself the meaning of his position. Was the old lady
responding to his advances? Did the fact that he was a solitary guest
augment his credit or diminish it? Were they ashamed to show him to
other people, or did they wish to give him a sign of sudden adoption
into their last reserve of favor? Newman was on his guard; he was
watchful and conjectural; and yet at the same time he was vaguely
indifferent. Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was
there now, and Madame de Cintré was opposite to him. She had a tall
candlestick on each side of her; she would sit there for the next hour,
and that was enough. The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he
wondered whether this was always the state of things in “old families.”
Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes, which
looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled white face, very
intently upon the table-service. The marquis appeared to have decided
that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not
leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having
learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he
uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the
good taste of Sansovino. His manners seemed to indicate a fine, nervous
dread that something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were
not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast. “What under
the sun is the man afraid of?” Newman asked himself. “Does he think I
am going to offer to swap jack-knives with him?” It was useless to shut
his eyes to the fact that the marquis was profoundly disagreeable to
him. He had never been a man of strong personal aversions; his nerves
had not been at the mercy of the mystical qualities of his neighbors.
But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly in opposition; a
man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible
impertinences and treacheries. M. de Bellegarde made him feel as if he
were standing bare-footed on a marble floor; and yet, to gain his
desire, Newman felt perfectly able to stand. He wondered what Madame de
Cintré thought of his being accepted, if accepted it was. There was no
judging from her face, which expressed simply the desire to be gracious
in a manner which should require as little explicit recognition as
possible. Young Madame de Bellegarde had always the same manners; she
was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to everything and hearing
nothing, looking at her dress, her rings, her finger-nails, seeming
rather bored, and yet puzzling you to decide what was her ideal of
social diversion. Newman was enlightened on this point later. Even
Valentin did not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful
and forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk he
appeared excited. His eyes had an intenser spark than usual. The effect
of all this was that Newman, for the first time in his life, was not
himself; that he measured his movements, and counted his words, and
resolved that if the occasion demanded that he should appear to have
swallowed a ramrod, he would meet the emergency.
After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they should go
into the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small, somewhat
musty apartment, the walls of which were ornamented with old hangings
of stamped leather and trophies of rusty arms. Newman refused a cigar,
but he established himself upon one of the divans, while the marquis
puffed his own weed before the fire-place, and Valentin sat looking
through the light fumes of a cigarette from one to the other.
“I can’t keep quiet any longer,” said Valentin, at last. “I must tell
you the news and congratulate you. My brother seems unable to come to
the point; he revolves around his announcement like the priest around
the altar. You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our sister.”
“Valentin, be a little proper!” murmured the marquis, with a look of
the most delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.
“There has been a family council,” the young man continued; “my mother
and Urbain have put their heads together, and even my testimony has not
been altogether excluded. My mother and the marquis sat at a table
covered with green cloth; my sister-in-law and I were on a bench
against the wall. It was like a committee at the Corps Législatif. We
were called up, one after the other, to testify. We spoke of you very
handsomely. Madame de Bellegarde said that if she had not been told who
you were, she would have taken you for a duke—an American duke, the
Duke of California. I said that I could warrant you grateful for the
smallest favors—modest, humble, unassuming. I was sure that you would
know your own place, always, and never give us occasion to remind you
of certain differences. After all, you couldn’t help it if you were not
a duke. There were none in your country; but if there had been, it was
certain that, smart and active as you are, you would have got the pick
of the titles. At this point I was ordered to sit down, but I think I
made an impression in your favor.”
M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness, and
gave a smile as thin as the edge of a knife. Then he removed a spark of
cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes for a while on
the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted one of his white hands
into the breast of his waistcoat. “I must apologize to you for the
deplorable levity of my brother,” he said, “and I must notify you that
this is probably not the last time that his want of tact will cause you
serious embarrassment.”
“No, I confess I have no tact,” said Valentin. “Is your embarrassment
really painful, Newman? The marquis will put you right again; his own
touch is deliciously delicate.”
“Valentin, I am sorry to say,” the marquis continued, “has never
possessed the tone, the manner, that belongs to a young man in his
position. It has been a great affliction to his mother, who is very
fond of the old traditions. But you must remember that he speaks for no
one but himself.”
“Oh, I don’t mind him, sir,” said Newman, good-humoredly. “I know what
he amounts to.”
“In the good old times,” said Valentin, “marquises and counts used to
have their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them.
Nowadays we see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to
play the fool. It’s a good situation, but I certainly am very
degenerate.”
M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor. “My mother
informed me,” he said presently, “of the announcement that you made to
her the other evening.”
“That I desired to marry your sister?” said Newman.
“That you wished to arrange a marriage,” said the marquis, slowly,
“with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintré. The proposal was serious, and
required, on my mother’s part, a great deal of reflection. She
naturally took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous
attention to the subject. There was a great deal to be considered; more
than you appear to imagine. We have viewed the question on all its
faces, we have weighed one thing against another. Our conclusion has
been that we favor your suit. My mother has desired me to inform you of
our decision. She will have the honor of saying a few words to you on
the subject herself. Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family, you are
accepted.”
Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis. “You will do nothing to
hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?”
“I will recommend my sister to accept you.”
Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for a moment upon
his eyes. This promise had a great sound, and yet the pleasure he took
in it was embittered by his having to stand there so and receive his
passport from M. de Bellegarde. The idea of having this gentleman mixed
up with his wooing and wedding was more and more disagreeable to him.
But Newman had resolved to go through the mill, as he imagined it, and
he would not cry out at the first turn of the wheel. He was silent a
while, and then he said, with a certain dryness which Valentin told him
afterwards had a very grand air, “I am much obliged to you.”
“I take note of the promise,” said Valentin, “I register the vow.”
M. de Bellegarde began to gaze at the cornice again; he apparently had
something more to say. “I must do my mother the justice,” he resumed,
“I must do myself the justice, to say that our decision was not easy.
Such an arrangement was not what we had expected. The idea that my
sister should marry a gentleman—ah—in business was something of a
novelty.”
“So I told you, you know,” said Valentin raising his finger at Newman.
“The novelty has not quite worn away, I confess,” the marquis went on;
“perhaps it never will, entirely. But possibly that is not altogether
to be regretted,” and he gave his thin smile again. “It may be that the
time has come when we should make some concession to novelty. There had
been no novelties in our house for a great many years. I made the
observation to my mother, and she did me the honor to admit that it was
worthy of attention.”
“My dear brother,” interrupted Valentin, “is not your memory just here
leading you the least bit astray? Our mother is, I may say,
distinguished for her small respect of abstract reasoning. Are you very
sure that she replied to your striking proposition in the gracious
manner you describe? You know how terribly incisive she is sometimes.
Didn’t she, rather, do you the honor to say, ‘A fiddlestick for your
phrases! There are better reasons than that?’”
“Other reasons were discussed,” said the marquis, without looking at
Valentin, but with an audible tremor in his voice; “some of them
possibly were better. We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not
also bigots. We judged the matter liberally. We have no doubt that
everything will be comfortable.”
Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and
his eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, “Comfortable?” he said, with a
sort of grim flatness of intonation. “Why shouldn’t we be comfortable?
If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make
_me_ so.”
“My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the
change”—and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
“What change?” asked Newman in the same tone.
“Urbain,” said Valentin, very gravely, “I am afraid that Mr. Newman
does not quite realize the change. We ought to insist upon that.”
“My brother goes too far,” said M. de Bellegarde. “It is his fatal want
of tact again. It is my mother’s wish, and mine, that no such allusions
should be made. Pray never make them yourself. We prefer to assume that
the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one of
ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make. With a
little discretion on both sides, everything, I think, will be easy.
That is exactly what I wished to say—that we quite understand what we
have undertaken, and that you may depend upon our adhering to our
resolution.”
Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them.
“I have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh, my brother, if
you knew what you yourself were saying!” And he went off into a long
laugh.
M. de Bellegarde’s face flushed a little, but he held his head higher,
as if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability. “I am sure
you understand me,” he said to Newman.
“Oh no, I don’t understand you at all,” said Newman. “But you needn’t
mind that. I don’t care. In fact, I think I had better not understand
you. I might not like it. That wouldn’t suit me at all, you know. I
want to marry your sister, that’s all; to do it as quickly as possible,
and to find fault with nothing. I don’t care how I do it. I am not
marrying you, you know, sir. I have got my leave, and that is all I
want.”
“You had better receive the last word from my mother,” said the
marquis.
“Very good; I will go and get it,” said Newman; and he prepared to
return to the drawing-room.
M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman
had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin. Newman had
been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother,
and he had not needed its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde’s
transcendent patronage. He had wit enough to appreciate the force of
that civility which consists in calling your attention to the
impertinences it spares you. But he had felt warmly the delicate
sympathy with himself that underlay Valentin’s fraternal irreverence,
and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it. He
paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde’s displeasure; but
he detected only a perfect stillness. The stillness itself seemed a
trifle portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand
listening, and he made his way back to the salon. In his absence
several persons had come in. They were scattered about the room in
groups, two or three of them having passed into a small boudoir, next
to the drawing-room, which had now been lighted and opened. Old Madame
de Bellegarde was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old
gentleman in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of
1820. Madame de Cintré was bending a listening head to the historic
confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife of the old
gentleman in the neckcloth, an old lady in a red satin dress and an
ermine cape, who wore across her forehead a band with a topaz set in
it. Young Madame de Bellegarde, when Newman came in, left some people
among whom she was sitting, and took the place that she had occupied
before dinner. Then she gave a little push to the puff that stood near
her, and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed
it in position for him. He went and took possession of it; the
marquis’s wife amused and puzzled him.
“I know your secret,” she said, in her bad but charming English; “you
need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. _C’est
un beau choix_. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You
must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!”
“You have spoken to Madame de Cintré?” said Newman.
“Oh no, not that. You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I
are not so intimate as that. No; I spoke to my husband and my
mother-in-law; I said I was sure we could do what we chose with you.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Newman, laughing; “but you can’t.”
“I know that very well; I didn’t believe a word of it. But I wanted you
to come into the house; I thought we should be friends.”
“I am very sure of it,” said Newman.
“Don’t be too sure. If you like Madame de Cintré so much, perhaps you
will not like me. We are as different as blue and pink. But you and I
have something in common. I have come into this family by marriage; you
want to come into it in the same way.”
“Oh no, I don’t!” interrupted Newman. “I only want to take Madame de
Cintré out of it.”
“Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water. Our positions
are alike; we shall be able to compare notes. What do you think of my
husband? It’s a strange question, isn’t it? But I shall ask you some
stranger ones yet.”
“Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer,” said Newman. “You
might try me.”
“Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la Rochefidèle, yonder,
couldn’t do it better. I told them that if we only gave you a chance
you would be a perfect _talon rouge_. I know something about men.
Besides, you and I belong to the same camp. I am a ferocious democrat.
By birth I am _vieille roche_; a good little bit of the history of
France is the history of my family. Oh, you never heard of us, of
course! _Ce que c’est que la gloire!_ We are much better than the
Bellegardes, at any rate. But I don’t care a pin for my pedigree; I
want to belong to my time. I’m a revolutionist, a radical, a child of
the age! I am sure I go beyond you. I like clever people, wherever they
come from, and I take my amusement wherever I find it. I don’t pout at
the Empire; here all the world pouts at the Empire. Of course I have to
mind what I say; but I expect to take my revenge with you.” Madame de
Bellegarde discoursed for some time longer in this sympathetic strain,
with an eager abundance which seemed to indicate that her opportunities
for revealing her esoteric philosophy were indeed rare. She hoped that
Newman would never be afraid of her, however he might be with the
others, for, really, she went very far indeed. “Strong people”—_le gens
forts_—were in her opinion equal, all the world over. Newman listened
to her with an attention at once beguiled and irritated. He wondered
what the deuce she, too, was driving at, with her hope that he would
not be afraid of her and her protestations of equality. In so far as he
could understand her, she was wrong; a silly, rattling woman was
certainly not the equal of a sensible man, preoccupied with an
ambitious passion. Madame de Bellegarde stopped suddenly, and looked at
him sharply, shaking her fan. “I see you don’t believe me,” she said,
“you are too much on your guard. You will not form an alliance,
offensive or defensive? You are very wrong; I could help you.”
Newman answered that he was very grateful and that he would certainly
ask for help; she should see. “But first of all,” he said, “I must help
myself.” And he went to join Madame de Cintré.
“I have been telling Madame de la Rochefidèle that you are an
American,” she said, as he came up. “It interests her greatly. Her
father went over with the French troops to help you in your battles in
the last century, and she has always, in consequence, wanted greatly to
see an American. But she has never succeeded till to-night. You are the
first—to her knowledge—that she has ever looked at.”
Madame de la Rochefidèle had an aged, cadaverous face, with a falling
of the lower jaw which prevented her from bringing her lips together,
and reduced her conversations to a series of impressive but
inarticulate gutturals. She raised an antique eyeglass, elaborately
mounted in chased silver, and looked at Newman from head to foot. Then
she said something to which he listened deferentially, but which he
completely failed to understand.
“Madame de la Rochefidèle says that she is convinced that she must have
seen Americans without knowing it,” Madame de Cintré explained. Newman
thought it probable she had seen a great many things without knowing
it; and the old lady, again addressing herself to utterance,
declared—as interpreted by Madame de Cintré—that she wished she had
known it.
At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder
Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm. His
wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable
origin. M. de la Rochefidèle, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke
very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M.
Nioche. When he had been enlightened, he turned to Newman with an
inimitable elderly grace.
“Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen,” he said.
“Almost the first person I ever saw—to notice him—was an American.”
“Ah?” said Newman, sympathetically.
“The great Dr. Franklin,” said M. de la Rochefidèle. “Of course I was
very young. He was received very well in our _monde._”
“Not better than Mr. Newman,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I beg he will
offer his arm into the other room. I could have offered no higher
privilege to Dr. Franklin.”
Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde’s request, perceived that
her two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their faces
an instant for traces of the scene that had followed his separation
from them, but the marquis seemed neither more nor less frigidly grand
than usual, and Valentin was kissing ladies’ hands with at least his
habitual air of self-abandonment to the act. Madame de Bellegarde gave
a glance at her eldest son, and by the time she had crossed the
threshold of her boudoir he was at her side. The room was now empty and
offered a sufficient degree of privacy. The old lady disengaged herself
from Newman’s arm and rested her hand on the arm of the marquis; and in
this position she stood a moment, holding her head high and biting her
small under-lip. I am afraid the picture was lost upon Newman, but
Madame de Bellegarde was, in fact, at this moment a striking image of
the dignity which—even in the case of a little time-shrunken old
lady—may reside in the habit of unquestioned authority and the
absoluteness of a social theory favorable to yourself.
“My son has spoken to you as I desired,” she said, “and you understand
that we shall not interfere. The rest will lie with yourself.”
“M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn’t understand,” said
Newman, “but I made out that. You will leave me open field. I am much
obliged.”
“I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to
say,” the marquise rejoined. “I must say it for my own peace of mind.
We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor.”
“Oh, your son said it very well; didn’t you?” said Newman.
“Not so well as my mother,” declared the marquis.
“I can only repeat—I am much obliged.”
“It is proper I should tell you,” Madame de Bellegarde went on, “that I
am very proud, and that I hold my head very high. I may be wrong, but I
am too old to change. At least I know it, and I don’t pretend to
anything else. Don’t flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud.
She is proud in her own way—a somewhat different way from mine. You
will have to make your terms with that. Even Valentin is proud, if you
touch the right spot—or the wrong one. Urbain is proud; that you see
for yourself. Sometimes I think he is a little too proud; but I
wouldn’t change him. He is the best of my children; he cleaves to his
old mother. But I have said enough to show you that we are all proud
together. It is well that you should know the sort of people you have
come among.”
“Well,” said Newman, “I can only say, in return, that I am _not_ proud;
I shan’t mind you! But you speak as if you intended to be very
disagreeable.”
“I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not
pretend to enjoy it. If you don’t mind that, so much the better.”
“If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall not quarrel;
that is all I ask of you,” said Newman. “Keep your hands off, and give
me an open field. I am very much in earnest, and there is not the
slightest danger of my getting discouraged or backing out. You will
have me constantly before your eyes; if you don’t like it, I am sorry
for you. I will do for your daughter, if she will accept me, everything
that a man can do for a woman. I am happy to tell you that, as a
promise—a pledge. I consider that on your side you make me an equal
pledge. You will not back out, eh?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘backing out,’” said the marquise. “It
suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has ever been
guilty.”
“Our word is our word,” said Urbain. “We have given it.”
“Well, now,” said Newman, “I am very glad you are so proud. It makes me
believe that you will keep it.”
The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, “I shall always
be polite to you, Mr. Newman,” she declared, “but, decidedly, I shall
never like you.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Newman, laughing.
“I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my armchair
without the least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service
you render me.” And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to
the salon and to her customary place.
M. de la Rochefidèle and his wife were preparing to take their leave,
and Madame de Cintré’s interview with the mumbling old lady was at an
end. She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom
she should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
“Your mother has given me leave—very solemnly—to come here often,” he
said. “I mean to come often.”
“I shall be glad to see you,” she answered simply. And then, in a
moment: “You probably think it very strange that there should be such a
solemnity—as you say—about your coming.”
“Well, yes; I do, rather.”
“Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time you came
to see me—that we were a strange, strange family?”
“It was not the first time I came, but the second,” said Newman.
“Very true. Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better,
I may tell you he was right. If you come often, you will see!” and
Madame de Cintré turned away.
Newman watched her a while, talking with other people, and then he took
his leave. He shook hands last with Valentin de Bellegarde, who came
out with him to the top of the staircase. “Well, you have got your
permit,” said Valentin. “I hope you liked the process.”
“I like your sister, more than ever. But don’t worry your brother any
more for my sake,” Newman added. “I don’t mind him. I am afraid he came
down on you in the smoking-room, after I went out.”
“When my brother comes down on me,” said Valentin, “he falls hard. I
have a peculiar way of receiving him. I must say,” he continued, “that
they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected. I don’t
understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight. It’s
a tribute to your millions.”
“Well, it’s the most precious one they have ever received,” said
Newman.
He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with a
brilliant, softly-cynical glance. “I should like to know whether,
within a few days, you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche.”
“He was yesterday at my rooms,” Newman answered.
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing particular.”
“You didn’t see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his pocket?”
“What are you driving at?” Newman demanded. “I thought he seemed rather
cheerful for him.”
Valentin broke into a laugh. “I am delighted to hear it! I win my bet.
Mademoiselle Noémie has thrown her cap over the mill, as we say. She
has left the paternal domicile. She is launched! And M. Nioche is
rather cheerful—_for him!_ Don’t brandish your tomahawk at that rate; I
have not seen her nor communicated with her since that day at the
Louvre. Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is
exact; on such matters it always is. I suppose that now you will raise
your protest.”
“My protest be hanged!” murmured Newman, disgustedly.
But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin, with his hand on
the door, to return to his mother’s apartment, exclaimed, “But I shall
see her now! She is very remarkable—she is very remarkable!”
CHAPTER XIII
Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to the Rue de
l’Université, and during the next six weeks he saw Madame de Cintré
more times than he could have numbered. He flattered himself that he
was not in love, but his biographer may be supposed to know better. He
claimed, at least, none of the exemptions and emoluments of the
romantic passion. Love, he believed, made a fool of a man, and his
present emotion was not folly but wisdom; wisdom sound, serene,
well-directed. What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness,
which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful and delicate, and
at the same time impressive, woman who lived in a large gray house on
the left bank of the Seine. This tenderness turned very often into a
positive heartache; a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have
read the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment.
When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether
the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes
into that place in which it becomes identical with pain, a man may
admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended. Newman wished
Madame de Cintré so well that nothing he could think of doing for her
in the future rose to the high standard which his present mood had set
itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and
circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was
constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some
brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony.
This is what I mean by Newman’s tenderness: Madame de Cintré pleased
him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose between her
and the troubles of life had the quality of a young mother’s eagerness
to protect the sleep of her first-born child. Newman was simply
charmed, and he handled his charm as if it were a music-box which would
stop if one shook it. There can be no better proof of the hankering
epicure that is hidden in every man’s temperament, waiting for a signal
from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out. Newman at
last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply. Certain of Madame de
Cintré’s personal qualities—the luminous sweetness of her eyes, the
delicate mobility of her face, the deep liquidity of her voice—filled
all his consciousness. A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble
goddess with his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act,
could not have been a more complete embodiment of the wisdom that loses
itself in the enjoyment of quiet harmonies.
He made no violent love to her—no sentimental speeches. He never
trespassed on what she had made him understand was for the present
forbidden ground. But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable sense that
she knew better from day to day how much he admired her. Though in
general he was no great talker, he talked much, and he succeeded
perfectly in making her say many things. He was not afraid of boring
her, either by his discourse or by his silence; and whether or no he
did occasionally bore her, it is probable that on the whole she liked
him only the better for his absence of embarrassed scruples. Her
visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there, found a tall, lean,
silent man in a half-lounging attitude, who laughed out sometimes when
no one had meant to be droll, and remained grave in the presence of
calculated witticisms, for appreciation of which he had apparently not
the proper culture.
It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman had
no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards
those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly
without words. He had little of the small change of conversation, and
his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest. On the
other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his estimate of
the importance of a topic did not depend upon the number of clever
things he could say about it. He himself was almost never bored, and
there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to
suppose that silence meant displeasure. What it was that entertained
him during some of his speechless sessions I must, however, confess
myself unable to determine. We know in a general way that a great many
things which were old stories to a great many people had the charm of
novelty to him, but a complete list of his new impressions would
probably contain a number of surprises for us. He told Madame de Cintré
a hundred long stories; he explained to her, in talking of the United
States, the working of various local institutions and mercantile
customs. Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not
have been sure of it beforehand. As regards her own talk, Newman was
very sure himself that she herself enjoyed it: this was as a sort of
amendment to the portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her. He
discovered that she had naturally an abundance of gaiety. He had been
right at first in saying she was shy; her shyness, in a woman whose
circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded every facility for
well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more. For Newman it had
lasted some time, and even when it went it left something behind it
which for a while performed the same office. Was this the tearful
secret of which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse, and of which, as of
her friend’s reserve, her high-breeding, and her profundity, she had
given a sketch of which the outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy?
Newman supposed so, but he found himself wondering less every day what
Madame de Cintré’s secrets might be, and more convinced that secrets
were, in themselves, hateful things to her. She was a woman for the
light, not for the shade; and her natural line was not picturesque
reserve and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action,
with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more. To
this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back. He felt,
himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets; what he offered
her was, in fact, above all things a vast, sunny immunity from the need
of having any.
He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintré had so appointed
it, at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself
with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his
mistress, who always made a point, before her family, of talking to
someone else. Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly
and coldly with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room
with her slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon
him, was to Newman’s sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of
damp air. When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh
whether she could “stand him” another evening, and she replied, without
a laugh, that thank God she had always been able to do her duty.
Newman, talking once of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after
all it was very easy to get on with her; it always was easy to get on
with out-and-out rascals.
“And is it by that elegant term,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you
designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?”
“Well,” said Newman, “she is wicked, she is an old sinner.”
“What is her crime?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
“I shouldn’t wonder if she had murdered someone—all from a sense of
duty, of course.”
“How can you be so dreadful?” sighed Mrs. Tristram.
“I am not dreadful. I am speaking of her favorably.”
“Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?”
“I shall keep my severity for someone else—for the marquis. There’s a
man I can’t swallow, mix the drink as I will.”
“And what has _he_ done?”
“I can’t quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad, something mean
and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity, as his mother’s
misdemeanors may have been. If he has never committed murder, he has at
least turned his back and looked the other way while someone else was
committing it.”
In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken for nothing
more than an example of the capricious play of “American humor,” Newman
did his best to maintain an easy and friendly style of communication
with M. de Bellegarde. So long as he was in personal contact with
people he disliked extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he
was capable of a good deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the
sake of his own personal comfort) to assume for the time that they were
good fellows. He did his best to treat the marquis as one; he believed
honestly, moreover, that he could not, in reason, be such a confounded
fool as he seemed. Newman’s familiarity was never importunate; his
sense of human equality was not an aggressive taste or an æsthetic
theory, but something as natural and organic as a physical appetite
which had never been put on a scanty allowance and consequently was
innocent of ungraceful eagerness. His tranquil unsuspectingness of the
relativity of his own place in the social scale was probably irritating
to M. de Bellegarde, who saw himself reflected in the mind of his
potential brother-in-law in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly
dissimilar to the impressive image projected upon his own intellectual
mirror. He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he
must have considered Newman’s “advances” with mechanical politeness.
Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging in an
unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture, now and then
found himself confronted by the conscious, ironical smile of his host.
What the deuce M. de Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to
divine. M. de Bellegarde’s smile may be supposed to have been, for
himself, a compromise between a great many emotions. So long as he
smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should be polite. A smile,
moreover, committed him to nothing more than politeness, and left the
degree of politeness agreeably vague. A smile, too, was neither
dissent—which was too serious—nor agreement, which might have brought
on terrible complications. And then a smile covered his own personal
dignity, which in this critical situation he was resolved to keep
immaculate; it was quite enough that the glory of his house should pass
into eclipse. Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to
declare there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding his
breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy. Newman was far from
being versed in European politics, but he liked to have a general idea
of what was going on about him, and he accordingly asked M. de
Bellegarde several times what he thought of public affairs. M. de
Bellegarde answered with suave concision that he thought as ill of them
as possible, that they were going from bad to worse, and that the age
was rotten to its core. This gave Newman, for the moment, an almost
kindly feeling for the marquis; he pitied a man for whom the world was
so cheerless a place, and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he
attempted to call his attention to some of the brilliant features of
the time. The marquis presently replied that he had but a single
political conviction, which was enough for him: he believed in the
divine right of Henry of Bourbon, Fifth of his name, to the throne of
France. Newman stared, and after this he ceased to talk politics with
M. de Bellegarde. He was not horrified nor scandalized, he was not even
amused; he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered in M. de
Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet; an appetite, for
instance, for fishbones or nutshells. Under these circumstances, of
course, he would never have broached dietary questions with him.
One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintré, Newman was requested
by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess was not at
liberty. He walked about the room a while, taking up her books,
smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints and photographs (which
he thought prodigiously pretty), and at last he heard the opening of a
door to which his back was turned. On the threshold stood an old woman
whom he remembered to have met several times in entering and leaving
the house. She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore
a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries, would
have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman; a cap
of pure British composition. She had a pale, decent, depressed-looking
face, and a clear, dull, English eye. She looked at Newman a moment,
both intently and timidly, and then she dropped a short, straight
English curtsey.
“Madame de Cintré begs you will kindly wait,” she said. “She has just
come in; she will soon have finished dressing.”
“Oh, I will wait as long as she wants,” said Newman. “Pray tell her not
to hurry.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring
with her message, she advanced into the room. She looked about her for
a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain
books and knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability
of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant. She
busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order and
pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro.
He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was
passing that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him
intently. She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving
it, helped her to begin.
“You are English?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, please,” she answered, quickly and softly; “I was born in
Wiltshire.”
“And what do you think of Paris?”
“Oh, I don’t think of Paris, sir,” she said in the same tone. “It is so
long since I have been here.”
“Ah, you have been here very long?”
“It is more than forty years, sir. I came over with Lady Emmeline.”
“You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?”
“Yes, sir. I came with her when she was married. I was my lady’s own
woman.”
“And you have been with her ever since?”
“I have been in the house ever since. My lady has taken a younger
person. You see I am very old. I do nothing regular now. But I keep
about.”
“You look very strong and well,” said Newman, observing the erectness
of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
“Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go
panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and
it is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you.”
“Oh, speak out,” said Newman, curiously. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
“Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before.”
“On the stairs, you mean?”
“Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken
the liberty of noticing that you come often.”
“Oh yes; I come very often,” said Newman, laughing. “You need not have
been wide-awake to notice that.”
“I have noticed it with pleasure, sir,” said the ancient tirewoman,
gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of
face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit
of decent self-effacement and knowledge of her “own place.” But there
mingled with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a
sense, probably, of Newman’s unprecedented approachableness, and,
beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my
lady’s own woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had
taken another person, she had a slight reversionary property in
herself.
“You take a great interest in the family?” said Newman.
“A deep interest, sir. Especially in the countess.”
“I am glad of that,” said Newman. And in a moment he added, smiling,
“So do I!”
“So I suppose, sir. We can’t help noticing these things and having our
ideas; can we, sir?”
“You mean as a servant?” said Newman.
“Ah, there it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle
with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the
countess; if she were my own child I couldn’t love her more. That is
how I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want to marry her.”
Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not a
gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet. “It is
quite true,” he said. “I want to marry Madame de Cintré.”
“And to take her away to America?”
“I will take her wherever she wants to go.”
“The farther away the better, sir!” exclaimed the old woman, with
sudden intensity. But she checked herself, and, taking up a
paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron. “I
don’t mean anything against the house or the family, sir. But I think a
great change would do the poor countess good. It is very sad here.”
“Yes, it’s not very lively,” said Newman. “But Madame de Cintré is gay
herself.”
“She is everything that is good. You will not be vexed to hear that she
has been gayer for a couple of months past than she had been in many a
day before.”
Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity of his
suit, but he repressed all violent marks of elation. “Has Madame de
Cintré been in bad spirits before this?” he asked.
“Poor lady, she had good reason. M. de Cintré was no husband for a
sweet young lady like that. And then, as I say, it has been a sad
house. It is better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it. So,
if you will excuse me for saying so, I hope she will marry you.”
“I hope she will!” said Newman.
“But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn’t make up her mind at
once. That is what I wanted to beg of you, sir. Don’t give it up, sir.
You will not take it ill if I say it’s a great risk for any lady at any
time; all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain. But if she
can marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman, I think she had better
make up her mind to it. They speak very well of you, sir, in the house,
and, if you will allow me to say so, I like your face. You have a very
different appearance from the late count, he wasn’t five feet high. And
they say your fortune is beyond everything. There’s no harm in that. So
I beseech you to be patient, sir, and bide your time. If I don’t say
this to you, sir, perhaps no one will. Of course it is not for me to
make any promises. I can answer for nothing. But I think your chance is
not so bad, sir. I am nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner,
but one woman understands another, and I think I make out the countess.
I received her in my arms when she came into the world and her first
wedding day was the saddest of my life. She owes it to me to show me
another and a brighter one. If you will hold firm, sir—and you look as
if you would—I think we may see it.”
“I am much obliged to you for your encouragement,” said Newman,
heartily. “One can’t have too much. I mean to hold firm. And if Madame
de Cintré marries me you must come and live with her.”
The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes.
“It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty
years in a house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this
place.”
“Why, it’s just the time to say it,” said Newman, fervently. “After
forty years one wants a change.”
“You are very kind, sir;” and this faithful servant dropped another
curtsey and seemed disposed to retire. But she lingered a moment and
gave a timid, joyless smile. Newman was disappointed, and his fingers
stole half shyly half irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His
informant noticed the movement. “Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman,” she
said. “If I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am,
that if you please, monsieur, my information is worth something. Let me
tell you so in my own decent English way. It _is_ worth something.”
“How much, please?” said Newman.
“Simply this: a promise not to hint to the countess that I have said
these things.”
“If that is all, you have it,” said Newman.
“That is all, sir. Thank you, sir. Good day, sir.” And having once more
slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman
departed. At the same moment Madame de Cintré came in by an opposite
door. She noticed the movement of the other _portière_ and asked Newman
who had been entertaining him.
“The British female!” said Newman. “An old lady in a black dress and a
cap, who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well.”
“An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?... Ah, you mean poor
Mrs. Bread. I happen to know that you have made a conquest of her.”
“Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called,” said Newman. “She is very sweet.
She is a delicious old woman.”
Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment. “What can she have said to
you? She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal.”
“I suppose,” Newman answered presently, “that I like her because she
has lived near you so long. Since your birth, she told me.”
“Yes,” said Madame de Cintré, simply; “she is very faithful; I can
trust her.”
Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother and
her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression they made upon
him. But, as if she had guessed his thoughts, she seemed careful to
avoid all occasion for making him speak of them. She never alluded to
her mother’s domestic decrees; she never quoted the opinions of the
marquis. They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made no
secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother. Newman
listened sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy; he would have
liked to divert some of her tender allusions to his own credit. Once
Madame de Cintré told him with a little air of triumph about something
that Valentin had done which she thought very much to his honor. It was
a service he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something
more “serious” than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being.
Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began to talk about
something which lay upon his own heart. Madame de Cintré listened, but
after a while she said, “I don’t like the way you speak of my brother
Valentin.” Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken of
him but kindly.
“It is too kindly,” said Madame de Cintré. “It is a kindness that costs
nothing; it is the kindness you show to a child. It is as if you didn’t
respect him.”
“Respect him? Why I think I do.”
“You think? If you are not sure, it is no respect.”
“Do you respect him?” said Newman. “If you do, I do.”
“If one loves a person, that is a question one is not bound to answer,”
said Madame de Cintré.
“You should not have asked it of me, then. I am very fond of your
brother.”
“He amuses you. But you would not like to resemble him.”
“I shouldn’t like to resemble anyone. It is hard enough work resembling
one’s self.”
“What do you mean,” asked Madame de Cintré, “by resembling one’s self?”
“Why, doing what is expected of one. Doing one’s duty.”
“But that is only when one is very good.”
“Well, a great many people are good,” said Newman. “Valentin is quite
good enough for me.”
Madame de Cintré was silent for a short time. “He is not good enough
for me,” she said at last. “I wish he would do something.”
“What can he do?” asked Newman.
“Nothing. Yet he is very clever.”
“It is a proof of cleverness,” said Newman, “to be happy without doing
anything.”
“I don’t think Valentin is happy, in reality. He is clever, generous,
brave; but what is there to show for it? To me there is something sad
in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him. I
don’t know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble—perhaps an
unhappy end.”
“Oh, leave him to me,” said Newman, jovially. “I will watch over him
and keep harm away.”
One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde’s salon, the conversation had
flagged most sensibly. The marquis walked up and down in silence, like
a sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted citadel of the
proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire; young Madame de
Bellegarde worked at an enormous band of tapestry. Usually there were
three or four visitors, but on this occasion a violent storm
sufficiently accounted for the absence of even the most devoted
habitués. In the long silences the howling of the wind and the beating
of the rain were distinctly audible. Newman sat perfectly still,
watching the clock, determined to stay till the stroke of eleven, but
not a moment longer. Madame de Cintré had turned her back to the
circle, and had been standing for some time within the uplifted curtain
of a window, with her forehead against the pane, gazing out into the
deluged darkness. Suddenly she turned round toward her sister-in-law.
“For Heaven’s sake,” she said, with peculiar eagerness, “go to the
piano and play something.”
Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed to a little white
flower. “Don’t ask me to leave this. I am in the midst of a
masterpiece. My flower is going to smell very sweet; I am putting in
the smell with this gold-colored silk. I am holding my breath; I can’t
leave off. Play something yourself.”
“It is absurd for me to play when you are present,” said Madame de
Cintré. But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike
the keys with vehemence. She played for some time, rapidly and
brilliantly; when she stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her
to begin again. She shook her head, and, on his insisting, she said, “I
have not been playing for you; I have been playing for myself.” She
went back to the window again and looked out, and shortly afterwards
left the room. When Newman took leave, Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied
him, as he always did, just three steps down the staircase. At the
bottom stood a servant with his overcoat. He had just put it on when he
saw Madame de Cintré coming towards him across the vestibule.
“Shall you be at home on Friday?” Newman asked.
She looked at him a moment before answering his question. “You don’t
like my mother and my brother,” she said.
He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, “No.”
She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs,
fixing her eyes on the first step.
“Yes, I shall be at home on Friday,” and she passed up the wide dusky
staircase.
On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please to tell
her why he disliked her family.
“Dislike your family?” he exclaimed. “That has a horrid sound. I didn’t
say so, did I? I didn’t mean it, if I did.”
“I wish you would tell me what you think of them,” said Madame de
Cintré.
“I don’t think of any of them but you.”
“That is because you dislike them. Speak the truth; you can’t offend
me.”
“Well, I don’t exactly love your brother,” said Newman. “I remember
now. But what is the use of my saying so? I had forgotten it.”
“You are too good-natured,” said Madame de Cintré gravely. Then, as if
to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill of the marquis,
she turned away, motioning him to sit down.
But he remained standing before her and said presently, “What is of
much more importance is that they don’t like me.”
“No—they don’t,” she said.
“And don’t you think they are wrong?” Newman asked. “I don’t believe I
am a man to dislike.”
“I suppose that a man who may be liked may also be disliked. And my
brother—my mother,” she added, “have not made you angry?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“You have never shown it.”
“So much the better.”
