YALE
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
THE NOVELS AND TALES OF
HENRY JAMES
New York Edition
VOLUME II
The Faubourg Saint-Germain.,
THE AMERICAN
BY
HENRY JAMES
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
Copyright, 1877, by H. O. Houghton & Co., and
James R. Osgood & Co.
Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Published under special arrangement with
Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
PREFACE
44 The American," which I had begun in Paris early in
the winter of 18J5-76, made its first appearance in "The
Atlantic Monthly" uFJiine of the latter year and continued
fhere, from "month to month, till May of the next. It started
on its course while much was still unwritten, and there again
come back to me, with this remembrance, the frequent
hauntings and alarms of that comparatively early time ; the
habit of wondering what would happen if anything should
" happen," if one should break one's arm by an accident or
make a long illness or suffer, in body, mind, fortune, any
other visitation involving a loss of time. The habit of ap¬
prehension became of course in some degree the habit of
confidence that one would pull through, that, with oppor¬
tunity enough, grave interruption never yet had descended,
and that a special Providence, in short, despite the sad
warning of Thackeray's " Denis Duval " and of Mrs. Gas-
kell's " Wives and Daughters " (that of Stevenson's " Weir
of Hermiston " was yet to come) watches over anxious
novelists condemned to the economy of serialisation. I make
myself out in memory as having at least for many months
and in many places given my Providence much to do : so
great a variety of scenes of labour, implying all so much
renewal of application, glimmer out of the book as I now
read it over. And yet as the faded interest of the whole
episode becomes again mildly vivid what I seem most to
recover is, in its pale spectrality, a degree of joy, an eager¬
ness on behalf of my recital, that must recklessly enough
have overridden anxieties of every sort, including any view
of inherent difficulties.
I seem to recall no other like connexion in which the
case was met, to my measure, by so fond^i complacency,
in which my subject can have appeared so apt to take care
v
PREFACE
of itselfa I see now that I might all the while have taken
much better care of it ; yet, as I had at the time no sense
of neglecting it, neither acute nor rueful solicitude, I can
but speculate all vainly to-day on the oddity of my com¬
posure. I ask myself indeed if, possibly, recognising after
I was launched the danger of an inordinate leak — since the
ship has truly a hole in its side more than sufficient to have
sunk it — I may not have managed, as a counsel of mere
despair, to stop my ears against the noise of waters and
pretend to myself I was afloat; being indubitably, in any
case, at sea, with no harbour of refuge till the end of my
serial voyage. If I succeeded at all in that emulation (in
another sphere) of the pursued ostrich I must have succeeded
altogether ; must have buried my head in the sand and there
found beatitude. The explanation of my enjoyment of it,
no doubt, is that I was more than commonly enamoured
of my idea, and that I believed it, so trusted, so imaginat¬
ively fostered, not less capable of limping to its goal on
three feet than on one. The lameness might be what it
would ^1 clearly, for myself, felt the things — which is
the most a dramatist can ever ask of his drama T) and I shall
here accordingly indulge myself in speaking first of how,
superficially, it did so proceed; explaining then what I mean
by its practical dependence on a miracle.
It had come to me, this happy, halting view of an inter¬
esting case, abruptly enough, some years before: I recall
sharply the felicity of the first glimpse, though I forget the
accident of thought that produced it. I recall that I was
seated in an American " horse-car " when I found myself,
of a sudden, considering with enthusiasm, as the theme of
* a " story," the situation, in another country and an aristo¬
cratic society, of some robust but insidiously beguiled and
betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot: the point being
in especial that he should suffer at the hands of persons
pretending to represent the highest possible civilisation and
toJj>e of an order in every way superior to his own. WKat
would he " do" in that predicament, how would We~right
himself, or how, failing a remedy, would he conduct him-
vi
PREFACE
self under his wrong ? This would be the question involved,
affd I remember well how, having entered the horse-car
without a dream of it, I was presently to leave that vehicle
in full possession of my answer. He would behave in the
most interesting manner—it would all depend on that:
stricken, smarting, sore, he would arrive at his just vindi¬
cation and then would fail of all triumphantly and all Vul¬
garly enjoying it. He would hold his revenge and cherish it
ancT feef its sweetness, and then in the very act of forcing
it Rome would sacrifice it in disgust. He would let them
go, in short, his haughty contemners, even while feeling
them, with joy, in his power, and he would obey, in so doing,
one of the large and easy impulses generally characteristic
of his type. He wouldn't " forgive "— that would have,
in the case, no application ; he would simply turn, at the
supreme moment, away, the bitterness of his personal loss
yielding to the very force of his aversion. AJ1 he would
have at the end wouldjbe therefore just the moral conven-
iejice^Im^ee^tlie-moral necessity, of his practical, but quite
unappreciated, magnanimity ; and one's last view of him
would be that of a "strong man indifferent to his strength
and too wrapped in fine, too wrapped abo"ve**~aH 7n other
and intenser, reflexions for the assertion of his " rights."
(TKIFlast™] point was of the essence and constituted in fact
the subject :)there would be no subject at all, obviously, — or
simply the commonest of the common, — if my gentleman
should enjoy his advantage. I was charmed with my idea,—
which would take, however, much working out; and pre¬
cisely because it had so much to give, I think, must I have
/dropped it for the time into the deep well of unconscious
cerebration : not without the hope, doubtless, that it might
eventually emerge from that reservoir^as one had already
known the buried treasure to come to light, with a firm
iridescent surface and a notable increase of weight.
This resurrection then took place in Paris, where I was at
the moment living, and in December 1875; my good fortune
being apparently that Paris had ever so promptly offered
me, and with an immediate directness at which I now mar-
vii
PREFACE
vel (since I had come back there, after earlier visitations,
but a few weeks before), everything that was needed to make
my conception concrete. I seem again at this distant day
to see it /become so quickly and easily, quite as if filling
itself with life^in that air. rThe objectivity it had wanted it
promptly put on, and if tne questions had been, with the
usual intensity, for my hero and his crisis — the whole for¬
midable list, the who ? the what ? the where ? the when ?
the why ? the how ? — they gathered their answers in the
cold shadow of the Arc de Triomphe\for fine reasons, very
much as if they had been plucking Spring flowers for the
weaving of a frolic garland. I saw from one day to another
my particular cluster of circumstances, with the life of the
splendid city playing up in it like a flashing fountain in
a marble basin. The very splendour seemed somehow to
witness and intervene ; it was importariFfor the effect of my
friendTs discomfiture that it should take place on a high and
lighteJ stage, and that his original ambition, the project
exposing him, should have sprung from beautiful and noLle
suggestions — those that, at certain hours and under certain
impressions, we feel the many-tinted medium by the Seine
irresistibly to communicate.^ It was all charmingly simple,
this conception, and the current must have gushed, full and
clear, to my imagination^from the moment Christopher New¬
man rose before me, on a perfect day of tinr-divnrcr"Paris
"spring, in the great gilded Salon Carre of the Louvre.^Under
this strong contagion of the place he would, by the happi¬
est of hazards, meet his old comrade, now initiated and domi¬
ciled ; after which the rest would gojjf itself^ If he was to
be wronged he would be wronged with just tnat conspicuity,
with his felicity at just that pitch and with the highest aggra¬
vation of the general effect of misery mocked at. Great and
gilded the whole trap set, in fine, for his wary freshness
and into which it would blunder upon its fate. I have,
I confess, no memory of a disturbing doubt; onr^ the man
himself was imaged to me (and that germination is a process
almost always untraceable^ he must have walked into the
situation as by taking a pass-key frolirTn^ocllcet.
viii
PREFACE
But what then meanwhile would be the affront one would
see him as most feeling ? The affront of course done him
as a lover ; aatLyet not that done by his mistress herself,
since injuries of this order are the stalest stuff of romance.
I was not to have him jilted, any more than I was to have
him successfully vindictive : both his wrong and his right
would have been in these cases of too vulgar a type. I
doubtless even then felt that the conception of Paris as the
consecrated scene of rash infatuations and bold bad treach¬
eries belongs, in the Anglo-Saxon imagination, to the infancy
of art. The right renovation of any such theme as that
would place it in Boston or at Cleveland, at Hartford or at
Utica—give it some local connexion in which we had not
already had so much of it. No, I should make my heroine
herself, if heroine there was to be, an equal victim — just
as Romeo was not less the sport of fate for not having been
interestedly sacrificed by Juliet; and^to this end I had but
to imagine " great people " again, imagine my hero con¬
fronted and involved with them, and impute to them, with
a fine free hand, the arrogance and cruelty, the tortuous
behaviour, in given conditions, of which great people have
been historically so often capable^ But as this was the
light in which they were to show, so the essence of the
matter would be that he should at the right moment find
them in his power, and so the situation would reach its
highest interest with the question of his utilisation of that
knowledge. It would be here, in the possession and appli¬
cation of his power, that he would come out strong and
would so deeply appeal to our sympathy. Here above all
it really was, however, that my conception unfurled, with
the best conscience in the world, the emblazoned flag of
romance; which venerable ensign it had, though quite
unwittingly, from the first and at every point sported in per¬
fect good faith. had been plotting arch-romance without
knowing itNjust as I began to write it that December day
without recognising it and just as I all serenely and bliss¬
fully pursued the process from month to month and from
place to place ; just as I now, in short, reading the book
ix
PREFACE
over, find it yields me no interest and no reward comparable
to the fond perception of this truth.
The thing is consistently, consummately — and I would
fain really make bold to say charmingly-^romantic ; and
all wjthout intention, presumption, hesitation, contritions
The effect is equally undesigned and unabashed, and I lose
myself, at this late hour, I am bound to add, in a certain
sad envy of the free play of so much unchallenged instinct.
One would like to woo back such hours of fine precipita¬
tion. They represent to the critical sense which the exercise
of^me's whole faculty has, with time, so inevitably and so
thoroughly waked up, the happiest season of surrender to the
invoked muse and the projected fable : the season of images
so free and confident and ready that they brush questions
aside and disport themselves, like the artless schoolboys of
Gray's beautiful Ode, in all the ecstasy of the ignorance
attending them. The time doubtless comes soon enough
when questions, as I call them, rule the roosnand when the
little victim, to adjust Gray's term again to the creature of
frolic fancy, does n't dare propose a gambol till they have all
(like a board of trustees discussing a new outlay) sat on the
possibly scandalous case. I somehow feel, accordingly, that
it was lucky to have sacrificed on this particular altar while
one still could ; though it is perhaps droll — in a yet higher
degree —to have done so not simply because one was guile¬
less, but even quite under the conviction, in a general way,
that, since no "rendering" of any object and no painting
of any picture can take effect without some form of reference
and control, so these guarantees could but reside in a high
probity of observation, must decidedly have supposed, all
the while, that I was acutely observing — and with a blest
absence of wonder at its being so easy. Let me certainly at
preserftTeJoice In that absence; for I ask myself how with¬
out it I could have written "The American."^
Was it indeed meanwhile my excellent conscience that
kept the charm as unbroken as it appears to me, in rich
retrospect, to have remained ? — or is it that I suffer the
mere influence of remembered, of associated places and
x
PREFACE
hours, all acute impressions, to palm itself off as the sign of
a finer confidence than I could justly claim ? It is a pleasure
to perceive how again and again the shrunken depths of
old work yet permit themselves to be sounded or — even
if rather terrible the image — " dragged " : the long pole of
memory stirs and rummages the bottom, and we fish up
such fragments and relics of the submerged life and the ex¬
tinct consciousness as tempt us to piece them together. My
windows looked into the Rue de Luxembourg — since then
meagrely re-named Rue Cambon — and the particular light
Parisian click of the small cab-horse on the clear asphalt,
with its sharpness of detonation between the high houses,
makes for the faded page to-day a sort of interlineation of
sound. This sound rises to a martial clatter at the moment
a troop of cuirassiers charges down the narrow street, each
morning, to file, directly opposite my house, through the plain
portal of the barracks occupying part of the vast domain
attached in a iearward manner to one of the Ministeres
that front on the Place Vendome; an expanse marked,
along a considerable stretch of the street, by one of those
high painted and administratively-placarded garden walls
that form deep, vague, recurrent notes in the organic vast-
ness of the city. I have but to re-read ten lines to recall
my daily effort not to waste time in hanging over the win¬
dow-bar for a sight of the cavalry the hard music of whose
hoofs so directly and thrillingly appealed; an effort that
inveterately failed — and a trivial circumstance now digni¬
fied, to my imagination, I may add, by the fact that the
fruits of this weakness, the various items of the vivid pic¬
ture, so constantly recaptured, must have been in themselves
suggestive and inspiring, must have been rich strains, in
their way, of the great Paris harmony, (i have ever, in gen¬
eral, found it difficult to write of places under too immedi¬
ate an impression—the impression that prevents standing
off and allows neither space nor time for perspective. The
image has had for the most part to be dim if the reflexion
was to be, as is proper for a reflexion, both sharp and quiet:
one has a horror, I think, artistically, of agitated reflexions.l
xi
PREFACE
Perhaps that is why the novel, after all, was to achieve,
as it went on, no great — certainly no very direct— trans¬
fusion of the immense overhanging presence. It had to save
as it could its own life, to keep tight hold of the tenuous
silver thread, the one hope for which was that it shouldn't
be tangled or clipped. This earnest grasp of the silver
thread was doubtless an easier business in other places —
though as I remount the stream of composition I see it
faintly coloured again : with the bright protection of the
Normandy coast (I worked away a few weeks at Etretat) ;
with the stronger glow of southernmost France, breaking
in during a stay at Bayonne; then with the fine historic
and other " psychic " substance of Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
a purple patch of terraced October before returning to Paris.