“Yes, so much the better. They think they have treated you very well.”
“I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly,” said
Newman. “I am much obliged to them. Honestly.”
“You are generous,” said Madame de Cintré. “It’s a disagreeable
position.”
“For them, you mean. Not for me.”
“For me,” said Madame de Cintré.
“Not when their sins are forgiven!” said Newman. “They don’t think I am
as good as they are. I do. But we shan’t quarrel about it.”
“I can’t even agree with you without saying something that has a
disagreeable sound. The presumption was against you. That you probably
don’t understand.”
Newman sat down and looked at her for some time. “I don’t think I
really understand it. But when you say it, I believe it.”
“That’s a poor reason,” said Madame de Cintré, smiling.
“No, it’s a very good one. You have a high spirit, a high standard; but
with you it’s all natural and unaffected; you don’t seem to have stuck
your head into a vise, as if you were sitting for the photograph of
propriety. You think of me as a fellow who has had no idea in life but
to make money and drive sharp bargains. That’s a fair description of
me, but it is not the whole story. A man ought to care for something
else, though I don’t know exactly what. I cared for money-making, but I
never cared particularly for the money. There was nothing else to do,
and it was impossible to be idle. I have been very easy to others, and
to myself. I have done most of the things that people asked me—I don’t
mean rascals. As regards your mother and your brother,” Newman added,
“there is only one point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with
them. I don’t ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let
you alone. If I thought they talked ill of me to you, I should come
down upon them.”
“They have let me alone, as you say. They have not talked ill of you.”
“In that case,” cried Newman, “I declare they are only too good for
this world!”
Madame de Cintré appeared to find something startling in his
exclamation. She would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the
door was thrown open and Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the
threshold. He appeared surprised at finding Newman, but his surprise
was but a momentary shadow across the surface of an unwonted joviality.
Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his pale, unlighted
countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration. He held open the door
for someone else to enter, and presently appeared old Madame de
Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a gentleman whom Newman had not seen
before. He had already risen, and Madame de Cintré rose, as she always
did before her mother. The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost
genially, stood apart, slowly rubbing his hands. His mother came
forward with her companion. She gave a majestic little nod at Newman,
and then she released the strange gentleman, that he might make his bow
to her daughter.
“My daughter,” she said, “I have brought you an unknown relative, Lord
Deepmere. Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has done only to-day what
he ought to have done long ago—come to make our acquaintance.”
Madame de Cintré smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand. “It is
very extraordinary,” said this noble laggard, “but this is the first
time that I have ever been in Paris for more than three or four weeks.”
“And how long have you been here now?” asked Madame de Cintré.
“Oh, for the last two months,” said Lord Deepmere.
These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance
at Lord Deepmere’s face would have satisfied you, as it apparently
satisfied Madame de Cintré, that they constituted only a _naïveté_.
When his companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the
conversation, occupied himself with observing the newcomer.
Observation, however, as regards Lord Deepmere’s person; had no great
range. He was a small, meagre man, of some three and thirty years of
age, with a bald head, a short nose and no front teeth in the upper
jaw; he had round, candid blue eyes, and several pimples on his chin.
He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his
breath with an odd, startling sound, as the most convenient imitation
of repose. His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount
of brutality, and probable failure in the past to profit by rare
educational advantages. He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but
that for real, thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin.
He even preferred Dublin to London. Had Madame de Cintré ever been to
Dublin? They must all come over there some day, and he would show them
some Irish sport. He always went to Ireland for the fishing, and he
came to Paris for the new Offenbach things. They always brought them
out in Dublin, but he couldn’t wait. He had been nine times to hear La
Pomme de Paris. Madame de Cintré, leaning back, with her arms folded,
looked at Lord Deepmere with a more visibly puzzled face than she
usually showed to society. Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand,
wore a fixed smile. The marquis said that among light operas his
favorite was the Gazza Ladra. The marquise then began a series of
inquiries about the duke and the cardinal, the old countess and Lady
Barbara, after listening to which, and to Lord Deepmere’s somewhat
irreverent responses, for a quarter of an hour, Newman rose to take his
leave. The marquis went with him three steps into the hall.
“Is he Irish?” asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the visitor.
“His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane,” said the marquis; “he
has great Irish estates. Lady Bridget, in the complete absence of male
heirs, either direct or collateral—a most extraordinary
circumstance—came in for everything. But Lord Deepmere’s title is
English and his English property is immense. He is a charming young
man.”
Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was
beginning gracefully to recede. “It is a good time for me to thank
you,” he said, “for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for doing
so much to help me on with your sister.”
The marquis stared. “Really, I have done nothing that I can boast of,”
he said.
“Oh don’t be modest,” Newman answered, laughing. “I can’t flatter
myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit. And thank your
mother for me, too!” And he turned away, leaving M. de Bellegarde
looking after him.
CHAPTER XIV
The next time Newman came to the Rue de l’Université he had the good
fortune to find Madame de Cintré alone. He had come with a definite
intention, and he lost no time in executing it. She wore, moreover, a
look which he eagerly interpreted as expectancy.
“I have been coming to see you for six months, now,” he said, “and I
have never spoken to you a second time of marriage. That was what you
asked me; I obeyed. Could any man have done better?”
“You have acted with great delicacy,” said Madame de Cintré.
“Well, I’m going to change now,” said Newman. “I don’t mean that I am
going to be indelicate; but I’m going to go back to where I began. I
_am_ back there. I have been all round the circle. Or rather, I have
never been away from here. I have never ceased to want what I wanted
then. Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more sure of
myself, and more sure of you. I know you better, though I don’t know
anything I didn’t believe three months ago. You are everything—you are
beyond everything—I can imagine or desire. You know me now; you _must_
know me. I won’t say that you have seen the best—but you have seen the
worst. I hope you have been thinking all this while. You must have seen
that I was only waiting; you can’t suppose that I was changing. What
will you say to me, now? Say that everything is clear and reasonable,
and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my
reward. And then give me your hand. Madame de Cintré do that. Do it.”
“I knew you were only waiting,” she said; “and I was very sure this day
would come. I have thought about it a great deal. At first I was half
afraid of it. But I am not afraid of it now.” She paused a moment, and
then she added, “It’s a relief.”
She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her.
He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him
keep. “That means that I have not waited for nothing,” he said. She
looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. “With
me,” he went on, “you will be as safe—as safe”—and even in his ardor he
hesitated a moment for a comparison—“as safe,” he said, with a kind of
simple solemnity, “as in your father’s arms.”
Still she looked at him and her tears increased. Then, abruptly, she
buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and
broke into noiseless sobs. “I am weak—I am weak,” he heard her say.
“All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,” he
answered. “Why are you troubled? There is nothing but happiness. Is
that so hard to believe?”
“To you everything seems so simple,” she said, raising her head. “But
things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago,
and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy,
simply for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things
to think about.”
“There ought to be only one thing to think about—that we love each
other,” said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added, “Very
good, if you can’t accept that, don’t tell me so.”
“I should be very glad to think of nothing,” she said at last; “not to
think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I
can’t. I’m cold, I’m old, I’m a coward; I never supposed I should marry
again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to
you. When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to
marry freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from
you.”
“That’s nothing against me,” said Newman with an immense smile; “your
taste was not formed.”
His smile made Madame de Cintré smile. “Have you formed it?” she asked.
And then she said, in a different tone, “Where do you wish to live?”
“Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that.”
“I don’t know why I ask you,” she presently continued. “I care very
little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost anywhere.
You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great many
things—that I must have a brilliant, worldly life. I am sure you are
prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But
that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that.” She paused
again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet
to him that he had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have
had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise. “Your being so different, which
at first seemed a difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a
pleasure, a great pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet if I
had said so, no one would have understood me; I don’t mean simply to my
family.”
“They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?” said Newman.
“They would have said I could never be happy with you—you were too
different; and I would have said it was just _because_ you were so
different that I might be happy. But they would have given better
reasons than I. My only reason”—and she paused again.
But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the
impulse to grasp at a rosy cloud. “Your only reason is that you love
me!” he murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better
reason Madame de Cintré reconciled herself to this one.
Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule, as he entered the
house, he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread. She was wandering about in
honorable idleness, and when his eyes fell upon her she delivered him
one of her curtsies. Then turning to the servant who had admitted him,
she said, with the combined majesty of her native superiority and of a
rugged English accent, “You may retire; I will have the honor of
conducting monsieur.” In spite of this combination, however, it
appeared to Newman that her voice had a slight quaver, as if the tone
of command were not habitual to it. The man gave her an impertinent
stare, but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman upstairs. At half
its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little platform. In the
angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an eighteenth-century
nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked. Here Mrs. Bread stopped and
looked with shy kindness at her companion.
“I know the good news, sir,” she murmured.
“You have a good right to be first to know it,” said Newman. “You have
taken such a friendly interest.”
Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue, as if
this might be mockery.
“I suppose you want to congratulate me,” said Newman. “I am greatly
obliged.” And then he added, “You gave me much pleasure the other day.”
She turned around, apparently reassured. “You are not to think that I
have been told anything,” she said; “I have only guessed. But when I
looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I had guessed aright.”
“You are very sharp,” said Newman. “I am sure that in your quiet way
you see everything.”
“I am not a fool, sir, thank God. I have guessed something else
beside,” said Mrs. Bread.
“What’s that?”
“I needn’t tell you that, sir; I don’t think you would believe it. At
any rate it wouldn’t please you.”
“Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me,” laughed Newman. “That is
the way you began.”
“Well, sir, I suppose you won’t be vexed to hear that the sooner
everything is over the better.”
“The sooner we are married, you mean? The better for me, certainly.”
“The better for everyone.”
“The better for you, perhaps. You know you are coming to live with us,”
said Newman.
“I’m extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was
thinking. I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you
to lose no time.”
“Whom are you afraid of?”
Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked at
the undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears. “I am afraid
of everyone,” she said.
“What an uncomfortable state of mind!” said Newman. “Does ‘everyone’
wish to prevent my marriage?”
“I am afraid of already having said too much,” Mrs. Bread replied. “I
won’t take it back, but I won’t say any more.” And she took her way up
the staircase again and led him into Madame de Cintré’s salon.
Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that
Madame de Cintré was not alone. With her sat her mother, and in the
middle of the room stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and
mantle. The old marquise, who was leaning back in her chair with a hand
clasping the knob of each arm, looked at him fixedly without moving.
She seemed barely conscious of his greeting; she appeared to be musing
intently. Newman said to himself that her daughter had been announcing
her engagement and that the old lady found the morsel hard to swallow.
But Madame de Cintré, as she gave him her hand gave him also a look by
which she appeared to mean that he should understand something. Was it
a warning or a request? Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence? He
was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde’s pretty grin gave him no
information.
“I have not told my mother,” said Madame de Cintré abruptly, looking at
him.
“Told me what?” demanded the marquise. “You tell me too little; you
should tell me everything.”
“That is what I do,” said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.
“Let _me_ tell your mother,” said Newman.
The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter. “You
are going to marry him?” she cried, softly.
“_Oui, ma mère_,” said Madame de Cintré.
“Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness,” said Newman.
“And when was this arrangement made?” asked Madame de Bellegarde. “I
seem to be picking up the news by chance!”
“My suspense came to an end yesterday,” said Newman.
“And how long was mine to have lasted?” said the marquise to her
daughter. She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble
displeasure.
Madame de Cintré stood silent, with her eyes on the ground. “It is over
now,” she said.
“Where is my son—where is Urbain?” asked the marquise. “Send for your
brother and inform him.”
Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. “He was to
make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock—very softly, very
softly—at the door of his study. But he can come to me!” She pulled the
bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared, with a face of calm
inquiry.
“Send for your brother,” said the old lady.
But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a
certain way. “Tell the marquis we want him,” he said to Mrs. Bread, who
quietly retired.
Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her.
Then she turned to Newman, with an intense smile. “She is charming. I
congratulate you.”
“I congratulate you, sir,” said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme
solemnity. “My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman. She may have
faults, but I don’t know them.”
“My mother does not often make jokes,” said Madame de Cintré; “but when
she does they are terrible.”
“She is ravishing,” the Marquise Urbain resumed, looking at her
sister-in-law, with her head on one side. “Yes, I congratulate you.”
Madame de Cintré turned away, and, taking up a piece of tapestry, began
to ply the needle. Some minutes of silence elapsed, which were
interrupted by the arrival of M. de Bellegarde. He came in with his hat
in his hand, gloved, and was followed by his brother Valentin, who
appeared to have just entered the house. M. de Bellegarde looked around
the circle and greeted Newman with his usual finely-measured courtesy.
Valentin saluted his mother and his sisters, and, as he shook hands
with Newman, gave him a glance of acute interrogation.
“_Arrivez donc, messieurs!_” cried young Madame de Bellegarde. “We have
great news for you.”
“Speak to your brother, my daughter,” said the old lady.
Madame de Cintré had been looking at her tapestry. She raised her eyes
to her brother. “I have accepted Mr. Newman.”
“Your sister has consented,” said Newman. “You see after all, I knew
what I was about.”
“I am charmed!” said M. de Bellegarde, with superior benignity.
“So am I,” said Valentin to Newman. “The marquis and I are charmed. I
can’t marry, myself, but I can understand it. I can’t stand on my head,
but I can applaud a clever acrobat. My dear sister, I bless your
union.”
The marquis stood looking for a while into the crown of his hat. “We
have been prepared,” he said at last “but it is inevitable that in face
of the event one should experience a certain emotion.” And he gave a
most unhilarious smile.
“I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared for,” said his
mother.
“I can’t say that for myself,” said Newman, smiling but differently
from the marquis. “I am happier than I expected to be. I suppose it’s
the sight of your happiness!”
“Don’t exaggerate that,” said Madame de Bellegarde, getting up and
laying her hand upon her daughter’s arm. “You can’t expect an honest
old woman to thank you for taking away her beautiful, only daughter.”
“You forgot me, dear madame,” said the young marquise demurely.
“Yes, she is very beautiful,” said Newman.
“And when is the wedding, pray?” asked young Madame de Bellegarde; “I
must have a month to think over a dress.”
“That must be discussed,” said the marquise.
“Oh, we will discuss it, and let you know!” Newman exclaimed.
“I have no doubt we shall agree,” said Urbain.
“If you don’t agree with Madame de Cintré, you will be very
unreasonable.”
“Come, come, Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, “I must go
straight to my tailor’s.”
The old lady had been standing with her hand on her daughter’s arm,
looking at her fixedly. She gave a little sigh, and murmured, “No, I
did _not_ expect it! You are a fortunate man,” she added, turning to
Newman, with an expressive nod.
“Oh, I know that!” he answered. “I feel tremendously proud. I feel like
crying it on the housetops,—like stopping people in the street to tell
them.”
Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips. “Pray don’t,” she said.
“The more people that know it, the better,” Newman declared. “I haven’t
yet announced it here, but I telegraphed it this morning to America.”
“Telegraphed it to America?” the old lady murmured.
“To New York, to St. Louis, and to San Francisco; those are the
principal cities, you know. To-morrow I shall tell my friends here.”
“Have you many?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone of which I am
afraid that Newman but partly measured the impertinence.
“Enough to bring me a great many hand-shakes and congratulations. To
say nothing,” he added, in a moment, “of those I shall receive from
your friends.”
“They will not use the telegraph,” said the marquise, taking her
departure.
M. de Bellegarde, whose wife, her imagination having apparently taken
flight to the tailor’s, was fluttering her silken wings in emulation,
shook hands with Newman, and said with a more persuasive accent than
the latter had ever heard him use, “You may count upon me.” Then his
wife led him away.
Valentin stood looking from his sister to our hero. “I hope you both
reflected seriously,” he said.
Madame de Cintré smiled. “We have neither your powers of reflection nor
your depth of seriousness; but we have done our best.”
“Well, I have a great regard for each of you,” Valentin continued. “You
are charming young people. But I am not satisfied, on the whole, that
you belong to that small and superior class—that exquisite group
composed of persons who are worthy to remain unmarried. These are rare
souls; they are the salt of the earth. But I don’t mean to be
invidious; the marrying people are often very nice.”
“Valentin holds that women should marry, and that men should not,” said
Madame de Cintré. “I don’t know how he arranges it.”
“I arrange it by adoring you, my sister,” said Valentin ardently.
“Good-bye.”
“Adore someone whom you can marry,” said Newman. “I will arrange that
for you some day. I foresee that I am going to turn apostle.”
Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a moment with a face that
had turned grave. “I adore someone I can’t marry!” he said. And he
dropped the _portière_ and departed.
“They don’t like it,” said Newman, standing alone before Madame de
Cintré.
“No,” she said, after a moment; “they don’t like it.”
“Well, now, do you mind that?” asked Newman.
“Yes!” she said, after another interval.
“That’s a mistake.”
“I can’t help it. I should prefer that my mother were pleased.”
“Why the deuce,” demanded Newman, “is she not pleased? She gave you
leave to marry me.”
“Very true; I don’t understand it. And yet I do ‘mind it,’ as you say.
You will call it superstitious.”
“That will depend upon how much you let it bother you. Then I shall
call it an awful bore.”
“I will keep it to myself,” said Madame de Cintré, “It shall not bother
you.” And then they talked of their marriage-day, and Madame de Cintré
assented unreservedly to Newman’s desire to have it fixed for an early
date.
Newman’s telegrams were answered with interest. Having dispatched but
three electric missives, he received no less than eight gratulatory
bulletins in return. He put them into his pocket-book, and the next
time he encountered old Madame de Bellegarde drew them forth and
displayed them to her. This, it must be confessed, was a slightly
malicious stroke; the reader must judge in what degree the offense was
venial. Newman knew that the marquise disliked his telegrams, though he
could see no sufficient reason for it. Madame de Cintré, on the other
hand, liked them, and, most of them being of a humorous cast, laughed
at them immoderately, and inquired into the character of their authors.
Newman, now that his prize was gained, felt a peculiar desire that his
triumph should be manifest. He more than suspected that the Bellegardes
were keeping quiet about it, and allowing it, in their select circle,
but a limited resonance; and it pleased him to think that if he were to
take the trouble he might, as he phrased it, break all the windows. No
man likes being repudiated, and yet Newman, if he was not flattered,
was not exactly offended. He had not this good excuse for his somewhat
aggressive impulse to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of
another quality. He wanted for once to make the heads of the house of
Bellegarde _feel_ him; he knew not when he should have another chance.
He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady and her son
looking straight over his head, and he was now resolved that they
should toe a mark which he would give himself the satisfaction of
drawing.
“It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too
slowly,” he said to Mrs. Tristram. “They make me want to joggle their
elbows and force them to spill their wine.”
To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and
let them do things in their own way. “You must make allowances for
them,” she said. “It is natural enough that they should hang fire a
little. They thought they accepted you when you made your application;
but they are not people of imagination, they could not project
themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again. But
they _are_ people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary.”
Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation. “I am not hard on
them,” he presently said, “and to prove it I will invite them all to a
festival.”
“To a festival?”
“You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I will
show you that they are good for something. I will give a party. What is
the grandest thing one can do here? I will hire all the great singers
from the opera, and all the first people from the Théâtre Français, and
I will give an entertainment.”
“And whom will you invite?”
“You, first of all. And then the old lady and her son. And then
everyone among her friends whom I have met at her house or elsewhere,
everyone who has shown me the minimum of politeness, every duke of them
and his wife. And then all my friends, without exception: Miss Kitty
Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest.
And everyone shall know what it is about, that is, to celebrate my
engagement to the Countess de Cintré. What do you think of the idea?”
“I think it is odious!” said Mrs. Tristram. And then in a moment: “I
think it is delicious!”
The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde’s salon,
where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor
his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight
distant.
The marquise stared a moment. “My dear sir,” she cried, “what do you
want to do to me?”
“To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a
very easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini’s singing.”
“You mean to give a concert?”
“Something of that sort.”
“And to have a crowd of people?”
“All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter’s. I want
to celebrate my engagement.”
It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale. She opened
her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last century, and looked at the
picture, which represented a _fête champêtre_—a lady with a guitar,
singing, and a group of dancers round a garlanded Hermes.
“We go out so little,” murmured the marquis, “since my poor father’s
death.”
“But _my_ dear father is still alive, my friend,” said his wife. “I am
only waiting for my invitation to accept it,” and she glanced with
amiable confidence at Newman. “It will be magnificent; I am very sure
of that.”
I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman’s gallantry, that this
lady’s invitation was not then and there bestowed; he was giving all
his attention to the old marquise. She looked up at last, smiling. “I
can’t think of letting you offer me a fête,” she said, “until I have
offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we will invite
them all. We have it very much at heart. We must do things in order.
Come to me about the 25th; I will let you know the exact day
immediately. We shall not have anyone so fine as Madame Frezzolini, but
we shall have some very good people. After that you may talk of your
own fête.” The old lady spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling
more agreeably as she went on.
It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always
touched the sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde
that he should be glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that
it mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or at
his own. I have said that Newman was observant, but it must be admitted
that on this occasion he failed to notice a certain delicate glance
which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and the marquis, and which we
may presume to have been a commentary upon the innocence displayed in
that latter clause of his speech.
Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening, and when
they had left the Rue de l’Université some distance behind them he said
reflectively, “My mother is very strong—very strong.” Then in answer to
an interrogative movement of Newman’s he continued, “She was driven to
the wall, but you would never have thought it. Her fête of the 25th was
an invention of the moment. She had no idea whatever of giving a fête,
but finding it the only issue from your proposal, she looked straight
at the dose—excuse the expression—and bolted it, as you saw, without
winking. She is very strong.”
“Dear me!” said Newman, divided between relish and compassion. “I don’t
care a straw for her fête, I am willing to take the will for the deed.”
“No, no,” said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family
pride. “The thing will be done now, and done handsomely.”
CHAPTER XV
Valentin de Bellegarde’s announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle
Nioche from her father’s domicile and his irreverent reflections upon
the attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe, received
a practical commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow to seek
another interview with his late pupil. It had cost Newman some disgust
to be forced to assent to Valentin’s somewhat cynical interpretation of
the old man’s philosophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indicate
that he had not given himself up to a noble despair, Newman thought it
very possible he might be suffering more keenly than was apparent. M.
Nioche had been in the habit of paying him a respectful little visit
every two or three weeks and his absence might be a proof quite as much
of extreme depression as of a desire to conceal the success with which
he had patched up his sorrow. Newman presently learned from Valentin
several details touching this new phase of Mademoiselle Noémie’s
career.
“I told you she was remarkable,” this unshrinking observer declared,
“and the way she has managed this performance proves it. She has had
other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best. She did
you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance. You
were not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer. At
last her occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes wide
open. I am very sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had all her
respectability. Dubious little damsel as you thought her, she had kept
a firm hold of that; nothing could be proved against her, and she was
determined not to let her reputation go till she had got her
equivalent. About her equivalent she had high ideas. Apparently her
ideal has been satisfied. It is fifty years old, bald-headed, and deaf,
but it is very easy about money.”
“And where in the world,” asked Newman, “did you pick up this valuable
information?”
“In conversation. Remember my frivolous habits. In conversation with a
young woman engaged in the humble trade of glove-cleaner, who keeps a
small shop in the Rue St. Roch. M. Nioche lives in the same house, up
six pair of stairs, across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept
doorway Miss Noémie has been flitting for the last five years. The
little glove-cleaner was an old acquaintance; she used to be the friend
of a friend of mine, who has married and dropped such friends. I often
saw her in his society. As soon as I espied her behind her clear little
window-pane, I recollected her. I had on a spotlessly fresh pair of
gloves, but I went in and held up my hands, and said to her, ‘Dear
mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning these?’ ‘Dear count,’
she answered immediately, ‘I will clean them for you for nothing.’ She
had instantly recognized me, and I had to hear her history for the last
six years. But after that, I put her upon that of her neighbors. She
knows and admires Noémie, and she told me what I have just repeated.”
A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every
morning read two or three suicides in the _Figaro_, began to suspect
that, mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his
wounded pride in the waters of the Seine. He had a note of M. Nioche’s
address in his pocket-book, and finding himself one day in the
_quartier_, he determined, in so far as he might, to clear up his
doubts. He repaired to the house in the Rue St. Roch which bore the
recorded number, and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a
dangling row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy of
Bellegarde’s informant—a sallow person in a dressing-gown—peering into
the street as if she were expecting that amiable nobleman to pass
again. But it was not to her that Newman applied; he simply asked of
the portress if M. Nioche were at home. The portress replied, as the
portress invariably replies, that her lodger had gone out barely three
minutes before; but then, through the little square hole of her
lodge-window taking the measure of Newman’s fortunes, and seeing them,
by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places of servitude to
occupants of fifth floors on courts, she added that M. Nioche would
have had just time to reach the Café de la Patrie, round the second
corner to the left, at which establishment he regularly spent his
afternoons. Newman thanked her for the information, took the second
turning to the left, and arrived at the Café de la Patrie. He felt a
momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather mean to “follow up”
poor old Nioche at that rate? But there passed across his vision an
image of a haggard little septuagenarian taking measured sips of a
glass of sugar and water and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his
desolation. He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first
but a dense cloud of tobacco smoke. Across this, however, in a corner,
he presently descried the figure of M. Nioche, stirring the contents of
a deep glass, with a lady seated in front of him. The lady’s back was
turned to Newman, but M. Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his
visitor. Newman had gone toward him, and the old man rose slowly,
gazing at him with a more blighted expression even than usual.
“If you are drinking hot punch,” said Newman, “I suppose you are not
dead. That’s all right. Don’t move.”
M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his
hand. The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and
glanced upward with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the
agreeable features of his daughter. She looked at Newman sharply, to
see how he was looking at her, then—I don’t know what she
discovered—she said graciously, “How d’ ye do, monsieur? won’t you come
into our little corner?”
“Did you come—did you come after _me?_” asked M. Nioche very softly.
“I went to your house to see what had become of you. I thought you
might be sick,” said Newman.
“It is very good of you, as always,” said the old man. “No, I am not
well. Yes, I am _seek_.”
“Ask monsieur to sit down,” said Mademoiselle Nioche. “Garçon, bring a
chair.”
“Will you do us the honor to _seat?_” said M. Nioche, timorously, and
with a double foreignness of accent.
Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took
a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left
and her father on the other side. “You will take something, of course,”
said Miss Noémie, who was sipping a glass of madeira. Newman said that
he believed not, and then she turned to her papa with a smile. “What an
honor, eh? he has come only for us.” M. Nioche drained his pungent
glass at a long draught, and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in
consequence. “But you didn’t come for me, eh?” Mademoiselle Noémie went
on. “You didn’t expect to find me here?”
Newman observed the change in her appearance. She was very elegant and
prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was
noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability. She
looked “lady-like.” She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her
expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from
years of practice. Her present self-possession and _aplomb_ struck
Newman as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de
Bellegarde that the young lady was very remarkable. “No, to tell the
truth, I didn’t come for you,” he said, “and I didn’t expect to find
you. I was told,” he added in a moment “that you had left your father.”
“_Quelle horreur!_” cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile. “Does one
leave one’s father? You have the proof of the contrary.”
“Yes, convincing proof,” said Newman glancing at M. Nioche. The old man
caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then,
lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.
“Who told you that?” Noémie demanded. “I know very well. It was M. de
Bellegarde. Why don’t you say yes? You are not polite.”
“I am embarrassed,” said Newman.
“I set you a better example. I know M. de Bellegarde told you. He knows
a great deal about me—or he thinks he does. He has taken a great deal
of trouble to find out, but half of it isn’t true. In the first place,
I haven’t left my father; I am much too fond of him. Isn’t it so,
little father? M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man; it is
impossible to be cleverer. I know a good deal about him too; you can
tell him that when you next see him.”
“No,” said Newman, with a sturdy grin; “I won’t carry any messages for
you.”
“Just as you please,” said Mademoiselle Nioche, “I don’t depend upon
you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either. He is very much interested in
me; he can be left to his own devices. He is a contrast to you.”
“Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt” said Newman. “But I
don’t exactly know how you mean it.”
“I mean it in this way. First of all, he never offered to help me to a
_dot_ and a husband.” And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling. “I won’t
say that is in his favor, for I do you justice. What led you, by the
way, to make me such a queer offer? You didn’t care for me.”
“Oh yes, I did,” said Newman.
“How so?”
“It would have given me real pleasure to see you married to a
respectable young fellow.”
“With six thousand francs of income!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche. “Do
you call that caring for me? I’m afraid you know little about women.
You were not _galant_; you were not what you might have been.”
Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. “Come!” he exclaimed “that’s rather
strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby.”
Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. “It is something,
at any rate, to have made you angry.”
Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table, and his head, bent
forward, was supported in his hands, the thin white fingers of which
were pressed over his ears. In his position he was staring fixedly at
the bottom of his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing.
Mademoiselle Noémie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her
chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive
appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman.
“You had better have remained an honest girl,” Newman said quietly.
M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his
daughter got up, still bravely smiling. “You mean that I look so much
like one? That’s more than most women do nowadays. Don’t judge me yet
awhile,” she added. “I mean to succeed; that’s what I mean to do. I
leave you; I don’t mean to be seen in cafés, for one thing. I can’t
think what you want of my poor father; he’s very comfortable now. It
isn’t his fault, either. _Au revoir_, little father.” And she tapped
the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute,
looking at Newman. “Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to
come and get it from _me!_” And she turned and departed, the
white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him.
The old man looked dismally foolish. “So you determined not to shoot
her, after all,” Newman said presently.
M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long,
peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for
pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do
without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous
insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a
boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed.
M. Nioche’s gaze was a profession of moral flatness. “You despise me
terribly,” he said, in the weakest possible voice.
“Oh no,” said Newman, “it is none of my business. It’s a good plan to
take things easily.”
“I made you too many fine speeches,” M. Nioche added. “I meant them at
the time.”
“I am sure I am very glad you didn’t shoot her,” said Newman. “I was
afraid you might have shot yourself. That is why I came to look you
up.” And he began to button his coat.
“Neither,” said M. Nioche. “You despise me, and I can’t explain to you.
I hoped I shouldn’t see you again.”
“Why, that’s rather shabby,” said Newman. “You shouldn’t drop your
friends that way. Besides, the last time you came to see me I thought
you particularly jolly.”
“Yes, I remember,” said M. Nioche musingly; “I was in a fever. I didn’t
know what I said, what I did. It was delirium.”
“Ah, well, you are quieter now.”
M. Nioche was silent a moment. “As quiet as the grave,” he whispered
softly.
“Are you very unhappy?”
M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his wig a
little, looking askance at his empty glass. “Yes—yes. But that’s an old
story. I have always been unhappy. My daughter does what she will with
me. I take what she gives me, good or bad. I have no spirit, and when
you have no spirit you must keep quiet. I shan’t trouble you any more.”
“Well,” said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation of the
old man’s philosophy, “that’s as you please.”
M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless
he made a feeble movement of appeal from Newman’s faint praise. “After
all,” he said, “she is my daughter, and I can still look after her. If
she will do wrong, why she will. But there are many different paths,
there are degrees. I can give her the benefit—give her the benefit”—and
M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began to suspect that
his brain had softened—“the benefit of my experience,” M. Nioche added.
“Your experience?” inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.
“My experience of business,” said M. Nioche, gravely.
“Ah, yes,” said Newman, laughing, “that will be a great advantage to
her!” And then he said good-bye, and offered the poor, foolish old man
his hand.
M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment
and looking up at him. “I suppose you think my wits are going,” he
said. “Very likely; I have always a pain in my head. That’s why I can’t
explain, I can’t tell you. And she’s so strong, she makes me walk as
she will, anywhere! But there’s this—there’s this.” And he stopped,
still staring up at Newman. His little white eyes expanded and
glittered for a moment like those of a cat in the dark. “It’s not as it
seems. I haven’t forgiven her. Oh, no!”
“That’s right; don’t,” said Newman. “She’s a bad case.”
“It’s horrible, it’s horrible,” said M. Nioche; “but do you want to
know the truth? I hate her! I take what she gives me, and I hate her
more. To-day she brought me three hundred francs; they are here in my
waistcoat pocket. Now I hate her almost cruelly. No, I haven’t forgiven
her.”
“Why did you accept the money?” Newman asked.
“If I hadn’t,” said M. Nioche, “I should have hated her still more.
That’s what misery is. No, I haven’t forgiven her.”
“Take care you don’t hurt her!” said Newman, laughing again. And with
this he took his leave. As he passed along the glazed side of the café,
on reaching the street, he saw the old man motioning the waiter, with a
melancholy gesture, to replenish his glass.
One day, a week after his visit to the Café de la Patrie, he called
upon Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home.
Newman spoke of his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter, and said
he was afraid Valentin had judged the old man correctly. He had found
the couple hobnobbing together in all amity; the old gentleman’s rigor
was purely theoretic. Newman confessed that he was disappointed; he
should have expected to see M. Nioche take high ground.
“High ground, my dear fellow,” said Valentin, laughing; “there is no
high ground for him to take. The only perceptible eminence in M.
Nioche’s horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter. You
can’t go mountaineering in a flat country.”
“He remarked, indeed,” said Newman, “that he has not forgiven her. But
she’ll never find it out.”
“We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn’t like the thing,”
Valentin rejoined. “Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great artists whose
biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have suffered
opposition in the domestic circle. Their vocation has not been
recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice.
Mademoiselle Nioche has a vocation.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman, impatiently, “you take the little baggage too
seriously.”
“I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about, one must think
of little baggages. I suppose it is better to be serious about light
things than not to be serious at all. This little baggage entertains
me.”
“Oh, she has discovered that. She knows you have been hunting her up
and asking questions about her. She is very much tickled by it. That’s
rather annoying.”
“Annoying, my dear fellow,” laughed Valentin; “not the least!”
“Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that
know I was giving myself such pains about her!” said Newman.
“A pretty woman is always worth one’s pains,” objected Valentin.
“Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity, and to
know that I am tickled that she is tickled. She is not so much tickled,
by the way.”
“You had better go and tell her,” Newman rejoined. “She gave me a
message for you of some such drift.”
“Bless your quiet imagination,” said Valentin, “I have been to see
her—three times in five days. She is a charming hostess; we talk of
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. She is extremely clever and a very
curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse; determined not
to be. She means to take very good care of herself. She is extremely
perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a
sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she has not a
grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped out of a big
amethyst. You can’t scratch her even with a diamond. Extremely
pretty,—really, when you know her, she is wonderfully
pretty,—intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon my
honor, extremely entertaining.”
“It’s a fine list of attractions,” said Newman; “they would serve as a
police-detective’s description of a favorite criminal. I should sum
them up by another word than ‘entertaining.’”
“Why, that is just the word to use. I don’t say she is laudable or
lovable. I don’t want her as my wife or my sister. But she is a very
curious and ingenious piece of machinery; I like to see it in
operation.”
“Well, I have seen some very curious machines too,” said Newman; “and
once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city, who had
stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly as if he had been
prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight, and ground into small
pieces.”
Re-entering his domicile, late in the evening, three days after Madame
de Bellegarde had made her bargain with him—the expression is
sufficiently correct—touching the entertainment at which she was to
present him to the world, he found on his table a card of goodly
dimensions bearing an announcement that this lady would be at home on
the 27th of the month, at ten o’clock in the evening. He stuck it into
the frame of his mirror and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an
agreeable emblem of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was
gained. Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly, when
Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room. Valentin’s glance
presently followed the direction of Newman’s, and he perceived his
mother’s invitation.
“And what have they put into the corner?” he asked. “Not the customary
‘music,’ ‘dancing,’ or _‘tableaux vivants’?_ They ought at least to put
‘An American.’”
“Oh, there are to be several of us,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram told
me to-day that she had received a card and sent an acceptance.”
“Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support. My
mother might have put on her card ‘Three Americans.’ But I suspect you
will not lack amusement. You will see a great many of the best people
in France. I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that.
Some of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up
cautiously.”
“Oh, I guess I shall like them,” said Newman. “I am prepared to like
every one and everything in these days; I am in high good-humor.”
Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself
into a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.
“Happy man!” he said with a sigh. “Take care you don’t become
offensive.”
“If anyone chooses to take offense, he may. I have a good conscience,”
said Newman.
“So you are really in love with my sister.”
“Yes, sir!” said Newman, after a pause.
“And she also?”
“I guess she likes me,” said Newman.
“What is the witchcraft you have used?” Valentin asked. “How do _you_
make love?”
“Oh, I haven’t any general rules,” said Newman. “In any way that seems
acceptable.”
“I suspect that, if one knew it,” said Valentin, laughing, “you are a
terrible customer. You walk in seven-league boots.”
“There is something the matter with you to-night,” Newman said in
response to this. “You are vicious. Spare me all discordant sounds
until after my marriage. Then, when I have settled down for life, I
shall be better able to take things as they come.”
“And when does your marriage take place?”
“About six weeks hence.”
Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, “And you feel very
confident about the future?”
“Confident. I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have got.”
“You are sure you are going to be happy?”
“Sure?” said Newman. “So foolish a question deserves a foolish answer.
Yes!”
“You are not afraid of anything?”
“What should I be afraid of? You can’t hurt me unless you kill me by
some violent means. That I should indeed consider a tremendous sell. I
want to live and I mean to live. I can’t die of illness, I am too
ridiculously tough; and the time for dying of old age won’t come round
yet a while. I can’t lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her. I
may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that won’t matter, for I
shall make twice as much again. So what have I to be afraid of?”
“You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American man of
business to marry a French countess?”
“For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you
mean me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her
happiness!” And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy
certitude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the
already blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the
quickened flame, and then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a
melancholy sigh. “Got a headache?” Newman asked.
“_Je suis triste_,” said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
“You are sad, eh? It is about the lady you said the other night that
you adored and that you couldn’t marry?”
“Did I really say that? It seemed to me afterwards that the words had
escaped me. Before Claire it was bad taste. But I felt gloomy as I
spoke, and I feel gloomy still. Why did you ever introduce me to that
girl?”
“Oh, it’s Noémie, is it? Lord deliver us! You don’t mean to say you are
lovesick about her?”
“Lovesick, no; it’s not a grand passion. But the cold-blooded little
demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little
teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something crazy
in consequence. It’s very low, it’s disgustingly low. She’s the most
mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of
mind; she is always running in my head. It’s a striking contrast to
your noble and virtuous attachment—a vile contrast! It is rather
pitiful that it should be the best I am able to do for myself at my
present respectable age. I am a nice young man, eh, _en somme?_ You
can’t warrant my future, as you do your own.”
“Drop that girl, short,” said Newman; “don’t go near her again, and
your future will do. Come over to America and I will get you a place in
a bank.”
“It is easy to say drop her,” said Valentin, with a light laugh. “You
can’t drop a pretty woman like that. One must be polite, even with
Noémie. Besides, I’ll not have her suppose I am afraid of her.”
“So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
Keep them both for something better. Remember, too, that I didn’t want
to introduce you to her; you insisted. I had a sort of uneasy feeling
about it.”
“Oh, I don’t reproach you,” said Valentin. “Heaven forbid! I wouldn’t
for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The
way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don’t know when a
woman has amused me more. But excuse me,” he added in an instant; “she
doesn’t amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one.
Let us talk of something else.” Valentin introduced another topic, but
within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had
reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving pictures of her manners
and quoting specimens of her _mots_. These were very witty, and, for a
young woman who six months before had been painting the most artless
madonnas, startlingly cynical. But at last, abruptly, he stopped,
became thoughtful, and for some time afterwards said nothing. When he
rose to go it was evident that his thoughts were still running upon
Mademoiselle Nioche. “Yes, she’s a frightful little monster!” he said.
CHAPTER XVI
The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known. He saw
Madame de Cintré every day, and never saw either old Madame de
Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law. Madame de
Cintré at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize for their never
being present. “They are much taken up,” she said, “with doing the
honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere.” There was a smile in her gravity as
she made this declaration, and it deepened as she added, “He is our
seventh cousin, you know, and blood is thicker than water. And then, he
is so interesting!” And with this she laughed.
Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times, always
roaming about with graceful vagueness, as if in search of an
unattainable ideal of amusement. She always reminded him of a painted
perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he had grown to have a kindly
feeling for her, based on the fact of her owing conjugal allegiance to
Urbain de Bellegarde. He pitied M. de Bellegarde’s wife, especially
since she was a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a
suggestion of an unregulated heart. The small marquise sometimes looked
at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent, for coquetry is
more finely shaded. She apparently wanted to ask him something or tell
him something; he wondered what it was. But he was shy of giving her an
opportunity, because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her
matrimonial lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had
a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after
looking around behind her) with a little passionate hiss, “I know you
detest my husband; let me have the pleasure of assuring you for once
that you are right. Pity a poor woman who is married to a clock-image
in _papier-mâché!_” Possessing, however, in default of a competent
knowledge of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the
“meanness” of certain actions, it seemed to him to belong to his
position to keep on his guard; he was not going to put it into the
power of these people to say that in their house he had done anything
unpleasant. As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of
the dress she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not yet, in
her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews with the tailor,
resolved itself into its composite totality. “I told you pale blue bows
on the sleeves, at the elbows,” she said. “But to-day I don’t see my
blue bows at all. I don’t know what has become of them. To-day I see
pink—a tender pink. And then I pass through strange, dull phases in
which neither blue nor pink says anything to me. And yet I must have
the bows.”
“Have them green or yellow,” said Newman.
“_Malheureux!_” the little marquise would cry. “Green bows would break
your marriage—your children would be illegitimate!”
Madame de Cintré was calmly happy before the world, and Newman had the
felicity of fancying that before him, when the world was absent, she
was almost agitatedly happy. She said very tender things. “I take no
pleasure in you. You never give me a chance to scold you, to correct
you. I bargained for that, I expected to enjoy it. But you won’t do
anything dreadful; you are dismally inoffensive. It is very stupid;
there is no excitement for me; I might as well be marrying someone
else.”
“I am afraid it’s the worst I can do,” Newman would say in answer to
this. “Kindly overlook the deficiency.” He assured her that he, at
least, would never scold her; she was perfectly satisfactory. “If you
only knew,” he said, “how exactly you are what I coveted! And I am
beginning to understand why I coveted it; the having it makes all the
difference that I expected. Never was a man so pleased with his good
fortune. You have been holding your head for a week past just as I
wanted my wife to hold hers. You say just the things I want her to say.
You walk about the room just as I want her to walk. You have just the
taste in dress that I want her to have. In short, you come up to the
mark, and, I can tell you, my mark was high.”
These observations seemed to make Madame de Cintré rather grave. At
last she said, “Depend upon it, I don’t come up to the mark; your mark
is too high. I am not all that you suppose; I am a much smaller affair.
She is a magnificent woman, your ideal. Pray, how did she come to such
perfection?”
“She was never anything else,” Newman said.
“I really believe,” Madame de Cintré went on, “that she is better than
my own ideal. Do you know that is a very handsome compliment? Well,
sir, I will make her my own!”
Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after Newman had announced
his engagement, and she told our hero the next day that his good
fortune was simply absurd. “For the ridiculous part of it is,” she
said, “that you are evidently going to be as happy as if you were
marrying Miss Smith or Miss Thompson. I call it a brilliant match for
you, but you get brilliancy without paying any tax upon it. Those
things are usually a compromise, but here you have everything, and
nothing crowds anything else out. You will be brilliantly happy as
well.” Newman thanked her for her pleasant, encouraging way of saying
things; no woman could encourage or discourage better. Tristram’s way
of saying things was different; he had been taken by his wife to call
upon Madame de Cintré, and he gave an account of the expedition.
“You don’t catch me giving an opinion on your countess this time,” he
said; “I put my foot in it once. That’s a d—d underhand thing to do, by
the way—coming round to sound a fellow upon the woman you are going to
marry. You deserve anything you get. Then of course you rush and tell
her, and she takes care to make it pleasant for the poor spiteful
wretch the first time he calls. I will do you the justice to say,
however, that you don’t seem to have told Madame de Cintré; or if you
have, she’s uncommonly magnanimous. She was very nice; she was
tremendously polite. She and Lizzie sat on the sofa, pressing each
other’s hands and calling each other _chère belle_, and Madame de
Cintré sent me with every third word a magnificent smile, as if to give
me to understand that I too was a handsome dear. She quite made up for
past neglect, I assure you; she was very pleasant and sociable. Only in
an evil hour it came into her head to say that she must present us to
her mother—her mother wished to know your friends. I didn’t want to
know her mother, and I was on the point of telling Lizzie to go in
alone and let me wait for her outside. But Lizzie, with her usual
infernal ingenuity, guessed my purpose and reduced me by a glance of
her eye. So they marched off arm in arm, and I followed as I could. We
found the old lady in her armchair, twiddling her aristocratic thumbs.
She looked at Lizzie from head to foot; but at that game Lizzie, to do
her justice, was a match for her. My wife told her we were great
friends of Mr. Newman. The marquise started a moment, and then said,
‘Oh, Mr. Newman! My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr.
Newman.’ Then Madame de Cintré began to fondle Lizzie again, and said
it was this dear lady that had planned the match and brought them
together. ‘Oh, ‘tis you I have to thank for my American son-in-law,’
the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram. ‘It was a very clever thought of
yours. Be sure of my gratitude.’ And then she began to look at me and
presently said, ‘Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?’
I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old witches to
ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me. ‘My husband, Madame la
Marquise,’ she said, ‘belongs to that unfortunate class of persons who
have no profession and no business, and do very little good in the
world.’ To get her poke at the old woman she didn’t care where she
shoved me. ‘Dear me,’ said the marquise, ‘we all have our duties.’ ‘I
am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,’ said Lizzie. And we
bundled out again. But you have a mother-in-law, in all the force of
the term.”
“Oh,” said Newman, “my mother-in-law desires nothing better than to let
me alone.”
Betimes, on the evening of the 27th, he went to Madame de Bellegarde’s
ball. The old house in the Rue de l’Université looked strangely
brilliant. In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a
detachment of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the
court was illumined with flaring torches and the portico carpeted with
crimson. When Newman arrived there were but a few people present. The
marquise and her two daughters were at the top of the staircase, where
the sallow old nymph in the angle peeped out from a bower of plants.
Madame de Bellegarde, in purple and fine laces, looked like an old lady
painted by Vandyke; Madame de Cintré was dressed in white. The old lady
greeted Newman with majestic formality, and looking round her, called
several of the persons who were standing near. They were elderly
gentlemen, of what Valentin de Bellegarde had designated as the
high-nosed category; two or three of them wore cordons and stars. They
approached with measured alertness, and the marquise said that she
wished to present them to Mr. Newman, who was going to marry her
daughter. Then she introduced successively three dukes, three counts,
and a baron. These gentlemen bowed and smiled most agreeably, and
Newman indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes, accompanied by a
“Happy to make your acquaintance, sir.” He looked at Madame de Cintré,
but she was not looking at him. If his personal self-consciousness had
been of a nature to make him constantly refer to her, as the critic
before whom, in company, he played his part, he might have found it a
flattering proof of her confidence that he never caught her eyes
resting upon him. It is a reflection Newman did not make, but we
nevertheless risk it, that in spite of this circumstance she probably
saw every movement of his little finger. Young Madame de Bellegarde was
dressed in an audacious toilet of crimson crape, bestrewn with huge
silver moons—thin crescent and full disks.
“You don’t say anything about my dress,” she said to Newman.
“I feel,” he answered, “as if I were looking at you through a
telescope. It is very strange.”
“If it is strange it matches the occasion. But I am not a heavenly
body.”
“I never saw the sky at midnight that particular shade of crimson,”
said Newman.
“That is my originality; anyone could have chosen blue. My
sister-in-law would have chosen a lovely shade of blue, with a dozen
little delicate moons. But I think crimson is much more amusing. And I
give my idea, which is moonshine.”
“Moonshine and bloodshed,” said Newman.
“A murder by moonlight,” laughed Madame de Bellegarde. “What a
delicious idea for a toilet! To make it complete, there is the silver
dagger, you see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deepmere,” she
added in a moment. “I must find out what he thinks of it.” Lord
Deepmere came up, looking very red in the face, and laughing. “Lord
Deepmere can’t decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,” said
Madame de Bellegarde. “He likes Claire because she is his cousin, and
me because I am not. But he has no right to make love to Claire,
whereas I am perfectly _disponible_. It is very wrong to make love to a
woman who is engaged, but it is very wrong not to make love to a woman
who is married.”
“Oh, it’s very jolly making love to married women,” said Lord Deepmere,
“because they can’t ask you to marry them.”
“Is that what the others do, the spinsters?” Newman inquired.
“Oh dear, yes,” said Lord Deepmere; “in England all the girls ask a
fellow to marry them.”
“And a fellow brutally refuses,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“Why, really, you know, a fellow can’t marry any girl that asks him,”
said his lordship.
“Your cousin won’t ask you. She is going to marry Mr. Newman.”
“Oh, that’s a very different thing!” laughed Lord Deepmere.
“You would have accepted _her_, I suppose. That makes me hope that
after all you prefer me.”
“Oh, when things are nice I never prefer one to the other,” said the
young Englishman. “I take them all.”
“Ah, what a horror! I won’t be taken in that way; I must be kept
apart,” cried Madame de Bellegarde. “Mr. Newman is much better; he
knows how to choose. Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle.
He prefers Madame de Cintré to any conceivable creature or thing.”
“Well, you can’t help my being her cousin,” said Lord Deepmere to
Newman, with candid hilarity.
“Oh, no, I can’t help that,” said Newman, laughing back; “neither can
she!”
“And you can’t help my dancing with her,” said Lord Deepmere, with
sturdy simplicity.
“I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself,” said Newman.
“But unfortunately I don’t know how to dance.”
“Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?” said
Madame de Bellegarde. But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow
ought to know how to dance if he didn’t want to make an ass of himself;
and at this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping
and with his hands behind him.
“This is a very splendid entertainment,” said Newman, cheerfully. “The
old house looks very bright.”
“If _you_ are pleased, we are content,” said the marquis, lifting his
shoulders and bending them forward.
“Oh, I suspect everyone is pleased,” said Newman. “How can they help
being pleased when the first thing they see as they come in is your
sister, standing there as beautiful as an angel?”
“Yes, she is very beautiful,” rejoined the marquis, solemnly. “But that
is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as
to you.”
“Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied,” said Newman, with his
protracted enunciation. “And now tell me,” he added, looking round,
“who some of your friends are.”
M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and
his hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed. A stream of
people had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his
host, the rooms were filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant.
It borrowed its splendor chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse
jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses.
There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde’s door was inexorably
closed against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the
fortunes of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering
faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious
beauty. It is a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a
physiognomist, for a great many of the faces were irregularly
agreeable, expressive, and suggestive. If the occasion had been
different they would hardly have pleased him; he would have thought the
women not pretty enough and the men too smirking; but he was now in a
humor to receive none but agreeable impressions, and he looked no more
narrowly than to perceive that everyone was brilliant, and to feel that
the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his credit. “I will present
you to some people,” said M. de Bellegarde after a while. “I will make
a point of it, in fact. You will allow me?”
“Oh, I will shake hands with anyone you want,” said Newman. “Your
mother just introduced me to half a dozen old gentlemen. Take care you
don’t pick up the same parties again.”
“Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?”
“Upon my word, I forgot them,” said Newman, laughing. “The people here
look very much alike.”
“I suspect they have not forgotten you,” said the marquis. And he began
to walk through the rooms. Newman, to keep near him in the crowd, took
his arm; after which for some time, the marquis walked straight along,
in silence. At last, reaching the farther end of the suite of
reception-rooms, Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of
monstrous proportions, seated in a very capacious armchair, with
several persons standing in a semicircle round her. This little group
had divided as the marquis came up, and M. de Bellegarde stepped
forward and stood for an instant silent and obsequious, with his hat
raised to his lips, as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches
as soon as they entered their pews. The lady, indeed, bore a very fair
likeness to a reverend effigy in some idolatrous shrine. She was
monumentally stout and imperturbably serene. Her aspect was to Newman
almost formidable; he had a troubled consciousness of a triple chin, a
small piercing eye, a vast expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and
twinkling tiara of plumes and gems, and an immense circumference of
satin petticoat. With her little circle of beholders this remarkable
woman reminded him of the Fat Lady at a fair. She fixed her small,
unwinking eyes at the new-comers.
“Dear duchess,” said the marquis, “let me present you our good friend
Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr. Newman
known to those who are dear to us, I could not possibly fail to begin
with you.”
“Charmed, dear friend; charmed, monsieur,” said the duchess in a voice
which, though small and shrill, was not disagreeable, while Newman
executed his obeisance. “I came on purpose to see monsieur. I hope he
appreciates the compliment. You have only to look at me to do so, sir,”
she continued, sweeping her person with a much-encompassing glance.
Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess who
joked about her corpulence one might say almost anything. On hearing
that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman, the gentlemen who
surrounded her turned a little and looked at him with sympathetic
curiosity. The marquis with supernatural gravity mentioned to him the
name of each, while the gentleman who bore it bowed; they were all what
are called in France _beaux noms_. “I wanted extremely to see you,” the
duchess went on. “_C’est positif_. In the first place, I am very fond
of the person you are going to marry; she is the most charming creature
in France. Mind you treat her well, or you shall hear some news of me.
But you look as if you were good. I am told you are very remarkable. I
have heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you. _Voyons_, are
they true?”
“I don’t know what you can have heard,” said Newman.
“Oh, you have your _légende_. We have heard that you have had a career
the most checkered, the most _bizarre_. What is that about your having
founded a city some ten years ago in the great West, a city which
contains to-day half a million of inhabitants? Isn’t it half a million,
messieurs? You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement,
and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer still if
you didn’t grant lands and houses free of rent to all new-comers who
will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars. At this game, in three
years, we are told, you are going to be made president of America.”
The duchess recited this amazing “legend” with a smooth self-possession
which gave the speech to Newman’s mind, the air of being a bit of
amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress.
Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible
laughter. “Dear duchess, dear duchess,” the marquis began to murmur,
soothingly. Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see
who was laughing at the duchess. But the lady continued with the soft,
serene assurance of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being
listened to, and, as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of
her auditors. “But I know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have
endeared yourself to this good marquis and to his admirable world. They
are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really
possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an
American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing
the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale. Your
success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don’t ask you to reveal it
before all these gentlemen, but come and see me some day and give me a
specimen of your talents.”
“The secret is with Madame de Cintré,” said Newman. “You must ask her
for it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity.”
“Very pretty!” said the duchess. “That’s a very nice specimen, to begin
with. What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?”
“I have a duty to perform, dear friend,” said the marquis, pointing to
the other groups.
“Ah, for you I know what that means. Well, I have seen monsieur; that
is what I wanted. He can’t persuade me that he isn’t very clever.
Farewell.”
As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was. “The
greatest lady in France,” said the marquis. M. de Bellegarde then
presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons
of both sexes, selected apparently for their typically august
character. In some cases this character was written in good round hand
upon the countenance of the wearer; in others Newman was thankful for
such help as his companion’s impressively brief intimation contributed
to the discovery of it. There were large, majestic men, and small
demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint
jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and
everything else were absent. Everyone gave Newman extreme attention,
everyone smiled, everyone was charmed to make his acquaintance,
everyone looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which
puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the
marquis was going about as a bear-leader, if the fiction of Beauty and
the Beast was supposed to have found its companion-piece, the general
impression appeared to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of
humanity. Newman found his reception among the marquis’s friends very
“pleasant;” he could not have said more for it. It was pleasant to be
treated with so much explicit politeness; it was pleasant to hear
neatly turned civilities, with a flavor of wit, uttered from beneath
carefully-shaped moustaches; it was pleasant to see clever
Frenchwomen—they all seemed clever—turn their backs to their partners
to get a good look at the strange American whom Claire de Cintré was to
marry, and reward the object of the exhibition with a charming smile.
At last, as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other
amenities, Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily;
and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself. “Am I behaving
like a d—d fool?” he asked himself. “Am I stepping about like a terrier
on his hind legs?” At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the
other side of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de
Bellegarde and made his way toward her.
“Am I holding my head too high?” he asked. “Do I look as if I had the
lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?”
“You look like all happy men, very ridiculous,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“It’s the usual thing, neither better nor worse. I have been watching
you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de
Bellegarde. He doesn’t like it.”
“The more credit to him for putting it through,” replied Newman. “But I
shall be generous. I shan’t trouble him any more. But I am very happy.
I can’t stand still here. Please to take my arm and we will go for a
walk.”
He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms. There were a great many of
them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a stately crowd,
their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre. Mrs. Tristram,
looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive comments upon
her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers; he hardly heard her,
his thoughts were elsewhere. They were lost in a cheerful sense of
success, of attainment and victory. His momentary care as to whether he
looked like a fool passed away, leaving him simply with a rich
contentment. He had got what he wanted. The savor of success had always
been highly agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it
often. But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with so
much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining. The lights,
the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women, the jewels, the
strangeness even of the universal murmur of a clever foreign tongue
were all a vivid symbol and assurance of his having grasped his purpose
and forced along his groove. If Newman’s smile was larger than usual,
it was not tickled vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be
shown with the finger or to achieve a personal success. If he could
have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof, he
would have enjoyed it quite as much. It would have spoken to him about
his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life to which,
sooner or later, he made all experience contribute. Just now the cup
seemed full.
“It is a very pretty party,” said Mrs. Tristram, after they had walked
a while. “I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning
against the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes
for a duke, but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who
attends to the lamps. Do you think you could separate them? Knock over
a lamp!”
I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram’s conversing with
an ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at
this moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near. Newman, some weeks
previously, had presented Madame de Cintré’s youngest brother to Mrs.
Tristram, for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish
and to whom he had paid several visits.
“Did you ever read Keats’s Belle Dame sans Merci?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
“You remind me of the hero of the ballad:—
‘Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?’”
“If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your society,”
said Valentin. “Besides it is good manners for no man except Newman to
look happy. This is all to his address. It is not for you and me to go
before the curtain.”
“You promised me last spring,” said Newman to Mrs. Tristram, “that six
months from that time I should get into a monstrous rage. It seems to
me the time’s up, and yet the nearest I can come to doing anything
rough now is to offer you a _café glacé_.”
“I told you we should do things grandly,” said Valentin. “I don’t
allude to the _cafés glacés_. But everyone is here, and my sister told
me just now that Urbain had been adorable.”
“He’s a good fellow, he’s a good fellow,” said Newman. “I love him as a
brother. That reminds me that I ought to go and say something polite to
your mother.”
“Let it be something very polite indeed,” said Valentin. “It may be the
last time you will feel so much like it!”
Newman walked away, almost disposed to clasp old Madame de Bellegarde
round the waist. He passed through several rooms and at last found the
old marquise in the first saloon, seated on a sofa, with her young
kinsman, Lord Deepmere, beside her. The young man looked somewhat
bored; his hands were thrust into his pockets and his eyes were fixed
upon the toes of his shoes, his feet being thrust out in front of him.
Madame de Bellegarde appeared to have been talking to him with some
intensity and to be waiting for an answer to what she had said, or for
some sign of the effect of her words. Her hands were folded in her lap,
and she was looking at his lordship’s simple physiognomy with an air of
politely suppressed irritation.
Lord Deepmere looked up as Newman approached, met his eyes, and changed
color.
“I am afraid I disturb an interesting interview,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde rose, and her companion rising at the same time,
she put her hand into his arm. She answered nothing for an instant, and
then, as he remained silent, she said with a smile, “It would be polite
for Lord Deepmere to say it was very interesting.”
“Oh, I’m not polite!” cried his lordship. “But it _was_ interesting.”
“Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some good advice, eh?” said
Newman; “toning you down a little?”
“I was giving him some excellent advice,” said the marquise, fixing her
fresh, cold eyes upon our hero. “It’s for him to take it.”
“Take it, sir—take it,” Newman exclaimed. “Any advice the marquise
gives you to-night must be good. For to-night, marquise, you must speak
from a cheerful, comfortable spirit, and that makes good advice. You
see everything going on so brightly and successfully round you. Your
party is magnificent; it was a very happy thought. It is much better
than that thing of mine would have been.”
“If you are pleased I am satisfied,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “My
desire was to please you.”
“Do you want to please me a little more?” said Newman. “Just drop our
lordly friend; I am sure he wants to be off and shake his heels a
little. Then take my arm and walk through the rooms.”
“My desire was to please you,” the old lady repeated. And she liberated
Lord Deepmere, Newman rather wondering at her docility. “If this young
man is wise,” she added, “he will go and find my daughter and ask her
to dance.”
“I have been endorsing your advice,” said Newman, bending over her and
laughing, “I suppose I must swallow that!”
Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed, and Madame de Bellegarde
took Newman’s arm. “Yes, it’s a very pleasant, sociable entertainment,”
the latter declared, as they proceeded on their circuit. “Everyone
seems to know everyone and to be glad to see everyone. The marquis has
made me acquainted with ever so many people, and I feel quite like one
of the family. It’s an occasion,” Newman continued, wanting to say
something thoroughly kind and comfortable, “that I shall always
remember, and remember very pleasantly.”
“I think it is an occasion that we shall none of us forget,” said the
marquise, with her pure, neat enunciation.
People made way for her as she passed, others turned round and looked
at her, and she received a great many greetings and pressings of the
hand, all of which she accepted with the most delicate dignity. But
though she smiled upon everyone, she said nothing until she reached the
last of the rooms, where she found her elder son. Then, “This is
enough, sir,” she declared with measured softness to Newman, and turned
to the marquis. He put out both his hands and took both hers, drawing
her to a seat with an air of the tenderest veneration. It was a most
harmonious family group, and Newman discreetly retired. He moved
through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely, overtopping
most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance with some of the
groups to which Urbain de Bellegarde had presented him, and expending
generally the surplus of his equanimity. He continued to find it all
extremely agreeable; but the most agreeable things have an end, and the
revelry on this occasion began to deepen to a close. The music was
sounding its ultimate strains and people were looking for the marquise,
to make their farewells. There seemed to be some difficulty in finding
her, and Newman heard a report that she had left the ball, feeling
faint. “She has succumbed to the emotions of the evening,” he heard a
lady say. “Poor, dear marquise; I can imagine all that they may have
been for her!” But he learned immediately afterwards that she had
recovered herself and was seated in an armchair near the doorway,
receiving parting compliments from great ladies who insisted upon her
not rising. He himself set out in quest of Madame de Cintré. He had
seen her move past him many times in the rapid circles of a waltz, but
in accordance with her explicit instructions he had exchanged no words
with her since the beginning of the evening. The whole house having
been thrown open, the apartments of the _rez-de-chaussée_ were also
accessible, though a smaller number of persons had gathered there.
Newman wandered through them, observing a few scattered couples to whom
this comparative seclusion appeared grateful and reached a small
conservatory which opened into the garden. The end of the conservatory
was formed by a clear sheet of glass, unmasked by plants, and admitting
the winter starlight so directly that a person standing there would
seem to have passed into the open air. Two persons stood there now, a
lady and a gentleman; the lady Newman, from within the room and
although she had turned her back to it, immediately recognized as
Madame de Cintré. He hesitated as to whether he would advance, but as
he did so she looked round, feeling apparently that he was there. She
rested her eyes on him a moment and then turned again to her companion.
“It is almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman,” she said softly, but in a
tone that Newman could hear.
“Tell him if you like!” the gentleman answered, in the voice of Lord
Deepmere.
“Oh, tell me by all means!” said Newman advancing.
Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the face, and he had
twisted his gloves into a tight cord as if he had been squeezing them
dry. These, presumably, were tokens of violent emotion, and it seemed
to Newman that the traces of corresponding agitation were visible in
Madame de Cintré’s face. The two had been talking with much vivacity.
“What I should tell you is only to my lord’s credit,” said Madame de
Cintré, smiling frankly enough.
“He wouldn’t like it any better for that!” said my lord, with his
awkward laugh.
“Come; what’s the mystery?” Newman demanded. “Clear it up. I don’t like
mysteries.”
“We must have some things we don’t like, and go without some we do,”
said the ruddy young nobleman, laughing still.
“It’s to Lord Deepmere’s credit, but it is not to everyone’s,” said
Madam de Cintré. “So I shall say nothing about it. You may be sure,”
she added; and she put out her hand to the Englishman, who took it half
shyly, half impetuously. “And now go and dance!” she said.
“Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing!” he answered. “I shall go and get
tipsy.” And he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
“What has happened between you?” Newman asked.
“I can’t tell you—now,” said Madame de Cintré. “Nothing that need make
you unhappy.”
“Has the little Englishman been trying to make love to you?”
She hesitated, and then she uttered a grave “No! he’s a very honest
little fellow.”
“But you are agitated. Something is the matter.”
“Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy. My agitation is over.
Some day I will tell you what it was; not now. I can’t now!”
“Well, I confess,” remarked Newman, “I don’t want to hear anything
unpleasant. I am satisfied with everything—most of all with you. I have
seen all the ladies and talked with a great many of them; but I am
satisfied with you.” Madame de Cintré covered him for a moment with her
large, soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry
night. So they stood silent a moment, side by side. “Say you are
satisfied with me,” said Newman.
He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last, low yet
distinct: “I am very happy.”
It was presently followed by a few words from another source, which
made them both turn round. “I am sadly afraid Madame de Cintré will
take a chill. I have ventured to bring a shawl.” Mrs. Bread stood there
softly solicitous, holding a white drapery in her hand.
“Thank you,” said Madame de Cintré, “the sight of those cold stars
gives one a sense of frost. I won’t take your shawl, but we will go
back into the house.”
She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing
respectfully aside to make way for them. Newman paused an instant
before the old woman, and she glanced up at him with a silent greeting.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “you must come and live with us.”
“Well then, sir, if you will,” she answered, “you have not seen the
last of me!”
CHAPTER XVII
Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera. A couple of
evenings after Madame de Bellegarde’s ball he sat listening to “Don
Giovanni,” having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen
represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of
the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his
compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much
addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them
to the theatre, and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at
remote restaurants. He liked doing things which involved his paying for
people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed “treating” them. This was
not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public
was on the contrary positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of
personal modesty about it, akin to what he would have felt about making
a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him
to be handsomely dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction to him
(he enjoyed it very clandestinely) to have interposed, pecuniarily, in
a scheme of pleasure. To set a large group of people in motion and
transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter
railway-carriages and steamboats, harmonized with his relish for bold
processes, and made hospitality seem more active and more to the
purpose. A few evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had
invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera to listen to Madame
Alboni—a party which included Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that
Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman in the box, discoursed
brilliantly, not only during the entr’actes, but during many of the
finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had really come away
with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill voice,
and that her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the
giggling order. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the
opera alone.
When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of “Don Giovanni” he
turned round in his place to observe the house. Presently, in one of
the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little
marquise was sweeping the house very busily with a glass, and Newman,
supposing that she saw him, determined to go and bid her good evening.
M. de Bellegarde was leaning against a column, motionless, looking
straight in front of him, with one hand in the breast of his white
waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about
to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to
the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly,
“bathing-tubs,” a face which even the dim light and the distance could
not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty
woman, and it was surmounted with a _coiffure_ of pink roses and
diamonds. This person was looking round the house, and her fan was
moving to and fro with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it,
Newman perceived a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a
rose-colored dress. Beside her, very close to the shoulders and
talking, apparently with an earnestness which it pleased her scantily
to heed, sat a young man with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A
moment’s gazing left Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was
Noémie Nioche. He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her
father might perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the
young man’s eloquence had no other auditor. Newman at last made his way
out, and in doing so he passed beneath the _baignoire_ of Mademoiselle
Noémie. She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which
seemed meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in
spite of her enviable rise in the world. Newman passed into the _foyer_
and walked through it. Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman
seated on one of the divans. The gentleman’s elbows were on his knees;
he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently in
meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast. But in spite of his bent head
Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down beside him. Then the
gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance of
Valentin de Bellegarde.
“What in the world are you thinking of so hard?” asked Newman.
“A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice,” said
Valentin. “My immeasurable idiocy.”
“What is the matter now?”
“The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than
usual. But I came within an inch of taking that girl _au sérieux_.”
“You mean the young lady below stairs, in a _baignoire_ in a pink
dress?” said Newman.
“Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?” Valentin
inquired, by way of answer. “It makes her look as white as new milk.”
“White or black, as you please. But you have stopped going to see her?”
“Oh, bless you, no. Why should I stop? I have changed, but she hasn’t,”
said Valentin. “I see she is a vulgar little wretch, after all. But she
is as amusing as ever, and one _must_ be amused.”
“Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly,” Newman rejoiced. “I
suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about her the
other night. You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz, or an
amethyst—some precious stone; what was it?”
“I don’t remember,” said Valentin, “it may have been to a carbuncle!
But she won’t make a fool of me now. She has no real charm. It’s an
awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person of that sort.”
“I congratulate you,” Newman declared, “upon the scales having fallen
from your eyes. It’s a great triumph; it ought to make you feel
better.”
“Yes, it makes me feel better!” said Valentin, gaily. Then, checking
himself, he looked askance at Newman. “I rather think you are laughing
at me. If you were not one of the family I would take it up.”
“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, any more than I am one of the family. You
make me feel badly. You are too clever a fellow, you are made of too
good stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that class of
goods. The idea of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche! It seems to me
awfully foolish. You say you have given up taking her seriously; but
you take her seriously so long as you take her at all.”
Valentin turned round in his place and looked a while at Newman,
wrinkling his forehead and rubbing his knees. “_Vous parlez d’or_. But
she has wonderfully pretty arms. Would you believe I didn’t know it
till this evening?”
“But she is a vulgar little wretch, remember, all the same,” said
Newman.
“Yes; the other day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her father,
to his face, in my presence. I shouldn’t have expected it of her; it
was a disappointment; heigho!”
“Why, she cares no more for her father than for her door-mat,” said
Newman. “I discovered that the first time I saw her.”
“Oh, that’s another affair; she may think of the poor old beggar what
she pleases. But it was low in her to call him bad names; it quite
threw me off. It was about a frilled petticoat that he was to have
fetched from the washer-woman’s; he appeared to have neglected this
graceful duty. She almost boxed his ears. He stood there staring at her
with his little blank eyes and smoothing his old hat with his
coat-tail. At last he turned round and went out without a word. Then I
told her it was in very bad taste to speak so to one’s papa. She said
she should be so thankful to me if I would mention it to her whenever
her taste was at fault; she had immense confidence in mine. I told her
I couldn’t have the bother of forming her manners; I had had an idea
they were already formed, after the best models. She had disappointed
me. But I shall get over it,” said Valentin, gaily.
“Oh, time’s a great consoler!” Newman answered with humorous sobriety.
He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, “I wish you
would think of what I said to you the other day. Come over to America
with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business. You have
a very good head, if you will only use it.”
Valentin made a genial grimace. “My head is much obliged to you. Do you
mean the place in a bank?”
“There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank
the most aristocratic.”
Valentin burst into a laugh. “My dear fellow, at night all cats are
gray! When one derogates there are no degrees.”
Newman answered nothing for a minute. Then, “I think you will find
there are degrees in success,” he said with a certain dryness.
Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees, and he
was scratching the pavement with his stick. At last he said, looking
up, “Do you really think I ought to do something?”
Newman laid his hand on his companion’s arm and looked at him a moment
through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids. “Try it and see. You are not good
enough for it, but we will stretch a point.”
“Do you really think I can make some money? I should like to see how it
feels to have a little.”
“Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich,” said Newman. “Think of
it.” And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way to
Madame de Bellegarde’s box.
“Upon my word I will think of it,” said Valentin. “I will go and listen
to Mozart another half hour—I can always think better to music—and
profoundly meditate upon it.”
The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was
bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed to Newman, even
more than usual.
“What do you think of the opera?” asked our hero. “What do you think of
the Don?”
“We all know what Mozart is,” said the marquis; “our impressions don’t
date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy,
facility—a little too great facility, perhaps. But the execution is
here and there deplorably rough.”
“I am very curious to see how it ends,” said Newman.
“You speak as if it were a _feuilleton_ in the _Figaro_,” observed the
marquis. “You have surely seen the opera before?”
“Never,” said Newman. “I am sure I should have remembered it. Donna
Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintré; I don’t mean in her
circumstances, but in the music she sings.”
“It is a very nice distinction,” laughed the marquis lightly. “There is
no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de Cintré being forsaken.”
“Not much!” said Newman. “But what becomes of the Don?”
“The devil comes down—or comes up,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “and
carries him off. I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me.”
“I will go to the _foyer_ for a few moments,” said the marquis, “and
give you a chance to say that the commander—the man of stone—resembles
me.” And he passed out of the box.
The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge of the
balcony, and then murmured, “Not a man of stone, a man of wood.” Newman
had taken her husband’s empty chair. She made no protest, and then she
turned suddenly and laid her closed fan upon his arm. “I am very glad
you came in,” she said. “I want to ask you a favor. I wanted to do so
on Thursday, at my mother-in-law’s ball, but you would give me no
chance. You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might
grant my little favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now.
It is something you must promise me; now is the time to take you; after
you are married you will be good for nothing. Come, promise!”
“I never sign a paper without reading it first,” said Newman. “Show me
your document.”
“No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand. Come,
before you put your head into the noose. You ought to be thankful to me
for giving you a chance to do something amusing.”
“If it is so amusing,” said Newman, “it will be in even better season
after I am married.”
“In other words,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “you will not do it at
all. You will be afraid of your wife.”
“Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper,” said Newman, “I won’t go
into it. If it is not, I will do it after my marriage.”
“You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the
bargain!” exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde. “Promise, then, after you are
married. After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.”
“Well, then, after I am married,” said Newman serenely.
The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered
what was coming. “I suppose you know what my life is,” she presently
said. “I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris
as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me—what is the
pretty word?—a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and
thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over
my ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors?
I am sure they never bothered about me. I don’t propose to live with a
green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at. My
husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that
the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar, his
principles are tiresome. If I chose I might have principles quite as
well as he. If they grew on one’s family tree I should only have to
give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At any rate, I
prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.”
“Oh, I see; you want to go to court,” said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to
smooth her way to the imperial halls.
The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. “You are a thousand miles away.
I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they
will be very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an
imperial quadrille. I know what you are going to say: ‘How will you
dare?’ But I _shall_ dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft,
smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of
him—horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.
But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must
live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it’s my dream. I
want to go to the Bal Bullier.”
“To the Bal Bullier?” repeated Newman, for whom the words at first
meant nothing.
“The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their
mistresses. Don’t tell me you have not heard of it.”
“Oh yes,” said Newman; “I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even
been there. And you want to go there?”
“It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go.
Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully _drôle_. My
friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home.”
“It seems to me you are not at home now,” said Newman, “and I shouldn’t
exactly say you were moping.”
“I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the
last eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with
that: Pray, madam, haven’t you an opera box? Could a woman of taste
want more? In the first place, my opera box was down in my _contrat_;
they have to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have
preferred a thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband
won’t go to the Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there
so much. You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier’s;
he says it is a mere imitation—and a bad one—of what they do at the
Princess Kleinfuss’s. But as I don’t go to the Princess Kleinfuss’s,
the next best thing is to go to Bullier’s. It is my dream, at any rate,
it’s a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are
less compromising than anyone else. I don’t know why, but you are. I
can arrange it. I shall risk something, but that is my own affair.
Besides, fortune favors the bold. Don’t refuse me; it is my dream!”
Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the
wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress
of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one’s
aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking
off young men’s hats. It struck him as a theme for the moralist; but he
had no time to moralize upon it. The curtain rose again; M. de
Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.
He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the
_baignoire_ of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her
companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him.
In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had
reflected upon possible emigration. “If you really meant to meditate,”
he said, “you might have chosen a better place for it.”
“Oh, the place was not bad,” said Valentin. “I was not thinking of that
girl. I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the play or
looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal. At first it seemed
quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra—I could
distinguish it—began to say as it scraped away, ‘Why not, why not?’ And
then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and the
conductor’s stick seemed to beat it in the air: ‘Why not, why not?’ I’m
sure I can’t say! I don’t see why not. I don’t see why I shouldn’t do
something. It appears to me really a very bright idea. This sort of
thing is certainly very stale. And then I could come back with a trunk
full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call
me a _raffiné_; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected
charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic,
picturesque side; it would look well in my biography. It would look as
if I were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated
circumstances.”
“Never mind how it would look,” said Newman. “It always looks well to
have half a million of dollars. There is no reason why you shouldn’t
have them if you will mind what I tell you—I alone—and not talk to
other parties.” He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the
two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented
corridors. Newman’s imagination began to glow with the idea of
converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of
business. He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of
the propagandist. Its ardor was in part the result of that general
discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him;
so fine an intelligence as Bellegarde’s ought to be dedicated to high
uses. The highest uses known to Newman’s experience were certain
transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his
zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort
of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the
Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being
pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in
varnished boots between the Rue d’Anjou and the Rue de l’Université,
taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in
America one’s promenade was a continent, and one’s Boulevard stretched
from New York to San Francisco. It mortified him, moreover, to think
that Valentin lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it. It
affected him as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without
reproach, touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done.
There were things that one knew about as a matter of course, he would
have said in such a case. Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the
world, one had money as a matter of course, one had made it! There was
something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of
lively pretensions unaccompanied by large investments in railroads;
though I may add that he would not have maintained that such
investments were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions. “I will
make you do something,” he said to Valentin; “I will put you through. I
know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you. You will
see some lively work. It will take you a little while to get used to
the life, but you will work in before long, and at the end of six
months—after you have done a thing or two on your own account—you will
like it. And then it will be very pleasant for you, having your sister
over there. It will be pleasant for her to have you, too. Yes,
Valentin,” continued Newman, pressing his friend’s arm genially, “I
think I see just the opening for you. Keep quiet and I’ll push you
right in.”
Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer. The two men
strolled about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and
questioned, many of his questions making Newman laugh loud at the
_naïveté_ of his ignorance of the vulgar processes of money-getting;
smiling himself, too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was
serious; he was fascinated by Newman’s plain prose version of the
legend of El Dorado. It is true, however, that though to accept an
“opening” in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original,
and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do, he did not
quite see himself objectively doing it. So that when the bell rang to
indicate the close of the entr’acte, there was a certain mock-heroism
in his saying, with his brilliant smile, “Well, then, put me through;
push me in! I make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me
into gold.”
They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of
_baignoires_, and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in
which Mademoiselle Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the
doorknob. “Oh, come, are you going back there?” asked Newman.
“_Mon Dieu, oui_,” said Valentin.
“Haven’t you another place?”
“Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls.”
“You had better go and occupy it, then.”
“I see her very well from there, too,” added Valentin, serenely, “and
to-night she is worth seeing. But,” he added in a moment, “I have a
particular reason for going back just now.”
“Oh, I give you up,” said Newman. “You are infatuated!”
“No, it is only this. There is a young man in the box whom I shall
annoy by going in, and I want to annoy him.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Newman. “Can’t you leave the poor fellow
alone?”
“No, he has given me cause. The box is not his. Noémie came in alone
and installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments
she asked me to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which
the _ouvreuse_ had carried off. In my absence this gentleman came in
and took the chair beside Noémie in which I had been sitting. My
reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness to show it. He
came within an ace of being impertinent. I don’t know who he is; he is
some vulgar wretch. I can’t think where she picks up such
acquaintances. He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is
about. Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again. I shall
put in another appearance for ten minutes—time enough to give him an
opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined. I really can’t let
the brute suppose that he is keeping me out of the box.”
“My dear fellow,” said Newman, remonstrantly, “what child’s play! You
are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope.”
“That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention of
picking a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to
make a point that a gentleman must.”
“Oh, damn your point!” said Newman. “That is the trouble with you
Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well,” he added, “be
short. But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you
off to America in advance.”
“Very good,” Valentin answered, “whenever you please. But if I go to
America, I must not let this gentleman suppose that it is to run away
from him.”
And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin
was still in the _baignoire_. He strolled into the corridor again,
expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of
Mademoiselle Nioche’s box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by the
young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant. The two
gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part of the
lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking. The manner
of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger, who looked flushed, had
begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his pocket-handkerchief.
By this time Newman was abreast of the _baignoire_; the door had been
left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside. He immediately went
in. Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him with a brilliant smile.
“Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?” she exclaimed. “You
just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit down.”
There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek, and her eye had a
noticeable spark. You would have said that she had received some very
good news.
“Something has happened here!” said Newman, without sitting down.
“You find me in a very fine moment,” she repeated. “Two gentlemen—one
of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe
to you—have just had words about your humble servant. Very big words
too. They can’t come off without crossing swords. A duel—that will give
me a push!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie clapping her little hands.
“_C’est ça qui pose une femme!_”
“You don’t mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about _you!_”
exclaimed Newman disgustedly.
“Nothing else!” and she looked at him with a hard little smile. “No,
no, you are not _galant!_ And if you prevent this affair I shall owe
you a grudge—and pay my debt!”
Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief—it consisted simply
of the interjection “Oh!” followed by a geographical, or more
correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters—had better not be
transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony
upon the pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found
Valentin and his companion walking towards him. The latter was
thrusting a card into his waistcoat pocket. Mademoiselle Noémie’s
jealous votary was a tall, robust young man with a thick nose, a
prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy, and a massive watch-chain.
When they reached the box, Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for
him to pass in first. Newman touched Valentin’s arm as a sign that he
wished to speak with him, and Bellegarde answered that he would be with
him in an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust young man,
but a couple of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.
“She is immensely tickled,” he said. “She says we will make her
fortune. I don’t want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible.”
“So you are going to fight?” said Newman.
“My dear fellow, don’t look so mortally disgusted. It was not my
choice. The thing is all arranged.”
“I told you so!” groaned Newman.
“I told _him_ so,” said Valentin, smiling.
“What did he do to you?”
“My good friend, it doesn’t matter what. He used an expression—I took
it up.”
“But I insist upon knowing; I can’t, as your elder brother, have you
rushing into this sort of nonsense.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Valentin. “I have nothing to
conceal, but I can’t go into particulars now and here.”
“We will leave this place, then. You can tell me outside.”
“Oh no, I can’t leave this place, why should I hurry away? I will go to
my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera.”
“You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied.”
Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted
him on the arm. “You are delightfully simple! Before an affair a man is
quiet. The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place.”
“Ah,” said Newman, “you want her to see you there—you and your
quietness. I am not so simple! It is a poor business.”
Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat out
the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle
Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin
again, and they went into the street together. Valentin shook his head
at his friend’s proposal that he should get into Newman’s own vehicle,
and stopped on the edge of the pavement. “I must go off alone,” he
said; “I must look up a couple of friends who will take charge of this
matter.”
“I will take charge of it,” Newman declared. “Put it into my hands.”
“You are very kind, but that is hardly possible. In the first place,
you are, as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to
marry my sister. That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your
impartiality. And if it didn’t, it would be enough for me that I
strongly suspect you of disapproving of the affair. You would try to
prevent a meeting.”
“Of course I should,” said Newman. “Whoever your friends are, I hope
they will do that.”
“Unquestionably they will. They will urge that excuses be made, proper
excuses. But you would be too good-natured. You won’t do.”
Newman was silent a moment. He was keenly annoyed, but he saw it was
useless to attempt interference. “When is this precious performance to
come off?” he asked.
“The sooner the better,” said Valentin. “The day after to-morrow, I
hope.”
“Well,” said Newman, “I have certainly a claim to know the facts. I
can’t consent to shut my eyes to the matter.”
“I shall be most happy to tell you the facts,” said Valentin. “They are
very simple, and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on
my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I will jump into a
cab; you had better drive to my room and wait for me there. I will turn
up at the end of an hour.”
Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook
himself to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d’Anjou. It was
more than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was
able to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that
this gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an
associate. Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin’s faded
fire, upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the
richly-encumbered little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and
shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin’s account of what had
passed between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket—M.
Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg—after his return to Mademoiselle Nioche’s
box. This hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance on the other
side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure at his not having
the civility to come and pay her a visit. “Oh, let him alone!” M.
Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed. “There are too many people in
the box already.” And he had fixed his eyes with a demonstrative stare
upon M. de Bellegarde. Valentin had promptly retorted that if there
were too many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the
number. “I shall be most happy to open the door for _you!_” M. Kapp
exclaimed. “I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!” Valentin
had answered. “Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!” Miss
Noémie had gleefully ejaculated. “M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de
Bellegarde, pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra—anywhere! I
don’t care who does which, so long as you make a scene.” Valentin
answered that they would make no scene, but that the gentleman would be
so good as to step into the corridor with him. In the corridor, after a
brief further exchange of words, there had been an exchange of cards.
M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff. He evidently meant to force his
offence home.
“The man, no doubt, was insolent,” Newman said; “but if you hadn’t gone
back into the box the thing wouldn’t have happened.”
“Why, don’t you see,” Valentin replied, “that the event proves the
extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to
provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case—that is, when he
has been, so to speak, notified—a man must be on hand to receive the
provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my
saying to M. Stanislas Kapp, ‘Oh, if you are going to be
disagreeable’”— —
“‘You must manage it by yourself; damned if I’ll help you!’ That would
have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only attraction for
you seems to have been the prospect of M. Kapp’s impertinence,” Newman
went on. “You told me you were not going back for that girl.”
“Oh, don’t mention that girl any more,” murmured Valentin. “She’s a
bore.”
“With all my heart. But if that is the way you feel about her, why
couldn’t you let her alone?”
Valentin shook his head with a fine smile. “I don’t think you quite
understand, and I don’t believe I can make you. She understood the
situation; she knew what was in the air; she was watching us.”
“A cat may look at a king! What difference does that make?”
“Why, a man can’t back down before a woman.”
“I don’t call her a woman. You said yourself she was a stone,” cried
Newman.
“Well,” Valentin rejoined, “there is no disputing about tastes. It’s a
matter of feeling; it’s measured by one’s sense of honor.”
“Oh, confound your sense of honor!” cried Newman.
“It is vain talking,” said Valentin; “words have passed, and the thing
is settled.”
Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then pausing with his hand on the
door, “What are you going to use?” he asked.
“That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide. My
own choice would be a short, light sword. I handle it well. I’m an
indifferent shot.”
Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching his
forehead, high up. “I wish it were pistols,” he said. “I could show you
how to lodge a bullet!”
Valentin broke into a laugh. “What is it some English poet says about
consistency? It’s a flower, or a star, or a jewel. Yours has the beauty
of all three!” But he agreed to see Newman again on the morrow, after
the details of his meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been
arranged.
In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him, saying
that it had been decided that he should cross the frontier, with his
adversary, and that he was to take the night express to Geneva. He
should have time, however, to dine with Newman. In the afternoon Newman
called upon Madame de Cintré, but his visit was brief. She was as
gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found her, but she was sad, and
she confessed, on Newman’s charging her with her red eyes, that she had
been crying. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours before, and
his visit had left her with a painful impression. He had laughed and
gossiped, he had brought her no bad news, he had only been, in his
manner, rather more affectionate than usual. His fraternal tenderness
had touched her, and on his departure she had burst into tears. She had
felt as if something strange and sad were going to happen; she had
tried to reason away the fancy, and the effort had only given her a
headache. Newman, of course, was perforce tongue-tied about Valentin’s
projected duel, and his dramatic talent was not equal to satirizing
Madame de Cintré’s presentiment as pointedly as perfect security
demanded. Before he went away he asked Madame de Cintré whether
Valentin had seen his mother.
“Yes,” she said, “but he didn’t make her cry.”
It was in Newman’s own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought
his portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway. M.
Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and he, on his
side, obviously, had none to offer. Valentin had found out with whom he
was dealing. M. Stanislas Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer
of Strasbourg, a youth of a sanguineous—and sanguinary—temperament. He
was making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery, and although he
passed in a general way for a good fellow, he had already been observed
to be quarrelsome after dinner. “_Que voulez-vous?_” said Valentin.
“Brought up on beer, he can’t stand champagne.” He had chosen pistols.
Valentin, at dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point, in
view of his long journey, of eating more than usual. He took the
liberty of suggesting to Newman a slight modification in the
composition of a certain fish-sauce; he thought it would be worth
mentioning to the cook. But Newman had no thoughts for fish-sauce; he
felt thoroughly discontented. As he sat and watched his amiable and
clever companion going through his excellent repast with the delicate
deliberation of hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow
traveling off to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M.
Stanislas and Mademoiselle Noémie struck him with intolerable force. He
had grown fond of Valentin, he felt now how fond; and his sense of
helplessness only increased his irritation.
“Well, this sort of thing may be all very well,” he cried at last, “but
I declare I don’t see it. I can’t stop you, perhaps, but at least I can
protest. I do protest, violently.”
“My dear fellow, don’t make a scene,” said Valentin. “Scenes in these
cases are in very bad taste.”
“Your duel itself is a scene,” said Newman; “that’s all it is! It’s a
wretched theatrical affair. Why don’t you take a band of music with you
outright? It’s d—d barbarous and it’s d—d corrupt, both.”
“Oh, I can’t begin, at this time of day, to defend the theory of
dueling,” said Valentin. “It is our custom, and I think it is a good
thing. Quite apart from the goodness of the cause in which a duel may
be fought, it has a kind of picturesque charm which in this age of vile
prose seems to me greatly to recommend it. It’s a remnant of a
higher-tempered time; one ought to cling to it. Depend upon it, a duel
is never amiss.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a higher-tempered time,” said Newman.
“Because your great-grandfather was an ass, is that any reason why you
should be? For my part I think we had better let our temper take care
of itself; it generally seems to me quite high enough; I am not afraid
of being too meek. If your great-grandfather were to make himself
unpleasant to me, I think I could manage him yet.”
“My dear friend,” said Valentin, smiling, “you can’t invent anything
that will take the place of satisfaction for an insult. To demand it
and to give it are equally excellent arrangements.”
“Do you call this sort of thing satisfaction?” Newman asked. “Does it
satisfy you to receive a present of the carcass of that coarse fop?
does it gratify you to make him a present of yours? If a man hits you,
hit him back; if a man libels you, haul him up.”
“Haul him up, into court? Oh, that is very nasty!” said Valentin.
“The nastiness is his—not yours. And for that matter, what you are
doing is not particularly nice. You are too good for it. I don’t say
you are the most useful man in the world, or the cleverest, or the most
amiable. But you are too good to go and get your throat cut for a
prostitute.”
Valentin flushed a little, but he laughed. “I shan’t get my throat cut
if I can help it. Moreover, one’s honor hasn’t two different measures.
It only knows that it is hurt; it doesn’t ask when, or how, or where.”
“The more fool it is!” said Newman.
Valentin ceased to laugh; he looked grave. “I beg you not to say any
more,” he said. “If you do I shall almost fancy you don’t care
about—about”—and he paused.
“About what?”
“About that matter—about one’s honor.”
“Fancy what you please,” said Newman. “Fancy while you are at it that I
care about _you_—though you are not worth it. But come back without
damage,” he added in a moment, “and I will forgive you. And then,” he
continued, as Valentin was going, “I will ship you straight off to
America.”
“Well,” answered Valentin, “if I am to turn over a new page, this may
figure as a tail-piece to the old.” And then he lit another cigar and
departed.
“Blast that girl!” said Newman as the door closed upon Valentin.
CHAPTER XVIII
Newman went the next morning to see Madame de Cintré, timing his visit
so as to arrive after the noonday breakfast. In the court of the
_hôtel_, before the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde’s old square
carriage. The servant who opened the door answered Newman’s inquiry
with a slightly embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same
moment Mrs. Bread appeared in the background, dim-visaged as usual, and
wearing a large black bonnet and shawl.
“What is the matter?” asked Newman. “Is Madame la Comtesse at home, or
not?”
Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes upon him: he observed that she
held a sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers. “The countess
has left a message for you, sir; she has left this,” said Mrs. Bread,
holding out the letter, which Newman took.
“Left it? Is she out? Is she gone away?”
“She is going away, sir; she is leaving town,” said Mrs. Bread.
“Leaving town!” exclaimed Newman. “What has happened?”
“It is not for me to say, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, with her eyes on the
ground. “But I thought it would come.”
“What would come, pray?” Newman demanded. He had broken the seal of the
letter, but he still questioned. “She is in the house? She is visible?”
“I don’t think she expected you this morning,” the old waiting-woman
replied. “She was to leave immediately.”
“Where is she going?”
“To Fleurières.”
“To Fleurières? But surely I can see her?”
Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then clasping together her two
hands, “I will take you!” she said. And she led the way upstairs. At
the top of the staircase she paused and fixed her dry, sad eyes upon
Newman. “Be very easy with her,” she said; “she is most unhappy!” Then
she went on to Madame de Cintré’s apartment; Newman, perplexed and
alarmed, followed her rapidly. Mrs. Bread threw open the door, and
Newman pushed back the curtain at the farther side of its deep
embrasure. In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintré; her face
was pale and she was dressed for traveling. Behind her, before the
fire-place, stood Urbain de Bellegarde, looking at his finger-nails;
near the marquis sat his mother, buried in an armchair, and with her
eyes immediately fixing themselves upon Newman. He felt, as soon as he
entered the room, that he was in the presence of something evil; he was
startled and pained, as he would have been by a threatening cry in the
stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de Cintré and
seized her by the hand.
“What is the matter?” he asked commandingly; “what is happening?”
Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came and leaned
upon his mother’s chair, behind. Newman’s sudden irruption had
evidently discomposed both mother and son. Madame de Cintré stood
silent, with her eyes resting upon Newman’s. She had often looked at
him with all her soul, as it seemed to him; but in this present gaze
there was a sort of bottomless depth. She was in distress; it was the
most touching thing he had ever seen. His heart rose into his throat,
and he was on the point of turning to her companions, with an angry
challenge; but she checked him, pressing the hand that held her own.
“Something very grave has happened,” she said. “I cannot marry you.”
Newman dropped her hand and stood staring, first at her and then at the
others. “Why not?” he asked, as quietly as possible.
Madame de Cintré almost smiled, but the attempt was strange. “You must
ask my mother, you must ask my brother.”
“Why can’t she marry me?” said Newman, looking at them.
Madame de Bellegarde did not move in her place, but she was as pale as
her daughter. The marquis looked down at her. She said nothing for some
moments, but she kept her keen, clear eyes upon Newman, bravely. The
marquis drew himself up and looked at the ceiling. “It’s impossible!”
he said softly.
“It’s improper,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
Newman began to laugh. “Oh, you are fooling!” he exclaimed.
“My sister, you have no time; you are losing your train,” said the
marquis.
“Come, is he mad?” asked Newman.
“No; don’t think that,” said Madame de Cintré. “But I am going away.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the country, to Fleurières; to be alone.”
“To leave me?” said Newman, slowly.
“I can’t see you, now,” said Madame de Cintré.
“_Now_—why not?”
“I am ashamed,” said Madame de Cintré, simply.
Newman turned toward the marquis. “What have you done to her—what does
it mean?” he asked with the same effort at calmness, the fruit of his
constant practice in taking things easily. He was excited, but
excitement with him was only an intenser deliberateness; it was the
swimmer stripped.
“It means that I have given you up,” said Madame de Cintré. “It means
that.”
Her face was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm
her words. Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no
resentment against her. He was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of
the old marquise and her son seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of
a watchman’s lantern. “Can’t I see you alone?” he asked.
“It would be only more painful. I hoped I should not see you—I should
escape. I wrote to you. Good-bye.” And she put out her hand again.
Newman put both his own into his pockets. “I will go with you,” he
said.
She laid her two hands on his arm. “Will you grant me a last request?”
and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears. “Let
me go alone—let me go in peace. I can’t call it peace—it’s death. But
let me bury myself. So—good-bye.”
Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly rubbing his head
and looking through his keenly-narrowed eyes from one to the other of
the three persons before him. His lips were compressed, and the two
lines which had formed themselves beside his mouth might have made it
appear at a first glance that he was smiling. I have said that his
excitement was an intenser deliberateness, and now he looked grimly
deliberate. “It seems very much as if you had interfered, marquis,” he
said slowly. “I thought you said you wouldn’t interfere. I know you
don’t like me; but that doesn’t make any difference. I thought you
promised me you wouldn’t interfere. I thought you swore on your honor
that you wouldn’t interfere. Don’t you remember, marquis?”
The marquis lifted his eyebrows; but he was apparently determined to be
even more urbane than usual. He rested his two hands upon the back of
his mother’s chair and bent forward, as if he were leaning over the
edge of a pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did not smile, but he looked
softly grave. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “I assured you that I would
not influence my sister’s decision. I adhered, to the letter, to my
engagement. Did I not, sister?”
“Don’t appeal, my son,” said the marquise, “your word is sufficient.”
“Yes—she accepted me,” said Newman. “That is very true, I can’t deny
that. At least,” he added, in a different tone, turning to Madame de
Cintré, “you _did_ accept me?”
Something in the tone seemed to move her strongly. She turned away,
burying her face in her hands.
“But you have interfered now, haven’t you?” inquired Newman of the
marquis.
“Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister. I used
no persuasion then, I have used no persuasion to-day.”
“And what have you used?”
“We have used authority,” said Madame de Bellegarde in a rich,
bell-like voice.
“Ah, you have used authority,” Newman exclaimed. “They have used
authority,” he went on, turning to Madame de Cintré. “What is it? how
did they use it?”
“My mother commanded,” said Madame de Cintré.
“Commanded you to give me up—I see. And you obey—I see. But why do you
obey?” asked Newman.
Madame de Cintré looked across at the old marquise; her eyes slowly
measured her from head to foot. “I am afraid of my mother,” she said.
Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness, crying, “This is a
most indecent scene!”
“I have no wish to prolong it,” said Madame de Cintré; and turning to
the door she put out her hand again. “If you can pity me a little, let
me go alone.”
Newman shook her hand quietly and firmly. “I’ll come down there,” he
said. The _portière_ dropped behind her, and Newman sank with a long
breath into the nearest chair. He leaned back in it, resting his hands
on the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and
Urbain. There was a long silence. They stood side by side, with their
heads high and their handsome eyebrows arched.
“So you make a distinction?” Newman said at last. “You make a
distinction between persuading and commanding? It’s very neat. But the
distinction is in favor of commanding. That rather spoils it.”
“We have not the least objection to defining our position,” said M. de
Bellegarde. “We understand that it should not at first appear to you
quite clear. We rather expected, indeed, that you should not do us
justice.”
“Oh, I’ll do you justice,” said Newman. “Don’t be afraid. Please
proceed.”
The marquise laid her hand on her son’s arm, as if to deprecate the
attempt to define their position. “It is quite useless,” she said, “to
try and arrange this matter so as to make it agreeable to you. It can
never be agreeable to you. It is a disappointment, and disappointments
are unpleasant. I thought it over carefully and tried to arrange it
better; but I only gave myself a headache and lost my sleep. Say what
we will, you will think yourself ill-treated, and you will publish your
wrongs among your friends. But we are not afraid of that. Besides, your
friends are not our friends, and it will not matter. Think of us as you
please. I only beg you not to be violent. I have never in my life been
present at a violent scene of any kind, and at my age I can’t be
expected to begin.”
“Is _that_ all you have got to say?” asked Newman, slowly rising out of
his chair. “That’s a poor show for a clever lady like you, marquise.
Come, try again.”
“My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and intrepidity,”
said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard. “But it is perhaps well
to say a little more. We of course quite repudiate the charge of having
broken faith with you. We left you entirely at liberty to make yourself
agreeable to my sister. We left her quite at liberty to entertain your
proposal. When she accepted you we said nothing. We therefore quite
observed our promise. It was only at a later stage of the affair, and
on quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak. It
would have been better, perhaps, if we had spoken before. But really,
you see, nothing has yet been done.”
“Nothing has yet been done?” Newman repeated the words, unconscious of
their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the marquis was
saying; M. de Bellegarde’s superior style was a mere humming in his
ears. All that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was
that the matter was not a violent joke, and that the people before him
were perfectly serious. “Do you suppose I can take this?” he asked. “Do
you suppose it can matter to me what you say? Do you suppose I can
seriously listen to you? You are simply crazy!”
Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand.
“If you don’t take it you can leave it, sir. It matters very little
what you do. My daughter has given you up.”
“She doesn’t mean it,” Newman declared after a moment.
“I think I can assure you that she does,” said the marquis.
“Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?” cried Newman.
“Gently, gently!” murmured M. de Bellegarde.
“She told you,” said the old lady. “I commanded her.”
Newman shook his head, heavily. “This sort of thing can’t be, you
know,” he said. “A man can’t be used in this fashion. You have got no
right; you have got no power.”
“My power,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “is in my children’s obedience.”
“In their fear, your daughter said. There is something very strange in
it. Why should your daughter be afraid of you?” added Newman, after
looking a moment at the old lady. “There is some foul play.”
The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not hear
or heed what he said. “I did my best,” she said, quietly. “I could
endure it no longer.”
“It was a bold experiment!” said the marquis.
Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers
and press his windpipe with his thumb. “I needn’t tell you how you
strike me,” he said; “of course you know that. But I should think you
would be afraid of your friends—all those people you introduced me to
the other night. There were some very nice people among them; you may
depend upon it there were some honest men and women.”
“Our friends approve us,” said M. de Bellegarde, “there is not a family
among them that would have acted otherwise. And however that may be, we
take the cue from no one. The Bellegardes have been used to set the
example, not to wait for it.”
“You would have waited long before anyone would have set you such an
example as this,” exclaimed Newman. “Have I done anything wrong?” he
demanded. “Have I given you reason to change your opinion? Have you
found out anything against me? I can’t imagine.”
“Our opinion,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “is quite the same as at
first—exactly. We have no ill-will towards yourself; we are very far
from accusing you of misconduct. Since your relations with us began you
have been, I frankly confess, less—less peculiar than I expected. It is
not your disposition that we object to, it is your antecedents. We
really cannot reconcile ourselves to a commercial person. We fancied in
an evil hour that we could; it was a great misfortune. We determined to
persevere to the end, and to give you every advantage. I was resolved
that you should have no reason to accuse me of want of loyalty. We let
the thing certainly go very far; we introduced you to our friends. To
tell the truth, it was that, I think, that broke me down. I succumbed
to the scene that took place on Thursday night in these rooms. You must
excuse me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but we cannot release
ourselves without an explanation.”
“There can be no better proof of our good faith,” said the marquis,
“than our committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world the
other evening. We endeavored to bind ourselves—to tie our hands, as it
were.”
“But it was that,” added his mother, “that opened our eyes and broke
our bonds. We should have been most uncomfortable! You know,” she added
in a moment, “that you were forewarned. I told you we were very proud.”
Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it; the very
fierceness of his scorn kept him from speaking. “You are not proud
enough,” he observed at last.
“In all this matter,” said the marquis, smiling, “I really see nothing
but our humility.”
“Let us have no more discussion than is necessary,” resumed Madame de
Bellegarde. “My daughter told you everything when she said she gave you
up.”
“I am not satisfied about your daughter,” said Newman; “I want to know
what you did to her. It is all very easy talking about authority and
saying you commanded her. She didn’t accept me blindly, and she
wouldn’t have given me up blindly. Not that I believe yet she has
really given me up; she will talk it over with me. But you have
frightened her, you have bullied her, you have _hurt_ her. What was it
you did to her?”
“I did very little!” said Madame de Bellegarde, in a tone which gave
Newman a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
“Let me remind you that we offered you these explanations,” the marquis
observed, “with the express understanding that you should abstain from
violence of language.”
“I am not violent,” Newman answered, “it is you who are violent! But I
don’t know that I have much more to say to you. What you expect of me,
apparently, is to go my way, thanking you for favors received, and
promising never to trouble you again.”
“We expect of you to act like a clever man,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“You have shown yourself that already, and what we have done is
altogether based upon your being so. When one must submit, one must.
Since my daughter absolutely withdraws, what will be the use of your
making a noise?”
“It remains to be seen whether your daughter absolutely withdraws. Your
daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing is changed in that.
As I say, I will talk it over with her.”
“That will be of no use,” said the old lady. “I know my daughter well
enough to know that words spoken as she just now spoke to you are
final. Besides, she has promised me.”
“I have no doubt her promise is worth a great deal more than your own,”
said Newman; “nevertheless I don’t give her up.”
“Just as you please! But if she won’t even see you,—and she won’t,—your
constancy must remain purely Platonic.”
Poor Newman was feigning a greater confidence than he felt. Madame de
Cintré’s strange intensity had in fact struck a chill to his heart; her
face, still impressed upon his vision, had been a terribly vivid image
of renunciation. He felt sick, and suddenly helpless. He turned away
and stood for a moment with his hand on the door; then he faced about
and after the briefest hesitation broke out with a different accent.
“Come, think of what this must be to me, and let her alone! Why should
you object to me so—what’s the matter with me? I can’t hurt you. I
wouldn’t if I could. I’m the most unobjectionable fellow in the world.
What if I am a commercial person? What under the sun do you mean? A
commercial person? I will be any sort of a person you want. I never
talked to you about business. Let her go, and I will ask no questions.
I will take her away, and you shall never see me or hear of me again. I
will stay in America if you like. I’ll sign a paper promising never to
come back to Europe! All I want is not to lose her!”
Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony, and
Urbain said, “My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement.
We have not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable
foreigner, and we have every reason for not wishing to be eternally
separated from my sister. We object to the marriage; and in that way,”
and M. de Bellegarde gave a small, thin laugh, “she would be more
married than ever.”
“Well, then,” said Newman, “where is this place of yours—Fleurières? I
know it is near some old city on a hill.”
“Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I don’t
know how old it is. We are not afraid to tell you.”
“It is Poitiers, is it? Very good,” said Newman. “I shall immediately
follow Madame de Cintré.”
“The trains after this hour won’t serve you,” said Urbain.
“I shall hire a special train!”
“That will be a very silly waste of money,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,” Newman
answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
He did not immediately start for Fleurières; he was too stunned and
wounded for consecutive action. He simply walked; he walked straight
before him, following the river, till he got out of the _enceinte_ of
Paris. He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage. He had
never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never been
pulled up, or, as he would have said, “let down,” so short; and he
found the sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the trees and
lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging. To lose Madame
de Cintré after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant possession of
her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury to his
happiness. And to lose her by the interference and the dictation of
others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping in with
their “authority”! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful. Upon
what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman
wasted little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal
perdition. But the treachery of Madame de Cintré herself amazed and
confounded him; there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he
groped for it in vain. Only three days had elapsed since she stood
beside him in the starlight, beautiful and tranquil as the trust with
which he had inspired her, and told him that she was happy in the
prospect of their marriage. What was the meaning of the change? of what
infernal potion had she tasted? Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension
that she had really changed. His very admiration for her attached the
idea of force and weight to her rupture. But he did not rail at her as
false, for he was sure she was unhappy. In his walk he had crossed one
of the bridges of the Seine, and he still followed, unheedingly, the
long, unbroken quay. He had left Paris behind him, and he was almost in
the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil. He stopped at
last, looked around him without seeing or caring for its pleasantness,
and then slowly turned and at a slower pace retraced his steps. When he
came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero, he
reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs. Tristram’s
dwelling, and that Mrs. Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of
a woman’s kindness in her utterance. He felt that he needed to pour out
his ire and he took the road to her house. Mrs. Tristram was at home
and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the
room, she told him that she knew what he had come for. Newman sat down
heavily, in silence, looking at her.
“They have backed out!” she said. “Well, you may think it strange, but
I felt something the other night in the air.” Presently he told her his
story; she listened, with her eyes fixed on him. When he had finished
she said quietly, “They want her to marry Lord Deepmere.” Newman
stared. He did not know that she knew anything about Lord Deepmere.
“But I don’t think she will,” Mrs. Tristram added.
“_She_ marry that poor little cub!” cried Newman. “Oh, Lord! And yet,
why did she refuse me?”
“But that isn’t the only thing,” said Mrs. Tristram. “They really
couldn’t endure you any longer. They had overrated their courage. I
must say, to give the devil his due, that there is something rather
fine in that. It was your commercial quality in the abstract they
couldn’t swallow. That is really aristocratic. They wanted your money,
but they have given you up for an idea.”
Newman frowned most ruefully, and took up his hat again. “I thought you
would encourage me!” he said, with almost childlike sadness.
“Excuse me,” she answered very gently. “I feel none the less sorry for
you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles. I have not
forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don’t believe that
Madame de Cintré has any intention of marrying Lord Deepmere. It is
true he is not younger than she, as he looks. He is thirty-three years
old; I looked in the Peerage. But no—I can’t believe her so horribly,
cruelly false.”
“Please say nothing against her,” said Newman.
“Poor woman, she _is_ cruel. But of course you will go after her and
you will plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now,” Mrs.
Tristram pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment, “you are
extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must
have a very fixed idea in her head. I wish I had done you a wrong, that
you might come to me in that fine fashion! But go to Madame de Cintré
at any rate, and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me. I am very
curious to see how far family discipline will go.”
Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head
in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with
philosophy and compassion with criticism. At last she inquired, “And
what does the Count Valentin say to it?” Newman started; he had not
thought of Valentin and his errand on the Swiss frontier since the
morning. The reflection made him restless again, and he took his leave.
He went straight to his apartment, where, upon the table of the
vestibule, he found a telegram. It ran (with the date and place) as
follows: “I am seriously ill; please to come to me as soon as possible.
V. B.” Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at the necessity of
deferring his journey to the Château de Fleurières. But he wrote to
Madame de Cintré these few lines; they were all he had time for:—
“I don’t give you up, and I don’t really believe you give me up. I
don’t understand it, but we shall clear it up together. I can’t follow
you to-day, as I am called to see a friend at a distance who is very
ill, perhaps dying. But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my
friend. Why shouldn’t I say that he is your brother? C. N.”
After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.
CHAPTER XIX
Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was
necessary, and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to
Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep,
but he sat motionless in his corner of the railway-carriage, with his
eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have
envied him his apparent slumber. Toward morning slumber really came, as
an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a
couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one
of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just
reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither the cold mountain nor the
warm sky; his consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant,
with a sense of his wrong. He got out of the train half an hour before
it reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station
indicated in Valentin’s telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the
platform with a lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head,
and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman. This
personage was a man of forty, with a tall lean figure, a sallow face, a
dark eye, a neat moustache, and a pair of fresh gloves. He took off his
hat, looking very grave, and pronounced Newman’s name. Our hero
assented and said, “You are M. de Bellegarde’s friend?”