There comes after that the memory of a last brief intense
invocation of the enclosing scene, of the pious effort to un¬
wind my tangle, with a firm hand, in the very light (that
light of high, narrowish French windows in old rooms,
the light somehow, as one always feels, of " style " itself)
that had quickened my original vision. I was to pass over
to London that autumn ; which was a reason the more for
considering the matter — the matter of Newman's final
predicament — with due intensity : to let a loose end dangle
over into alien air would so fix upon the whole, I strenu¬
ously felt, the dishonour of piecemeal composition. There¬
fore I strove to finish — first in a small dusky hotel of the
Rive Gauche, where, though the windows again were high,
the days were dim and the crepuscular court, domestic,
intimate, " quaint," testified to ancient manners almost as
if it had been that of Balzac's Maison Vauquer in " Le
Pere Goriot" : and then once more in the Rue de Luxem¬
bourg, where a black-framed Empire portrait-medallion,
suspended in the centre of each white panel of my almost
noble old salon, made the coolest, discreetest, most meas¬
ured decoration, and where, through casements open to the
last mildness of the year, a belated Saint Martin's summer,
the tale was taken up afresh by the charming light click
and clatter, that sound as of the thin, quick, quite feminine
xii
PREFACE
surface-breathing of Paris,the shortest of rhythms for so huge
an organism.
I shall not tell whether I did there bring my book to
a close — and indeed I shrink, for myself, from putting the
question to the test of memory. I follow it so far, the old
urgent ingenious business, and then I lose sight of it: from
which I infer—- all exact recovery of the matter failing —
that I did not in the event drag over the Channel a length¬
ening chain ; which would have been detestable. I reduce
to the absurd perhaps, however, by that small subjective
issue, any undue measure of the interest of this insistent
recovery of what I have called attendant facts. There always
has been, for the valid work of art, a history — though
mainly inviting, doubtless, but to the curious critic, for
whom such things grow up and are formed very much in
the manner of attaching young lives and characters, those
conspicuous cases of happy development as to which evi¬
dence and anecdote are always in order. ^The development
indeed must be certain to have been happy, the life sincere,
the character fine : the work of art, to create or repay crit¬
ical curiosity, must in short have been very " valid " indeed.)
Yet there is on the other hand no mathematical measure
of that importance — it may be a matter of widely-varying
appreciation ; and I am willing to grant, assuredly, that
this interest, in a given relation, will nowhere so effectually
kindle as on the artist's own part. And I am afraid that
after all even his best excuse for it must remain the highly
personal plea— the joy of living over, as a chapter of ex¬
perience, the particular intellectual adventure. Here lurks
an immense homage to the general privilege of the artist,
to that constructive, that creative passion — portentous
words, but they are convenient — the exercise of which
finds so many an occasion for appearing to him the highest
of human fortunes, the rarest boon of the gods. He values
it, all sublimely and perhaps a little fatuously, for itself — as
the great extension, great beyond all others, of experience
and of consciousness ; with the toil and trouble a mere
sun-cast shadow that falls, shifts and vanishes, the result
xiii
PREFACE
of his living in so large a light. On the constant nameless
felicity of this Robert Louis Stevenson has, in an admirable
passage and as in so many other connexions, said the right
word: that/the partaker of the "life of art" who repines
at the absence of the rewards, as they are called, of the
pursuit might surely be better occupied.yMuch rather
should he endlessly wonder at his not having to pay half
his substance for his luxuriojAaJmroersion. He enjoys it,
so to speak, without a tax ; the effort of labour involved,
the torment of expression, of which we have heard in
our time so much, being after all but the last refinement
of his privilege. It may leave him weary and worn; but
how, after his fashion, he will have lived ! As if one were
to expect at once freedom and ease ! That silly safety is
but the sign of bondage and forfeiture. Who can imagine
free selection — which is the beautiful, terrible whole of art
— without fr^e difficulty P.^This is the very franchise of
the city and high ambition of the citizen. The vision
of the difficulty, as one looks back, bathes one's course in
a golden glow by which the very objects along the road are
transfigured and glorified; so that one exhibits them to other
eyes with an elation possibly presumptuous.
Since I accuse myself at all events of these complacencies
I take advantage of them to repeat that I value, in my re¬
trospect, nothing so much as the lively light on the romantic
property of my subject that I had not expected to encounter.
If in "The American " I invoked the romantic association
without malice prepense, yet with a production of the ro¬
mantic effect that is for myself unmistakeable, the occasion
is of the best perhaps for penetrating a little the obscurity
of that principle. ^By what art or mystery, what craft of
selection, omission or commission, does a given picture of life
appear to us to surround its theme, its figures and images,
with the air of romance while another picture close beside
it may affect us as steeping the whole matter in the element
of reality n It is a question, no doubt, on the painter's part,
very much more of perceived effect, effect after the fact,
than of conscious design — though indeed I have ever failed
xiv
PREFACE
to see how a coherent picture of anything is producible save
by a complex of fine measurements. The cause of the de¬
flexion, in one pronounced sense or the other, must lie
deep, however; so that (for the most part we recognise the
character of our interest only after the particular magic, as
I say, has thoroughly operated^— and then in truth but if
we be a bit critically minded, if we find our pleasure, that
is, in these intimate appreciations (for which, as I am well
aware, ninety-nine readers in a hundred have no use what¬
ever). The determining condition would at any rate seem
so latent that one may well doubt if the full artistic con¬
sciousness ever reaches it; leaving the matter thus(a case,
ever, not of an author's plotting and planning and calculat¬
ing, but just of his feeling and seeing, of his conceiving, in
a word, and of his thereby inevitably expressing himself,
under the influence of one value or the other!) These values
represent different sorts and degrees of the communicable
thrill, and I doubt if any novelist, for instance, ever proposed
to commit himself to one kind or the other with as little
mitigation as we are sometimes able to find for him. (The
interest is greatest — the interest of his genius, I mean,
and of his general wealth — when he commits himself in
both directions^ not quite at the same time or to the same
effect, of course, but b^some need of performing his whole
possible revolution, by the law of some rich passion in him
for extremes.*}
Of the men of largest responding imagination before the
human scene, of Scott, of Balzac, even of the coarse, com¬
prehensive, prodigious Zola, we feel, I think, that the de¬
flexion toward either quarter has never taken place; that
neither the nature of the man's faculty nor the nature of
his experience has ever quite determined it. His current
remains therefore extraordinarily rich and mixed, washing
us successively with the warm wave of the near and familiar
and the tonic shock, as may be, of the far and strange. (In
making which opposition I suggest not that the strange and
the far are at all necessarily romantic : they happen to be
simply the unknown, which is quite a different matter. The
xv
PREFACE
^real represents to my perception the things we cannot pos¬
sibly not know, sooner or later^in one way or another; it
being but one of the accidents of our hampered state, and
one of the incidents of their quantity and number, that par¬
ticular instances have not yet come our way. The romantic
stands, on the other hand, for the things that, with ill' the
facilities in the world, all the wealth and all the ^/ourage
and all the wit and all the adventure, we never can directly
know; the things that can reach us onTy through the beau¬
tiful circuit and subterfuge of our thought and our desire.^
There have been, I gather, many definitions of romance, as
a matter indispensably of boats, or of caravansf, or of tigers,
or of " historical characters," or of ghosts, or <j)f forgers, or
of detectives, or of beautiful wicked women, lor of pistols
and knives, but they appear for the most para, reducible to
the idea of the facing of danger^the acceptance of great
risks for the fascination, the very love, of their uncertainty,
the joy of success if possible and of battle in any case.) This
would be a fine formula if it bore examination ; but it strikes
iyp_ as weak and inadequate, as by no means covering the
true ground and yet as landing us in strange confusions.
The panting pursuit of danger is the pursuit of life itself,
in which danger awaits us possibly at every step and faces
us at every turn ; so that the dream of an intenser experi¬
ence easily becomes rather some vision of a sublime secur¬
ity like that enjoyed on the flowery plains of heaven, where
we may conceive ourselves proceeding in ecstasy from one
prodigious phase and form of it to another. (And if it be
insisted that the measure of the type is then in the apprecia¬
tion of danger — the sign of our projection of the real being
the smallness of its dangers, and that of our projection of
the romantic the hugeness^the mark of the distinction being
in short, as they say of Nsallaj^-atttHgloves and shoes, the
size and " number" of the danger —(tms discrimination
again surely fails, since it makes our difference not a differ¬
ence of kind^ which is what we want, but a difference only
of degree, and subject by that condition to the indignity of
a sliding scale and a shifting measure. There are immense
xvi
PREFACE
and flagrant dangers that are but sordid and squalid ones, as
we feel, tainting with their quality the very defiances they
provoke ; while there are common and covert ones, that
" look like nothing " and that can be but inwardly and oc¬
cultly dealt with, which involve the sharpest hazards to life
and honour and the highest instant decisions and intrepid¬
ities of action. It is an arbitrary stamp that keeps these
latter prosaic and makes the former heroic ; and yet I should
still less subscribe to a mere u subjective " division — I
mean one that would place the difference wholly in the
temper of the imperilled agent. It would be impossible to
have a more romantic temper than Flaubert's Madame Bo-
vary, and yet nothing less resembles a romance than the
record of her adventures. (T° classify it by that aspect —
the definition of the spirit that happens to animate her — is
like settling the question (as I have seen it witlessly settled)
by the presence or absence of "costume." Where again
then does costume begin or end y— save with the " run "
of one or another sort of play ? We must reserve vague
labels for artless mixtures. w
The only general attribute of projected romance that I
can see, the only one that fits alTlts cases, is the fact of
the kind of experience with which it deals — experience
liberate?"-, so to speak; experience disengaged, disembroiled,
disencumbered, exempt from the conditions that we usually
know to attach to it and, if we wish so to put the matter,
drag upon it, and operating in a medium which relieves itt
in a particular interest, inmnmjijpnrp nf ^ related, a
measurable state, a state subject to all our vulgar commun-
j^es/Trhe"greatest intensity may so be arrived aiTevi'clentiy"'
— when the sacrifice of community, of the " related" sides
of situations, has not been too rash?^ It must to this end
not flagrantly betray itself; (we must even be kept if pos¬
sible, for our illusion, from suspecting any sacrifice at alD
The balloon of experience is in fact of course tied to the
earth, and under that necessity we swing, thanks to a rope
of remarkable length, in the more or less commodious car
of the imagination; but it is by the rope we know where
xvii
PREFACE
we are, and from the moment that cable is cut we are at
large and unrelated : we only swing apart from the globe
— though remaining as exhilarated, naturally, as we like,
especially when all goes well. The art of the romancer is,
" for the fun of it," insidiously to cut the cable, to cut it
without our detecting him. What I have recognised then
in " The American," much to my surprise and alter~long
years, is that the experience here represented is the discon¬
nected and uncontrolled experience— uncontrolled by,our
genera] sense of u the way things happen " — which romance
alone more or less successfully palms off on us. It is a case
of(Newman's own intimate experience all, that being my
subject, the thread of which, from beginning to end, is not
once exchanged, however momentarily, for any other thread;
and the experience of others concerning us, and concerning
him, only so far as it touches him and as he recognises,
feels or divines it.l There is our general sense of the way
things happen — it abides with us indefeasibly, as readers
of fiction, from the moment we demand that our fiction
shall be intelligible; and there is our particular sense of
the way they don't happen, which is liable to wake up un¬
less reflexion and criticism, in us, have been skilfully and
successfully drugged. (There are drugs enough, clearly —
it is all a question of applying them with tact; in which
case the way things don't happen may be artfully made to
pass for the way things do)
Amusing and even touching to me, I profess, at this
time of day, the ingenuity (worthy, with whatever lapses,
of a better cause) with which, on behalf of Newman's ad¬
venture, this hocus-pocus is attempted : the value of the in¬
stance not being diminished either, surely, by its having been
attempted in such evident good faith. Yes, all is romantic
to my actual vision here, and not least so, I hasten to add,
the fabulous felicity of my candour.^The way things hap¬
pen is frankly not the way in which they are. represented
as having happened, in Paris, to my heroVthe situation
I had conceived only saddled me with that for want of my
invention of something better.} The great house of Belle-
xviii
PREFACE
garde, in a word, would, I now feel, given the circum¬
stances, given the whole of the ground, have comported
itself in a manner as difiprerif ac possible from the manner
ta..w.hich my narrative commits it ; of which truth, more¬
over, I am by no means sure that, in spite of what I have
called my serenity, I had not all the while an uneasy
suspicion. I had dug in my path, alas, a hole into which
I was destined to fall, fl was so possessed of my idea that
Newman should be ill-used — which was the essence of
my subject—that I attached too scant an importance to its
fashion of coming aboutJ) (Almost any fashion would
serve^I appear to have as'sumed, that would give me my
main chance for him; a matter(depending not so much on
the particular trick played him as on the interesting face
presented by him to any damnable trick^ So where I part'
company with terra-firm a is in making that 'pojected, ThaF
performed outrage so much more showy, dramatically speak¬
ing, tEari_sound. Had I patched it up to a greater apparent"
soundness my own trick, artistically speaking, would have
been played ; I should have cut the cable without my
reader's suspecting it. I doubtless at the time, I repeat,
believed I had taken my precautions ; but truly they should
have been greater, to impart the air of truth to the attitude
— that is first to the pomp and circumstance, and second
to the queer falsity — of the Bellegardes.