“I unite with you in claiming that sad honor,” said the gentleman. “I
had placed myself at M. de Bellegarde’s service in this melancholy
affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who is now at his bedside. M.
de Grosjoyaux, I believe, has had the honor of meeting you in Paris,
but as he is a better nurse than I he remained with our poor friend.
Bellegarde has been eagerly expecting you.”
“And how is Bellegarde?” said Newman. “He was badly hit?”
“The doctor has condemned him; we brought a surgeon with us. But he
will die in the best sentiments. I sent last evening for the curé of
the nearest French village, who spent an hour with him. The curé was
quite satisfied.”
“Heaven forgive us!” groaned Newman. “I would rather the doctor were
satisfied! And can he see me—shall he know me?”
“When I left him, half an hour ago, he had fallen asleep after a
feverish, wakeful night. But we shall see.” And Newman’s companion
proceeded to lead the way out of the station to the village, explaining
as he went that the little party was lodged in the humblest of Swiss
inns, where, however, they had succeeded in making M. de Bellegarde
much more comfortable than could at first have been expected. “We are
old companions in arms,” said Valentin’s second; “it is not the first
time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily. It is a very
nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that Bellegarde’s
adversary was not shot. He put his bullet where he could. It took it
into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde’s left side, just below
the heart.”
As they picked their way in the gray, deceptive dawn, between the
manure-heaps of the village street, Newman’s new acquaintance narrated
the particulars of the duel. The conditions of the meeting had been
that if the first exchange of shots should fail to satisfy one of the
two gentlemen, a second should take place. Valentin’s first bullet had
done exactly what Newman’s companion was convinced he had intended it
to do; it had grazed the arm of M. Stanislas Kapp, just scratching the
flesh. M. Kapp’s own projectile, meanwhile, had passed at ten good
inches from the person of Valentin. The representatives of M. Stanislas
had demanded another shot, which was granted. Valentin had then fired
aside and the young Alsatian had done effective execution. “I saw, when
we met him on the ground,” said Newman’s informant, “that he was not
going to be _commode_. It is a kind of bovine temperament.” Valentin
had immediately been installed at the inn, and M. Stanislas and his
friends had withdrawn to regions unknown. The police authorities of the
canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been extremely
majestic, and had drawn up a long _procès-verbal_; but it was probable
that they would wink at so very gentlemanly a bit of bloodshed. Newman
asked whether a message had not been sent to Valentin’s family, and
learned that up to a late hour on the preceding evening Valentin had
opposed it. He had refused to believe his wound was dangerous. But
after his interview with the curé he had consented, and a telegram had
been dispatched to his mother. “But the marquise had better hurry!”
said Newman’s conductor.
“Well, it’s an abominable affair!” said Newman. “That’s all I have to
say!” To say this, at least, in a tone of infinite disgust was an
irresistible need.
“Ah, you don’t approve?” questioned his conductor, with curious
urbanity.
“Approve?” cried Newman. “I wish that when I had him there, night
before last, I had locked him up in my _cabinet de toilette!_”
Valentin’s late second opened his eyes, and shook his head up and down
two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle. But they
had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a night-cap was at the
door with a lantern, to take Newman’s traveling-bag from the porter who
trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back
of the house, and Newman’s companion went along a stone-faced passage
and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to Newman, who advanced and
looked into the room, which was lighted by a single shaded candle.
Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown—a
little plump, fair man whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin’s
company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still, with his eyes
closed—a figure very shocking to Newman, who had seen it hitherto awake
to its fingertips. M. de Grosjoyaux’s colleague pointed to an open door
beyond, and whispered that the doctor was within, keeping guard. So
long as Valentin slept, or seemed to sleep, of course Newman could not
approach him; so our hero withdrew for the present, committing himself
to the care of the half-waked _bonne_. She took him to a room
above-stairs, and introduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster,
in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. Newman lay down, and, in
spite of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke,
the morning was advanced and the sun was filling his window, and he
heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens. While he was dressing there
came to his door a messenger from M. de Grosjoyaux and his companion
proposing that he should breakfast with them. Presently he went
downstairs to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the
maid-servant, who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.
M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a gentleman who had
been playing sick-nurse half the night, rubbing his hands and watching
the breakfast table attentively. Newman renewed acquaintance with him,
and learned that Valentin was still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had
a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him. Before M. de
Grosjoyaux’s associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M.
Ledoux, and that Bellegarde’s acquaintance with him dated from the days
when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M. Ledoux was the
nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop. At last the bishop’s
nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at harmony
with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by
a decent deference to the best breakfast that the Croix Helvétique had
ever set forth. Valentin’s servant, who was allowed only in scanty
measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light
Parisian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did their best to prove
that if circumstances might overshadow, they could not really obscure,
the national talent for conversation, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat
little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming
Englishman he had ever known.
“Do you call him an Englishman?” Newman asked.
M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram. _“C’est plus qu’un
Anglais—c’est un Anglomane!”_ Newman said soberly that he had never
noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon
to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde. “Evidently,” said M.
Ledoux. “But I couldn’t help observing this morning to Mr. Newman that
when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our
dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it
in peril again by returning to the world.” M. Ledoux was a great
Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture. His countenance, by
daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast; he had a very large
thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture. He appeared to think
dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit,
one could promptly see the priest. He seemed to take a great
satisfaction in Valentin’s interview with the curé, and yet his
conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind. M.
Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was prepared to
be urbane and tasteful on all points. He was always furnished with a
smile (which pushed his moustache up under his nose) and an
explanation. _Savoir-vivre_—knowing how to live—was his specialty, in
which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected, with a
good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others
the application of his learning on this latter point. M. de Grosjoyaux
was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his friend’s
theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior mind. He
was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to
make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as
possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens; but what chiefly occupied
his mind was the mystery of a bungling brewer’s son making so neat a
shot. He himself could snuff a candle, etc., and yet he confessed that
he could not have done better than this. He hastened to add that on the
present occasion he would have made a point of not doing so well. It
was not an occasion for that sort of murderous work, _que diable!_ He
would have picked out some quiet fleshy spot and just tapped it with a
harmless ball. M. Stanislas Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but
really, when the world had come to that pass that one granted a meeting
to a brewer’s son!... This was M. de Grosjoyaux’s nearest approach to a
generalization. He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder
of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane,
opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its distance from his
extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been
introduced, propriety did not forbid a little speculative
pistol-practice.
Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company. He could neither eat nor
talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his
double sorrow was intolerable. He sat with his eyes fixed upon his
plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would
see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintré and his
lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for
the impatient egotism of the wish. He was very poor company, himself,
and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of
pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from
reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor
Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he
must needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth
alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open
barn doors, the brown, bent old women, showing their hugely darned
stocking-heels at the ends of their slowly-clicking sabots, and the
beautiful view of snowy Alps and purple Jura at either end of the
little street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and
in the sunshine, and the winter’s damp was trickling out of the cottage
eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping
chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and burial for
poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde. Newman walked as far as
the village church, and went into the small graveyard beside it, where
he sat down and looked at the awkward tablets which were planted
around. They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could feel nothing
but the hardness and coldness of death. He got up and came back to the
inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and a cigarette at a little
green table which he had caused to be carried into the small garden.
Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin, asked
M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him; he had a great
desire to be useful to his poor friend. This was easily arranged; the
doctor was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty
practitioner, but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of
Honor in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the
instructions he gave him before retiring, and took mechanically from
his hand a small volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to
wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of “Les Liaisons
Dangereuses.”
Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible
change in his condition. Newman sat down near him, and for a long time
narrowly watched him. Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts
upon his own situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps,
disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the
window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the
red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but
he only half succeeded. What had happened to him seemed to have, in its
violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity—the strength and
insolence of Destiny herself. It was unnatural and monstrous, and he
had no arms against it. At last a sound struck upon the stillness, and
he heard Valentin’s voice.
“It can’t be about _me_ you are pulling that long face!” He found, when
he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position; but his eyes
were open, and he was even trying to smile. It was with a very slender
strength that he returned the pressure of Newman’s hand. “I have been
watching you for a quarter of an hour,” Valentin went on; “you have
been looking as black as thunder. You are greatly disgusted with me, I
see. Well, of course! So am I!”
“Oh, I shall not scold you,” said Newman. “I feel too badly. And how
are you getting on?”
“Oh, I’m getting off! They have quite settled that; haven’t they?”
“That’s for you to settle; you can get well if you try,” said Newman,
with resolute cheerfulness.
“My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying is violent exercise, and that
sort of thing isn’t in order for a man with a hole in his side as big
as your hat, that begins to bleed if he moves a hair’s-breadth. I knew
you would come,” he continued; “I knew I should wake up and find you
here; so I’m not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I
didn’t see how I could keep still until you came. It was a matter of
keeping still, just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You
talk about trying; I tried that! Well, here I am yet—these twenty
hours. It seems like twenty days.” Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly,
but distinctly enough. It was visible, however, that he was in extreme
pain, and at last he closed his eyes. Newman begged him to remain
silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders. “Oh,” said
Valentin, “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow—to-morrow”—and he paused
again. “No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but to-day. I can’t eat and drink,
but I can talk. What’s to be gained, at this pass, by
renun—renunciation? I mustn’t use such big words. I was always a
chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!”
“That’s a reason for keeping quiet now,” said Newman. “We know how well
you talk, you know.”
But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying
drawl. “I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister. Does she
know—will she come?”
Newman was embarrassed. “Yes, by this time she must know.”
“Didn’t you tell her?” Valentin asked. And then, in a moment, “Didn’t
you bring me any message from her?” His eyes rested upon Newman’s with
a certain soft keenness.
“I didn’t see her after I got your telegram,” said Newman. “I wrote to
her.”
“And she sent you no answer?”
Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintré had left Paris. “She
went yesterday to Fleurières.”
“Yesterday—to Fleurières? Why did she go to Fleurières? What day is
this? What day was yesterday? Ah, then I shan’t see her,” said Valentin
sadly. “Fleurières is too far!” And then he closed his eyes again.
Newman sat silent, summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was
relieved at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason or
to be curious. Bellegarde, however, presently went on. “And my
mother—and my brother—will they come? Are they at Fleurières?”
“They were in Paris, but I didn’t see them, either,” Newman answered.
“If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this
morning. Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express,
and they will arrive at the same hour as I did.”
“They won’t thank me—they won’t thank me,” Valentin murmured. “They
will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn’t like the early morning
air. I don’t remember ever in my life to have seen him before
noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don’t know how he is
then. Perhaps he’s different. Who knows? Posterity, perhaps, will know.
That’s the time he works, in his _cabinet_, at the history of the
Princesses. But I had to send for them—hadn’t I? And then I want to see
my mother sit there where you sit, and say good-bye to her. Perhaps,
after all, I don’t know her, and she will have some surprise for me.
Don’t think you know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise _you_.
But if I can’t see Claire, I don’t care for anything. I have been
thinking of it—and in my dreams, too. Why did she go to Fleurières
to-day? She never told me. What has happened? Ah, she ought to have
guessed I was here—this way. It is the first time in her life she ever
disappointed me. Poor Claire!”
“You know we are not man and wife quite yet,—your sister and I,” said
Newman. “She doesn’t yet account to me for all her actions.” And, after
a fashion, he smiled.
Valentin looked at him a moment. “Have you quarreled?”
“Never, never, never!” Newman exclaimed.
“How happily you say that!” said Valentin. “You are going to be
happy—_va!_” In answer to this stroke of irony, none the less powerful
for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a
helpless and transparent stare. Valentin continued to fix him with his
own rather over-bright gaze, and presently he said, “But something _is_
the matter with you. I watched you just now; you haven’t a bridegroom’s
face.”
“My dear fellow,” said Newman, “how can I show _you_ a bridegroom’s
face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to
help you”—
“Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don’t forfeit your rights!
I’m a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever gloomy when he could
say, ‘I told you so?’ You told me so, you know. You did what you could
about it. You said some very good things; I have thought them over.
But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular
way.”
“I didn’t do what I ought,” said Newman. “I ought to have done
something else.”
“For instance?”
“Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small boy.”
“Well, I’m a very small boy, now,” said Valentin. “I’m rather less than
an infant. An infant is helpless, but it’s generally voted promising.
I’m not promising, eh? Society can’t lose a less valuable member.”
Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his
friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but
only vaguely seeing. “No, I don’t like the look of your back,” Valentin
continued. “I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out
of sorts.”
Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. “Be quiet
and get well,” he said. “That’s what you must do. Get well and help
me.”
“I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?” Valentin asked.
“I’ll let you know when you are better. You were always curious; there
is something to get well for!” Newman answered, with resolute
animation.
Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He
seemed even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he
began to talk again. “I am rather sorry about that place in the bank.
Who knows but that I might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn’t
meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don’t you think I
have been very easy to kill? It’s not like a serious man. It’s really
very mortifying. It’s like telling your hostess you must go, when you
count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such
thing. ‘Really—so soon? You’ve only just come!’ Life doesn’t make me
any such polite little speech.”
Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. “It’s a
bad case—it’s a bad case—it’s the worst case I ever met. I don’t want
to say anything unpleasant, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen men dying
before—and I’ve seen men shot. But it always seemed more natural; they
were not so clever as you. Damnation—damnation! You might have done
something better than this. It’s about the meanest winding-up of a
man’s affairs that I can imagine!”
Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. “Don’t insist—don’t insist!
It is mean—decidedly mean. For you see at the bottom—down at the
bottom, in a little place as small as the end of a wine funnel—I agree
with you!”
A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the
half-opened door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and
felt his pulse. He shook his head and declared that he had talked too
much—ten times too much. “Nonsense!” said Valentin; “a man sentenced to
death can never talk too much. Have you never read an account of an
execution in a newspaper? Don’t they always set a lot of people at the
prisoner—lawyers, reporters, priests—to make him talk? But it’s not Mr.
Newman’s fault; he sits there as mum as a death’s-head.”
The doctor observed that it was time his patient’s wound should be
dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed
this delicate operation, taking Newman’s place as assistants. Newman
withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a
telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had
been delivered in the Rue de l’Université too late to allow him to take
the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the
evening. Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about
restlessly for two or three hours. The day seemed terribly long. At
dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The dressing
of Valentin’s wound had been a very critical operation; the doctor
didn’t really see how he was to endure a repetition of it. He then
declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the present
the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than anyone
else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of
exciting him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence;
he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting
in the American.
Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time
staring at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying
downstairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap
at his door. The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
“He must amuse himself still!” said Valentin’s medical adviser. “He
insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come. I think at this
rate, that he will hardly outlast the night.”
Newman went back to Valentin’s room, which he found lighted by a taper
on the hearth. Valentin begged him to light a candle. “I want to see
your face,” he said. “They say you excite me,” he went on, as Newman
complied with this request, “and I confess I do feel excited. But it
isn’t you—it’s my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down
there and let me look at you again.” Newman seated himself, folded his
arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a
part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for
some time. “Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your
mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I’m a dying man and
it’s indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It
was not for nothing that my sister started off at this season of the
year for Fleurières. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I have been
thinking it over, and if you don’t tell me I shall guess.”
“I had better not tell you,” said Newman. “It won’t do you any good.”
“If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are very much
mistaken. There is trouble about your marriage.”
“Yes,” said Newman. “There is trouble about my marriage.”
“Good!” And Valentin was silent again. “They have stopped it.”
“They have stopped it,” said Newman. Now that he had spoken out, he
found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on. “Your mother
and brother have broken faith. They have decided that it can’t take
place. They have decided that I am not good enough, after all. They
have taken back their word. Since you insist, there it is!”
Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment, and then let
them drop.
“I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,” Newman
pursued. “But it’s not my fault. I was, indeed, very unhappy when your
telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether I
feel any better now.”
Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing. “Broken
faith, broken faith!” he murmured. “And my sister—my sister?”
“Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I don’t
know why. I don’t know what they have done to her; it must be something
pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know it. They have made her
suffer. I haven’t seen her alone, but only before them! We had an
interview yesterday morning. They came out flat, in so many words. They
told me to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I’m
angry, I’m sore, I’m sick.”
Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his
lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face. Newman
had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now,
in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow’s extremity, he had a
feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere within the presence
of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his outgush of
resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
“And Claire,”—said Bellegarde,—“Claire? She has given you up?”
“I don’t really believe it,” said Newman.
“No. Don’t believe it, don’t believe it. She is gaining time; excuse
her.”
“I pity her!” said Newman.
“Poor Claire!” murmured Valentin. “But they—but they”—and he paused
again. “You saw them; they dismissed you, face to face?”
“Face to face. They were very explicit.”
“What did they say?”
“They said they couldn’t stand a commercial person.”
Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman’s arm. “And about
their promise—their engagement with you?”
“They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until
Madame de Cintré accepted me.”
Valentin lay staring a while, and his flush died away. “Don’t tell me
any more,” he said at last. “I’m ashamed.”
“You? You are the soul of honor,” said Newman simply.
Valentin groaned and turned away his head. For some time nothing more
was said. Then Valentin turned back again and found a certain force to
press Newman’s arm. “It’s very bad—very bad. When my people—when my
race—come to that, it is time for me to withdraw. I believe in my
sister; she will explain. Excuse her. If she can’t—if she can’t,
forgive her. She has suffered. But for the others it is very bad—very
bad. You take it very hard? No, it’s a shame to make you say so.” He
closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt almost awed;
he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected. Presently Valentin
looked at him again, removing his hand from his arm. “I apologize,” he
said. “Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I apologize for my
family. For my mother. For my brother. For the ancient house of
Bellegarde. _Voilà!_” he added softly.
Newman for an answer took his hand and pressed it with a world of
kindness. Valentin remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the
doctor softly came in. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman
saw the two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The
doctor laid his hand on Valentin’s wrist and sat looking at him. He
gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first
beckoned to someone outside. This was M. le Curé, who carried in his
hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered with a white napkin. M.
le Curé was short, round, and red: he advanced, pulling off his little
black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and then he
sat down in the best armchair, with his hands folded across his person.
The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as
to the timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin
neither spoke nor moved. It was Newman’s belief, afterwards, that M. le
Curé went to sleep. At last abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman’s
name. His friend went to him, and he said in French, “You are not
alone. I want to speak to you alone.” Newman looked at the doctor, and
the doctor looked at the curé, who looked back at him; and then the
doctor and the curé, together, gave a shrug. “Alone—for five minutes,”
Valentin repeated. “Please leave us.”
The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his
companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to
Valentin’s bedside. Bellegarde had watched all this intently.
“It’s very bad, it’s very bad,” he said, after Newman had seated
himself close to him. “The more I think of it the worse it is.”
“Oh, don’t think of it,” said Newman.
But Valentin went on, without heeding him. “Even if they should come
round again, the shame—the baseness—is there.”
“Oh, they won’t come round!” said Newman.
“Well, you can make them.”
“Make them?”
“I can tell you something—a great secret—an immense secret. You can use
it against them—frighten them, force them.”
“A secret!” Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his
death-bed, confide him an “immense secret” shocked him, for the moment,
and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at
information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole.
Then, suddenly, the thought of “forcing” Madame de Bellegarde and her
son became attractive, and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin’s
lips. For some time, however, the dying man said nothing more. He only
lay and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye,
and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium. But at last
he said,—
“There was something done—something done at Fleurières. It was foul
play. My father—something happened to him. I don’t know; I have been
ashamed—afraid to know. But I know there is something. My mother
knows—Urbain knows.”
“Something happened to your father?” said Newman, urgently.
Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. “He didn’t get well.”
“Get well of what?”
But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to
utter these words and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken
his last strength. He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat
watching him. “Do you understand?” he began again, presently. “At
Fleurières. You can find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I begged you
to ask her. Then tell them that, and see. It may help you. If not, tell
everyone. It will—it will”—here Valentin’s voice sank to the feeblest
murmur—“it will avenge you!”
The words died away in a long, soft groan. Newman stood up, deeply
impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently.
“Thank you,” he said at last. “I am much obliged.” But Valentin seemed
not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last
Newman went and opened the door. M. le Curé re-entered, bearing his
sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin’s
servant. It was almost processional.
CHAPTER XX
Valentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as the cold faint March
dawn began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered
about his bedside. An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to
Geneva; he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival of
Madame de Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he
remained. He was like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit still
and count his bruises. He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintré, relating
to her the circumstances of her brother’s death—with certain
exceptions—and asking her what was the earliest moment at which he
might hope that she would consent to see him. M. Ledoux had told him
that he had reason to know that Valentin’s will—Bellegarde had a great
deal of elegant personal property to dispose of—contained a request
that he should be buried near his father in the churchyard of
Fleurières, and Newman intended that the state of his own relations
with the family should not deprive him of the satisfaction of helping
to pay the last earthly honors to the best fellow in the world. He
reflected that Valentin’s friendship was older than Urbain’s enmity,
and that at a funeral it was easy to escape notice. Madame de Cintré’s
answer to his letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurières.
This answer was very brief; it ran as follows:—
“I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin. It is a
most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not. To see you will be
nothing but a distress to me; there is no need, therefore, to wait for
what you call brighter days. It is all one now, and I shall have no
brighter days. Come when you please; only notify me first. My brother
is to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here. C. de
C.”
As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to
Poitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine
and across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring
deepened about him as he went. But he had never made a journey during
which he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land. He
obtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove in
a couple of hours to the village of Fleurières. But here, preoccupied
though he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of the
place. It was what the French call a _petit bourg_; it lay at the base
of a sort of huge mound on the summit of which stood the crumbling
ruins of a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as
that of the wall which dropped along the hill to enclose the clustered
houses defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the
village. The church was simply the former chapel of the castle,
fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous
enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little
graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they
slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held them
together on one side, and in front, far beneath their mossy lids, the
green plains and blue distances stretched away. The way to church, up
the hill, was impracticable to vehicles. It was lined with peasants,
two or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame de Bellegarde
slowly ascend it, on the arm of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers
of the other. Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners who
murmured “Madame la Comtesse” as a tall figure veiled in black passed
before them. He stood in the dusky little church while the service was
going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side he turned away and walked
down the hill. He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days in which
patience and impatience were singularly commingled. On the third day he
sent Madame de Cintré a note, saying that he would call upon her in the
afternoon, and in accordance with this he again took his way to
Fleurières. He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street,
and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for finding the
château.
“It is just beyond there,” said the landlord, and pointed to the
tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed the
first cross-road to the right—it was bordered with mouldy cottages—and
in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers.
Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and
closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The château
was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but its
aspect was extremely impressive. Newman learned afterwards, from a
guide-book of the province, that it dated from the time of Henry IV. It
presented to the wide, paved area which preceded it and which was edged
with shabby farm-buildings an immense façade of dark time-stained
brick, flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a little
Dutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof. Two towers rose
behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms and beeches, now just
faintly green.
But the great feature was a wide, green river which washed the
foundations of the château. The building rose from an island in the
circling stream, so that this formed a perfect moat spanned by a
two-arched bridge without a parapet. The dull brick walls, which here
and there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas of the
wings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles of mossy slate,
all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river. Newman rang at the gate,
and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty bell above
his head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house and
opened the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass, and he
went in, across the dry, bare court and the little cracked white slabs
of the causeway on the moat. At the door of the château he waited for
some moments, and this gave him a chance to observe that Fleurières was
not “kept up,” and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of
residence. “It looks,” said Newman to himself—and I give the comparison
for what it is worth—“like a Chinese penitentiary.” At last the door
was opened by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de
l’Université. The man’s dull face brightened as he perceived our hero,
for Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the
liveried gentry. The footman led the way across a great central
vestibule, with a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle of glass
doors all around, to what appeared to be the principal drawing-room of
the château. Newman crossed the threshold of a room of superb
proportions, which made him feel at first like a tourist with a
guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee. But when his guide had left
him alone, with the observation that he would call Madame la Comtesse,
Newman perceived that the salon contained little that was remarkable
save a dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters, some curtains of
elaborate, antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor, polished like a
mirror. He waited some minutes, walking up and down; but at length, as
he turned at the end of the room, he saw that Madame de Cintré had come
in by a distant door. She wore a black dress, and she stood looking at
him. As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time to
look at her before they met in the middle of it.
He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed,
almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had
little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant
good grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own,
and she let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy
autumn moons, and her touch was portentously lifeless.
“I was at your brother’s funeral,” Newman said. “Then I waited three
days. But I could wait no longer.”
“Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,” said Madame de Cintré. “But
it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been.”
“I’m glad you think I have been wronged,” said Newman, with that oddly
humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest
meaning.
“Do I need to say so?” she asked. “I don’t think I have wronged,
seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously. To you, to whom I
have done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make is
to say, ‘I know it, I feel it!’ The reparation is pitifully small!”
“Oh, it’s a great step forward!” said Newman, with a gracious smile of
encouragement. He pushed a chair towards her and held it, looking at
her urgently. She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself near
her; but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her. She
remained seated, like a troubled creature who had passed through the
stage of restlessness.
“I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you,” she went on, “and yet
I am very glad you came. Now I can tell you what I feel. It is a
selfish pleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have.” And she
paused, with her great misty eyes fixed upon him. “I know how I have
deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I
see it as vividly as you do—I feel it to the ends of my fingers.” And
she unclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted
them, and dropped them at her side. “Anything that you may have said of
me in your angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself.”
“In my angriest passion,” said Newman, “I have said nothing hard of
you. The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are the
loveliest of women.” And he seated himself before her again abruptly.
She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale. “That is because you
think I will come back. But I will not come back. It is in that hope
you have come here, I know; I am very sorry for you. I would do almost
anything for you. To say that, after what I have done, seems simply
impudent; but what can I say that will not seem impudent? To wrong you
and apologize—that is easy enough. I should not have wronged you.” She
stopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him to let her go on. “I
ought never to have listened to you at first; that was the wrong. No
good could come of it. I felt it, and yet I listened; that was your
fault. I liked you too much; I believed in you.”
“And don’t you believe in me now?”
“More than ever. But now it doesn’t matter. I have given you up.”
Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee.
“Why, why, why?” he cried. “Give me a reason—a decent reason. You are
not a child—you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to
drop me because your mother told you to. Such a reason isn’t worthy of
you.”
“I know that; it’s not worthy of me. But it’s the only one I have to
give. After all,” said Madame de Cintré, throwing out her hands, “think
me an idiot and forget me! That will be the simplest way.”
Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause was
lost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting. He went to
one of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked river
and the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round,
Madame de Cintré had risen; she stood there silent and passive. “You
are not frank,” said Newman; “you are not honest. Instead of saying
that you are imbecile, you should say that other people are wicked.
Your mother and your brother have been false and cruel; they have been
so to me, and I am sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to
shield them? Why do you sacrifice me to them? I’m not false; I’m not
cruel. You don’t know what you give up; I can tell you that—you don’t.
They bully you and plot about you; and I—I”—And he paused, holding out
his hands. She turned away and began to leave him. “You told me the
other day that you were afraid of your mother,” he said, following her.
“What did you mean?”
Madame de Cintré shook her head. “I remember; I was sorry afterwards.”
“You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumbscrews. In God’s
name what _is_ it she does to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing that you can understand. And now that I have given
you up, I must not complain of her to you.”
“That’s no reasoning!” cried Newman. “Complain of her, on the contrary.
Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we will
talk it over so satisfactorily that you won’t give me up.”
Madame de Cintré looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raising
her eyes, she said, “One good at least has come of this: I have made
you judge me more fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me great
honor; I don’t know why you had taken it into your head. But it left me
no loophole for escape—no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.
It was not my fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to have
warned you more. I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed to
disappoint you. But I _was_, in a way, too proud. You see what my
superiority amounts to, I hope!” she went on, raising her voice with a
tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful. “I am too
proud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless. I am timid and
cold and selfish. I am afraid of being uncomfortable.”
“And you call marrying me uncomfortable!” said Newman staring.
Madame de Cintré blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging his
pardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely express
her perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. “It is not
marrying you; it is doing all that would go with it. It’s the rupture,
the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What right
have I to be happy when—when”—And she paused.
“When what?” said Newman.
“When others have been most unhappy!”
“What others?” Newman asked. “What have you to do with any others but
me? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that you
should find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself.”
“Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not even
intelligent.”
“You are laughing at me!” cried Newman. “You are mocking me!”
She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she
was asking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common
pain by confessing that she was mocking him. “No; I am not,” she
presently said.
“Granting that you are not intelligent,” he went on, “that you are
weak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believed
you were—what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very common
effort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simple
truth is that you don’t care enough about me to make it.”
“I am cold,” said Madame de Cintré, “I am as cold as that flowing
river.”
Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim
laugh. “Good, good!” he cried. “You go altogether too far—you overshoot
the mark. There isn’t a woman in the world as bad as you would make
yourself out. I see your game; it’s what I said. You are blackening
yourself to whiten others. You don’t want to give me up, at all; you
like me—you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt
it. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied
you, I say; they have tortured you. It’s an outrage, and I insist upon
saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop
off your hand if your mother requested it?”
Madame de Cintré looked a little frightened. “I spoke of my mother too
blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by her
approval. She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has never
alluded to those hard words I used about her.”
“She has made you feel them, I’ll promise you!” said Newman.
“It’s my conscience that makes me feel them.”
“Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!” exclaimed Newman,
passionately.
“It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,” said Madame
de Cintré. “I don’t give you up for any worldly advantage or for any
worldly happiness.”
“Oh, you don’t give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know,” said Newman. “I
won’t pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that. But that’s what
your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that
villainous ball of hers—I liked it at the time, but the very thought of
it now makes me rabid—tried to push him on to make up to you.”
“Who told you this?” said Madame de Cintré softly.
“Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I didn’t know at the time
that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you
recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You said
then that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.”
“That was before—before _this_,” said Madame de Cintré.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Newman; “and, besides, I think I know. He’s
an honest little Englishman. He came and told you what your mother was
up to—that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a commercial
person. If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you
over and give me the slip. Lord Deepmere isn’t very intellectual, so
she had to spell it out to him. He said he admired you ‘no end,’ and
that he wanted you to know it; but he didn’t like being mixed up with
that sort of underhand work, and he came to you and told tales. That
was about the amount of it, wasn’t it? And then you said you were
perfectly happy.”
“I don’t see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere,” said Madame de
Cintré. “It was not for that you came here. And about my mother, it
doesn’t matter what you suspect and what you know. When once my mind
has been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
Discussing anything, now, is very idle. We must try and live each as we
can. I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think
of me. When you do so, think this—that it was not easy, and that I did
the best I could. I have things to reckon with that you don’t know. I
mean I have feelings. I must do as they force me—I must, I must. They
would haunt me otherwise,” she cried, with vehemence; “they would kill
me!”
“I know what your feelings are: they are superstitions! They are the
feeling that, after all, though I _am_ a good fellow, I have been in
business; the feeling that your mother’s looks are law and your
brother’s words are gospel; that you all hang together, and that it’s a
part of the everlasting proprieties that they should have a hand in
everything you do. It makes my blood boil. That _is_ cold; you are
right. And what I feel here,” and Newman struck his heart and became
more poetical than he knew, “is a glowing fire!”
A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintré’s distracted wooer
would have felt sure from the first that her appealing calm of manner
was the result of violent effort, in spite of which the tide of
agitation was rapidly rising. On these last words of Newman’s it
overflowed, though at first she spoke low, for fear of her voice
betraying her. “No. I was not right—I am not cold! I believe that if I
am doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness. Mr.
Newman, it’s like a religion. I can’t tell you—I can’t! It’s cruel of
you to insist. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask you to believe me—and
pity me. It’s like a religion. There’s a curse upon the house; I don’t
know what—I don’t know why—don’t ask me. We must all bear it. I have
been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a great
chance—besides my liking you. It seemed good to change completely, to
break, to go away. And then I admired you. But I can’t—it has overtaken
and come back to me.” Her self-control had now completely abandoned
her, and her words were broken with long sobs. “Why do such dreadful
things happen to us—why is my brother Valentin killed, like a beast in
the midst of his youth and his gaiety and his brightness and all that
we loved him for? Why are there things I can’t ask about—that I am
afraid to know? Why are there places I can’t look at, sounds I can’t
hear? Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard and
so terrible as this? I am not meant for that—I am not made for boldness
and defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet, natural way.” At this
Newman gave a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintré went on. “I
was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me. My mother
has always been very good to me; that’s all I can say. I must not judge
her; I must not criticize her. If I did, it would come back to me. I
can’t change!”
“No,” said Newman, bitterly; “_I_ must change—if I break in two in the
effort!”
“You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have all
kinds of consolation. You were born—you were trained, to changes.
Besides—besides, I shall always think of you.”
“I don’t care for that!” cried Newman. “You are cruel—you are terribly
cruel. God forgive you! You may have the best reasons and the finest
feelings in the world; that makes no difference. You are a mystery to
me; I don’t see how such hardness can go with such loveliness.”
Madame de Cintré fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes. “You
believe I am hard, then?”
Newman answered her look, and then broke out, “You are a perfect,
faultless creature! Stay by me!”
“Of course I am hard,” she went on. “Whenever we give pain we are hard.
And we _must_ give pain; that’s the world,—the hateful, miserable
world! Ah!” and she gave a long, deep sigh, “I can’t even say I am glad
to have known you—though I am. That too is to wrong you. I can say
nothing that is not cruel. Therefore let us part, without more of this.
Good-bye!” And she put out her hand.
Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his eyes to
her face. He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage. “What are you
going to do?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
“Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil. I am going
out of the world.”
“Out of the world?”
“I am going into a convent.”
“Into a convent!” Newman repeated the words with the deepest dismay; it
was as if she had said she was going into an hospital. “Into a
convent—_you!_”
“I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure I was
leaving you.”
But still Newman hardly understood. “You are going to be a nun,” he
went on, “in a cell—for life—with a gown and white veil?”
“A nun—a Carmelite nun,” said Madame de Cintré. “For life, with God’s
leave.”
The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and made
him feel as he would have done if she had told him that she was going
to mutilate her beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make
her mad. He clasped his hands and began to tremble, visibly.
“Madame de Cintré, don’t, don’t!” he said. “I beseech you! On my knees,
if you like, I’ll beseech you.”
She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying, almost
reassuring gesture. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You have wrong
ideas. It’s nothing horrible. It is only peace and safety. It is to be
out of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to
the best. And for life—that’s the blessing of it! They can’t begin
again.”
Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long,
inarticulate murmur. That this superb woman, in whom he had seen all
human grace and household force, should turn from him and all the
brightness that he offered her—him and his future and his fortune and
his fidelity—to muffle herself in ascetic rags and entomb herself in a
cell was a confounding combination of the inexorable and the grotesque.
As the image deepened before him the grotesque seemed to expand and
overspread it; it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to which
he was subjected. “You—you a nun!” he exclaimed; “you with your beauty
defaced—you behind locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!”
And he sprang to his feet with a violent laugh.
“You can’t prevent it,” said Madame de Cintré, “and it ought—a
little—to satisfy you. Do you suppose I will go on living in the world,
still beside you, and yet not with you? It is all arranged. Good-bye,
good-bye.”
This time he took her hand, took it in both his own. “Forever?” he
said. Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deep
imprecation. She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it;
then he drew her towards him and clasped her to his breast. He kissed
her white face; for an instant she resisted and for a moment she
submitted; then, with force, she disengaged herself and hurried away
over the long shining floor. The next moment the door closed behind
her.
Newman made his way out as he could.
CHAPTER XXI
There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon the crest of
the high hill around which the little city clusters, planted with thick
trees and looking down upon the fertile fields in which the old English
princes fought for their right and held it. Newman paced up and down
this quiet promenade for the greater part of the next day and let his
eyes wander over the historic prospect; but he would have been sadly at
a loss to tell you afterwards whether the latter was made up of
coal-fields or of vineyards. He was wholly given up to his grievance,
of which reflection by no means diminished the weight. He feared that
Madame de Cintré was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have said
himself, he didn’t see his way clear to giving her up. He found it
impossible to turn his back upon Fleurières and its inhabitants; it
seemed to him that some germ of hope or reparation must lurk there
somewhere, if he could only stretch his arm out far enough to pluck it.
It was as if he had his hand on a door-knob and were closing his
clenched fist upon it: he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed
the door with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength,
and dead, damning silence had answered him. And yet something held him
there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman’s
satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and
mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this
fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed
fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save
the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever
known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept
his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of
good-nature of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him
intently and continually, and what he saw there did not assuage his
resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have
eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized and satirized and
have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain—to
have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to
protest. And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As
if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connection
with the Bellegardes began—as if he had made the least circumstance of
the commercial—as if he would not have consented to confound the
commercial fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair’s
breadth the chance of the Bellegardes’ not playing him a trick! Granted
that being commercial was fair ground for having a trick played upon
one, how little they knew about the class so designed and its
enterprising way of not standing upon trifles! It was in the light of
his injury that the weight of Newman’s past endurance seemed so heavy;
his actual irritation had not been so great, merged as it was in his
vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his immediate wooing. But
now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt
that he was a good fellow wronged. As for Madame de Cintré’s conduct,
it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to
understand it or feel the reality of its motives only deepened the
force with which he had attached himself to her. He had never let the
fact of her Catholicism trouble him; Catholicism to him was nothing but
a name, and to express a mistrust of the form in which her religious
feelings had moulded themselves would have seemed to him on his own
part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant zeal. If such
superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil, the soil was
not insalubrious. But it was one thing to be a Catholic, and another to
turn nun—on your hand! There was something lugubriously comical in the
way Newman’s thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with
this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for
motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was
a thing to rub one’s eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But
the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him
only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame
de Cintré. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over
and tried to shake the mystery out of them and to infuse them with an
endurable meaning. What had she meant by her feeling being a kind of
religion? It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion
of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess. Twist the
thing about as her generosity would, the one certain fact was that they
had used force against her. Her generosity had tried to screen them,
but Newman’s heart rose into his throat at the thought that they should
go scot-free.
The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning Newman
sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to Fleurières and
demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde and her son. He lost
no time in putting it into practice. As he rolled swiftly over the
excellent road in the little calèche furnished him at the inn at
Poitiers, he drew forth, as it were, from the very safe place in his
mind to which he had consigned it, the last information given him by
poor Valentin. Valentin had told him he could do something with it, and
Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand. This was of course
not the first time, lately, that Newman had given it his attention. It
was information in the rough,—it was dark and puzzling; but Newman was
neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had evidently meant to put him in
possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to
have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had
not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to
it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs.
Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he
apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to
share her knowledge with him. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to
deal with, he felt easy. As to what there was to find out, he had only
one fear—that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the
marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side, the
old woman’s hand in Urbain’s arm, and the same cold, unsociable
fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear
was groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very least! He
arrived at Fleurières almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied
himself, logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they
would, as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He
remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare—first ascertain
what there was to expose; but after that, why shouldn’t his happiness
be as good as new again? Mother and son would drop their lovely victim
in terror and take to hiding, and Madame de Cintré, left to herself,
would surely come back to him. Give her a chance and she would rise to
the surface, return to the light. How could she fail to perceive that
his house would be much the most comfortable sort of convent?
Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn and
walked the short remaining distance to the château. When he reached the
gate, however, a singular feeling took possession of him—a feeling
which, strange as it may seem, had its source in its unfathomable good
nature. He stood there a while, looking through the bars at the large,
time-stained face of the edifice, and wondering to what crime it was
that the dark old house, with its flowery name, had given convenient
occasion. It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and
sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking place
to live in. Then, suddenly, came the reflection—What a horrible
rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in! The attitude of inquisitor
turned its ignobler face, and with the same movement Newman declared
that the Bellegardes should have another chance. He would appeal once
more directly to their sense of fairness, and not to their fear, and if
they should be accessible to reason, he need know nothing worse about
them than what he already knew. That was bad enough.
The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before,
and he passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge on
the moat. The door was opened before he had reached it, and, as if to
put his clemency to rout with the suggestion of a richer opportunity,
Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him. Her face, as usual, looked as
hopelessly blank as the tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments
seemed of an intenser sable. Newman had already learned that her
strange inexpressiveness could be a vehicle for emotion, and he was not
surprised at the muffled vivacity with which she whispered, “I thought
you would try again, sir. I was looking out for you.”
“I am glad to see you,” said Newman; “I think you are my friend.”
Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. “I wish you well sir; but it’s vain
wishing now.”
“You know, then, how they have treated me?”
“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, dryly, “I know everything.”
Newman hesitated a moment. “Everything?”
Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent. “I know at least too
much, sir.”
“One can never know too much. I congratulate you. I have come to see
Madame de Bellegarde and her son,” Newman added. “Are they at home? If
they are not, I will wait.”
“My lady is always at home,” Mrs. Bread replied, “and the marquis is
mostly with her.”
“Please then tell them—one or the other, or both—that I am here and
that I desire to see them.”
Mrs. Bread hesitated. “May I take a great liberty, sir?”
“You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,” said
Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying; but
the curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave. “You have come
to plead with them again, sir? Perhaps you don’t know this—that Madame
de Cintré returned this morning to Paris.”
“Ah, she’s gone!” And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement with his
stick.
“She has gone straight to the convent—the Carmelites they call it. I
see you know, sir. My lady and the marquis take it very ill. It was
only last night she told them.”
“Ah, she had kept it back, then?” cried Newman. “Good, good! And they
are very fierce?”
“They are not pleased,” said Mrs. Bread. “But they may well dislike it.
They tell me it’s most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom
the Carmelites are the worst. You may say they are really not human,
sir; they make you give up everything—forever. And to think of _her_
there! If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry.”
Newman looked at her an instant. “We mustn’t cry, Mrs. Bread; we must
act. Go and call them!” And he made a movement to enter farther.
But Mrs. Bread gently checked him. “May I take another liberty? I am
told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin, in his last hours. If you
would tell me a word about him! The poor count was my own boy, sir; for
the first year of his life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him
to speak. And the count spoke so well, sir! He always spoke well to his
poor old Bread. When he grew up and took his pleasure he always had a
kind word for me. And to die in that wild way! They have a story that
he fought with a wine-merchant. I can’t believe that, sir! And was he
in great pain?”
“You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “I hoped I
might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall, yet.”
And he put out his hand. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open
palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture,
extended her own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and
deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her. “You want to know all about Mr.
Valentin?” he said.
“It would be a sad pleasure, sir.”
“I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?”
“The château, sir? I really don’t know. I never tried.”
“Try, then; try hard. Try this evening, at dusk. Come to me in the old
ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I will wait for
you there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman
like you can do as she pleases.”
Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. “Is it from the count,
sir?” she asked.
“From the count—from his death-bed,” said Newman.
“I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for _him_.”
She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already
made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman waited a
long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his
request. He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in
with his mother on his arm. It will be seen that Newman had a logical
mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as
a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly
wicked. “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they
advanced. “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” Madame de
Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of
extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a
sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they
hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have
any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before them,
and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman
feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the
damp darkness were being exhaled.
“You see I have come back,” he said. “I have come to try again.”
“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we
are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”
“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman, with a laugh, “or that will
bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t
come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
Promise me to raise the blockade—to set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and
I will retire instantly.”
“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de
Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honor. But it
seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done,
and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are
certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of
but once.”
“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times,
madam,” Newman answered. “I didn’t come however, for conversational
purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write
immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her
marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don’t want her to turn
nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a
commercial person is better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed
and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your
blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
There’s your chance—I call those easy terms.”
“We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard
terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing
rigidly in the middle of the room. “I think my mother will tell you
that she would rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than
Mrs. Newman.”
But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make
her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head
and repeating, “But once, Mr. Newman; but once!”
Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of
marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
“Could anything compel you?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that
would force you?”
“This language, sir,” said the marquis, “addressed to people in
bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.”
“In most cases,” Newman answered, “your objection would have some
weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré’s present intentions make
time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and
you two very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your
brother was ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor
fellow apologized to me for your conduct. He apologized to me for that
of his mother.”
For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a
physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de
Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of
steel. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of
which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the
sound, “_Le misérable!_”
“You show little respect for the living,” said Madame de Bellegarde,
“but at least respect the dead. Don’t profane—don’t insult—the memory
of my innocent son.”
“I speak the simple truth,” Newman declared, “and I speak it for a
purpose. I repeat it—distinctly. Your son was utterly disgusted—your
son apologized.”
Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he
was frowning at poor Valentin’s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his
scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to
dishonor. But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her
flag. “You are immensely mistaken, sir,” she said. “My son was
sometimes light, but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his
name.”
“You simply misunderstood him,” said the marquis, beginning to rally.
“You affirm the impossible!”
“Oh, I don’t care for poor Valentin’s apology,” said Newman. “It was
far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious thing was not his
fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of honor. But
it shows how he took it.”
“If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was
out of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy
circumstances nothing was more possible. But confine yourself to that.”
“He was quite in his right mind,” said Newman, with gentle but
dangerous doggedness; “I have never seen him so bright and clever. It
was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death. You
know I was very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his
sanity,” Newman concluded.
The marquise gathered herself together majestically. “This is too
gross!” she cried. “We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate
it. Urbain, open the door.” She turned away, with an imperious motion
to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis
went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.
He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the
door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more
silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then
Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost
brimming over into jocularity. “Come,” he said, “you don’t treat me
well; at least admit that.”
M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most
delicate, best-bred voice, “I detest you personally,” he said.
“That’s the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don’t say it,”
said Newman. “It’s singular I should want so much to be your
brother-in-law, but I can’t give it up. Let me try once more.” And he
paused a moment. “You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet.”
M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not
see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always
so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. “You and your mother
have committed a crime.” At this M. de Bellegarde’s eyes certainly did
change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see
that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in
his self-control.
“Continue,” said M. de Bellegarde.
Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. “Need I
continue? You are trembling.”
“Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?” M. de
Bellegarde asked, very softly.
“I shall be strictly accurate,” said Newman. “I won’t pretend to know
more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something
that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known,
something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don’t
know what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and
I _will_ find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will
leave you alone. It’s a bargain?”
The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of
the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was
necessarily gradual. But Newman’s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed
to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He stood some
moments, reflecting.
“My brother told you this,” he said, looking up.
Newman hesitated a moment. “Yes, your brother told me.”
The marquis smiled, handsomely. “Didn’t I say that he was out of his
mind?”
“He was out of his mind if I don’t find out. He was very much in it if
I do.”
M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. “Eh, sir, find out or not, as you
please.”
“I don’t frighten you?” demanded Newman.
“That’s for you to judge.”
“No, it’s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel
yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can’t give you
more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a
nun? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is
frightened. I don’t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as
you; but you will see. I will go and wait in the village, at the inn,
and I beg you to let me know as soon as possible. Say by three o’clock.
A simple _yes_ or _no_ on paper will do. Only, you know, in case of a
_yes_ I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.” And
with this Newman opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did
not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him another look. “At the inn, in
the village,” he repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed
out of the house.
He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was
inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the
spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old. But he went
back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next
two hours. He thought it more than probable that Urbain de Bellegarde
would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense,
would be a confession of guilt. What he most expected was silence—in
other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he imagined it, his shot
might bring them down. It did bring, by three o’clock, a note,
delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde’s
handsome English hand. It ran as follows:—
“I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I
return to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my
sister and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual
reply to your audacious pertinacity.
“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE.”
Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and
down the inn-parlor. He had spent most of his time, for the past week,
in walking up and down. He continued to measure the length of the
little _salle_ of the Armes de France until the day began to wane, when
he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led
up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and Newman in a short time
had followed it to the top. He passed beneath the rugged arch of the
castle wall, and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in
black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open.
Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than
without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just
enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer
inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact
that she was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black
silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress
disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had
judged it proper to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel.
She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when
Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then she rose.
“Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?” he asked.
“No, sir; I’m a good Church-of-England woman, very Low,” she answered.
“But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out
in the evening before, sir.”
“We shall be safer,” said Newman, “where no one can hear us.” And he
led the way back into the castle court and then followed a path beside
the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the ruin.
He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and
terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which
had once been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed and found
himself in a nook peculiarly favorable to quiet conversation, as
probably many an earnest couple, otherwise assorted than our friends,
had assured themselves. The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the
remnant of its crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone.
Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which, in
the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the château. Mrs.
Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself
that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon
it. She cautiously complied, and he placed himself upon another, near
her.
CHAPTER XXII
“I am very much obliged to you for coming,” Newman said. “I hope it
won’t get you into trouble.”
“I don’t think I shall be missed. My lady, in these days, is not fond
of having me about her.” This was said with a certain fluttered
eagerness which increased Newman’s sense of having inspired the old
woman with confidence.
“From the first, you know,” he answered, “you took an interest in my
prospects. You were on my side. That gratified me, I assure you. And
now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are with me
all the more.”
“They have not done well—I must say it,” said Mrs. Bread. “But you
mustn’t blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard.”
“I would give a million of dollars to know what they did to her!” cried
Newman.
Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the
château. “They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way. She
is a delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She is only too
good.”
“Ah, they made her feel wicked,” said Newman, slowly; and then he
repeated it. “They made her feel wicked,—they made her feel wicked.”
The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description of infernal
ingenuity.
“It was because she was so good that she gave up—poor sweet lady!”
added Mrs. Bread.
“But she was better to them than to me,” said Newman.
“She was afraid,” said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; “she has always
been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble,
sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck.
She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and
it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in
a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a
delicate creature.”
This singular attestation of Madame de Cintré’s delicacy, for all its
singularity, set Newman’s wound aching afresh. “I see,” he presently
said; “she knew something bad about her mother.”
“No, sir, she knew nothing,” said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very
stiff and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the
château.
“She guessed something, then, or suspected it.”
“She was afraid to know,” said Mrs. Bread.
“But _you_ know, at any rate,” said Newman.
She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her hands
together in her lap. “You are not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was
to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me to come here.”
“Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better,” said Newman. “That’s
exactly what I want. I was with him, as I told you, in his last hour.
He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself. You know what
that means; he was bright and lively and clever.”
“Oh, he would always be clever, sir,” said Mrs. Bread. “And did he know
of your trouble?”
“Yes, he guessed it of himself.”
“And what did he say to it?”
“He said it was a disgrace to his name—but it was not the first.”
“Lord, Lord!” murmured Mrs. Bread.
“He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads
together and invented something even worse.”
“You shouldn’t have listened to that, sir.”
“Perhaps not. But I _did_ listen, and I don’t forget it. Now I want to
know what it is they did.”
Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan. “And you have enticed me up into this
strange place to tell you?”
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Newman. “I won’t say a word that shall be
disagreeable to you. Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you.
Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin’s last wish that you should.”
“Did he say that?”
“He said it with his last breath—‘Tell Mrs. Bread I told you to ask
her.’”
“Why didn’t he tell you himself?”
“It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his
body. He could only say that he wanted me to know—that, wronged as I
was, it was my right to know.”
“But how will it help you, sir?” said Mrs. Bread.
“That’s for me to decide. Mr. Valentin believed it would, and that’s
why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke.”
Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement; she shook her
clasped hands slowly up and down. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “if I
take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you are speaking? I _must_
ask you that; must I not, sir?”
“There’s no offense. It _is_ the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. Mr.
Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been
able.”
“Oh, sir, if he knew more!”
“Don’t you suppose he did?”
“There’s no saying what he knew about anything,” said Mrs. Bread, with
a mild head-shake. “He was so mightily clever. He could make you
believe he knew things that he didn’t, and that he didn’t know others
that he had better not have known.”
“I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis
civil to him,” Newman propounded; “he made the marquis feel him. What
he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance
to make the marquis feel _me_.”
“Mercy on us!” cried the old waiting-woman, “how wicked we all are!”
“I don’t know,” said Newman; “some of us are wicked, certainly. I am
very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I don’t know that
I am wicked. I have been cruelly injured. They have hurt me, and I want
to hurt them. I don’t deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly
that it is the use I want to make of your secret.”
Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath. “You want to publish them—you
want to shame them?”
“I want to bring them down,—down, down, down! I want to turn the tables
upon them—I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took me up
into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me,
and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit,
where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself
before all their friends; but I shall make something worse of them.”
This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater fervor
that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all this aloud,
kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread’s fixed eyes. “I suppose you
have a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonor you will
draw down on Madame de Cintré.”
“Madame de Cintré is buried alive,” cried Newman. “What are honor or
dishonor to her? The door of the tomb is at this moment closing behind
her.”
“Yes, it’s most awful,” moaned Mrs. Bread.
“She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work.
It’s as if it were done on purpose.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity of
this reflection. She was silent for some moments; then she added, “And
would you bring my lady before the courts?”
“The courts care nothing for my lady,” Newman replied. “If she has
committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts but a wicked old
woman.”
“And will they hang her, sir?”
“That depends upon what she has done.” And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread
intently.
“It would break up the family most terribly, sir!”
“It’s time such a family should be broken up!” said Newman, with a
laugh.
“And me at my age out of place, sir!” sighed Mrs. Bread.
“Oh, I will take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You
shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like. I will pension you for
life.”
“Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything.” And she seemed to fall
a-brooding.
Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly. “Ah, Mrs. Bread,
you are too fond of my lady!”
She looked at him as quickly. “I wouldn’t have you say that, sir. I
don’t think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I have served
her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die to-morrow, I
believe, before Heaven I shouldn’t shed a tear for her.” Then, after a
pause, “I have no reason to love her!” Mrs. Bread added. “The most she
has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house.” Newman felt
that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential—that if
luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread’s conservative habits were already
relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview, in a
remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire. All his native
shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply to let her take her
time—let the charm of the occasion work. So he said nothing; he only
looked at her kindly. Mrs. Bread sat nursing her lean elbows. “My lady
once did me a great wrong,” she went on at last. “She has a terrible
tongue when she is vexed. It was many a year ago, but I have never
forgotten it. I have never mentioned it to a human creature; I have
kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge
has grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say;
but it has lived along, as I have lived. It will die when I die,—not
before!”
“And what _is_ your grudge?” Newman asked.
Mrs. Bread dropped her eyes and hesitated. “If I were a foreigner, sir,
I should make less of telling you; it comes harder to a decent
Englishwoman. But I sometimes think I have picked up too many foreign
ways. What I was telling you belongs to a time when I was much younger
and very different looking to what I am now. I had a very high color,
sir, if you can believe it, indeed I was a very smart lass. My lady was
younger, too, and the late marquis was youngest of all—I mean in the
way he went on, sir; he had a very high spirit; he was a magnificent
man. He was fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must be
owned that he sometimes went rather below him to take it. My lady was
often jealous, and, if you’ll believe it, sir, she did me the honor to
be jealous of me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and my lady
flew out at me and ordered me to take it off. She accused me of putting
it on to make the marquis look at me. I don’t know that I was
impertinent, but I spoke up like an honest girl and didn’t count my
words. A red ribbon indeed! As if it was my ribbons the marquis looked
at! My lady knew afterwards that I was perfectly respectable, but she
never said a word to show that she believed it. But the marquis did!”
Mrs. Bread presently added, “I took off my red ribbon and put it away
in a drawer, where I have kept it to this day. It’s faded now, it’s a
very pale pink; but there it lies. My grudge has faded, too; the red
has all gone out of it; but it lies here yet.” And Mrs. Bread stroked
her black satin bodice.
Newman listened with interest to this decent narrative, which seemed to
have opened up the deeps of memory to his companion. Then, as she
remained silent, and seemed to be losing herself in retrospective
meditation upon her perfect respectability, he ventured upon a short
cut to his goal. “So Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And M. de
Bellegarde admired pretty women, without distinction of class. I
suppose one mustn’t be hard upon him, for they probably didn’t all
behave so properly as you. But years afterwards it could hardly have
been jealousy that turned Madame de Bellegarde into a criminal.”
Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. “We are using dreadful words, sir, but I
don’t care now. I see you have your idea, and I have no will of my own.
My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I have lost
my children now. They are dead—I may say it of both of them; and what
should I care for the living? What is anyone in the house to me
now—what am I to them? My lady objects to me—she has objected to me
these thirty years. I should have been glad to be something to young
Madame de Bellegarde, though I never was nurse to the present marquis.
When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn’t trust me with him.
But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion she had
of me. Perhaps you would like to hear it, sir.”
“Oh, immensely,” said Newman.
“She said that if I would sit in her children’s schoolroom I should do
very well for a penwiper! When things have come to that I don’t think I
need stand upon ceremony.”
“Decidedly not,” said Newman. “Go on, Mrs. Bread.”
Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled dumbness, and all
Newman could do was to fold his arms and wait. But at last she appeared
to have set her memories in order. “It was when the late marquis was an
old man and his eldest son had been two years married. It was when the
time came on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that’s the way they talk
of it here, you know, sir. The marquis’s health was bad; he was very
much broken down. My lady had picked out M. de Cintré, for no good
reason that I could see. But there are reasons, I very well know, that
are beyond me, and you must be high in the world to understand them.
Old M. de Cintré was very high, and my lady thought him almost as good
as herself; that’s saying a good deal. Mr. Urbain took sides with his
mother, as he always did. The trouble, I believe, was that my lady
would give very little money, and all the other gentlemen asked more.
It was only M. de Cintré that was satisfied. The Lord willed it he
should have that one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may have
been very grand in his birth, and he certainly was very grand in his
bows and speeches; but that was all the grandeur he had. I think he was
like what I have heard of comedians; not that I have ever seen one. But
I know he painted his face. He might paint it all he would; he could
never make me like it! The marquis couldn’t abide him, and declared
that sooner than take such a husband as that Mademoiselle Claire should
take none at all. He and my lady had a great scene; it came even to our
ears in the servants’ hall. It was not their first quarrel, if the
truth must be told. They were not a loving couple, but they didn’t
often come to words, because, I think, neither of them thought the
other’s doings worth the trouble. My lady had long ago got over her
jealousy, and she had taken to indifference. In this, I must say, they
were well matched. The marquis was very easy-going; he had a most
gentlemanly temper. He got angry only once a year, but then it was very
bad. He always took to bed directly afterwards. This time I speak of he
took to bed as usual, but he never got up again. I’m afraid the poor
gentleman was paying for his dissipation; isn’t it true they mostly do,
sir, when they get old? My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but I know
my lady wrote letters to M. de Cintré. The marquis got worse and the
doctors gave him up. My lady, she gave him up too, and if the truth
must be told, she gave him up gladly. When once he was out of the way
she could do what she pleased with her daughter, and it was all
arranged that my poor innocent child should be handed over to M. de
Cintré. You don’t know what Mademoiselle was in those days, sir; she
was the sweetest young creature in France, and knew as little of what
was going on around her as the lamb does of the butcher. I used to
nurse the marquis, and I was always in his room. It was here at
Fleurières, in the autumn. We had a doctor from Paris, who came and
stayed two or three weeks in the house. Then there came two others, and
there was a consultation, and these two others, as I said, declared
that the marquis couldn’t be saved. After this they went off, pocketing
their fees, but the other one stayed and did what he could. The marquis
himself kept crying out that he wouldn’t die, that he didn’t want to
die, that he would live and look after his daughter. Mademoiselle
Claire and the viscount—that was Mr. Valentin, you know—were both in
the house. The doctor was a clever man,—that I could see myself,—and I
think he believed that the marquis might get well. We took good care of
him, he and I, between us, and one day, when my lady had almost ordered
her mourning, my patient suddenly began to mend. He got better and
better, till the doctor said he was out of danger. What was killing him
was the dreadful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they
stopped, and the poor marquis began to make his jokes again. The doctor
found something that gave him great comfort—some white stuff that we
kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to the
marquis through a glass tube; it always made him easier. Then the
doctor went away, after telling me to keep on giving him the mixture
whenever he was bad. After that there was a little doctor from
Poitiers, who came every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady and
her poor husband and their three children. Young Madame de Bellegarde
had gone away, with her little girl, to her mothers. You know she is
very lively, and her maid told me that she didn’t like to be where
people were dying.” Mrs. Bread paused a moment, and then she went on
with the same quiet consistency. “I think you have guessed, sir, that
when the marquis began to turn my lady was disappointed.” And she
paused again, bending upon Newman a face which seemed to grow whiter as
the darkness settled down upon them.
Newman had listened eagerly—with an eagerness greater even than that
with which he had bent his ear to Valentin de Bellegarde’s last words.
Every now and then, as his companion looked up at him, she reminded him
of an ancient tabby cat, protracting the enjoyment of a dish of milk.
Even her triumph was measured and decorous; the faculty of exultation
had been chilled by disuse. She presently continued. “Late one night I
was sitting by the marquis in his room, the great red room in the west
tower. He had been complaining a little, and I gave him a spoonful of
the doctor’s dose. My lady had been there in the early part of the
evening; she sat far more than an hour by his bed. Then she went away
and left me alone. After midnight she came back, and her eldest son was
with her. They went to the bed and looked at the marquis, and my lady
took hold of his hand. Then she turned to me and said he was not so
well; I remember how the marquis, without saying anything, lay staring
at her. I can see his white face, at this moment, in the great black
square between the bed-curtains. I said I didn’t think he was very bad;
and she told me to go to bed—she would sit a while with him. When the
marquis saw me going he gave a sort of groan, and called out to me not
to leave him; but Mr. Urbain opened the door for me and pointed the way
out. The present marquis—perhaps you have noticed, sir—has a very proud
way of giving orders, and I was there to take orders. I went to my
room, but I wasn’t easy; I couldn’t tell you why. I didn’t undress; I
sat there waiting and listening. For what, would you have said, sir? I
couldn’t have told you; for surely a poor gentleman might be
comfortable with his wife and his son. It was as if I expected to hear
the marquis moaning after me again. I listened, but I heard nothing. It
was a very still night; I never knew a night so still. At last the very
stillness itself seemed to frighten me, and I came out of my room and
went very softly downstairs. In the anteroom, outside of the marquis’s
chamber, I found Mr. Urbain walking up and down. He asked me what I
wanted, and I said I came back to relieve my lady. He said _he_ would
relieve my lady, and ordered me back to bed; but as I stood there,
unwilling to turn away, the door of the room opened and my lady came
out. I noticed she was very pale; she was very strange. She looked a
moment at the count and at me, and then she held out her arms to the
count. He went to her, and she fell upon him and hid her face. I went
quickly past her into the room and to the marquis’s bed. He was lying
there, very white, with his eyes shut, like a corpse. I took hold of
his hand and spoke to him, and he felt to me like a dead man. Then I
turned round; my lady and Mr. Urbain were there. ‘My poor Bread,’ said
my lady, ‘M. le Marquis is gone.’ Mr. Urbain knelt down by the bed and
said softly, ‘_Mon père, mon père_.’ I thought it wonderful strange,
and asked my lady what in the world had happened, and why she hadn’t
called me. She said nothing had happened; that she had only been
sitting there with the marquis, very quiet. She had closed her eyes,
thinking she might sleep, and she had slept, she didn’t know how long.
When she woke up he was dead. ‘It’s death, my son, it’s death,’ she
said to the count. Mr. Urbain said they must have the doctor,
immediately, from Poitiers, and that he would ride off and fetch him.
He kissed his father’s face, and then he kissed his mother and went
away. My lady and I stood there at the bedside. As I looked at the poor
marquis it came into my head that he was not dead, that he was in a
kind of swoon. And then my lady repeated, ‘My poor Bread, it’s death,
it’s death;’ and I said, ‘Yes, my lady, it’s certainly death.’ I said
just the opposite to what I believed; it was my notion. Then my lady
said we must wait for the doctor, and we sat there and waited. It was a
long time; the poor marquis neither stirred nor changed. ‘I have seen
death before,’ said my lady, ‘and it’s terribly like this.’ ‘Yes,
please, my lady,’ said I; and I kept thinking. The night wore away
without the count’s coming back, and my lady began to be frightened.
She was afraid he had had an accident in the dark, or met with some
wild people. At last she got so restless that she went below to watch
in the court for her son’s return. I sat there alone and the marquis
never stirred.”
Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and the most artistic of romancers could
not have been more effective. Newman made a movement as if he were
turning over the page of a novel. “So he _was_ dead!” he exclaimed.
“Three days afterwards he was in his grave,” said Mrs. Bread,
sententiously. “In a little while I went away to the front of the house
and looked out into the court, and there, before long, I saw Mr. Urbain
ride in alone. I waited a bit, to hear him come upstairs with his
mother, but they stayed below, and I went back to the marquis’s room. I
went to the bed and held up the light to him, but I don’t know why I
didn’t let the candlestick fall. The marquis’s eyes were open—open
wide! they were staring at me. I knelt down beside him and took his
hands, and begged him to tell me, in the name of wonder, whether he was
alive or dead. Still he looked at me a long time, and then he made me a
sign to put my ear close to him: ‘I am dead,’ he said, ‘I am dead. The
marquise has killed me.’ I was all in a tremble; I didn’t understand
him. He seemed both a man and a corpse, if you can fancy, sir. ‘But
you’ll get well now, sir,’ I said. And then he whispered again, ever so
weak; ‘I wouldn’t get well for a kingdom. I wouldn’t be that woman’s
husband again.’ And then he said more; he said she had murdered him. I
asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied, ‘Murder,
murder. And she’ll kill my daughter,’ he said; ‘my poor unhappy child.’
And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said that he was dying,
that he was dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost
dead myself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for
him; and then I had to tell him that I couldn’t manage a pencil. He
asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he
could never, never do such a thing. But he seemed to have a kind of
terror that gave him strength. I found a pencil in the room and a piece
of paper and a book, and I put the paper on the book and the pencil
into his hand, and moved the candle near him. You will think all this
very strange, sir; and very strange it was. The strangest part of it
was that I believed he was dying, and that I was eager to help him to
write. I sat on the bed and put my arm round him, and held him up. I
felt very strong; I believe I could have lifted him and carried him. It
was a wonder how he wrote, but he did write, in a big scratching hand;
he almost covered one side of the paper. It seemed a long time; I
suppose it was three or four minutes. He was groaning, terribly, all
the while. Then he said it was ended, and I let him down upon his
pillows and he gave me the paper and told me to fold it, and hide it,
and give it to those who would act upon it. ‘Whom do you mean?’ I said.
‘Who are those who will act upon it?’ But he only groaned, for an
answer; he couldn’t speak, for weakness. In a few minutes he told me to
go and look at the bottle on the chimney-piece. I knew the bottle he
meant; the white stuff that was good for his stomach. I went and looked
at it, but it was empty. When I came back his eyes were open and he was
staring at me; but soon he closed them and he said no more. I hid the
paper in my dress; I didn’t look at what was written upon it, though I
can read very well, sir, if I haven’t any handwriting. I sat down near
the bed, but it was nearly half an hour before my lady and the count
came in. The marquis looked as he did when they left him, and I never
said a word about his having been otherwise. Mr. Urbain said that the
doctor had been called to a person in childbirth, but that he promised
to set out for Fleurières immediately. In another half hour he arrived,
and as soon as he had examined the marquis he said that we had had a
false alarm. The poor gentleman was very low, but he was still living.
I watched my lady and her son when he said this, to see if they looked
at each other, and I am obliged to admit that they didn’t. The doctor
said there was no reason he should die; he had been going on so well.
And then he wanted to know how he had suddenly fallen off; he had left
him so very hearty. My lady told her little story again—what she had
told Mr. Urbain and me—and the doctor looked at her and said nothing.
He stayed all the next day at the château, and hardly left the marquis.
I was always there. Mademoiselle and Mr. Valentin came and looked at
their father, but he never stirred. It was a strange, deathly stupor.
My lady was always about; her face was as white as her husband’s, and
she looked very proud, as I had seen her look when her orders or her
wishes had been disobeyed. It was as if the poor marquis had defied
her; and the way she took it made me afraid of her. The apothecary from
Poitiers kept the marquis along through the day, and we waited for the
other doctor from Paris, who, as I told you, had been staying at
Fleurières. They had telegraphed for him early in the morning, and in
the evening he arrived. He talked a bit outside with the doctor from
Poitiers, and then they came in to see the marquis together. I was with
him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to receive the doctor from
Paris, and she didn’t come back with him into the room. He sat down by
the marquis; I can see him there now, with his hand on the marquis’s
wrist, and Mr. Urbain watching him with a little looking-glass in his
hand. ‘I’m sure he’s better,’ said the little doctor from Poitiers;
‘I’m sure he’ll come back.’ A few moments after he had said this the
marquis opened his eyes, as if he were waking up, and looked at us,
from one to the other. I saw him look at me very softly, as you’d say.
At the same moment my lady came in on tiptoe; she came up to the bed
and put in her head between me and the count. The marquis saw her and
gave a long, most wonderful moan. He said something we couldn’t
understand, and he seemed to have a kind of spasm. He shook all over
and then closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and took hold of my
lady. He held her for a moment a bit roughly. The marquis was stone
dead! This time there were those there that knew.”
Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly
important evidence in a great murder case. “And the paper—the paper!”
he said, excitedly. “What was written upon it?”
“I can’t tell you, sir,” answered Mrs. Bread. “I couldn’t read it; it
was in French.”
“But could no one else read it?”
“I never asked a human creature.”
“No one has ever seen it?”
“If you see it you’ll be the first.”
Newman seized the old woman’s hand in both his own and pressed it
vigorously. “I thank you ever so much for that,” he cried. “I want to
be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else’s! You’re the
wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the paper?” This
information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. “Give it to me
quick!”
Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. “It is not so easy as that,
sir. If you want the paper, you must wait.”
“But waiting is horrible, you know,” urged Newman.
“I am sure _I_ have waited; I have waited these many years,” said Mrs.
Bread.
“That is very true. You have waited for me. I won’t forget it. And yet,
how comes it you didn’t do as M. de Bellegarde said, show the paper to
someone?”
“To whom should I show it?” answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully. “It was
not easy to know, and many’s the night I have lain awake thinking of
it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to her
vicious old husband, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it was
my duty to do something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid. I
didn’t know what was written on the paper or how bad it might be, and
there was no one I could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a
cruel kindness to do that sweet young creature, letting her know that
her father had written her mother down so shamefully; for that’s what
he did, I suppose. I thought she would rather be unhappy with her
husband than be unhappy that way. It was for her and for my dear Mr.
Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary
quietness. It worried me terribly, and it changed me altogether. But
for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what
passed between the poor marquis and me.”
“But evidently there were suspicions,” said Newman. “Where did Mr.
Valentin get his ideas?”
“It was the little doctor from Poitiers. He was very ill-satisfied, and
he made a great talk. He was a sharp Frenchman, and coming to the
house, as he did day after day, I suppose he saw more than he seemed to
see. And indeed the way the poor marquis went off as soon as his eyes
fell on my lady was a most shocking sight for anyone. The medical
gentleman from Paris was much more accommodating, and he hushed up the
other. But for all he could do Mr. Valentin and Mademoiselle heard
something; they knew their father’s death was somehow against nature.
Of course they couldn’t accuse their mother, and, as I tell you, I was
as dumb as that stone. Mr. Valentin used to look at me sometimes, and
his eyes seemed to shine, as if he were thinking of asking me
something. I was dreadfully afraid he would speak, and I always looked
away and went about my business. If I were to tell him, I was sure he
would hate me afterwards, and that I could never have borne. Once I
went up to him and took a great liberty; I kissed him, as I had kissed
him when he was a child. ‘You oughtn’t to look so sad, sir,’ I said;
‘believe your poor old Bread. Such a gallant, handsome young man can
have nothing to be sad about.’ And I think he understood me; he
understood that I was begging off, and he made up his mind in his own
way. He went about with his unasked question in his mind, as I did with
my untold tale; we were both afraid of bringing dishonor on a great
house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle. She didn’t know what
happened; she wouldn’t know. My lady and Mr. Urbain asked me no
questions because they had no reason. I was as still as a mouse. When I
was younger my lady thought me a hussy, and now she thought me a fool.
How should I have any ideas?”
“But you say the little doctor from Poitiers made a talk,” said Newman.
“Did no one take it up?”
“I heard nothing of it, sir. They are always talking scandal in these
foreign countries you may have noticed—and I suppose they shook their
heads over Madame de Bellegarde. But after all, what could they say?
The marquis had been ill, and the marquis had died; he had as good a
right to die as anyone. The doctor couldn’t say he had not come
honestly by his cramps. The next year the little doctor left the place
and bought a practice in Bordeaux, and if there has been any gossip it
died out. And I don’t think there could have been much gossip about my
lady that anyone would listen to. My lady is so very respectable.”
Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into an immense, resounding
laugh. Mrs. Bread had begun to move away from the spot where they were
sitting, and he helped her through the aperture in the wall and along
the homeward path. “Yes,” he said, “my lady’s respectability is
delicious; it will be a great crash!” They reached the empty space in
front of the church, where they stopped a moment, looking at each other
with something of an air of closer fellowship—like two sociable
conspirators. “But what was it,” said Newman, “what was it she did to
her husband? She didn’t stab him or poison him.”
“I don’t know, sir; no one saw it.”
“Unless it was Mr. Urbain. You say he was walking up and down, outside
the room. Perhaps he looked through the keyhole. But no; I think that
with his mother he would take it on trust.”