They would "positively have jumped then, the Bellegardes,
at my rich and easy American, and not have "minded"
in the least any drawback — especially as, after all, given
the pleasant palette from which I have painted him, there
were few drawbacks to mind. (My subject imposed on me
a group of closely-allied persons animated by immense pre¬
tensions— which was all very well, which might be full of
1-lVr promise of interest : only of interest felt most of all in
the light of comedy and of irony. YThis, better understood,
would have dwelt in the idea not in the least of their not
finding Newman good enough for their alliance and thence
being ready to sacrifice him, but in that of their taking
with alacrity everything he could give them, only asking
xix
PREFACE
for more and more, and then adjusting their pretensions
and their pride to it with all the comfort in life. Such
accommodation of the theory of a noble indifference to the
practice of a deep avidity is the real note of policy in forlorn
aristocracies — and I meant of course that the Bellegardes
should be virtually forlorn. The perversion of truth is
by no means, I think, in the displayed acuteness of their
remembrance of " who " and " what " they are, or at any
rate take themselves for ; since it is the misfortune of all
insistence on " worldly " advantages — and the situation of
such people bristles at the best (by which I mean under
whatever invocation of a superficial simplicity).with em¬
phasis, accent, assumption — to produce at times an effect
of grossness. The picture of their tergiversation, at all
events, however it may originally have seemed to me to
hang together, has taken on this rococo appearance precisely
because their preferred course, a thousand times preferred,
would have been to haul him and his fortune into their boat
under cover of night perhaps, in any case as quietly and
with as little bumping and splashing as possible, and there
accommodate him with the very safest and most convenient
seat. Given Newman, given the fact that the thing consti¬
tutes itself organically as his adventure, that too might very
well be a situation and a subject: only it would n't have
been the theme of " The American " as the book stands,
the theme to which I was from so early pledged. Since
I had wanted a " wrong " this other turn might even have
been arranged to give me that, might even have been ar¬
ranged to meet my requirement that somebody or something
should be "in his power" so delightfully; and with the
signal effect, after all, of " defining " everything. (It is as
difficult, I said above, to trace the dividing-line between the
real and the romantic as to plant a milestone between north
and south; but I am not sure an infallible sign of the latter
is not this rank vegetation of the " power " of bad people
that good get into, or vice versa. It is so rarely, alas, into
our power that any one gets ! ) .
It is difficult for me to-day to believe that I had not, as
xx
PREFACE
my work went on, some shade of the rueful sense of my
affront taxerisimilitude ; yet I catch the memory at least of
no great sharpness, no true critical anguish, of remorse : an
anomaly the reason of which in fact now glimmers inter¬
estingly out. My concern, as I saw it, was to make and
to keep Newman consistent ; the picture of his consistency
was all my undertaking, and the memory of that infatuation
perfectly abides with me. He was to be the lighted figure,
the^-others — even doubtless to an excessive degree the
woman who is made the agent of his discomfiture—were
tQ~be_ tug, obscured ; by which I should largely get the very
effect most to be invoked, that of a generous nature engaged
with forces, with difficulties and dangers, that it but half
understands. ^If Newman was attaching enough, I must
have argued, his tangle would be sensible enough ; for the
interest of everything is all that it is his vision, his concep¬
tion, his interpretation : at the window of his wide, quite
sufficiently wide, consciousness we are seated, from that
admirable position we "assist." He therefore supremely
matters ; all the rest matters only as he feels it, treats it,
meets it. >A beautiful infatuation this, always, I think, the
(intensity of the" creative effort to get into the skin of the
creature ; J the act of personal possession of one being—bv
Mother at its completest — and with the high enhance¬
ment, ever, that it is, by the same stroke, the effort of the
artist to preserve for his subject that unity, and for his use
of it fin other words for the interest he desires to excite)
that ^ffect of a centre, which most economise its value.
Its value is most discussable when that economy has
most operated; the content and the " importance" of a
work of art are in fine wholly dependent on its being one :
outside of which all prate of its representative character, its
meaning and its bearing, its morality and humanity, are
an impudent thing. Strong in that character T which is the
condition of its really bearing witness at all, it is_sti'ongjevejy
wgyw So much remains true then on behalf of my instinct
of multiplying the fine touches by which Newman should
live and communicate life; and yet I still ask myself, I
xxi
PREFACE
confess, what I can have made of " life," in my picture, at
such a juncture as the interval offered as elapsing between
my hero's first accepted state and the nuptial rites that
are to crown it. Nothing here is in truth " offered"—
everything is evaded, and the effect of this, I recognise, is
of the oddest. His relation to Madame de Cintre takes
a great stride, but the author appears to view that but as
a signal for letting it severely alone.
I have been stupefied, in so thoroughly revising the book,
to find, on turning a page, that the light in which he is pre¬
sented immediately after Madame de Bellegarde has con¬
spicuously introduced him to all her circle as her daughter's
husband-to-be is that of an evening at the opera quite
alone; as if he would n't surely spend his leisure, and espe¬
cially those hours of it, with his intended. Instinctively,
from that moment, one would have seen them intimately
and, for one's interest, beautifully together; with some
illustration of the beauty incumbent on the author. The
truth was that at this point the author, all gracelessly,
could but hold his breath and pass ; lingering was too diffi¬
cult— he had made for himself a crushing complication.
Since Madame de Cintre was after all to " back out" every
touch in the picture of her apparent loyalty would add to
her eventual shame. She had acted in clear good faith, but
how could I give the detail of an attitude, on her part, of
which the foundation was yet so weak ? I preferred, as the
minor evil, to shirk the attempt — at the cost evidently of
a signal loss of " charm " ; and with this lady, altogether,
I recognise, a light plank, too light a plank, is laid for the
reader over a dark " psychological " abyss. The delicate
clue to her conduct is never definitely placed in his hand :
I must have liked verily to think it was delicate and to flat¬
ter myself it was to be felt with finger-tips rather than
heavily tugged at. Here then, at any rate, is the romantic
tout crach'e — the fine flower of Newman's experience
blooming in a medium " cut off" and shut up to itself. I
don't for a moment pronounce any spell proceeding from
it necessarily the less workable, to a rejoicing ingenuity, for
xxii
PREFACE
that; beguile the reader's suspicion of his being shut up,
transform it for him into a positive illusion of the largest
liberty, and the success will ever be proportionate to the
chance. Only all this gave me, I make out, a great deal to
look to, and I was perhaps wrong in thinking that Newman
by himself, and for any occasional extra inch or so I
might smuggle into his measurements, would see me
through my wood. Anything more liberated and discon¬
nected, to repeat my terms, than his prompt general profes¬
sion, before the Tristrams, of aspiring to a " great " marriage,
for example, could surely not well be imagined. I had to
take that over with the rest of him and fit it in — I had
indeed to exclude the outer air. Still, I find on re-perusal
that I have been able to breathe at least in my aching
void ; so that, clinging to my hero as to a tall, protective,
good-natured elder brother in a rough place, I leave the
record to stand or fall by his more or less convincing image.
HENRY JAMES.
THE AMERICAN
i
On a brilliant day in May, of the year 1868, a gentle¬
man was reclining at his ease on the great circular
divan which at that period occupied the centre of the
Salon Carre, 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 our visitor 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 deep enjoyment of his pos¬
ture. 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, with vague weariness, passed his hand¬
kerchief over his forehead. And yet he was evidently
not a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean,
and muscular, he suggested an intensity of uncon¬
scious resistance^ His exertions on this particular day,
however, had been of an unwonted sort, and he had
often performed great physical feats that left him
less jaded" than his quiet 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 Badeker; his attention had been strained and his
eyes dazzled; he had sat down with an aesthetic
THE AMERICAN
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 innumer¬
able young women in long aprons, on high stools,
who devote themselves, in France, to the reproduc¬
tion 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 person,
and in truth he had often sat up all night over a
bristling bundle of accounts and heard the cock
crow without a yawn, ^ut Raphael and Titian and
Rubens were a new kind of arithmetic, and they
made him for the first time in his life wonder at his
vaguenesses.
An observer with anything of an eye for local types
would have had no difficulty in referring this candid
connoisseur to the scene of his origin, and indeed such
an observer might have made an ironic point of the
almost ideal completeness with which he filled out
the mould of race. The gentleman on the divan was
the superlative American; to which affirmation of
chara~cter~Ke~ was partly helped by the general easy
magnificence of his manhood. He appeared to possess
that kind of health and strength which, when found
in perfection, are the most impressive — the physical
tone which the owner does nothing to "keep up."
If he was a muscular Christian it was quite without
doctrine. 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
2
THE AMERICAN
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 tem¬
perate man; but he had supped the night before his
visit to the Louvre at the Cafe Anglais — some one
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 had a liberal loose¬
ness, but when, under a special inspiration, he
straightened himself he looked a grenadier on parade.
He had never tasted tobacco. He had been assured —
such things are said — that cigars are excellent for
the health, and he was quite capable of believing it;
but he would no more have thought of "taking" one
than of taking a dose of medicine. His complexion
was brown and the arch of his nose bold and well-
marked. His eye was of a clear, cold grey, and save
for the abundant droop of his moustache he spoke,
as to cheek and chin, of the joy of the matutinal steel.
He had the flat jaw and the firm, dry neck which are
frequent in the American type; but the betrayal of
native conditions is a matter of expression even more
than of feature, and it was in this respect that our
traveller's countenance was supremely eloquent. The
observer we have been supposing might, however,
perfectly have measured its expressiveness and yet
have been at a loss for names and terms to fit it. It
had that paucity of detail which is yet not empti¬
ness, that blanlTness which is not simplicity, that look
of being committed to nothing in particular, of stand¬
ing in a posture of general hospitality to the chances
3
THE AMERICAN
of life, of being very much at one's own disposal,
characteristic of American faces of the clear strain.
It was the eye, in this case, that chiefly told the story;
an eye in which the unacquainted and the expert were
singularly blended. It was full of contradictory sug¬
gestions; 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-humoured, there was something
vaguely defiant in its concessions and something
profoundly reassuring in its reserve. The wide yet
partly folded wings 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 blue satin necktie
of too light a shade played perhaps an obtrusive part,
completed the elements of his identity. We have ap¬
proached him perhaps at a not especially favourable
moment; he is by no means sitting for his portrait.
But listless as he lounges there, rather baffled on the
aesthetic question and guilty of the damning fault (as
we have lately discovered it to be) of confounding the
aspect of the artist with that of his work (for he ad¬
mires the squinting Madonna of the young lady with
the hair that somehow also advertises "art," 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, moil of business.,hut the
term appears to confess, for his particular benefit, to
4
THE AMERICAN
undefined and mysterious boundaries which invite the
imagination to bestir itself.
As the little copyist proceeded with her task, her
attention addressed to her admirer, from time to time,
for reciprocity, one of its blankest, though not of its
briefest, missives. The working-out of her scheme
appeared to call, in her view, for a great deal of vivid
by-play, a great standing off with folded arms and
head dropping from side to side, stroking of a dim¬
pled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning
and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses
for wandering hair-pins. These motions were accom¬
panied by a far-straying glance, which tripped up,
occasionally, as it were, on the tall arrested gentle¬
man. At last he rose abruptly and, putting on his hat
as if for emphasis of an austere intention, approached
the young lady. He placed himself before her picture
and looked at it for a time during which she pre¬
tended to be quite unconscious of his presence. Then,
invoking her intelligence with the single word that
constituted the strength of his French vocabulary,
and holding up one finger in a manner that appeared
to him to illuminate his meaning, " Combien ?" he
abruptly demanded.
The artist stared a moment, gave a small pout,
shrugged her shoulders, put down her palette and
brushes and stood rubbing her hands.
"How much ?" said our friend in English. "Com¬
bien?"
" Monsieur wishes to buy it ?" she asked in French.
"Very pretty. Splendide. Combien?" repeated the
American.
5
THE AMERICAN
"It pleases monsieur, my little picture ? It's a very
beautiful subject," said the young lady.
"The Madonna, yes; I 'm not a real Catholic, but
I want to buy it. Combien ? Figure it right there."
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 n't
it for sale ?" he asked. And as she still stood reflect¬
ing, probing him with eyes which, in spite of her de¬
sire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old
story, added to her flush of incredulity, he was afraid
he had offended her. She was simply trying to look
indifferent, wondering how far she might go. "I
haven't made a mistake — pas insulte, 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 all
her conscious perception 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. On which she handed back the
book and resumed her palette.
Our friend read the number: "2000 francs." He
said nothing for a time, but stood looking at the pic¬
ture while the copyist began actively to dabble with
her paint. "For a copy, is n't that a good deal ?" he
inquired at last. "Pas beaucoup ?"
She raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him
from head to foot, and alighted with admirable sagac¬
ity upon exactly the right answer. "Yes, it's a good
6
THE AMERICAN
deal. But my copy is extremely soigne. That's its
value."