“You may be sure I have often thought of it,” said Mrs. Bread. “I am
sure she didn’t touch him with her hands. I saw nothing on him,
anywhere. I believe it was in this way. He had a fit of his great pain,
and he asked her for his medicine. Instead of giving it to him she went
and poured it away, before his eyes. Then he saw what she meant, and,
weak and helpless as he was, he was frightened, he was terrified. ‘You
want to kill me,’ he said. ‘Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,’
says my lady, and sits down and fixes her eyes upon him. You know my
lady’s eyes, I think, sir; it was with them she killed him; it was with
the terrible strong will she put into them. It was like a frost on
flowers.”
“Well, you are a very intelligent woman; you have shown great
discretion,” said Newman. “I shall value your services as housekeeper
extremely.”
They had begun to descend the hill, and Mrs. Bread said nothing until
they reached the foot. Newman strolled lightly beside her; his head was
thrown back and he was gazing at all the stars; he seemed to himself to
be riding his vengeance along the Milky Way. “So you are serious, sir,
about that?” said Mrs. Bread, softly.
“About your living with me? Why of course I will take care of you to
the end of your days. You can’t live with those people any longer. And
you oughtn’t to, you know, after this. You give me the paper, and you
move away.”
“It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of
life,” observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously. “But if you are going to turn
the house upside down, I would rather be out of it.”
“Oh,” said Newman, in the cheerful tone of a man who feels rich in
alternatives. “I don’t think I shall bring in the constables, if that’s
what you mean. Whatever Madame de Bellegarde did, I am afraid the law
can’t take hold of it. But I am glad of that; it leaves it altogether
to me!”
“You are a mighty bold gentleman, sir,” murmured Mrs. Bread, looking at
him round the edge of her great bonnet.
He walked with her back to the château; the curfew had tolled for the
laborious villagers of Fleurières, and the street was unlighted and
empty. She promised him that he should have the marquis’s manuscript in
half an hour. Mrs. Bread choosing not to go in by the great gate, they
passed round by a winding lane to a door in the wall of the park, of
which she had the key, and which would enable her to enter the château
from behind. Newman arranged with her that he should await outside the
wall her return with the coveted document.
She went in, and his half hour in the dusky lane seemed very long. But
he had plenty to think about. At last the door in the wall opened and
Mrs. Bread stood there, with one hand on the latch and the other
holding out a scrap of white paper, folded small. In a moment he was
master of it, and it had passed into his waistcoat pocket. “Come and
see me in Paris,” he said; “we are to settle your future, you know; and
I will translate poor M. de Bellegarde’s French to you.” Never had he
felt so grateful as at this moment for M. Nioche’s instructions.
Mrs. Bread’s dull eyes had followed the disappearance of the paper, and
she gave a heavy sigh. “Well, you have done what you would with me,
sir, and I suppose you will do it again. You _must_ take care of me
now. You are a terribly positive gentleman.”
“Just now,” said Newman, “I’m a terribly impatient gentleman!” And he
bade her good-night and walked rapidly back to the inn. He ordered his
vehicle to be prepared for his return to Poitiers, and then he shut the
door of the common salle and strode toward the solitary lamp on the
chimney-piece. He pulled out the paper and quickly unfolded it. It was
covered with pencil-marks, which at first, in the feeble light, seemed
indistinct. But Newman’s fierce curiosity forced a meaning from the
tremulous signs. The English of them was as follows:—
“My wife has tried to kill me, and she has done it; I am dying, dying
horribly. It is to marry my dear daughter to M. de Cintré. With all my
soul I protest,—I forbid it. I am not insane,—ask the doctors, ask Mrs.
B——. It was alone with me here, to-night; she attacked me and put me to
death. It is murder, if murder ever was. Ask the doctors.
“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE”
CHAPTER XXIII
Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs.
Bread. The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again
the little document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and
thinking what he would do in the circumstances and how he would do it.
He would not have said that Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day
seemed very short. Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann, he
walked over to the Rue de l’Université and inquired of Madame de
Bellegarde’s portress whether the marquise had come back. The portress
told him that she had arrived, with M. le Marquis, on the preceding
day, and further informed him that if he desired to enter, Madame de
Bellegarde and her son were both at home. As she said these words the
little white-faced old woman who peered out of the dusky gate-house of
the Hôtel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked smile—a smile which seemed
to Newman to mean, “Go in if you dare!” She was evidently versed in the
current domestic history; she was placed where she could feel the pulse
of the house. Newman stood a moment, twisting his moustache and looking
at her; then he abruptly turned away. But this was not because he was
afraid to go in—though he doubted whether, if he did so, he should be
able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
Cintré’s relatives. Confidence—excessive confidence, perhaps—quite as
much as timidity prompted his retreat. He was nursing his thunderbolt;
he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He seemed to be holding
it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces.
Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure
as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was
disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely
fashion. It must be added, too, that he was at a loss to see exactly
how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder. To send
in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste of ceremony; she
would certainly decline to receive him. On the other hand he could not
force his way into her presence. It annoyed him keenly to think that he
might be reduced to the blind satisfaction of writing her a letter; but
he consoled himself in a measure with the reflection that a letter
might lead to an interview. He went home, and feeling rather
tired—nursing a vengeance was, it must be confessed, a rather fatiguing
process; it took a good deal out of one—flung himself into one of his
brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs, thrust his hands into his
pockets, and, while he watched the reflected sunset fading from the
ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the Boulevard, began mentally
to compose a cool epistle to Madame de Bellegarde. While he was so
occupied his servant threw open the door and announced ceremoniously,
“Madame Brett!”
Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived upon
his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed to such good
purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurières. Mrs. Bread had made for
this visit the same toilet as for her former expedition. Newman was
struck with her distinguished appearance. His lamp was not lit, and as
her large, grave face gazed at him through the light dusk from under
the shadow of her ample bonnet, he felt the incongruity of such a
person presenting herself as a servant. He greeted her with high
geniality and bade her come in and sit down and make herself
comfortable. There was something which might have touched the springs
both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness with which
Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions. She was not
playing at being fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous;
she was doing her best to carry herself as a person so humble that, for
her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious; but evidently she
had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope to pay a visit, at
night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived in
theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
“I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir,” she murmured.
“Forgetting your place?” cried Newman. “Why, you are remembering it.
This is your place, you know. You are already in my service; your
wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago. I can tell you my house
wants keeping! Why don’t you take off your bonnet and stay?”
“Take off my bonnet?” said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness. “Oh,
sir, I haven’t my cap. And with your leave, sir, I couldn’t keep house
in my best gown.”
“Never mind your gown,” said Newman, cheerfully. “You shall have a
better gown than that.”
Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her
lustreless satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were
defining itself. “Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes,” she murmured.
“I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate,” said Newman.
“Well, sir, here I am!” said Mrs. Bread. “That’s all I can tell you.
Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread. It’s a strange place for me to be. I
don’t know myself; I never supposed I was so bold. But indeed, sir, I
have gone as far as my own strength will bear me.”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman, almost caressingly, “don’t make
yourself uncomfortable. Now’s the time to feel lively, you know.”
She began to speak again with a trembling voice. “I think it would be
more respectable if I could—if I could”—and her voice trembled to a
pause.
“If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?” said Newman
kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a
wish to retire from service.
“If I could give up everything, sir! All I should ask is a decent
Protestant burial.”
“Burial!” cried Newman, with a burst of laughter. “Why, to bury you now
would be a sad piece of extravagance. It’s only rascals who have to be
buried to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can live our
time out—and live together. Come! Did you bring your baggage?”
“My box is locked and corded; but I haven’t yet spoken to my lady.”
“Speak to her, then, and have done with it. I should like to have your
chance!” cried Newman.
“I would gladly give it you, sir. I have passed some weary hours in my
lady’s dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest. She will tax
me with ingratitude.”
“Well,” said Newman, “so long as you can tax her with murder—”
“Oh, sir, I can’t; not I,” sighed Mrs. Bread.
“You don’t mean to say anything about it? So much the better. Leave
that to me.”
“If she calls me a thankless old woman,” said Mrs. Bread, “I shall have
nothing to say. But it is better so,” she softly added. “She shall be
my lady to the last. That will be more respectable.”
“And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,” said
Newman; “that will be more respectable still!”
Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment; then, looking
up, she rested her eyes upon Newman’s face. The disordered proprieties
were somehow settling to rest. She looked at Newman so long and so
fixedly, with such a dull, intense devotedness, that he himself might
have had a pretext for embarrassment. At last she said gently, “You are
not looking well, sir.”
“That’s natural enough,” said Newman. “I have nothing to feel well
about. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very
jovial, very sick and very lively, all at once,—why, it rather mixes
one up.”
Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. “I can tell you something that will
make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way. About
Madame de Cintré.”
“What can you tell me?” Newman demanded. “Not that you have seen her?”
She shook her head. “No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That’s the
dullness of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde.”
“You mean that she is kept so close.”
“Close, close,” said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman’s
heart. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman. “They
have tried to see her, and she wouldn’t—she couldn’t?”
“She refused—forever! I had it from my lady’s own maid,” said Mrs.
Bread, “who had it from my lady. To speak of it to such a person my
lady must have felt the shock. Madame de Cintré won’t see them now, and
now is her only chance. A while hence she will have no chance.”
“You mean the other women—the mothers, the daughters, the sisters; what
is it they call them?—won’t let her?”
“It is what they call the rule of the house,—or of the order, I
believe,” said Mrs. Bread. “There is no rule so strict as that of the
Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
They wear old brown cloaks—so the _femme de chambre_ told me—that you
wouldn’t use for a horse blanket. And the poor countess was so fond of
soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff! They sleep
on the ground,” Mrs. Bread went on; “they are no better, no
better,”—and she hesitated for a comparison,—“they are no better than
tinkers’ wives. They give up everything, down to the very name their
poor old nurses called them by. They give up father and mother, brother
and sister,—to say nothing of other persons,” Mrs. Bread delicately
added. “They wear a shroud under their brown cloaks and a rope round
their waists, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold
places to pray to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!”
Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale,
with her hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy groan
and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long
silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the
chimney-piece.
“Where is this place—where is the convent?” Newman asked at last,
looking up.
“There are two houses,” said Mrs. Bread. “I found out; I thought you
would like to know—though it’s poor comfort, I think. One is in the
Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintré is there.
The other is in the Rue d’Enfer. That’s a terrible name; I suppose you
know what it means.”
Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came
back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
“Tell me this,” he said. “Can I get near her—even if I don’t see her?
Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where
she is?”
It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread’s sense of the
pre-established harmony which kept servants in their “place,” even as
planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread had ever consciously
likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal
melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her
new employer. She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years
before, she had held him also in her arms. “That wouldn’t help you,
sir. It would only make her seem farther away.”
“I want to go there, at all events,” said Newman. “Avenue de Messine,
you say? And what is it they call themselves?”
“Carmelites,” said Mrs. Bread.
“I shall remember that.”
Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, “It’s my duty to tell you
this, sir,” she went on. “The convent has a chapel, and some people are
admitted on Sunday to the mass. You don’t see the poor creatures that
are shut up there, but I am told you can hear them sing. It’s a wonder
they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go.
It seems to me I should know _her_ voice in fifty.”
Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
and shook hers. “Thank you,” he said. “If anyone can get in, I will.” A
moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire, but he
checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand. “There are half a
dozen rooms there I don’t use,” he said, pointing through an open door.
“Go and look at them and take your choice. You can live in the one you
like best.” From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first
recoiled; but finally, yielding to Newman’s gentle, reassuring push,
she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper. She remained
absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman paced up and down,
stopped occasionally to look out of the window at the lights on the
Boulevard, and then resumed his walk. Mrs. Bread’s relish for her
investigation apparently increased as she proceeded; but at last she
reappeared and deposited her candlestick on the chimney-piece.
“Well, have you picked one out?” asked Newman.
“A room, sir? They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me. There
isn’t one that hasn’t a bit of gilding.”
“It’s only tinsel, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “If you stay there a while
it will all peel off of itself.” And he gave a dismal smile.
“Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!” rejoined Mrs.
Bread, with a head-shake. “Since I was there I thought I would look
about me. I don’t believe you know, sir. The corners are most dreadful.
You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman
that isn’t above taking hold of a broom.”
Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured, his
domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her
powers. She held her candlestick aloft again and looked around the
salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted
the mission, and that its sacred character would sustain her in her
rupture with Madame de Bellegarde. With this she curtsied herself away.
She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman, going
into his drawing-room, found her upon her aged knees before a divan,
sewing up some detached fringe. He questioned her as to her
leave-taking with her late mistress, and she said it had proved easier
than she feared. “I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to
remember that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one.”
“I should think so!” cried Newman. “And does she know you have come to
me?”
“She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,” said Mrs.
Bread.
“What did she say to that?”
“She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red. Then she bade me
leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who is an
Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab. But when I
went down myself to the gate I found it closed. My lady had sent orders
to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter’s
wife—she is a dreadful sly old body—had gone out in a cab to fetch home
M. de Bellegarde from his club.”
Newman slapped his knee. “She _is_ scared! she _is_ scared!” he cried,
exultantly.
“I was frightened too, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, “but I was also mightily
vexed. I took it very high with the porter and asked him by what right
he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman who had lived in the
house for thirty years before he was heard of. Oh, sir, I was very
grand, and I brought the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out,
and I promised the cabman something handsome if he would drive fast.
But he was terribly slow; it seemed as if we should never reach your
blessed door. I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes,
just now, to thread my needle.”
Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she might have
a little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away
murmuring to himself again that the old woman _was_ scared—she _was_
scared!
He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several
times, and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange
way—an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his
disappointment gone to his head? He looked like a man who was going to
be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active. One
day he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly
resolved never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter
that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him. If
he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really went too
far. She begged him of all things not to be “strange.” Feeling in a
measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned out so
ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness. He might be
melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and
cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle with
his destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make
allowances. Only, for Heaven’s sake, let him not be incoherent. That
would be extremely unpleasant. It was like people talking in their
sleep; they always frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that,
taking very high ground as regards the moral obligation which events
had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet until she should have
confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for Madame de
Cintré that the two hemispheres contained.
“Oh,” said Newman, “we are even now, and we had better not open a new
account! You may bury me some day, but you shall never marry me. It’s
too rough. I hope, at any rate,” he added, “that there is nothing
incoherent in this—that I want to go next Sunday to the Carmelite
chapel in the Avenue de Messine. You know one of the Catholic
ministers—an abbé, is that it?—I have seen him here, you know; that
motherly old gentleman with the big waistband. Please ask him if I need
a special leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me.”
Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy. “I am so glad you
have asked me to do something!” she cried. “You shall get into the
chapel if the abbé is disfrocked for his share in it.” And two days
afterwards she told him that it was all arranged; the abbé was
enchanted to serve him, and if he would present himself civilly at the
convent gate there would be no difficulty.
CHAPTER XXIV
Sunday was as yet two days off; but meanwhile, to beguile his
impatience, Newman took his way to the Avenue de Messine and got what
comfort he could in staring at the blank outer wall of Madame de
Cintré’s present residence. The street in question, as some travelers
will remember, adjoins the Parc Monceau, which is one of the prettiest
corners of Paris. The quarter has an air of modern opulence and
convenience which seems at variance with the ascetic institution, and
the impression made upon Newman’s gloomily-irritated gaze by the
fresh-looking, windowless expanse behind which the woman he loved was
perhaps even then pledging herself to pass the rest of her days was
less exasperating than he had feared. The place suggested a convent
with the modern improvements—an asylum in which privacy, though
unbroken, might be not quite identical with privation, and meditation,
though monotonous, might be of a cheerful cast. And yet he knew the
case was otherwise; only at present it was not a reality to him. It was
too strange and too mocking to be real; it was like a page torn out of
a romance, with no context in his own experience.
On Sunday morning, at the hour which Mrs. Tristram had indicated, he
rang at the gate in the blank wall. It instantly opened and admitted
him into a clean, cold-looking court, from beyond which a dull, plain
edifice looked down upon him. A robust lay sister with a cheerful
complexion emerged from a porter’s lodge, and, on his stating his
errand, pointed to the open door of the chapel, an edifice which
occupied the right side of the court and was preceded by the high
flight of steps. Newman ascended the steps and immediately entered the
open door. Service had not yet begun; the place was dimly lighted, and
it was some moments before he could distinguish its features. Then he
saw it was divided by a large close iron screen into two unequal
portions. The altar was on the hither side of the screen, and between
it and the entrance were disposed several benches and chairs. Three or
four of these were occupied by vague, motionless figures—figures that
he presently perceived to be women, deeply absorbed in their devotion.
The place seemed to Newman very cold; the smell of the incense itself
was cold. Besides this there was a twinkle of tapers and here and there
a glow of colored glass. Newman seated himself; the praying women kept
still, with their backs turned. He saw they were visitors like himself
and he would have liked to see their faces; for he believed that they
were the mourning mothers and sisters of other women who had had the
same pitiless courage as Madame de Cintré. But they were better off
than he, for they at least shared the faith to which the others had
sacrificed themselves. Three or four persons came in; two of them were
elderly gentlemen. Everyone was very quiet. Newman fastened his eyes
upon the screen behind the altar. That was the convent, the real
convent, the place where she was. But he could see nothing; no light
came through the crevices. He got up and approached the partition very
gently, trying to look through. But behind it there was darkness, with
nothing stirring. He went back to his place, and after that a priest
and two altar boys came in and began to say mass.
Newman watched their genuflections and gyrations with a grim, still
enmity; they seemed aids and abettors of Madame de Cintré’s desertion;
they were mouthing and droning out their triumph. The priest’s long,
dismal intonings acted upon his nerves and deepened his wrath; there
was something defiant in his unintelligible drawl; it seemed meant for
Newman himself. Suddenly there arose from the depths of the chapel,
from behind the inexorable grating, a sound which drew his attention
from the altar—the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by
women’s voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder, and as
it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge. It was the chant of
the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It was their dirge over
their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly desires. At
first Newman was bewildered—almost stunned—by the strangeness of the
sound; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened intently and
his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintré’s voice, and
in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out.
(We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as she had
obviously not yet had time to become a member of the invisible
sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal
repetitions and despairing cadences. It was hideous, it was horrible;
as it continued, Newman felt that he needed all his self-control. He
was growing more agitated; he felt tears in his eyes. At last, as in
its full force the thought came over him that this confused, impersonal
wail was all that either he or the world she had deserted should ever
hear of the voice he had found so sweet, he felt that he could bear it
no longer. He rose abruptly and made his way out. On the threshold he
paused, listened again to the dreary strain, and then hastily descended
into the court. As he did so he saw the good sister with the
high-colored cheeks and the fanlike frill to her coiffure, who had
admitted him, was in conference at the gate with two persons who had
just come in. A second glance informed him that these persons were
Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and that they were about to avail
themselves of that method of approach to Madame de Cintré which Newman
had found but a mockery of consolation. As he crossed the court M. de
Bellegarde recognized him; the marquis was coming to the steps, leading
his mother. The old lady also gave Newman a look, and it resembled that
of her son. Both faces expressed a franker perturbation, something more
akin to the humbleness of dismay, than Newman had yet seen in them.
Evidently he startled the Bellegardes, and they had not their grand
behavior immediately in hand. Newman hurried past them, guided only by
the desire to get out of the convent walls and into the street. The
gate opened itself at his approach; he strode over the threshold and it
closed behind him. A carriage which appeared to have been standing
there, was just turning away from the sidewalk. Newman looked at it for
a moment, blankly; then he became conscious, through the dusky mist
that swam before his eyes, that a lady seated in it was bowing to him.
The vehicle had turned away before he recognized her; it was an ancient
landau with one half the cover lowered. The lady’s bow was very
positive and accompanied with a smile; a little girl was seated beside
her. He raised his hat, and then the lady bade the coachman stop. The
carriage halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and
beckoned to Newman—beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame
Urbain de Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her
summons, during this moment he had time to curse his stupidity for
letting the others escape him. He had been wondering how he could get
at them; fool that he was for not stopping them then and there! What
better place than beneath the very prison walls to which they had
consigned the promise of his joy? He had been too bewildered to stop
them, but now he felt ready to wait for them at the gate. Madame
Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to him again, and
this time he went over to the carriage. She leaned out and gave him her
hand, looking at him kindly, and smiling.
“Ah, monsieur,” she said, “you don’t include me in your wrath? I had
nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose _you_ could have prevented it!” Newman answered in
a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.
“What you say is too true for me to resent the small account it makes
of my influence. I forgive you, at any rate, because you look as if you
had seen a ghost.”
“I have!” said Newman.
“I am glad, then, I didn’t go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my
husband. You must have seen them, eh? Was the meeting affectionate? Did
you hear the chanting? They say it’s like the lamentations of the
damned. I wouldn’t go in: one is certain to hear that soon enough. Poor
Claire—in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That’s the _toilette_
of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long, loose
things. But I must not speak of her to you; only I must say that I am
very sorry for you, that if I could have helped you I would, and that I
think everyone has been very shabby. I was afraid of it, you know; I
felt it in the air for a fortnight before it came. When I saw you at my
mother-in-law’s ball, taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were
dancing on your grave. But what could I do? I wish you all the good I
can think of. You will say that isn’t much! Yes; they have been very
shabby; I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you everyone thinks
so. We are not all like that. I am sorry I am not going to see you
again; you know I think you very good company. I would prove it by
asking you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of
an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were
seen—considering what has passed, and everyone knows you have been
turned away—it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for
me. But I shall see you sometimes—somewhere, eh? You know”—this was
said in English—“we have a plan for a little amusement.”
Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door listening to this
consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame de
Bellegarde was saying; he was only conscious that she was chattering
ineffectively. But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty
professions, there was a way of making her effective; she might help
him to get at the old woman and the marquis. “They are coming back
soon—your companions?” he said. “You are waiting for them?”
“They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer.
Claire has refused to see them.”
“I want to speak to them,” said Newman; “and you can help me, you can
do me a favor. Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance
at them. I will wait for them here.”
Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace. “My poor
friend, what do you want to do to them? To beg them to come back to
you? It will be wasted words. They will never come back!”
“I want to speak to them, all the same. Pray do what I ask you. Stay
away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn’t be afraid; I
shall not be violent; I am very quiet.”
“Yes, you look very quiet! If they had _le cœur tendre_ you would move
them. But they haven’t! However, I will do better for you than what you
propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I am
going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and
my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit
by the same opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the
park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just
within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in
some quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There’s devotion for
you! _Le reste vous regarde_.”
This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a
goose as she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the
carriage drove away.
The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but
Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant
vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame
de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she
had spoken, while before her, in the alley, her little girl, attended
by the footman and the lap-dog, walked up and down as if she were
taking a lesson in deportment. Newman sat down beside the mamma, and
she talked a great deal, apparently with the design of convincing him
that—if he would only see it—poor dear Claire did not belong to the
most fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin, too stiff
and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no
dimples anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood;
she was an Anglaise, after all. Newman was very impatient; he was
counting the minutes until his victims should reappear. He sat silent,
leaning upon his cane, looking absently and insensibly at the little
marquise. At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the
gate of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she
dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace of her
sleeve, looked up again at Newman.
“Do you remember,” she asked, “the promise you made me three weeks
ago?” And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to
confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had made
her, at the time, a very queer answer—an answer at which, viewing it in
the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense. “You
promised to take me to Bullier’s after your marriage. After your
marriage—you made a great point of that. Three days after that your
marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the first
thing I said to myself? ‘Oh heaven, now he won’t go with me to
Bullier’s!’ And I really began to wonder if you had not been expecting
the rupture.”
“Oh, my dear lady,” murmured Newman, looking down the path to see if
the others were not coming.
“I shall be good-natured,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “One must not ask
too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun. Besides,
I can’t go to Bullier’s while we are in mourning. But I haven’t given
it up for that. The _partie_ is arranged; I have my cavalier. Lord
Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin; but a few
months hence I am to name any evening and he will come over from
Ireland, on purpose. That’s what I call gallantry!”
Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little
girl. Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt
how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked
over the glowing coals of his resentment. Madame de Bellegarde kept him
waiting, but she proved as good as her word. At last she reappeared at
the end of the path, with her little girl and her footman; beside her
slowly walked her husband, with his mother on his arm. They were a long
time advancing, during which Newman sat unmoved. Tingling as he was
with passion, it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able
to moderate his expression of it, as he would have turned down a
flaring gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and
deliberateness, his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that
words were acts and acts were steps in life, and that in this matter of
taking steps curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for
quadrupeds and foreigners—all this admonished him that rightful wrath
had no connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular
violence. So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were
close to him, he only felt very tall and light. He had been sitting
beside some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a
distance; but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him. His
mother and he were holding their course, but Newman stepped in front of
them, and they were obliged to pause. He lifted his hat slightly, and
looked at them for a moment; they were pale with amazement and disgust.
“Excuse me for stopping you,” he said in a low tone, “but I must profit
by the occasion. I have ten words to say to you. Will you listen to
them?”
The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother. “Can Mr.
Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth our listening to?”
“I assure you I have something,” said Newman, “besides, it is my duty
to say it. It’s a notification—a warning.”
“Your duty?” said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving like
scorched paper. “That is your affair, not ours.”
Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand, with a
gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman, intent as he
was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness. “If Mr. Newman
is going to make a scene in public,” she exclaimed, “I will take my
poor child out of the _mêlée_. She is too young to see such
naughtiness!” and she instantly resumed her walk.
“You had much better listen to me,” Newman went on. “Whether you do or
not, things will be disagreeable for you; but at any rate you will be
prepared.”
“We have already heard something of your threats,” said the marquis,
“and you know what we think of them.”
“You think a good deal more than you admit. A moment,” Newman added in
reply to an exclamation of the old lady. “I remember perfectly that we
are in a public place, and you see I am very quiet. I am not going to
tell your secret to the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for
certain picked listeners. Anyone who observes us will think that we are
having a friendly chat, and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your
venerable virtues.”
The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick.
“I demand of you to step out of our path!” he hissed.
Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with
his mother. Then Newman said, “Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde
will regret that she didn’t learn exactly what I mean.”
The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused,
looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.
“You are like a peddler with something to sell,” she said, with a
little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor in her
voice.
“Oh, no, not to sell,” Newman rejoined; “I give it to you for nothing.”
And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes. “You
killed your husband,” he said, almost in a whisper. “That is, you tried
once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded.”
Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as
a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic. “Dear
mother,” said the marquis, “does this stuff amuse you so much?”
“The rest is more amusing,” said Newman. “You had better not lose it.”
Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out
of them; they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her
narrow little lips, and repeated Newman’s word. “Amusing? Have I killed
someone else?”
“I don’t count your daughter,” said Newman, “though I might! Your
husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it whose existence
you have never suspected.” And he turned to the marquis, who was
terribly white—whiter than Newman had ever seen anyone out of a
picture. “A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of
Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madam, had left him for
dead, and while you, sir, had gone—not very fast—for the doctor.”
The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely
round her. “I must sit down,” she said in a low tone, going toward the
bench on which Newman had been sitting.
“Couldn’t you have spoken to me alone?” said the marquis to Newman,
with a strange look.
“Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone,
too,” Newman answered. “But I have had to take you as I could get you.”
Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
have called her “grit,” her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal
to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son’s arm and
went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her
hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of
her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he
went and stood in front of her and saw that her elegant features were
distorted by agitation. He saw, however, equally, that she was
resisting her agitation with all the rigor of her inflexible will, and
there was nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare.
She had been startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had an
exasperating feeling that she would get the better of him still; he
would not have believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be
touched by the sight of a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a
place. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed
tantamount to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own
devices. The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him,
looking at Newman.
“What paper is this you speak of?” asked the old lady, with an
imitation of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran
actress.
“Exactly what I have told you,” said Newman. “A paper written by your
husband after you had left him for dead, and during the couple of hours
before you returned. You see he had the time; you shouldn’t have stayed
away so long. It declares distinctly his wife’s murderous intent.”
“I should like to see it,” Madame de Bellegarde observed.
“I thought you might,” said Newman, “and I have taken a copy.” And he
drew from his waistcoat pocket a small, folded sheet.
“Give it to my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. Newman handed it to the
marquis, whose mother, glancing at him, said simply, “Look at it.” M.
de Bellegarde’s eyes had a pale eagerness which it was useless for him
to try to dissimulate; he took the paper in his light-gloved fingers
and opened it. There was a silence, during which he read it. He had
more than time to read it, but still he said nothing; he stood staring
at it. “Where is the original?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, in a voice
which was really a consummate negation of impatience.
“In a very safe place. Of course I can’t show you that,” said Newman.
“You might want to take hold of it,” he added with conscious
quaintness. “But that’s a very correct copy—except, of course, the
handwriting. I am keeping the original to show someone else.”
M. de Bellegarde at last looked up, and his eyes were still very eager.
“To whom do you mean to show it?”
“Well, I’m thinking of beginning with the duchess,” said Newman; “that
stout lady I saw at your ball. She asked me to come and see her, you
know. I thought at the moment I shouldn’t have much to say to her; but
my little document will give us something to talk about.”
“You had better keep it, my son,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“By all means,” said Newman; “keep it and show it to your mother when
you get home.”
“And after showing it to the duchess?”—asked the marquis, folding the
paper and putting it away.
“Well, I’ll take up the dukes,” said Newman. “Then the counts and the
barons—all the people you had the cruelty to introduce me to in a
character of which you meant immediately to deprive me. I have made out
a list.”
For a moment neither Madame de Bellegarde nor her son said a word; the
old lady sat with her eyes upon the ground; M. de Bellegarde’s blanched
pupils were fixed upon her face. Then, looking at Newman, “Is that all
you have to say?” she asked.
“No, I want to say a few words more. I want to say that I hope you
quite understand what I’m about. This is my revenge, you know. You have
treated me before the world—convened for the express purpose—as if I
were not good enough for you. I mean to show the world that, however
bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it.”
Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then she broke her silence.
Her self-possession continued to be extraordinary. “I needn’t ask you
who has been your accomplice. Mrs. Bread told me that you had purchased
her services.”
“Don’t accuse Mrs. Bread of venality,” said Newman. “She has kept your
secret all these years. She has given you a long respite. It was
beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into her
hands with a solemn injunction that she was to make it public. She was
too good-hearted to make use of it.”
The old lady appeared for an instant to hesitate, and then, “She was my
husband’s mistress,” she said, softly. This was the only concession to
self-defense that she condescended to make.
“I doubt that,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench. “It was not to your
opinions I undertook to listen, and if you have nothing left but them
to tell me I think this remarkable interview may terminate.” And
turning to the marquis she took his arm again. “My son,” she said, “say
something!”
M. de Bellegarde looked down at his mother, passing his hand over his
forehead, and then, tenderly, caressingly, “What shall I say?” he
asked.
“There is only one thing to say,” said the Marquise. “That it was
really not worth while to have interrupted our walk.”
But the marquis thought he could improve this. “Your paper’s a
forgery,” he said to Newman.
Newman shook his head a little, with a tranquil smile. “M. de
Bellegarde,” he said, “your mother does better. She has done better all
along, from the first of my knowing you. You’re a mighty plucky woman,
madam,” he continued. “It’s a great pity you have made me your enemy. I
should have been one of your greatest admirers.”
“_Mon pauvre ami_,” said Madame de Bellegarde to her son in French, and
as if she had not heard these words, “you must take me immediately to
my carriage.”
Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment
and saw Madame Urbain, with her little girl, come out of a by-path to
meet them. The old lady stooped and kissed her grandchild. “Damn it,
she _is_ plucky!” said Newman, and he walked home with a slight sense
of being balked. She was so inexpressively defiant! But on reflection
he decided that what he had witnessed was no real sense of security,
still less a real innocence. It was only a very superior style of
brazen assurance. “Wait till she reads the paper!” he said to himself;
and he concluded that he should hear from her soon.
He heard sooner than he expected. The next morning, before midday, when
he was about to give orders for his breakfast to be served, M. de
Bellegarde’s card was brought to him. “She has read the paper and she
has passed a bad night,” said Newman. He instantly admitted his
visitor, who came in with the air of the ambassador of a great power
meeting the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident had
enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying. The ambassador, at
all events, had passed a bad night, and his faultlessly careful toilet
only threw into relief the frigid rancor in his eyes and the mottled
tones of his refined complexion. He stood before Newman a moment,
breathing quickly and softly, and shaking his forefinger curtly as his
host pointed to a chair.
“What I have come to say is soon said,” he declared “and can only be
said without ceremony.”
“I am good for as much or for as little as you desire,” said Newman.
The marquis looked round the room a moment, and then, “On what terms
will you part with your scrap of paper?”
“On none!” And while Newman, with his head on one side and his hands
behind him sounded the marquis’s turbid gaze with his own, he added,
“Certainly, that is not worth sitting down about.”
M. de Bellegarde meditated a moment, as if he had not heard Newman’s
refusal. “My mother and I, last evening,” he said, “talked over your
story. You will be surprised to learn that we think your little
document is—a”—and he held back his word a moment—“is genuine.”
“You forget that with you I am used to surprises!” exclaimed Newman,
with a laugh.
“The very smallest amount of respect that we owe to my father’s
memory,” the marquis continued, “makes us desire that he should not be
held up to the world as the author of so—so infernal an attack upon the
reputation of a wife whose only fault was that she had been submissive
to accumulated injury.”
“Oh, I see,” said Newman. “It’s for your father’s sake.” And he laughed
the laugh in which he indulged when he was most amused—a noiseless
laugh, with his lips closed.
But M. de Bellegarde’s gravity held good. “There are a few of my
father’s particular friends for whom the knowledge of so—so unfortunate
an—inspiration—would be a real grief. Even say we firmly established by
medical evidence the presumption of a mind disordered by fever, _il en
resterait quelque chose_. At the best it would look ill in him. Very
ill!”
“Don’t try medical evidence,” said Newman. “Don’t touch the doctors and
they won’t touch you. I don’t mind your knowing that I have not written
to them.”
Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde’s discolored mask
that this information was extremely pertinent. But it may have been
merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative. “For
instance, Madame d’Outreville,” he said, “of whom you spoke yesterday.
I can imagine nothing that would shock her more.”
“Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d’Outreville, you know. That’s
on the cards. I expect to shock a great many people.”
M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the stitching on the back of one
of his gloves. Then, without looking up, “We don’t offer you money,” he
said. “That we supposed to be useless.”
Newman, turning away, took a few turns about the room and then came
back. “What _do_ you offer me? By what I can make out, the generosity
is all to be on my side.”
The marquis dropped his arms at his side and held his head a little
higher. “What we offer you is a chance—a chance that a gentleman should
appreciate. A chance to abstain from inflicting a terrible blot upon
the memory of a man who certainly had his faults, but who, personally,
had done you no wrong.”
“There are two things to say to that,” said Newman. “The first is, as
regards appreciating your ‘chance,’ that you don’t consider me a
gentleman. That’s your great point you know. It’s a poor rule that
won’t work both ways. The second is that—well, in a word, you are
talking great nonsense!”
Newman, who in the midst of his bitterness had, as I have said, kept
well before his eyes a certain ideal of saying nothing rude, was
immediately somewhat regretfully conscious of the sharpness of these
words. But he speedily observed that the marquis took them more quietly
than might have been expected. M. de Bellegarde, like the stately
ambassador that he was, continued the policy of ignoring what was
disagreeable in his adversary’s replies. He gazed at the gilded
arabesques on the opposite wall, and then presently transferred his
glance to Newman, as if he too were a large grotesque in a rather
vulgar system of chamber-decoration. “I suppose you know that as
regards yourself it won’t do at all.”
“How do you mean it won’t do?”
“Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that’s in your
programme. You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that
some of it may stick. We know, of course, it can’t,” explained the
marquis in a tone of conscious lucidity; “but you take the chance, and
are willing at any rate to show that you yourself have dirty hands.”
“That’s a good comparison; at least half of it is,” said Newman. “I
take the chance of something sticking. But as regards my hands, they
are clean. I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips.”
M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. “All our friends are
quite with us,” he said. “They would have done exactly as we have
done.”
“I shall believe that when I hear them say it. Meanwhile I shall think
better of human nature.”
The marquis looked into his hat again. “Madame de Cintré was extremely
fond of her father. If she knew of the existence of the few written
words of which you propose to make this scandalous use, she would
demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her, and she would
destroy it without reading it.”
“Very possibly,” Newman rejoined. “But she will not know. I was in that
convent yesterday and I know what _she_ is doing. Lord deliver us! You
can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!”
M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest; but he
continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that
his mere personal presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched
him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue, felt an
incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat in good
order.
“Your visit’s a failure, you see,” he said. “You offer too little.”
“Propose something yourself,” said the marquis.
“Give me back Madame de Cintré in the same state in which you took her
from me.”
M. de Bellegarde threw back his head and his pale face flushed.
“Never!” he said.
“You can’t!”