The gentleman in whom we are interested under¬
stood no French, but I have said he was intelligent,
and here is a good chance to prove it. He appre¬
hended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the
young woman's phrase, and it gratified him to find
her so honest. Beauty, therefore talent, rectitude;
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 per¬
fection 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 objected. "Her complexion," pointing to the
Murillo, "is more delicate."
"Delicate ? Oh it shall be delicate, monsieur; deli¬
cate as Sevres biscuit. I'm going to tone that down;
I promise you it shall have a surface! 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
on it. Then hesitating a moment: "If I don't like it
when it is finished, you know, I shall not be obliged
to pay for it."
The young lady seemed as good a guesser as him¬
self. " Oh, I'm very sure monsieur's not capricious!"
"Capricious?" And at this monsieur began to
laugh. "Oh no, I'm not capricious. I'm very faith¬
ful. I'm very constant. Comprenez?"
7
THE AMERICAN
"Monsieur's constant; I understand perfectly.
It's not the case of all the world. To recompense you,
you shall have your picture on the first possible day;
next week — as soon as it's dry. I '11 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 not commodes to say!"
"Well, mine's partly celebrated," said Mr. New¬
man, laughing too. "Did you never hear of Christo¬
pher Columbus ?"
"Bien sur ! He first showed Americans the way to
Europe; a very great man. And is he your patron ?"
"My patron?"
"Your patron saint, such as we all have."
"Oh, exactly; my parents named me after him."
"Monsieur is American then too?"
"Does n't it stick right out ?" monsieur enquired.
"And you mean to carry my dear little picture away
over there ?" She explained her phrase with a gesture.
"Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures — beau-
coup, beaucoup," said Christopher Newman.
"The honour's not less for me," the young lady
answered, "for I'm sure monsieur has a great deal of
taste."
" But you must give me your card," Newman went
on; "your card, you know."
The young lady looked severe an instant. "My
father will wait on you."
But this time Mr. Newman's powers of divination
were at fault. "Your card, your address," he simply
repeated.
8
THE AMERICAN
"My address ?" said mademoiselle. Then, with a
little shrug: "Happily for you, you're a stranger —
of a distinction qui se voit. It's the first time I ever
gave my card to a gentleman." And, taking from her
pocket a well-worn flat little wallet, she extracted from
it a small glazed visiting-card and presented the latter
to her client. It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a
great many flourishes, "Mile. Noemie Nioche." But
Mr. Newman, unlike his companion, read the name
with perfect gravity; all French names to him were
equally incommodes.
"And precisely — how it happens! — here's my
father; he has come to escort me home," said Made¬
moiselle Noemie. "He speaks English beautifully.
He '11 arrange with you." And she turned to welcome
a little old gentleman who came shuffling up and peer¬
ing over his glasses at Newman.
M. ]S[ioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural
colour, which overhung his little meek, white, vacant
face, leaving it hardly more expressive than the un-
featured block upon which these articles are dis¬
played in the barber's window. He was an exquisite
image of shabby gentility. His scant, ill-macfe'coat,
desperately brusHecf7~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 deprived
him of means, it had deprived him of confidence — so
frightened him that he was going through his rem¬
nant of life on tiptoe, lest he should wake up afresh
9
THE AMERICAN
the hostile fates. If this strange gentleman should be
saying anything improper to his daughter M. Nioche
would entreat him huskily, as a particular favour, to
forbear; but he would admit at the same time that he
was very presumptuous to ask for particular favours.
"Monsieur has bought my picture," said Mademoi¬
selle Noemie. "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."
"Spick English — yes." The old man slowly
rubbed his hands. "I'll bring it in a cab."
"Say something then," cried his daughter. "Thank
him a little — not too much."
"A little, my daughter, a little ?" he murmured in
distress. " How much ?"
"Two thousand!" said Mademoiselle Noemie.
"Don't make a fuss or he '11 take back his word."
"Two thousand!" gasped the old man; and he
began to fumble for his snuff-box. He looked at New¬
man 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 Noemie.
"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 ?" asked M. Nioche. "My
English is far from sufficing."
"I wish I spoke French half so well," said New-
10
THE AMERICAN
man good-naturedly. "Your daughter too, you see,
makes herself understood."
"Oh sir!" and M. Nioche looked over his spec¬
tacles with tearful eyes, nodding out of his depths of
sadness. "She has had an education — tres-superi-
eure! Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at ten
francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I
did n't look at the francs then. She's a serious
worker."
"Do I understand you to say that you've had a bad
time?" asked Newman.
"A bad time ? Oh sir, misfortunes — terrible!"
"Unsuccessful in business?"
"Very unsuccessful, sir."
"Oh, never fear; you'll get on your legs again,"
said Newman cheerily.
The old man cast his head to one side; he wore an
expression of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest:
whereupon "What is it he says?" Mademoiselle
Noemie demanded.
M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. "He says I shall
make my fortune again."
" Perhaps he '11 help you. And what else ?"
"He says thou hast a great deal of head."
"It's very possible. You believe it yourself, my
father."
"Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!"
And the old man turned afresh, in staring, wondering
homage, to the audacious daub on the easel.
"Ask him then if he'd not like to learn French."
"To learn French?"
"To take lessons."
II
THE AMERICAN
"To take lessons, my daughter ? From thee ?"
"From thee."
"From me, my child ? How should I give lessons ?"
"Pas de raisons ! Ask him immediately!" said
Mademoiselle Noemie with soft shortness.
M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter's
eye he collected his wits and, doing his best to assume
an agreeable smile, executed her commands. "Would
it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful
language ?" he brought out with an appealing qua¬
ver.
"To study French ?" Newman was rather struck.
M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and
slowly raised his shoulders. "A little practice in
conversation!"
"Practice, conversation — that's it!" murmured
Mademoiselle Noemie, who had caught the words.
"The conversation of the best society."
"Our French conversation is rather famous, you
know," M. Nioche ventured to continue. "It's the
genius of our nation."
" But — except for your nation — is n't it almost
impossible?" asked Newman very simply.
"Not to a man of esprit like monsieur, an admirer
of beauty in every form!" And M. Nioche cast a sig¬
nificant glance at his daughter's Madonna.
"I can't fancy myself reeling off fluent French!"
Newman protested. "And yet I suppose the more
things, the more names of things, a man knows, the
better he can get round."
"Monsieur expresses that very happily. The better
he can get round. Helas, out!"
12
THE AMERICAN
"I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking
about Paris, to be able to try at least to talk."
Ah, there are so many things monsieur must
want to say: remarkable things, and proportionately
difficult."
"Everything I want to say is proportionately diffi¬
cult. But you 're in the habit of giving lessons ?"
Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more
appealingly. "I'm not a regular professor," he ad¬
mitted. "I can't pourtant tell him I've a diploma,"
he said to his daughter.
"Tell him it's a very exceptional chance," an¬
swered mademoiselle; "an homme du monde — one
perfect gentleman conversing with another. Remem¬
ber what you are. Remember what you have been."
"A teacher of languages in neither case! Much
more dans le temps and much less to-day! And if he
asks the price of the lessons ?"
"He won't ask it," said the girl.
"What he pleases, I may say?"
"Never! That's bad style."
"But if he wants to know ?"
Mademoiselle Noemie had put on her bonnet and
was tying the ribbons. She smoothed them out, her
shell-like 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 you '11 let me make out the bill."
M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again
and stood rubbing his hands with his air of standing
convicted of almost any counsel of despair. It never
13
THE AMERICAN
occurred to Newman to plead for a guarantee of his
skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course
M. Nioche knew the language he so beautifully pro¬
nounced, and his brokenness of spring 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 any mastery of those mysterious correla¬
tives of his familiar English vocables which were cur¬
rent in this extraordinary city of Paris was that it
would be simply a matter of calling sharply into play
latent but dormant muscles and sinews. "How did
you learn so much English ?" he asked of the old
man.
"Oh, I could do things when I was young — before
my miseries. I was wide awake then. My father was
a great commer$ant; he placed me for a year in a
counting-house in England. Some of it stuck to me,
but much I've forgotten!"
"How much French can I learn in about a month ?"
"What does he say?" asked mademoiselle; and
then when her father had explained: "He'll speak
like an angel!"
But the native integrity which had been vainly
exerted to secure M. Nioche's commercial prosperity
flickered up again. "Dame, monsieur!" he an¬
swered. "All I can teach you!" And then, recovering
himself at a sign from his daughter: "I'll wait upon
you at your hotel."
"Oh yes, I should like to converse with elegance,"
Newman went on, giving his friends the benefit of any
14
THE AMERICAN
vagueness. "Hang me if I should ever have thought
of it! I seemed to feel it too far off. But you've
brought it quite near, and if you could catch on at all
to our grand language — that of Shakespeare and
Milton and Holy Writ — why should n't I catch on to
yours ?" His frank, friendly laugh drew the sting from
the jest. "Only, if we 're going to converse, you know,
you must think of something cheerful to converse
about."
"You're very good, sir; I'm overcome!" And
M. Nioche threw up his hands. "But you've cheer¬
fulness 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've struck up a tune I could
almost dance to!"
"Come and bring me my picture then; I'll pay
you for it, and we'll talk about that. That will be
a'cheerful subject!"
Mademoiselle Noemie had collected her access¬
ories 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 obeis¬
ances. The young lady gathered her mantle about her
like a perfect Parisienne, and it was with the "Au
revoir, monsieur!" of a perfect Parisienne that she
took leave of her patron.
II
This personage wandered back to the divan and
seated himself, on the other side, in view of the great
canvas on which Paul Veronese has spread, to swarm
and glow there for ever, the marriage-feast of Cana of
Galilee. Weary as he was^his spirit went out to the
picture; it had an illusion for him; it satisfied his con¬
ception, which was strenuous, of what a splendid ban¬
quet should be. In the left-hand corner is a young
woman with yellow tresses confined in a golden head¬
dress; she bends forward and listens, with the smile
of a charming person at a dinner-party, to her festal
neighbour. Newman detected her in the crowd, ad¬
mired her and perceived that she too had her votive
copyist — a young man whose genius, like that of
Samson, might have been in his bristling hair. Sud¬
denly he was aware of the prime throb 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
pursuit that might float even so heavy a weight as him¬
self. His reflexions quickened his good-humour 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
that connects them may seem imperfect. He knew
16
THE AMERICAN
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, though he was equipped neither with guide¬
book nor with opera-glass. He carried a white sun-
umbrella lined with blue silk, and he strolled in front
of the great picture, vaguely looking at it but much
too near to see anything but the grain of the canvas.
Opposite Christopher Newman he paused and turned,
and then our friend, who had been observing him, had
a chance to verify a suspicion roused by an imperfect
view of his face. The result of the larger scrutiny
was that he presently sprang to his feet, strode across
the room and, with an outstretched hand, arrested
this blank spectator. The gaping gentleman gaped
afresh, but put out his hand at a venture. FJe^was
large, smooth and pink, with the air of a successfully
potted~pTant7" and~though his countenance, orna¬
mented" with a beautiful flaxen beard carefully di¬
vided in the middle and brushed outward at the sides,
was not remarkable for intensity of expression, it was
exclusive only in the degree of the open door of an
hotel — it would have been closed to the undesirable.
It was for Newman in fact as if at first he had been
but invited to "register."
"Oh come, come," he said, laughing; "don't say
now you don't know me — if I've not got a white
parasol!"
His tone penetrated; the other's face expanded to
17
THE AMERICAN
its fullest capacity and then broke into gladness.
"Why, Christopher Newman — I'll be blowed!
Where in the world — ? Who would have thought ?
You've carried out such extensive alterations."
"Well, I guess you've not," said Newman.
"Oh no, I hold together very much as I was. But
when did you get here ?"
"Three days ago."
"Then why did n't you let me know ?"
"How was I to be aware — ?"
"Why, I've been located here quite a while."
"Yes, it's quite a while since we last met."
"Well, it feels long—since the War."
"It was in Saint Louis, at the outbreak. You
were going for a soldier," Newman said.
" Oh no, not I. It was you. Have you forgotten ?"
"You bring it unpleasantly back."
"Then you did take your turn?"
"Oh yes, I took my turn. But that was nothing,
I seem to feel, to this turn."
"How long then have you been in Europe ?"
"Just seventeen days."
"First time you've been?"
"Yes, quite immensely the first."
Newman's friend had been looking him all over.
"Made your everlasting fortune ?"
Our gentleman was silent a little, and then with
a tranquil smile, "Well, I've grubbed," he answered.
"And come to buy Paris up ? Paris is for sale, you
know."
"Well, I shall see what I can do about it. So they
carry those parasols here — the men-folk?"
18
THE AMERICAN
"Of course they do. They're great things, these
parasols. They understand detail out here."
"Where do you buy them
"Anywhere, everywhere."
"Well, Tristram, I'm glad to get hold of you. I
guess you cah tell me a good deal. I suppose you know
Paris pretty correctly," Newman pursued.
Mr. Tristram's face took a rosy light. "Well, I
guess there are not many men that can show me
much. I '11 take care of you."
"It's a pity you were not here a few minutes ago.
I've just bought a picture. You might have put the
thing through for me."
"Bought a picture?" said Mr. Tristram, looking
vaguely round the walls. "Why, do they sell them ?"
"I mean a copy."
"Oh, I see. These" — and Mr. Tristram nodded
at the Titians and Vandykes—"these, I suppose, are
originals ?"
"I hope so," said Newman. "I don't want a copy
of a copy."