“We wouldn’t if we could! In the sentiment which led us to deprecate
her marriage nothing is changed.”
“‘Deprecate’ is good!” cried Newman. “It was hardly worth while to come
here only to tell me that you are not ashamed of yourselves. I could
have guessed that!”
The marquis slowly walked toward the door, and Newman, following,
opened it for him. “What you propose to do will be very disagreeable,”
M. de Bellegarde said. “That is very evident. But it will be nothing
more.”
“As I understand it,” Newman answered, “that will be quite enough!”
M. de Bellegarde stood for a moment looking on the ground, as if he
were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his
father’s reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to
signify that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty
of his turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat
umbrella from the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly
walk, passed out. Newman stood listening till he heard the door close;
then he slowly exclaimed, “Well, I ought to begin to be satisfied now!”
CHAPTER XXV
Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home. An old
gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave
of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired, and our
hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees with whom he
had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde’s ball. The duchess, in her
armchair, from which she did not move, with a great flower-pot on one
side of her, a pile of pink-covered novels on the other, and a large
piece of tapestry depending from her lap, presented an expansive and
imposing front; but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and
there was nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his
confidence. She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched
with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris about
the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his impressions of
France and his opinion of its female inhabitants. All this was a
brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who, like many of her
country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather than an
interrogative cast of mind, who made _mots_ and put them herself into
circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present of a convenient
little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper of a happy
Gallicism. Newman had come to her with a grievance, but he found
himself in an atmosphere in which apparently no cognizance was taken of
grievance; an atmosphere into which the chill of discomfort had never
penetrated, and which seemed exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale
intellectual perfumes. The feeling with which he had watched Madame
d’Outreville at the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back
to him; she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy,
particularly well up in her part. He observed before long that she
asked him no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion
to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her. She
neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances nor
pretended to condole with him upon it; but she smiled and discoursed
and compared the tender-tinted wools of her tapestry, as if the
Bellegardes and their wickedness were not of this world. “She is
fighting shy!” said Newman to himself; and, having made the
observation, he was prompted to observe, farther, how the duchess would
carry off her indifference. She did so in a masterly manner. There was
not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small, clear,
demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim to personal
loveliness, there was not a symptom of apprehension that Newman would
trench upon the ground she proposed to avoid. “Upon my word, she does
it very well,” he tacitly commented. “They all hold together bravely,
and, whether anyone else can trust them or not, they can certainly
trust each other.”
Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her fine
manners. He felt, most accurately, that she was not a grain less urbane
than she would have been if his marriage were still in prospect; but he
felt also that she was not a particle more urbane. He had come, so
reasoned the duchess—Heaven knew why he had come, after what had
happened; and for the half hour, therefore, she would be _charmante_.
But she would never see him again. Finding no ready-made opportunity to
tell his story, Newman pondered these things more dispassionately than
might have been expected; he stretched his legs, as usual, and even
chuckled a little, appreciatively and noiselessly. And then as the
duchess went on relating a _mot_ with which her mother had snubbed the
great Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter of
French history more interesting to himself might possibly be the result
of an extreme consideration for his feelings. Perhaps it was delicacy
on the duchess’s part—not policy. He was on the point of saying
something himself, to make the chance which he had determined to give
her still better, when the servant announced another visitor. The
duchess, on hearing the name—it was that of an Italian prince—gave a
little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly: “I beg you to
remain; I desire this visit to be short.” Newman said to himself, at
this, that Madame d’Outreville intended, after all, that they should
discuss the Bellegardes together.
The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately
large. He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his
eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be
challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy. The duchess,
judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him as a bore; but this was
not apparent from the unchecked flow of her conversation. She made a
fresh series of _mots_, characterized with great felicity the Italian
intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento, predicted the ultimate
future of the Italian kingdom (disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule
and complete reversion, throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of
the Holy Father), and, finally, gave a history of the love affairs of
the Princess X——. This narrative provoked some rectifications on the
part of the prince, who, as he said, pretended to know something about
that matter; and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no
laughing mood, either with regard to the size of his head or anything
else, he entered into the controversy with an animation for which the
duchess, when she set him down as a bore, could not have been prepared.
The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X—— led to a discussion of
the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess had
spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information on the
subject. This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the Italian
heart _per se_. The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view—thought
it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had ever
encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility, and at
last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice. The
prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really proved
charming. Newman was naturally out of the conversation; he sat with his
head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors. The duchess, as
she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile, as if to intimate,
in the charming manner of her nation, that it lay only with him to say
something very much to the point. But he said nothing at all, and at
last his thoughts began to wander. A singular feeling came over him—a
sudden sense of the folly of his errand. What under the sun had he to
say to the duchess, after all? Wherein would it profit him to tell her
that the Bellegardes were traitors and that the old lady, into the
bargain was a murderess? He seemed morally to have turned a sort of
somersault, and to find things looking differently in consequence. He
felt a sudden stiffening of his will and quickening of his reserve.
What in the world had he been thinking of when he fancied the duchess
could help him, and that it would conduce to his comfort to make her
think ill of the Bellegardes? What did her opinion of the Bellegardes
matter to him? It was only a shade more important than the opinion the
Bellegardes entertained of her. The duchess help him—that cold, stout,
soft, artificial woman help him?—she who in the last twenty minutes had
built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she
evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate. Had it
come to that—that he was asking favors of conceited people, and
appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give? He rested his
arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat. As he
did so his ears tingled—he had come very near being an ass. Whether or
no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn’t tell it. Was he to sit
there another half hour for the sake of exposing the Bellegardes? The
Bellegardes be hanged! He got up abruptly, and advanced to shake hands
with his hostess.
“You can’t stay longer?” she asked very graciously.
“I am afraid not,” he said.
She hesitated a moment, and then, “I had an idea you had something
particular to say to me,” she declared.
Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed
to be turning his somersault again. The little Italian prince came to
his help: “Ah, madam, who has not that?” he softly sighed.
“Don’t teach Mr. Newman to say _fadaises_,” said the duchess. “It is
his merit that he doesn’t know how.”
“Yes, I don’t know how to say _fadaises_,” said Newman, “and I don’t
want to say anything unpleasant.”
“I am sure you are very considerate,” said the duchess with a smile;
and she gave him a little nod for good-bye with which he took his
departure.
Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement, wondering
whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged his
pistol. And then again he decided that to talk to anyone whomsoever
about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable to him. The least
disagreeable thing, under the circumstances, was to banish them from
his mind, and never think of them again. Indecision had not hitherto
been one of Newman’s weaknesses, and in this case it was not of long
duration. For three days after this he did not, or at least he tried
not to, think of the Bellegardes. He dined with Mrs. Tristram, and on
her mentioning their name, he begged her almost severely to desist.
This gave Tom Tristram a much-coveted opportunity to offer his
condolences.
He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman’s arm compressing his lips
and shaking his head. “The fact is my dear fellow, you see, that you
ought never to have gone into it. It was not your doing, I know—it was
all my wife. If you want to come down on her, I’ll stand off; I give
you leave to hit her as hard as you like. You know she has never had a
word of reproach from me in her life, and I think she is in need of
something of the kind. Why didn’t you listen to _me?_ You know I didn’t
believe in the thing. I thought it at the best an amiable delusion. I
don’t profess to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,—that class of man,
you know; but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex. I
have never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out
badly. I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had
my doubts about her. Whatever you may think of my present situation, I
must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open. Now suppose
you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintré. You may
depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one. And upon my word
I don’t see where you could have found your comfort. Not from the
marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn’t a man you could go and talk things
over with in a sociable, common-sense way. Did he ever seem to want to
have you on the premises—did he ever try to see you alone? Did he ever
ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening, or step in,
when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something? I don’t
think you would have got much encouragement out of _him_. And as for
the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose. They have a
great expression here, you know; they call it ‘sympathetic.’ Everything
is sympathetic—or ought to be. Now Madame de Bellegarde is about as
sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They’re a d—d cold-blooded lot, any
way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs. I felt as if I were
walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower of London! My dear boy,
don’t think me a vulgar brute for hinting at it, but you may depend
upon it, all they wanted was your money. I know something about that; I
can tell when people want one’s money! Why they stopped wanting yours I
don’t know; I suppose because they could get someone else’s without
working so hard for it. It isn’t worth finding out. It may be that it
was not Madame de Cintré that backed out first, very likely the old
woman put her up to it. I suspect she and her mother are really as
thick as thieves, eh? You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind
to that. If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so
much; and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have
thought of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should
have thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.”
Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre
eye; never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely
the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram’s
glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a
slightly lurid smile. “You must at least do justice,” she said, “to the
felicity with which Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too
zealous wife.”
But even without the aid of Tom Tristram’s conversational felicities,
Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again. He could
cease to think of them only when he ceased to think of his loss and
privation, and the days had as yet but scantily lightened the weight of
this incommodity. In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she
assured him that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.
“How can I help it?” he demanded with a trembling voice. “I feel like a
widower—and a widower who has not even the consolation of going to
stand beside the grave of his wife—who has not the right to wear so
much mourning as a weed on his hat. I feel,” he added in a moment “as
if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at large.”
Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said, with a
smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully
simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were; “Are you very
sure that you would have been happy?”
Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head. “That’s weak,” he
said; “that won’t do.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, “I don’t
believe you would have been happy.”
Newman gave a little laugh. “Say I should have been miserable, then;
it’s a misery I should have preferred to any happiness.”
Mrs. Tristram began to muse. “I should have been curious to see; it
would have been very strange.”
“Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?”
“A little,” said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious. Newman
gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment, and then she
said, “That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much to
see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place; second,
what would happen if it should take place.”
“So you didn’t believe,” said Newman, resentfully.
“Yes, I believed—I believed that it would take place, and that you
would be happy. Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations, a
very heartless creature. _But_,” she continued, laying her hand upon
Newman’s arm and hazarding a grave smile, “it was the highest flight
ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!”
Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for
three months. Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget
his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed
it. “I really feel,” Newman rejoined, “as if to leave _you_, at least,
would do me good—and cost me very little effort. You are growing
cynical, you shock me and pain me.”
“Very good,” said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as may be
thought most probable. “I shall certainly see you again.”
Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets
he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to
wear a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be
in the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining
mockery. He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his
preparations. Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train
that would transport him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the
shores of Britain. As he rolled along in the train he asked himself
what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was
provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till
called for.
He arrived in London in the midst of what is called “the season,” and
it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself in the way of
being diverted from his heavy-heartedness. He knew no one in all
England, but the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat
from his apathy. Anything that was enormous usually found favor with
Newman, and the multitudinous energies and industries of England
stirred within him a dull vivacity of contemplation. It is on record
that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality; he
took long walks and explored London in every direction; he sat by the
hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining Drive, watching the
people and the horses and the carriages; the rosy English beauties, the
wonderful English dandies, and the splendid flunkies. He went to the
opera and found it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and
found a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest points of
which came within the range of his comprehension. He made several
excursions into the country, recommended by the waiter at his hotel,
with whom, on this and similar points, he had established confidential
relations. He watched the deer in Windsor Forest and admired the Thames
from Richmond Hill; he ate white-bait and brown-bread and butter at
Greenwich, and strolled in the grassy shadow of the cathedral of
Canterbury. He also visited the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud’s
exhibition. One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and then,
thinking again, he gave it up. Why should he go to Sheffield? He had a
feeling that the link which bound him to a possible interest in the
manufacture of cutlery was broken. He had no desire for an “inside
view” of any successful enterprise whatever, and he would not have
given the smallest sum for the privilege of talking over the details of
the most “splendid” business with the shrewdest of overseers.
One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly threading
his way through the human maze which edges the Drive. The stream of
carriages was no less dense, and Newman, as usual, marveled at the
strange, dingy figures which he saw taking the air in some of the
stateliest vehicles. They reminded him of what he had read of eastern
and southern countries, in which grotesque idols and fetiches were
sometimes taken out of their temples and carried abroad in golden
chariots to be displayed to the multitude. He saw a great many pretty
cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed his way through serried
waves of crumpled muslin; and sitting on little chairs at the base of
the great serious English trees, he observed a number of quiet-eyed
maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh that the magic of beauty
had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintré: to say nothing of
other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet, and who struck him still more
as a satire on possible consolation. He had been walking for some time,
when, directly in front of him, borne back by the summer breeze, he
heard a few words uttered in that bright Parisian idiom from which his
ears had begun to alienate themselves. The voice in which the words
were spoken made them seem even more like a thing with which he had
once been familiar, and as he bent his eyes it lent an identity to the
commonplace elegance of the back hair and shoulders of a young lady
walking in the same direction as himself. Mademoiselle Nioche,
apparently, had come to seek a more rapid advancement in London, and
another glance led Newman to suppose that she had found it. A gentleman
was strolling beside her, lending a most attentive ear to her
conversation and too entranced to open his lips. Newman did not hear
his voice, but perceived that he presented the dorsal expression of a
well-dressed Englishman. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention:
the ladies who passed her turned round to survey the Parisian
perfection of her toilet. A great cataract of flounces rolled down from
the young lady’s waist to Newman’s feet; he had to step aside to avoid
treading upon them. He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of
movement which the occasion scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect
glimpse of Miss Noémie had excited his displeasure. She seemed an
odious blot upon the face of nature; he wanted to put her out of his
sight. He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green in the earth
of his burial—his young life clipped by this flourishing impudence. The
perfume of the young lady’s finery sickened him; he turned his head and
tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept him
near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
“Ah, I am sure he will miss me,” she murmured. “It was very cruel in me
to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless creature.
He might perfectly well have come with us. I don’t think he is very
well,” she added; “it seemed to me to-day that he was not very gay.”
Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an opening
among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said to himself
that she was probably paying a tribute to British propriety and playing
at tender solicitude about her papa. Was that miserable old man still
treading the path of vice in her train? Was he still giving her the
benefit of his experience of affairs, and had he crossed the sea to
serve as her interpreter? Newman walked some distance farther, and then
began to retrace his steps taking care not to traverse again the orbit
of Mademoiselle Nioche. At last he looked for a chair under the trees,
but he had some difficulty in finding an empty one. He was about to
give up the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at his
neighbors. He sat there for some time without heeding them; his
attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced by his
recent glimpse of Miss Noémie’s iniquitous vitality. But at the end of
a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog
squatted upon the path near his feet—a diminutive but very perfect
specimen of its interesting species. The pug was sniffing at the
fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black muzzle, and
was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon
attached to his collar with an enormous rosette and held in the hand of
a person seated next to Newman. To this person Newman transferred his
attention, and immediately perceived that he was the object of all that
of his neighbor, who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed
white eyes. These eyes Newman instantly recognized; he had been sitting
for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche. He had vaguely felt
that someone was staring at him. M. Nioche continued to stare; he
appeared afraid to move, even to the extent of evading Newman’s glance.
“Dear me,” said Newman; “are you here, too?” And he looked at his
neighbor’s helplessness more grimly than he knew. M. Nioche had a new
hat and a pair of kid gloves; his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a
more recent antiquity than of yore. Over his arm was suspended a lady’s
mantilla—a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace—which
had apparently been committed to his keeping; and the little dog’s blue
ribbon was wound tightly round his hand. There was no expression of
recognition in his face—or of anything indeed save a sort of feeble,
fascinated dread; Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla, and
then he met the old man’s eyes again. “You know me, I see,” he pursued.
“You might have spoken to me before.” M. Nioche still said nothing, but
it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly to water. “I didn’t
expect,” our hero went on, “to meet you so far from—from the Café de la
Patrie.” The old man remained silent, but decidedly Newman had touched
the source of tears. His neighbor sat staring and Newman added, “What’s
the matter, M. Nioche? You used to talk—to talk very prettily. Don’t
you remember you even gave lessons in conversation?”
At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude. He stooped and picked
up the pug, lifted it to his face and wiped his eyes on its little soft
back. “I’m afraid to speak to you,” he presently said, looking over the
puppy’s shoulder. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice me. I should have moved
away, but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me. So I sat
very still.”
“I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir,” said Newman.
The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap.
Then he shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his
interlocutor. “No, Mr. Newman, I have a good conscience,” he murmured.
“Then why should you want to slink away from me?”
“Because—because you don’t understand my position.”
“Oh, I think you once explained it to me,” said Newman. “But it seems
improved.”
“Improved!” exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath. “Do you call this
improvement?” And he glanced at the treasures in his arms.
“Why, you are on your travels,” Newman rejoined. “A visit to London in
the season is certainly a sign of prosperity.”
M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony, lifted the puppy up
to his face again, peering at Newman with his small blank eye-holes.
There was something almost imbecile in the movement, and Newman hardly
knew whether he was taking refuge in a convenient affectation of
unreason, or whether he had in fact paid for his dishonor by the loss
of his wits. In the latter case, just now, he felt little more tenderly
to the foolish old man than in the former. Responsible or not, he was
equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous daughter. Newman
was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty appeared to
disengage itself from the old man’s misty gaze. “Are you going away?”
he asked.
“Do you want me to stay?” said Newman.
“I should have left you—from consideration. But my dignity suffers at
your leaving me—that way.”
“Have you got anything particular to say to me?”
M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then
he said, very softly but distinctly, “I have _not_ forgiven her!”
Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment not to
perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some metaphysical image
of his implacability. “It doesn’t much matter whether you forgive her
or not,” said Newman. “There are other people who won’t, I assure you.”
“What has she done?” M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round again.
“I don’t know what she does, you know.”
“She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn’t matter what,” said
Newman. “She’s a nuisance; she ought to be stopped.”
M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently upon
Newman’s arm. “Stopped, yes,” he whispered. “That’s it. Stopped short.
She is running away—she must be stopped.” Then he paused a moment and
looked round him. “I mean to stop her,” he went on. “I am only waiting
for my chance.”
“I see,” said Newman, laughing briefly again. “She is running away and
you are running after her. You have run a long distance!”
But M. Nioche stared insistently: “I shall stop her!” he softly
repeated.
He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated, as if
by the impulse to make way for an important personage. Presently,
through the opening, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche, attended by the
gentleman whom Newman had lately observed. His face being now presented
to our hero, the latter recognized the irregular features, the hardly
more regular complexion, and the amiable expression of Lord Deepmere.
Noémie, on finding herself suddenly confronted with Newman, who, like
M. Nioche, had risen from his seat, faltered for a barely perceptible
instant. She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him yesterday,
and then, with a good-natured smile, “_Tiens_, how we keep meeting!”
she said. She looked consummately pretty, and the front of her dress
was a wonderful work of art. She went up to her father, stretching out
her hands for the little dog, which he submissively placed in them, and
she began to kiss it and murmur over it: “To think of leaving him all
alone,—what a wicked, abominable creature he must believe me! He has
been very unwell,” she added, turning and affecting to explain to
Newman, with a spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in
her eye. “I don’t think the English climate agrees with him.”
“It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress,” said Newman.
“Do you mean me? I have never been better, thank you,” Miss Noémie
declared. “But with _milord_”—and she gave a brilliant glance at her
late companion—“how can one help being well?” She seated herself in the
chair from which her father had risen, and began to arrange the little
dog’s rosette.
Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to
this unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a
Briton. He blushed a good deal, and greeted the object of his late
momentary aspiration to rivalry in the favor of a person other than the
mistress of the invalid pug with an awkward nod and a rapid
ejaculation—an ejaculation to which Newman, who often found it hard to
understand the speech of English people, was able to attach no meaning.
Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip, and with a
conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noémie. Suddenly an idea seemed
to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman, “Oh, you know her?”
“Yes,” said Newman, “I know her. I don’t believe you do.”
“Oh dear, yes, I do!” said Lord Deepmere, with another grin. “I knew
her in Paris—by my poor cousin Bellegarde, you know. He knew her, poor
fellow, didn’t he? It was she, you know, who was at the bottom of his
affair. Awfully sad, wasn’t it?” continued the young man, talking off
his embarrassment as his simple nature permitted. “They got up some
story about its being for the Pope; about the other man having said
something against the Pope’s morals. They always do that, you know.
They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves. But
it was about _her_ morals—_she_ was the Pope!” Lord Deepmere pursued,
directing an eye illumined by this pleasantry toward Mademoiselle
Nioche, who was bending gracefully over her lap-dog, apparently
absorbed in conversation with it. “I dare say you think it rather odd
that I should—ah—keep up the acquaintance,” the young man resumed; “but
she couldn’t help it, you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth
cousin. I dare say you think it’s rather cheeky, my showing with her in
Hyde Park, but you see she isn’t known yet, and she’s in such very good
form——” And Lord Deepmere’s conclusion was lost in the attesting glance
which he again directed toward the young lady.
Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished. M.
Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter’s approach, and he stood
there, within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground. It
had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite to place on
record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter. As Newman was
moving away he looked up and drew near to him, and Newman, seeing the
old man had something particular to say, bent his head for an instant.
“You will see it some day in the papers,” murmured M. Nioche.
Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the
newspapers form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested
by any paragraph forming a sequel to this announcement.
CHAPTER XXVI
In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life
upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed a
great many dull days. But the dullness of his days pleased him; his
melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage, like a healing
wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness. He had company
in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other. He had no
desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple of notes
of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram. He thought a
great deal of Madame de Cintré—sometimes with a dogged tranquillity
which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour at a time, a near
neighbor to forgetfulness. He lived over again the happiest hours he
had known—that silver chain of numbered days in which his afternoon
visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result, had subtilized his good
humor to a sort of spiritual intoxication. He came back to reality,
after such reveries, with a somewhat muffled shock; he had begun to
feel the need of accepting the unchangeable. At other times the reality
became an infamy again and the unchangeable an imposture, and he gave
himself up to his angry restlessness till he was weary. But on the
whole he fell into a rather reflective mood. Without in the least
intending it or knowing it, he attempted to read the moral of his
strange misadventure. He asked himself, in his quieter hours, whether
perhaps, after all, he _was_ more commercial than was pleasant. We know
that it was in obedience to a strong reaction against questions
exclusively commercial that he had come out to pick up æsthetic
entertainment in Europe; it may therefore be understood that he was
able to conceive that a man might be too commercial. He was very
willing to grant it, but the concession, as to his own case, was not
made with any very oppressive sense of shame. If he had been too
commercial, he was ready to forget it, for in being so he had done no
man any wrong that might not be as easily forgotten. He reflected with
sober placidity that at least there were no monuments of his “meanness”
scattered about the world. If there was any reason in the nature of
things why his connection with business should have cast a shadow upon
a connection—even a connection broken—with a woman justly proud, he was
willing to sponge it out of his life forever. The thing seemed a
possibility; he could not feel it, doubtless, as keenly as some people,
and it hardly seemed worth while to flap his wings very hard to rise to
the idea; but he could feel it enough to make any sacrifice that still
remained to be made. As to what such sacrifice was now to be made to,
here Newman stopped short before a blank wall over which there
sometimes played a shadowy imagery. He had a fancy of carrying out his
life as he would have directed it if Madame de Cintré had been left to
him—of making it a religion to do nothing that she would have disliked.
In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale,
oblique ray of inspiration. It would be lonely entertainment—a good
deal like a man talking to himself in the mirror for want of better
company. Yet the idea yielded Newman several half hours’ dumb
exaltation as he sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs
stretched, over the relics of an expensively poor dinner, in the
undying English twilight. If, however, his commercial imagination was
dead, he felt no contempt for the surviving actualities begotten by it.
He was glad he had been prosperous and had been a great man of business
rather than a small one; he was extremely glad he was rich. He felt no
impulse to sell all he had and give to the poor, or to retire into
meditative economy and asceticism. He was glad he was rich and
tolerably young; if it was possible to think too much about buying and
selling, it was a gain to have a good slice of life left in which not
to think about them. Come, what should he think about now? Again and
again Newman could think only of one thing; his thoughts always came
back to it, and as they did so, with an emotional rush which seemed
physically to express itself in a sudden upward choking, he leaned
forward—the waiter having left the room—and, resting his arms on the
table, buried his troubled face.
He remained in England till midsummer, and spent a month in the
country, wandering about cathedrals, castles, and ruins. Several times,
taking a walk from his inn into meadows and parks, he stopped by a
well-worn stile, looked across through the early evening at a gray
church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling swallows, and
remembered that this might have been part of the entertainment of his
honeymoon. He had never been so much alone or indulged so little in
accidental dialogue. The period of recreation appointed by Mrs.
Tristram had at last expired, and he asked himself what he should do
now. Mrs. Tristram had written to him, proposing to him that he should
join her in the Pyrenees; but he was not in the humor to return to
France. The simplest thing was to repair to Liverpool and embark on the
first American steamer. Newman made his way to the great seaport and
secured his berth; and the night before sailing he sat in his room at
the hotel, staring down, vacantly and wearily, at an open portmanteau.
A number of papers were lying upon it, which he had been meaning to
look over; some of them might conveniently be destroyed. But at last he
shuffled them roughly together, and pushed them into a corner of the
valise; they were business papers, and he was in no humor for sifting
them. Then he drew forth his pocket-book and took out a paper of
smaller size than those he had dismissed. He did not unfold it; he
simply sat looking at the back of it. If he had momentarily entertained
the idea of destroying it, the idea quickly expired. What the paper
suggested was the feeling that lay in his innermost heart and that no
reviving cheerfulness could long quench—the feeling that after all and
above all he was a good fellow wronged. With it came a hearty hope that
the Bellegardes were enjoying their suspense as to what he would do
yet. The more it was prolonged the more they would enjoy it! He had
hung fire once, yes; perhaps, in his present queer state of mind, he
might hang fire again. But he restored the little paper to his
pocket-book very tenderly, and felt better for thinking of the suspense
of the Bellegardes. He felt better every time he thought of it after
that, as he sailed the summer seas. He landed in New York and journeyed
across the continent to San Francisco, and nothing that he observed by
the way contributed to mitigate his sense of being a good fellow
wronged.
He saw a great many other good fellows—his old friends—but he told none
of them of the trick that had been played him. He said simply that the
lady he was to have married had changed her mind, and when he was asked
if he had changed his own, he said, “Suppose we change the subject.” He
told his friends that he had brought home no “new ideas” from Europe,
and his conduct probably struck them as an eloquent proof of failing
invention. He took no interest in chatting about his affairs and
manifested no desire to look over his accounts. He asked half a dozen
questions which, like those of an eminent physician inquiring for
particular symptoms, showed that he still knew what he was talking
about; but he made no comments and gave no directions. He not only
puzzled the gentlemen on the stock exchange, but he was himself
surprised at the extent of his indifference. As it seemed only to
increase, he made an effort to combat it; he tried to interest himself
and to take up his old occupations. But they appeared unreal to him; do
what he would he somehow could not believe in them. Sometimes he began
to fear that there was something the matter with his head; that his
brain, perhaps, had softened, and that the end of his strong activities
had come. This idea came back to him with an exasperating force. A
hopeless, helpless loafer, useful to no one and detestable to
himself—this was what the treachery of the Bellegardes had made of him.
In his restless idleness he came back from San Francisco to New York,
and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel, looking out through a
huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing stream of pretty girls in
Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past with little parcels nursed
against their neat figures. At the end of three days he returned to San
Francisco, and having arrived there he wished he had stayed away. He
had nothing to do, his occupation was gone, and it seemed to him that
he should never find it again. He had nothing to do _here_, he
sometimes said to himself; but there was something beyond the ocean
that he was still to do; something that he had left undone
experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could content itself to
remain undone. But it was not content: it kept pulling at his
heartstrings and thumping at his reason; it murmured in his ears and
hovered perpetually before his eyes. It interposed between all new
resolutions and their fulfillment; it seemed like a stubborn ghost,
dumbly entreating to be laid. Till that was done he should never be
able to do anything else.
One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval, he
received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated by a
charitable desire to amuse and distract her correspondent. She gave him
much Paris gossip, talked of General Packard and Miss Kitty Upjohn,
enumerated the new plays at the theatre, and enclosed a note from her
husband, who had gone down to spend a month at Nice. Then came her
signature, and after this her postscript. The latter consisted of these
few lines: “I heard three days since from my friend, the Abbé Aubert,
that Madame de Cintré last week took the veil at the Carmelites. It was
on her twenty-seventh birthday, and she took the name of her,
patroness, St. Veronica. Sister Veronica has a lifetime before her!”
This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started
for Paris. His wound began to ache with its first fierceness, and
during his long bleak journey the thought of Madame de Cintré’s
“life-time,” passed within prison walls on whose outer side he might
stand, kept him perpetual company. Now he would fix himself in Paris
forever; he would extort a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if
she was not there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was. He
descended, unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping lonely
watch in his great empty saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann. They were
as neat as a Dutch village, Mrs. Bread’s only occupation had been
removing individual dust-particles. She made no complaint, however, of
her loneliness, for in her philosophy a servant was but a mysteriously
projected machine, and it would be as fantastic for a housekeeper to
comment upon a gentleman’s absences as for a clock to remark upon not
being wound up. No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the
time, and no particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused
by the career of an exacting master. She ventured, nevertheless, to
express a modest hope that Newman meant to remain a while in Paris.
Newman laid his hand on hers and shook it gently. “I mean to remain
forever,” he said.
He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed,
and who expected him. She looked at him a moment and shook her head.
“This won’t do,” she said; “you have come back too soon.” He sat down
and asked about her husband and her children, tried even to inquire
about Miss Dora Finch. In the midst of this—“Do you know where she is?”
he asked, abruptly.
Mrs. Tristram hesitated a moment; of course he couldn’t mean Miss Dora
Finch. Then she answered, properly: “She has gone to the other house—in
the Rue d’Enfer.” After Newman had sat a while longer looking very
sombre, she went on: “You are not so good a man as I thought. You are
more—you are more—”
“More what?” Newman asked.
“More unforgiving.”
“Good God!” cried Newman; “do you expect me to forgive?”
“No, not that. I have forgiven, so of course you can’t. But you might
forget! You have a worse temper about it than I should have expected.
You look wicked—you look dangerous.”
“I may be dangerous,” he said; “but I am not wicked. No, I am not
wicked.” And he got up to go. Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to
dinner; but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to
be present at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest. Later in the
evening, if he should be able, he would come.
He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it, and took
the direction of the Rue d’Enfer. The day had the softness of early
spring; but the weather was gray and humid. Newman found himself in a
part of Paris which he little knew—a region of convents and prisons, of
streets bordered by long dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers.
At the intersection of two of these streets stood the house of the
Carmelites—a dull, plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all
round it. From without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep
roof and its chimneys. But these things revealed no symptoms of human
life; the place looked dumb, deaf, inanimate. The pale, dead,
discolored wall stretched beneath it, far down the empty side street—a
vista without a human figure. Newman stood there a long time; there
were no passers; he was free to gaze his fill. This seemed the goal of
his journey; it was what he had come for. It was a strange
satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of
the place seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing. It
told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall, and that the
days and years of the future would pile themselves above her like the
huge immovable slab of a tomb. These days and years, in this place,
would always be just so gray and silent. Suddenly, from the thought of
their seeing him stand there, again the charm utterly departed. He
would never stand there again; it was gratuitous dreariness. He turned
away with a heavy heart, but with a heart lighter than the one he had
brought. Everything was over, and he too at last could rest. He walked
down through narrow, winding streets to the edge of the Seine again,
and there he saw, close above him, the soft, vast towers of Notre Dame.
He crossed one of the bridges and stood a moment in the empty place
before the great cathedral; then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged
portals. He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the
splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells chiming
off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world. He was very tired;
this was the best place he could be in. He said no prayers; he had no
prayers to say. He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing
to ask; nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself. But a
great cathedral offers a very various hospitality, and Newman sat in
his place, because while he was there he was out of the world. The most
unpleasant thing that had ever happened to him had reached its formal
conclusion, as it were; he could close the book and put it away. He
leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him; when he
took it up he felt that he was himself again. Somewhere in his mind, a
tight knot seemed to have loosened. He thought of the Bellegardes; he
had almost forgotten them. He remembered them as people he had meant to
do something to. He gave a groan as he remembered what he had meant to
do; he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom, suddenly, had
fallen out of his revenge. Whether it was Christian charity or
unregenerate good nature—what it was, in the background of his soul—I
don’t pretend to say; but Newman’s last thought was that of course he
would let the Bellegardes go.
If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn’t want to
hurt them. He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them. They had hurt
him, but such things were really not his game. At last he got up and
came out of the darkening church; not with the elastic step of a man
who had won a victory or taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a
good-natured man who is still a little ashamed.
Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back
his things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before.
His gentle stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed.
“Dear me, sir,” she exclaimed, “I thought you said that you were going
to stay forever.”
“I meant that I was going to stay away forever,” said Newman kindly.
And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has
certainly not returned. The gilded apartments I have so often spoken of
stand ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious residence
for Mrs. Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room, adjusting the
tassels of the curtains, and keeps her wages, which are regularly
brought her by a banker’s clerk, in a great pink Sèvres vase on the
drawing-room mantelshelf.
Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram’s and found Tom
Tristram by the domestic fireside. “I’m glad to see you back in Paris,”
this gentleman declared. “You know it’s really the only place for a
white man to live.” Mr. Tristram made his friend welcome, according to
his own rosy light, and offered him a convenient _résumé_ of the
Franco-American gossip of the last six months. Then at last he got up
and said he would go for half an hour to the club. “I suppose a man who
has been for six months in California wants a little intellectual
conversation. I’ll let my wife have a go at you.”
Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to
remain; and then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to
Mrs. Tristram. She presently asked him what he had done after leaving
her. “Nothing particular,” said Newman.
“You struck me,” she rejoined, “as a man with a plot in his head. You
looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you had
left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go.”
“I only went over to the other side of the river—to the Carmelites,”
said Newman.
Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled. “What did you do
there? Try to scale the wall?”
“I did nothing. I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came
away.”
Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance. “You didn’t happen to meet
M. de Bellegarde,” she asked, “staring hopelessly at the convent wall
as well? I am told he takes his sister’s conduct very hard.”
“No, I didn’t meet him, I am happy to say,” Newman answered, after a
pause.
“They are in the country,” Mrs. Tristram went on; “at—what is the name
of the place?—Fleurières. They returned there at the time you left
Paris and have been spending the year in extreme seclusion. The little
marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has eloped with her
daughter’s music-master!”
Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with
extreme interest. At last he spoke: “I mean never to mention the name
of those people again, and I don’t want to hear anything more about
them.” And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of
paper. He looked at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire.
“I am going to burn them up,” he said. “I am glad to have you as a
witness. There they go!” And he tossed the paper into the flame.
Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended. “What is that
paper?” she asked.
Newman leaning against the fireplace, stretched his arms and drew a
longer breath than usual. Then after a moment, “I can tell you now,” he
said. “It was a paper containing a secret of the Bellegardes—something
which would damn them if it were known.”
Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan. “Ah, why
didn’t you show it to me?”
“I thought of showing it to you—I thought of showing it to everyone. I
thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way. So I told them,
and I frightened them. They have been staying in the country as you
tell me, to keep out of the explosion. But I have given it up.”
Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again. “Have you quite given
it up?”
“Oh yes.”
“Is it very bad, this secret?”
“Yes, very bad.”
“For myself,” said Mrs. Tristram, “I am sorry you have given it up. I
should have liked immensely to see your paper. They have wronged me
too, you know, as your sponsor and guarantee, and it would have served
for my revenge as well. How did you come into possession of your
secret?”
“It’s a long story. But honestly, at any rate.”
“And they knew you were master of it?”
“Oh, I told them.”
“Dear me, how interesting!” cried Mrs. Tristram. “And you humbled them
at your feet?”
Newman was silent a moment. “No, not at all. They pretended not to
care—not to be afraid. But I know they did care—they were afraid.”
“Are you very sure?”
Newman stared a moment. “Yes, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Tristram resumed her slow stitches. “They defied you, eh?”
“Yes,” said Newman, “it was about that.”
“You tried by the threat of exposure to make them retract?” Mrs.
Tristram pursued.
“Yes, but they wouldn’t. I gave them their choice, and they chose to
take their chance of bluffing off the charge and convicting me of
fraud. But they _were_ frightened,” Newman added, “and I have had all
the vengeance I want.”
“It is most provoking,” said Mrs. Tristram, “to hear you talk of the
‘charge’ when the charge is burnt up. Is it quite consumed?” she asked,
glancing at the fire.
Newman assured her that there was nothing left of it. “Well then,” she
said, “I suppose there is no harm in saying that you probably did not
make them so very uncomfortable. My impression would be that since, as
you say, they defied you, it was because they believed that, after all,
you would never really come to the point. Their confidence, after
counsel taken of each other, was not in their innocence, nor in their
talent for bluffing things off; it was in your remarkable good nature!
You see they were right.”
Newman instinctively turned to see if the little paper was in fact
consumed; but there was nothing left of it.
THE END
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