"Ah," his friend sagaciously returned, "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 — and his grimace
seemed a turn of the screw of discrimination — "I
don't do so very much in pictures. They're one of the
things I leave to my wife."
"Ah, you've acquired a wife?"
J9
THE AMERICAN
"Did n't I mention it ? She's a very smart woman.
You must come right round. She's up there in the
Avenue d'lena."
"So you're regularly fixed — house and children
and all"?"
"Yes; a tip-top house, and a couple of charming
cubs."
"Well," sighed Christopher Newman, stretching his
arms a little, "you affect me with a queer feeling that
I suppose to be envy."
"Oh no, I don't," answered Mr. Tristram, giving
him a little poke with his parasol.
"I beg your pardon; you do."
"Well, I shan't then, when — when — !"
"You don't certainly mean when I've seen your
pleasant home ?"
"When you've made yours, my boy. When you've
seen Paris. You want to be in light marching order
here."
"Oh, I've skipped about in my shirt all my life, and
I've had about enough of it."
"Well, try it on the basis of Paris. That makes
a new thing of it. How old may you be ?"
"Forty-two and a half, I guess."
" C est le bel age, as they say here."
Newman reflected. "Does that mean the age of the
belly?"
" It means that a man should n't send away his
plate till he has eaten his fill."
"It comes to the same thing. I've just made ar¬
rangements, anyhow, to take lessons in the language."
"Oh, you don't want any lessons. You'll pick it
20
THE AMERICAN
right up. I never required nor received any instruc¬
tion."
"You speak it then as easily as English ?"
"Easier!" said Mr. Tristram roundly. "It's a
splendid language. You can say all sorts of gay
things in it."
"But I suppose," said Christopher Newman with
an earnest desire for information, "that you must be
pretty gay to begin with."
"Not a bit: that's just the beauty of it!"
The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks,
which dropped from them without a pause, 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 lassitude 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, is n't it ?" he broke out with
enthusiasm.
"Great place, great place. Finest thing in the
world." And then suddenly Mr. Tristram hesitated
and looked about. "I suppose they won't let you
smoke ?"
Newman stared. "Smoke ? I'm sure I don't know.
You know the regulations better than I."
"I ? I never was here before."
"Never! all your 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
21
THE AMERICAN
assurance. "Come; let's go over to the Palais Royal
and have a smoke."
"I don't smoke," said Newman.
"What's that for?" Mr. Tristram growled as he
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 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'd
have come here once a week."
"Oh no, you wouldn't!" said Mr. Tristram.
"You think so, but you would n't. You would n't
have had time. You'd 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 any¬
thing else. It's an awful country; you can't get a
decent cigar. I don't know why I went into that place
to-day. I was strolling along, rather hard up for
amusement. I sort of took in the Louvre as I passed,
and I thought I might go up and see what was going
on. But if I had n't found you there I should have felt
rather sold. Hang it, I don't care for inanimate can¬
vas or for cold marble beauty; I prefer the real
thing!" And Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy
formula with an assurance which the numerous class
of persons suffering from an overdose of prescribed
taste might have envied him.
The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de
Rivoli and into the Palais Royal, where they seated
22
THE AMERICAN
themselves at one of the little tables stationed at the
door of the cafe which projects, or then projected,
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 Chris¬
topher Newman felt it to be characteristically, richly
Parisian.
"And now," began Mr. Tristram when they had
tasted the decoction 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 hanging out ?"
"At the Grand Hotel."
He put out all his lights. "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 some¬
thing small and quiet and superior, where your bell's
answered and your personality recognised."
"They keep running to see if I 've rung before I 've
touched the bell," said Newman, "and as for my per¬
sonality they're always.bowing and scraping to it."
"I suppose you're always tipping them. That's
very bad style."
"Always? By no means. A man brought me some¬
thing yesterday and then stood loafing about in a beg-
23
THE AMERICAN
garly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him if
he'd sit down. Was that bad style?"
"I'll tell my wife!" Tristram simply answered.
"Tell the police if you like! He bolted right away,
at any rate. The place quite fascinates me. Hang
your ' superior' if it bores me. I sat in the court of the
Grand Hotel last night until two o'clock in the morn¬
ing, 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've made a pile
of money, hey ?"
"I've made about enough."
"Happy the man who can say that! But enough
for what ?"
"Enough to let up a while, to forget the whole ques¬
tion, to look about me, to see the world, to have a good
time, to improve my mind and, if my hour strikes, to
marry a wife." Newman spoke slowly, with a quaint
effect of dry detachment and with frequent pauses.
This was his habitual mode of utterance, but it was
especially marked in the words just recorded.
"Jupiter, there's an order!" 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 fore¬
head, 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. "Well, I have n't done it by sitting
round this way."
24
THE AMERICAN
Tristram considered him again, allowing a finer
curiosity to measure his generous longitude and
retrace the blurred lines of his resting face. "What
have you been in ?"
"Oh, in more things than I care to remember."
"I suppose you're a real live man, hey?"
Newman continued to look at the nurses and
babies; they imparted to the scene a kind of primor¬
dial, pastoral simplicity. "Yes," he said at last, "I
guess I am." And then in answer to his companion's
enquiries he briefly exposed his record since their last
meeting. It was, with intensity, a tale of the Western
world, and it showed, in that bright alien air, very
much as fine dessicated, articulated "specimens,"
bleached, monstrous, probably unique, show in the^
high light of museums of natural history. It dealt
with elements, incidents, enterprises, which it will be
needless to introduce to the reader in detail; the deeps
and the shallows, the ebb and the flow, of great finan¬
cial tides. Newman had come out of the war with
a brevet of brigadier-general, an honour which in this
case — without invidious comparisons — had lighted
upon shoulders amply competent to carry it. But
though he had proved he could handle his men, and
still more the enemy's, with effect, when need was, he
heartily disliked the business; his four years in the
army had left him with a bitter sense of the waste
of precious things — life and time and money and in¬
genuity and opportunity; and he had addressed him¬
self to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and
energy. His "interests," already mature, had mean¬
while, however, waited for him, so that the capital at
25
THE AMERICAN
his disposal had ceased to be solely his whetted, knife-
edged resolution and his lively perception oF ends and
means. Yet these were his real arms, and exertion and
action as natural to him as respiration: a more com¬
pletely healthy mortal had never trod the elastic soil
of great States of his option. His experience moreover
had been as wide as his capacity; necessity had in his
fourteenth year 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 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 defied example and precedent
and probability, had adventured almost to madness
and escaped almost by miracles, drinking alike of the
flat water, when not the rank poison, of failure, and of
the strong wine of success.
A born experimentalist, he had always found some¬
thing to enjoy in the direct pressure of fate even when
it was as irritating as the haircloth shirt of the medi¬
aeval monk. At one time defeat had seemed inexorably
his portion; ill-luck had become his selfish bed-fel¬
low, and whatever he touched had turned to ashes
out of which no gleaming particle could be raked. His
most vivid conception of a supernatural element in the
world's affairs had come to him once when he felt
his head all too bullyingly pummelled ; there seemed
to him something stronger in life than his personal,
intimate will. But the mysterious something could
only be a demon as personal as himself, and he accord-
26
THE AMERICAN
ingly found himself in fine working opposition to this
rival concern. 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 had made his
entrance into San Francisco, the scene subsequently
of his most victorious engagements. 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
conclude the affair. He had ended by concluding
many, had at last buffeted his way into smooth waters,
had begun and continued to add dollars to dollars.
It must be rather nakedly owned that Newman's
only proposal had been to effect that addition ;
what he had been-placed in the world for was, to his
own conception,.simply to .gouge a fortune, the bigger
the better, out of its hard material. This idea com-
pletely filleTTHTs horizon and contented his imagina¬
tion. Upon the uses of money, upon what one might
do with a life into which one had succeeded in inject¬
ing the golden stream, he had up to the eve of his
fortieth year very scantly reflected. Life had been for
him an open game, and he had played for high stakes.
He had finally won and had 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 pos-
27
THE AMERICAN
sible 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 rich
corner of Paris with his friend.
"I must_ confess," he presently went on, "that I
don't here at all feel my value. My remarkable talents
seem of no use. It's as if I were as_-simple as a little"
chilcF, "and ;as if a little child might take me by the
hand and lead rne_about."
"Oh, I'll be your little child," said Tristram jovi¬
ally; " I '11 take you by the hand. Trust yourself to
me."
"I'm a grand good worker," Newman continued,
"but I've come abroad to amuse myself; though I
doubt if I very well know how."
"Oh, that's easily learned."
"Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I 'm afraid I shall
never do it by rote. I've the best will in the world
about it, but my genius does n't lie in that direction.
Besides," Newman pursued, "I don't want to work
at pleasure, any more than ever I played at work.
I want to let myself, let everything go. I feel coarse
and loose 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 first-
class music."
"First-class music and first-class pictures? Lord,
what refined tastes! You've what my wife calls a rare
mind. I have n'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?"
28
THE AMERICAN
"The Occidental. You'll 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're
not going to lock me up in a club and stick me down
at a card-table! I have n't come all this way for
that."
"What the deuce then have you come for? You
were glad enough to play poker in Saint Louis, I re¬
collect, when you cleaned me out."
"I've 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 best people do."
"The 'best' people? Much obliged. You set me
down then as one of the worst ?"
Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, his elbow
on the back and his head leaning on his hand. With¬
out moving he played a while at his companion his
dry, guarded, half-inscrutable and yet altogether
good-natured smile. "Introduce me to your wife!"
Tristram bounced about on his seat. "Upon my
word I '11 do nothing of the sort. She does n'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 any one nor anything. I'm not proud, I assure
you I'm not proud. That's why I'm willing to take
example by the best."
"Well, if I'm not the rose, as they say here, I've
lived near it. I can show you some rare minds too.
Do you know General Packard ? Do you know C. P.
Hatch ? Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn ?"
29
THE AMERICAN
"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 heavy book ?"
Christopher Newman twisted one end of his mous¬
tache in silence and finally made answer. "One day,
a couple of months ago, something very curious hap¬
pened to me. I had come on to New York on some
important business; it's too long and too low a story
to tell you now — a question of getting in ahead of
another party on a big transaction and on informa¬
tion that was all my own. This other party had once
played off on me one of the clever meannesses the
feeling of which works in a man like strong poison. I
owed him a good one, the best one he was ever to have
got in his life, and as his chance here — for he was
after it, but on the wrong tip — would have been a
remarkably sweet thing, a matter of half a million, I
saw my way to show him the weight of my hand. The
good it was going to do me, you see, to feel it come
down on him! I jumped into a hack and went abotit
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's possible I took a nap; I had been
travelling all night and, though I was excited with my
errand, I felt the want of sleep. At aJl_event&-I- woke.
up_suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind of reverie,
3°
THE AMERICAN
with the most extraordinary change of heart — a mor¬
tal disgust for the whole proposition. It came upon
me like that!" — and he snapped his fingers — "as
abruptly as an old wound that begins to ache. I
could n't tell the meaning of it; I only realised I had
turned against myself worse than against the man
I wanted to smash. The idea of not coming by that
half-million in that particular way, of letting it utterly
slide and scuttle and never hearing of it again, became
the one thing to save my life from a sudden danger.
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 me. You may depend
upon it that there are things going on inside us that we
understand mighty little about."
"Jupiter, you make my flesh creep!" cried Tris¬
tram. "And while you sat in your hack watching the
play, as you call it, the other man looked in and
collared your half-million ?"
"I haven't the least idea. I hope so, poor brute,
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 hack had n't turned
into a hearse. I could n't have got out any more than
if I had been a corpse. What was the matter with
me ? Momentary brain-collapse, you '11 say. What
I wanted to get out of was Wall Street. I told the man
to drive to the Brooklyn ferry and cross over. When
we were over I told him to drive me out into the coun¬
try^ As I had told him originally to drive for dear life
down town, I suppose he thought I had lost my wits
31
THE AMERICAN
on the way. Perhaps I had, but in that case my sacri¬
fice of them has become, in another way, my biggest
stroke of business. I spent the morning looking at the
first green leaves on Long Island^ I had been so hot
that it seemed as if I should never be cool enough
again. As for the damned old money, I've enough,
already, to miss it — you see how that spoils my
beauty. I seemed to feel a new man under my old
skin; a^alLeventsLlonged for a new world. When
you want a thing so very badly you probably had bet¬
ter have it and see. I did n't understand my case in
the least, but gave the poor beast the bridle and let
him find his way. As soon as I could get out of har¬
ness I sailed for Europe. That's how I come to be
sitting here."
"You ought to have bought up that hack," said
Tristram; " it is n't a safe vehicle to have about. And
you've really wound up and sold out then ? you've
formally retired from business?"
"Well, I'm not at present transacting any — on
any terms. There '11 be plenty to be done again if I
don't hold out, but I shall hold out as long as possible.
I dare say, however, that a twelvemonth hence the
uncanny operation will be repeated in the opposite
sense and the pendulum swing back again. I shall
be sitting in a gondola or on a dromedary, or on
a cushion at the feet of Beauty, and all of a sudden
I shall want to clear out. But for the present I'm
perfectly free. I've even arranged that I'm 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
32
THE AMERICAN
spend such very magnificent leisure as that. You
should get introduced to the crowned heads."
Newman considered a moment and then with all his
candour, "How does one do it ?" he asked.
"Come, I like that!" cried Tristram. "It shows
you're in earnest."
"Of course I'm in earnest. Did n't I say J wanted
the best ? I know the best can't be had for mere
money, but I'm willing to take a good deal of trouble."
"You're not too shrinking, hey?"
"I have n't the least idea — I must see. 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 elegant women."
"Settle down in Paris then. There are no moun¬
tains that I know of, higher than Montmartre, and
the only lake's in the Bois de Boulogne and not par¬
ticularly blue. But there's everything else: plenty of
pictures and churches, no end of celebrated men, and
several elegant women."
"But I can't settle down in Paris at this season, just
as summer's coming on."
"Oh, for the summer go right up to Trouville."
"And what may Trouville be?"
"Well, a sort of French Newport — as near as they
can come. All the Americans go."
"Is it anywhere near the Alps ?"
"About as near as Newport to the Rocky Moun¬
tains."
"Oh, I want to see Mont Blanc," said Newman,
33
THE AMERICAN
"and Amsterdam, and the Rhine, and a lot of places.
Venice in particular. I've grand ideas for Venice."
"Ah," said Mr. Tristram, rising, "I see I shall have
to introduce you to my wife. She'll have grand ideas
for you!"
Ill
He performed that ceremony the following day,
when, by appointment, Christopher Newman went
to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived
behind one of those chalk-coloured facades which
decorate with their pompous sameness the broad
avenues distributed by Baron Haussmann over the
neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. Their apart¬
ment was rich in the modern conveniences, and Tris¬
tram lost no time in calling his visitor's attention to
their principal household treasures, the thick-scattered
gas-lamps and the frequent furnace-holes. "When¬
ever you feel homesick," he said, "you must come
right up here. We '11 stick you down before a register,
under a good big burner, and —"
"And you'll soon get over your homesickness,"
said Mrs. Tristram.
Her husband stared; this lady often had a tone
that defied any convenient test; he could n't tell for
his life to whom her irony might be directed. The
truth is that circumstances had done much to culti¬
vate in Mrs. Tristram the need for any little intel¬
lectual luxury she could pick up by the way. Her
taste on many points differed from that of her hus¬
band; and though she made frequent concessions
to the dull small fact that he had married her it
must be confessed that her reserves were not always
muffled in pink gauze. They were founded upon the
35
THE AMERICAN
vague project of her some day affirming herself in
her totality; to which end she was in advance getting
herself together, building herself high, enquiring, in
short, into her dimensions.
It should be added, without delay, to anticipate
misconception, that if she was thus saving herself
up it was yet not to cover the expense of any fore¬
seen outlay of that finest part of her substance that
was known to her tacitly as her power of passion.
She had a very plain face and 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 mere mortified
maiden 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 pro¬
claiming herself the most ill-favoured 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 social service resides not in
what she is but in what s&e appears^jnd that in the
labyrinth of appearances -she may always make
others lose their clue if she only keeps her own. She
had encountered so many women who pleased with¬
out beauty that she began to believe she had discov¬
ered her refuge. She had once heard an enthusiastic
musician, out of patience with a gifted bungler, de¬
clare that a fine voice is really an obstacle to sing-
36
THE AMERICAN
ing 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 persuade by grace, and
she brought to the task no small ingenuity.
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 she had presumably not
a real genius for the charming art, or she would have
pursued it for itself. The poor lady was after all]
incomplete. She fell back upon the harmonies of
dress, which she thoroughly understood, and con¬
tented herself with playing in its lock that key to
the making of impressions. 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 al¬
ways 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 known, a figure to place, in
the great gallery of the wistful, somewhere apart.
She was naturally timid, and if she had been born
a beauty she would (content with it) probably have
taken no risks. At present she was both reckless
and diffident; extremely reserved sometimes with her
" 37
THE AMERICAN
friends and strangely expansive with strangers. She
overlooked her husband; overlooked 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 eventually slighted her, and she had married
a fool in the hope that the keener personage, re¬
flecting on it, would conclude that she had had no
appreciation of his keenness and that he had flattered
her in thinking her touched. Restless, discontented,
visionary, without personal ambitions but with a
certain avidity of imagination, she was interesting
from this sense she gave of her looking for her ideals
by a lamp of strange and fitful flame. 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, in 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. Two or three long
talks had made them fast friends. Newman's manner
with women was peculiar, and it required some
diligence 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.
Fond enough of a large pleasantry in his dealings
with men, he never found himself on a sofa beside
a member of the softer sex without feeling that such
situations appealed, like beautiful views, or cele-
38
THE AMERICAN
brated operas, or fine portraits, or handsome "sets"
of the classics, or even elegant "show" cemeteries,
to his earnest side. He was not shy and, so far as
awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with shyness,
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 romantic;
he had'thought very little about the "position" of
women, and he was not familiar, either sympathetic¬
ally 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 in¬
stinctive and genuinely democratic assumption of
every one'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 im¬
pressions. He had never read a page of printed
romance.
Tie 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, inasmuch as he had no
perception of difficulties and consequently no curi¬
osity about remedies. The complex Parisian world
about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an
39
THE AMERICAN
immense, surprising spectacle, but it neither in¬
flamed his imagination nor irritated his curiosity.
He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on good-
humouredly, desired to miss nothing important,
observed a great many things in detail, and never
reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristram's "advice"
was a part of the show and a more entertaining
element of her free criticism than any other. He
enjoyed her talking about him — it seemed a part
of her beautiful culture ; 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 for 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 imagination constantly on the alert.
For the present the only thing she could do was to
like him. She told him he was beyond everything
child of nature'!, but she repeated it so often that it
tild have been but a term of endearment. She led
him about with her, introduced him to fifty people,
took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman
accepted every proposal, shook hands universally
and promiscuously, and seemed equally unversed
in trepidation and in " cheek." X^n^n^Tristram com¬
plained of his wife's rapacity, declaring 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'lena.
The two men had formerly not been intimate, but
40
THE AMERICAN
Newman recalled his earlier impression of his host
and did Mrs. Tristram, who had by no means taken
him into her confidence, but whose secret he pre¬
sently discovered, the justice to admit that her
husband had somehow found means to be degenerate
without the iridescence of decay. People said he was
very sociable, but this was as much a matter of
course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was
a sociability affirmed, on its anecdotic side, too
much at the expense of those possible partakers
who were not there to guard their interest in it. He
was patient at poker; he was infallible upon the
names and the other attributes of all the cocottes;
his criticism of cookery, his comparative view of the
great "years" of champagne, enjoyed the authority
of the last word. And then he was 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 wherein such
a country, as a whole, could fall short of Mr. Tris¬
tram's stomach. He had never been a very systematic j
patriot, but it vexed him to see the United States
treated as little better than a vulgar smell in his
friend's nostril, and he finally spoke up for them
quite as if it had been Fourth of July, proclaiming
that any American who ran them down ought to be
carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston
— which for Newman was putting it very vindic¬
tively. Tristram was a comfortable man to snub;
he bore no malice and he continued to insist on
Newman's finishing his evenings at the Occidental
Club. The latter dined several times in the Avenue
41
THE AMERICAN
d'lena, and his host always proposed an early ad¬
journment to this institution. Mrs. Tristram pro¬
tested, declaring as promptly that her husband ex¬
hausted a low cunning 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." But their visitor hated to see a married
couple on these terms, and he was sure one or
other of them must be very unhappy. Yet he knew
it was not Tristram. The lady 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 he kept his promise
of following Mr. Tristram in half an hour to the
Occidental and sometimes forgot it. His companion
asked him a great many questions about himself,
but on this subject he was an indifferent talker. He
was not "subjective," though when he felt her
interest sincere he made a real effort to meet it. He
told her many things he had done, and regaled her
with pictures of that "nature" as the child of which
he figured for her; she herself was from Philadel¬
phia and, with her eight years in Paris, talked of
herself as a languid Oriental. But some other personj
was always the hero of the tale, though by no means
always to his advantage; and the states of Newman's
own spirit were but scantily chronicled. She had an
especial wish to know whether he had ever been
42
THE AMERICAN
in love — seriously, passionately — and, failing to
gather any satisfaction from his allusions, at last
closely pressed him. He hesitated a while, but finally
said "Hang it then, no!" She declared that she was
delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private con¬
viction that he was a man of no real feeling.
"Is that so?" he asked very gravely. "But how
do you recognise a man of real feeling ?"
"I carrt make out." said Mrs. Tristram, "whether
you're 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're as cold as a fish you would implicitly
believe me."
"A certain air?" Newman echoed. "Well, try
your air and see."
"You'd believe me, but you would n't care," said
Mrs. Tristram.
"You've got it all wrong. I should care immensely,
but I should n't believe you. The fact is I have
never had time to 'feel' things so very beautifully.
I 've had to do them, had to make myself felt."
"Oh, I can imagine indeed that you may have
sometimes done that tremendously."
"Yes, there's no mistake about that."
"When you're in one of your furies it can't be
pleasant."
"Ah, I don't have to get into a fury to do it."
"I don't, nevertheless, see you always as you are
now. You've something or other behind, beneath.
You get harder or you get softer. You're more
displeased — or you're more pleased."
43
THE AMERICAN
"Well, a man of any sense doesn't lay his plans
to be angry," said Newman, "and it's in fact so
long since I've been displeased that I've quite
forgotten it."
"I don't believe," she returned "that you're
never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes,
and you're neither good enough nor bad enough
always to keep your temper."
"I lose it perhaps every five years."
"The time's coming round then," said his hostess.
" Before I've known you six months I shall see you
in a magnificent rage."
"Do you mean to put me into one ?"
"I should n't be sorry. You take things too coollv.
It quite exasperates me. And then you're too happy.
You've what must be the most agreeable thing in the
world—the consciousness of having bought your
pleasure beforehand, having paid for it in advance.
You've not a day of reckoning staring you in the face.
Your reckonings are over."
"Well, I suppose I'm happy," said Newman
almost pensively.
"You've been odiously successful."
"Successful in copper," he recalled, "but very
mixed in other mining ventures. And I've had to
take quite a back seat on oil."
"It's very disagreeable to know how Americans
have come by their money," his companion sighed.
"Now, at all events, you've the world before you.
You've only to enjoy."
"Oh, I suppose I'm all right," said Newman.
"Only I'm tired of having it thrown up at me.
44
THE AMERICAN
Besides, there are several drawbacks. I don't come
up to my own standard of culture."
'**X5ne does n't expect it of you," Mrs. Tristram
answered. Then in a moment: "Besides, you do
come up. You are up!"
"Well, I mean to have a good time, wherever I
am," said Newman. "I find I take notice as I go,
and I guess I shan't have missed much by the time
I've done. I feel something under my ribs here,"
he added in a moment, "that I can't explain — a
sort of strong yearning, a desire to stretch out and
haul in."
"Bravo!" Mrs. Tristram cried; "that's what I
want to hear you say. You're the great Western
Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and
mightT^azing a while at this poor corrupToIcT world
and then swooping down on it."
"Oh come," Newman protested; "I'm not an
honest barbarian either, by a good deal. I'm a
great fall-off from him. I've seen honest barbarians,
I know what they are."
"I don't mean you're a Comanche chief or that
you wear a blanket and feathers. There are different
shades."
"I have the instincts — have them deeply — if
I have n't the forms of a high old civilisation,"
Newman went on. "I stick to that. If you don't
believe it I should like to prove it to you." i
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."
"Well, put me!" said Newman.
45
THE AMERICAN
"Vous ne doutez de rien!" his companion rejoined.
"Oh," he insisted, "I've 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 a
minute, as if trying to keep her pledge. It did n't
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 ingenious
banter to that of almost tremulous sympathy.
"Speaking seriously," she said, "I believe in you,
Mr. Newman. You flatter my latent patriotism."
"Your latent — ?"
"Deep within me the eagle shrieks, and I've
known my heart at times to bristle with more
feathers than my head. It would take too long to
explain, and you probably would n't understand.
Besides, you might take it — really you might take
it — for a declaration. Yet it has nothing to do with
you personally; the question is of what you almost
unconsciously represent. Fortunately you don't know
all that, or your conceit would increase insuffer¬
ably." And then as Newman stood wondering what
this great quantity might be: "Forgive all my med¬
dlesome chatter and forget my advice. It's very silly
in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When
you're embarrassed do as you think best, and you'll
do very well. When you're in a difficulty judge
for yourself. Only let it then be all you."
"I shall remember everything you've told me," he
made answer. "There are so many twists and turns
over here, so many forms and ceremonies — "
46
THE AMERICAN
"Forms and ceremonies are what I mean of
course."
"Ah, but I don't want not to take account of
them," he declared. "Haven't I as good a right as
another ? They don't scare me, and you need n't
give me leave to ignore them. I want to know all
about 'em."
"That's not what I mean. I mean that you're
to deal with them in your own way. Settle delicate
questions by your own light. Cut the knot or untie
it, as you choose."
"Oh, if there's ever a big knot," he returned —
"and they all seem knots of ribbon over here — I
shall simply pull it off and wear it!"
The next time he dined in the Avenue d'lena 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 their visitor that it was high time that he should
take a wife.
"Listen to her: she has the toupet!" said Tris¬
tram, who on Sunday evenings was always a little
peevish.
"I don't suppose you've made up your mind not
to marry?" Mrs. Tristram continued.
"Heaven forbid!" cried Newman. "I'm quite
viciously bent on it."
"It's a very easy mistake," said Tristram; "and
when it 's made it's made."
"Well then," his wife went on, "I suppose you
don't mean to wait till you're fifty."
47
THE AMERICAN
" On the contrary, I 'm in an almost indecent hurry."
" One would never guess it. Do you expect a lady
to come and propose to you ?"
"No; I'm willing to put the case before her myself.
I think a great deal about it."
"Tell me some of your thoughts."
"Well," said Newman slowly, "I want to marry
about as well as you can"
"'"Well' in what sense ?"
"In every sense. I shall be hard to suit."
"You must remember that, as the French proverb
puts it, the finest girl in the world can give but
what she has."
"Since you ask me," said Newman, "let me be
frank about it — I want quite awfully to marry. It's
time, to begin with; before I know it I shall be forty-
five. And then I'm lonely, and I really kind of pine
for a mate. There are things for which I want help.
But if I marry now, so long as I did n't do it in hot
haste when I was twenty, I must do it, you see, with
my eyes open. I want to set about it rather grandly.
I 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 pure pearl. I've thought an immense deal
about it."
"Perhaps you think too much. The best thing's
simply to fall in love."
"When I find the woman who satisfies me I shall
rise to the occasion. My wife shall be as satisfied as
I shall."
"You begin grandly enough," said Mrs. Tristram.
"There's a chance for the pure pearls!"
48
THE AMERICAN
"You: 're not fair," Newman presently broke out.
"You draw a fellow on and put him off his guard and
then you gibe at him."
"I assure you," she answered, "that I'm very seri¬
ous. To prove it I make you a proposal. Should you
like me, as they say here, to marry you ?"
"To hunt up a wife for me ?"
"She's already found. I'll bring you together."
"Oh come," said Tristram, "we don't keep a
bureau de placement. He '11 think you want your com¬
mission."
"Present me to a woman who comes up to my
notion," Newman declared, "and I'll marry her
to-morrow."
"You've a strange tone about it, and I don't quite
understand you. I did n't suppose you could be so
co|d-blooded."
Newman was silent a while. "Well, I want a great
woman. I stick to that. That's one thing I can treat
myself to, and if it's to be had I mean to have it. What
else have I toiled and struggled for all these years ?
I've succeeded, and now what am I to do with my
success ? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be
a lovely bemg^pircHecTon the pile like some shining
statue crowning some high monument. She must be
as good as she's beautiful and as clever as she's good.
I can give my wife many things, so I'm not afraid to
ask certain others 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, in a word, the best article in the market."
49
THE AMERICAN
"Why did n't you tell a fellow all this at the out¬
set?" Tristram demanded. "I've been trying so to
make you fond of me!"
"It's remarkably interesting," said Mrs. Tristram.
"I like to see a man know his own mind."
"I've known mine for a long time," Newman
went on. "I made up my mind tolerably early in
life that some rare creature all one's own is the best
kind of property to hold. It's the greatest victory
over circumstances. When I say rare I mean rare
all through — grown as a rarity and recognised as
one. It's,a things every man has an $qual jight to;
he may get it if he can get it. He does n't have to be
born with certain faculties on purpose; he needs
only to be — well, whatever he really is. Then he
need only use his will, and such wits as he can muster,
and go in."
"It strikes me," said Mrs. Tristram, "that your
marriage is to be rather a matter of heartless pomp."
"Well, it's certain," Newman granted, "that if
people notice my wife and admire her I shall count
it as part of my success."
"After this," cried Mrs. Tristram, "speak of any
man's modesty!"
"But none of them will admire her so much as I."
"You really have the imagination of greatness."
He hesitated as if in fear of her mockery, but he
kept it up, repeating his dry formula: " I want the best
thing going."
"And I suppose you've already looked about you
a good deal."
"More or less, according to opportunity."
5°
THE AMERICAN
"And you've seen nothing that has tempted you ?"
"No," said Newman half reluctantly, "I'm bound
to say in honesty that I've seen nothing that has come
up to my idea."
"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're in
earnest, and I should like to help you," Mrs. Tristram
wound up.
"Who the deuce is it, darling, that you're going to
palm off upon him?" her husband asked. "We
know a good many pretty girls, thank goodness, but
nobody to be mentioned in that blazing light."
"Have you any objections to a foreigner?" Mrs.
Tristram continued, addressing their friend, who had
tilted back his chair and, with his feet on a bar of the
balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, sat look¬
ing at the stars.
"No Irish need apply," said Tristram.
Newman remained pensive. "Just as a foreigner,
no. I've no prejudices."
"My dear fellow, you've no suspicions!" Tristram
cried. "You don't know what terrible customers
these foreign women are; especially those grown, as
you call it, for the use of millionaires. How should
you like an expensive Circassian with a dagger in
her baggy trousers ?"
Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee.
"I'd marry a Patagonian if she pleased me."
"We had better confine ourselves to Europe," said
Mrs. Tristram. "The only thing is then that the
51
THE AMERICAN
young person herself should square with your tre¬
mendous standard ?"
"She's going to offer you an unappreciated gov¬
erness!" Tristram groaned.
"Of course I won't deny that, other things being
equal, I should like one of my own countrywomen
best," Newman pursued. "We should speak the
same language, and that would be a comfort. But
I'm not afraid of any foreigner who's the best thing
in her own country. Besides, I rather like the idea
of taking in Europe too. It enlarges the field of selec¬
tion. When you choose from a greater number you
can bring your choice to a finer point."
" Sardanapalus!" Tristram sighed.
"Well, you've come to the right market," New¬
man's hostess brought out after a pause. "I happen
to number among my friends the finest creature 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 finest creature in the
world."
"I'm bound to say then," cried Tristram, "that
you've kept very quiet about her. Were you afraid
of me ? "
"You've seen her," said his wife, "but you've no
perception of such quality as Claire's."
"Ah, her name's Claire ? I give it up."
"Does your friend wish to marry?" Newman
asked.
"Not in the least. It's for you to make her change
her mind. It won't be easy; she has had one husband
and he gave her a low opinion of the species."
52
THE AMERICAN
"Oh, she's a widow then ?"
"Are you already afraid? She was married at
eighteen, by her parents, in the French fashion, to
a man with advantages of fortune, but objectionable,
detestable, on other grounds, and many years too old.
He had, however, the discretion to die a couple of
years afterwards, and she's now twenty-eight."
"So she's French?"
"French by her father, English by her mother.
She's really more English than French, and she
speaks English as well as you or I — or rather much
better. She belongs, as they say here, to the very top
of the basket. Her family, on each side, is of fabulous
antiquity; her mother's the daughter of an English
Catholic peer. Her father's dead, and since her
widowhood she has lived with her mother and a
married brother. There's another brother, younger,
who I believe is rather amusing but quite impossible.
They have an old hotel in the Rue de l'Universite,
but their fortune's small and they make, for eco¬
nomy's sake, a common household. When I was a
girl of less than fifteen I was put into a convent here
for my education while my father made the tour of
Europe. It was a fatuous thing to do with me, but it
had the advantage that it made me acquainted with
Claire de Bellegarde. She was younger than I, yet
we became fast friends. I took a tremendous fancy
to her, and she returned my adoration so 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'm not
now either, but we sometimes meet. They're terrible
53
THE AMERICAN
people — her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile
high and with pedigrees long in proportion. It's the
skim of the milk of the old noblesse. Did you ever
hear of such a prehistoric monster as a Legitimist or
an Ultramontane ? Go into Madame de Cintre's
drawing-room some afternoon at five o'clock and
you'll see the best-preserved specimens. I say go,
but no one is admitted—to intimacy — who can't
show good cause in the form of a family tree."
" 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 recognised no
reasons against you."
Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking
his moustache. "Is she a very great beauty?" he
demanded.
She hung fire a little. "No."
"Oh then it's no use—!"
"She's not a very great beauty, but she's very,
very beautiful; two quite 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 Cintre now," said Tris¬
tram. "She's as plain as a copy in a copy-book —
all round o's and uprights a little slanting. She just
slants toward us. A man of your large appetite
would swallow her down without tasting her."
" In telling how little use he has for her my husband
sufficiently describes her," Mrs. Tristram pursued.
"Is she good, is she clever?" Newman asked.
"She's perfect! I won't say more than that. When
you're praising a person to another who's to know
54
THE AMERICAN
her, it's bad policy to go into details. I won't exag¬
gerate, I simply recommend her. Among all the
women I've known she stands alone; she's of a
different clay."
"I should like to see her," said Newman simply.
" I '11 try to manage it. The only way will be to
invite her to dinner. I've never invited her before,
and I'm not sure she'll be able to 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 invite 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
she 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 eyed him with oblique penetration. "You
tell another story, eh ?"
"I say simply that Madame de Cintre's a great
white doll of a woman and that she cultivates quiet
haughtiness."
"Ah, she's really haughty, eh ?"
"She looks at you as if you were so much thin air,
and blows you away as easily."
"She's really proud, eh ?" Newman pursued with
interest.
" Proud ? As proud as they make 'em over here."
"And not good-looking?"
55
THE AMERICAN
Tristram shrugged his shoulders. "She leaves me
cold. She's as cold herself as a porcelain stove, and
has about as much expression. 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 joined
them 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 treated him, without drawing breath,
to the full force of an extraordinarily high-pitched
voice. He could but gaze and attend. Presently he
came to bid his hostess good-night. "Who is that
lady?"
" Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her ?"
"Well, as I like the gong that sounds for dinner.
She's good for a warning."
"She's thought so sweet! Certainly you have
ideas," said Mrs. Tristram.
He hung about, but at last, "Don't forget about
your friend," he said, "the lady of the proud people.
Do make her come, and give me good notice." And
with this he departed.
Some days later he came back; it was in the after¬
noon. He found Mrs. Tristram in her drawing-room
and entertaining a visitor, a woman young and pretty
and dressed in white. The two had risen and the
visitor was apparently taking leave. After Newman
had approached he received from Mrs. Tristram,
who had turned to her companion, a glance of the
most vivid significance, which he was yet not imme¬
diately able to interpret. "This is a good friend of
56
THE AMERICAN
ours, Mr. Christopher Newman. I've 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 presented her face with a still bright¬
ness of kindness. He was not embarrassed, for his
unconscious equanimity was boundless; but as he
became aware that this was the proud and beautiful
Madame de Cintre, the finest creature in the world,
the promised perfection, the proposed ideal, he made
an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
Through the slight preoccupation it produced he had
a sense of a longish fair face and of the look of a pair
of eyes that were both intense and mild.
"I should have been most happy," said Madame
de Cintre. "Unfortunately, as I have been telling
Mrs. Tristram, I go next week to the country."
Newman had made a solemn bow. " I'm very very
sorry."
"Paris is really getting too hot," Madame de
Cintre added, taking her friend's hand again in fare¬
well.
Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden
and somewhat venturesome resolution, and she
smiled more gaily, as women do when they become
more earnest. "I want Mr. Newman to know you,"
she said, dropping her head on one side and looking
at Madame de Cintre's bonnet-ribbons.
Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, and
his native penetration admonished him. Mrs. Tris¬
tram was determined to force her friend to address
him a word of encouragement which should be more
57
THE AMERICAN
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 Cintre was her
dearest Claire and her especial admiration; but
Madame de Cintre had found it impossible to dine
with her and Madame de Cintre 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 Cintre to say!"
"I'm very much obliged to you," said Newman.
"Mrs. Tristram can speak better for me than I can
speak for myself."
Madame de Cintre turned on him again her soft
lustre. "Are you for long in Paris ?"
"We shall keep him," said Mrs. Tristram.
"But you're keeping me I" And Madame de
Cintre disengaged her hand.
"A moment longer," said Mrs. Tristram.
Madame de Cintre looked at Newman again; this
time without her smile. Her eyes lingered a little.
"Will you come and see me ?"
Mrs. Tristram kissed her at this; Newman ac¬
knowledged it more formally, and she took her de¬
parture. Her hostess went with her to the door,
leaving Newman briefly alone. Presently she re¬
turned, clasping her hands together and shaking
them at him. "It was a fortunate chance. 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."
58
THE AMERICAN
"It was you who triumphed," said Newman.
"You must n't see too much in her."
Mrs. Tristram stared. "What do you mean?"
"She did n't strike me as so very proud. I should
call her quite timid."
"I should call you quite deep! And what do you
think of her face ?"
"Well, I guess I like her face," said Newman.
"I should think you might! May I guess, on my
side, that you'll go and see her?"
"To-morrow!" cried Newman.
"No, not to-morrow; next day. That will be Sun¬
day; she leaves Paris on Monday. If you don't see
her it will at least be a beginning." And she gave
him Madame de Cintre's address.
He walked across the Seine late in the summer
afternoon and made his way through those grey and
silent streets of the Faubourg Saint 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. New¬
man thought it a perverse, verily a "mean" way for
rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splen¬
did facade, 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; here was a doorway
facing the street, approached by three steps and
surmounted by a tent-like canopy. The place was
all in the shade; it answered to Newman's conception
59
THE AMERICAN
of a convent. The portress couldn't say if Madame
de Cintre were visible; he would please to apply at
the further door. He crossed the court; a gentle¬
man was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of the
portico, in play with a beautiful pointer. He rose
as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand on
the bell, said, almost sociably, in English, that he
was ashamed a visitor should be kept waiting: the
servants were scattered; he himself had been ringing;
he did n't know what the deuce was in them. This
gentleman was young; his English was excellent, his
expression easy. Newman pronounced the name of
Madame de Cintre.
"I dare say," said the young man, "that my sister
will be visible. Come in, and if you '11 give me your
card I '11 carry it to her myself."
Newman had been accompanied on his present
errand by a sentiment I will not say of defiance —
a readiness for aggression or for defence, as either
might prove needful — but rather of meditative,
though quite undaunted and~~good-humoured sus-
pTcTom He took from his pocket, while he stood on
A A
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 found quick reassurance; he liked the
young man's face; it strongly resembled that of
Madame de Cintre, whose brother he would clearly
be. 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
60
THE AMERICAN
man, of a fine presence, habited in evening-dress.
He looked hard at Newman and Newman met his
examination. "Madame de Cintre," the younger
man repeated as an introduction of the visitor. The
other took the card from his hand, read it in a sus¬
tained stare, looked again at Newman from head to
foot, hesitated a moment and then said, gravely but
urbanely: "Madame de Cintre is not at home."
The younger man made a gesture and turned to
Newman. " I'm very sorry, sir."
Newman gave 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 may the gentleman with the
dog be ?" he asked of the old woman who reap¬
peared. He had begun to learn French.
"That's Monsieur le Comte."
"And the other?"
"That's Monsieur le Marquis."
"A marquis ?" said Christopher in English, which
the old woman fortunately did not understand.
"Oh then he's not the major-domo!"
IV
Early one morning, before he was dressed, a little
old man was ushered into his apartment, followed
by a youth in a blouse who carried a picture in a
shining frame. Newman, among the distractions of
Paris, had forgotten iVLJI^ia-clie and his accomplished
daughter; but this was an effective reminder.
"I was afraid you had given me up, sir," M.
Nioche confessed after many apologies and saluta¬
tions. "We have made you wait so many days. You
accused us perhaps of a want of respectability, of
bad faith, what do I know ? 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 won¬
derfully splendid and precious. He thought of it as
a very happy purchase and felt rich in his acquisition.
He stood taking it in complacently while he pro¬
ceeded with his dressing, and M. Nioche, who had
dismissed his own attendant, hovered near, smiling
and rubbing his hands.
"It has wonderful finesse," he critically pro¬
nounced. "And here and there are marvellous
62
THE AMERICAN .
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
really to know how to paint. I don't say it because
I'm her father, sir; but as one man of taste address¬
ing another I can't help observing that you've ac¬
quired an object of price. It's hard to produce such
things and to have to part with them. If our means
only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I in fact
may say, sir" — and M. Nioche showed a feebly
insinuating gaiety — "I really may say that I envy
you your privilege. You see," he added in a moment,
"we've 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 may not here be reproduced in its
integrity. He had apparently once possessed a cer¬
tain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly
tinged with old cockneyisms and vulgarisms, things
quaint and familiar. 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 anglicised by a process of his
own, with native idioms literally translated. The
result, in the form in which he in all humility pre¬
sented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the
reader, so that I have ventured to attempt for it some
approximate notation. Newman only half followed,
I but he was always amused, and the old man's decent
1 63
THE AMERICAN
forlornness appealed to his democratic Justin cfs.
The assumption of any inevitability in the depressed
state always irritated his strong good-nature — it was
almost the only thing that did so; and he felt the
impulse to pass over it the dipped sponge of his own
prosperity. Mademoiselle Noemie's parent, however,
had apparently on this occasion been vigorously in¬
doctrinated and showed a certain tremulous eagerness
to culitvate unexpected opportunities.
"How much do I owe you then with the frame ?"
Newman asked.
"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've brought one," said M. Nioche. "I took the
liberty of drawing it up in case monsieur should hap¬
pen to desire to discharge his debt." And he drew
a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his
patron. The document, Newman judged, had the
graces alike of penmanship and of style. He laid
down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the na¬
poleons one by one, solemnly and lovingly, into
an old leathern purse.
"And how's your young lady?" he proceeded.
"She made a great impression on me."
"An impression ? monsieur is very good. Mon¬
sieur finds her — ?" the old man quavered.
"I find her remarkably pretty."
"Alas, yes, she's very very pretty!"
"And what's the harm in her being so ?"
M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot in the car-
64
THE AMERICAN
pet and shook his head. Then raising them to a more
intimate intelligence: "Monsieur knows what Paris
is. Dangerous to beauty when beauty has n't the
55
SOU.
"Ah, but that's not the case with your daughter.
Is n't she rich now ?"
"We're rich—yes, for six months. But if my
daughter were less attractive I should sleep none the
worse."
"You're afraid of the young men?"
"The young and the old!"
"She ought to get a husband."
"Ah, monsieur, one does n't get a husband for
nothing. Her husband must take her as she is; I
can't give her a Hard. But the young men don't see
with that eye."
"Oh," said Newman, "her talent's in itself a good
outfit."
" Heuhy for that it needs first to be converted into
specie!" — and M. Nioche slapped his purse ten¬
derly before he stowed it away. "The miracle does n't
take place every day."
"Well, your young men have very little grit; that's
all I can say. They ought to pay for your daughter,"
Newman said, "and not ask money themselves."
"Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what
will you have ? They're not the ideas of this country.
We want to know where we are when we marry."
"Well, how much will it take to show where your
daughter is?" M. Nioche stared as if he wondered
what might be coming next; but he promptly re¬
covered himself, at a venture, and replied that he
65
THE AMERICAN
knew a very nice young man, employed by an in¬
surance company, who would content himself with
fifteen thousand francs. "Let your daughter paint
half a dozen pictures for me," his benefactor then
resumed, "and you can offer him his figure."
"Half a dozen pictures — his figure? Monsieur
is n't speaking inconsiderately ?"
" If she '11 make me six or eight copies in the Louvre
as pretty as that 'Madonna,' I '11 pay her the same
price," said Newman.
Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with
amazement and gratitude; after which he seized
Newman's hand and pressed it between his own ten
fingers, gazing at him with watery eyes. "As pretty
as that ? They shall be a thousand times prettier —
they shall be perfect little loves. 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 some¬
thing.
"Oh, you've thanked me enough," said Newman.
"Ah, here it is, sir!" cried M. Nioche. "To ex¬
press my gratitude I '11 charge you nothing for our
lessons!"
"Our lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Lis¬
tening to your English," Newman laughed, "is
really quite a lesson in French."
"Ah, I don't profess to teach English, certainly,"
said M. Nioche. " But for my own admirable tongue
I'm still at your service."
"Since you're here then we'll begin. This is a
very good hour, I'm going to have my coffee. Come
66
THE AMERICAN
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."
"Allans, enfants de la patrie ," said Newman; "let's
begin! The coffee's ripping 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 enquiring and
apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes
of Newman's morning beverage. I know not what
progress he made; but, as he himself said, if he
did n't learn a great deal, at least he did n't learn
much harm. And it amused him; it gratified that
irregularly sociable side of his nature which had al¬
ways 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 the twilight of young Western towns and gossip
scarce less than fraternally with humorous loafers
and obscure fortune-seekers. He had notions, wher¬
ever he went, about talking with the natives; he
had been assured, and his judgement approved the
advice, that in travelling 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 "stiff"
sum of civilisation and sophistication which offered
our hero so much easy entertainment and proposed so
many curious problems to his idle but active mind.
6 7
THE AMERICAN
Newman had a theory that his intelligence was
lying down, but at least it could n't sleep. He 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 infor¬
mation, 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 declined. 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 small shrunken bourgeois
rejoiced, ever, to have questions asked him, and he
scraped together information by frugal processes, he
took in his little greasy pocket-book notes of matters
that might interest his munificent friend. He read old
almanacks at the book-stalls on the quays and be¬
gan to frequent another cafe, where more news¬
papers were taken and his post-prandial demi-tasse
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 X,
68
THE AMERICAN
charcutiere 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 pomp and cir¬
cumstance, 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 flutelike than ever; he offered to read extracts
from Lamartine and protested that, although he did
endeavour according to his feeble lights to cultivate
authority of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real
thing, should go to the Comedie.
Newman took an interest in the wondrous French
thrift 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 diversion akin
to the watching of ants in the spectacle of fortunes
made by the aggregation of copper coins and in the
minute subdivision of labour and profit. He ques¬
tioned M. Nioche about his own manner of life and
felt a friendly mixture of compassion and respect
for the mystery of these humilities. The worthy
man told him how he and his daughter had at one
period supported existence comfortably on the sum
of fifteen sous per diem; recently, having succeeded
in dragging ashore the last floating fragments of the
wreck of his fortune, his budget had been a trifle
more ample. But they still had to butter their bread
very thin, and M. Nioche intimated with a sigh that
69
THE AMERICAN
his young companion did n't bring to this task the
zealous co-operation that might have been desired.
" But what will you have ? One is in the flower of
youth, one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh
gloves; one can't wear shabby gowns among the
splendours of the Louvre."
"Yet she must earn what will pay for her clothes,"
Newman felt enlisted enough to suggest.
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, he declared that while it was obvious
that Mademoiselle Noemie'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
cherished one!" said M. Nioche with a sigh; "it's
almost a pity that her work's so perfect! It would be
in her interest to be a bit of an impostor."
" But if she has this spark of the flame," Newman
benevolently reasoned, "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 particularly uncom¬
fortable. Though he had no desire to destroy the
goose with the golden eggs — Newman's benevol¬
ent confidence — he felt a weary need to speak out
70
THE AMERICAN
all his trouble. "Ah, she has a spark of that flame,
my dear sir, most assuredly. But, to tell you the truth,
she has also more than a mere spark of another.
She's a franche coquette if there ever was one. I'm
sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his
head with a world of accepted melancholy, "it was
to come to her as straight as a letter in the post. Her
poor mother had that sad vice."
"Why, you were n't happy with your wife ?" New¬
man almost incredulously asked.
M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks
of his head. "She was my heavy cross, monsieur!"
"She was n't very good ?"
"She was good for some things and some people,
but not for a poor man like me. She deceived me,
under my nose, year after year. I was too stupid,
and the temptation was too great. But I found her
out at last. I've 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 why nor how much. Oh, she
was — if I must say so — bad."
"She's not living?"
"She's gone to her account."
"Her influence on your daughter then," said New¬
man encouragingly, "is not to be feared."
"She cared no more for her daughter than for the
wind in the chimney. But Noemie has no more use
for bad examples than for good. She's sufficient
to herself. She's stronger than I."
"She does n't mind what you say ?"
"There is n't much to mind, sir — I say so little.
71
THE AMERICAN
What's the use of my saying anything ? It would
only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete.
She's very clever, like her poor 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 the gift. I was delighted to believe it, and
when I went into society I used, to carry her little
water-colours with me in a portfolio and hand them
round to the company. I remember how a lady once
thought I was offering them for sale and that I took
it very ill. We don't know what we may come to!
Then came my dark days and my final rupture
with Madame Nioche. Noemie 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 made her an offer of her
living and six hundred francs a year; but Noemie
discovered that she passed her life in her arm-chair
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
72
THE AMERICAN
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 she tells me Rome was n't built in a day, that
she's making great progress, that I must leave her
to her own devices. The fact is, without prejudice to
her 'gift,' that she has no idea of burying herself
alive. She likes to see the world and to be seen of the
world. She says herself that she can't work in the
dark. Her appearance itself holds up the lamp for
others! Only I can't help worrying and trembling —
I can't help wondering what may happen to her
there all alone, day after day, amid that prowling of
people from the ends of the earth. 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 give on her nerves. As if it
did n't give on mine to keep walking up and down
outside! 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 she'll come out all right," his friend
soothingly returned.
"I believe I should shoot her otherwise!" said the
old man solemnly.
"Well, we'll marry her quick enough," insisted
Newman — "since that's how you manage it; and
I'll go and see her to-morrow at the Louvre and pick
out the pictures she's to copy for me."
M. Nioche had brought a message from his daugh¬
ter in acceptance of their patron's magnificent com¬
mission, the young lady declaring herself his most
73
THE AMERICAN
devoted servant, promising her most zealous endeav¬
our 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 his young friend at the
Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied and left
his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great
deal of snuflF and sent certain oblique, appealing
glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when
taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had
polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief,
and fixed his small pale eyes strangely on that per¬
sonage.
"Well, what's the matter?"
"Pardon the solicitude of a father's heart! You
inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can't
help making you an appeal. After all you're a man,
and so fine a one; you're young and at liberty. Let
me beseech you then to respect an innocence —!"
Newman had wondered what was coming, yet had
already burst into mirth. He was on the point of
pronouncing his own innocence the more exposed,
but he contented himself with promising to treat the
young lady with nothing less than veneration. He
found her, awaiting him, seated on the great divan
of the Salon Carre. She was not in the garb of labour,
but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her
parasol in honour 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 New¬
man a most respectful curtsey, she expressed her
74
THE AMERICAN
gratitude for his liberality in the neatest of little
speeches. It annoyed him to have so charming a
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 intona¬
tion, 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 regarded her services
as a particular favour.
"Whenever you please then," she said, "we'll
pass the review."
They walked slowly round the room and then
into the others; they strolled about with high dig¬
nity for half an hour. His companion evidently rel¬
ished her situation and had no desire to bring to
a close her public interview with a patron of such
striking type. Newman perceived that prosperity
agreed with her and that the little firm-lipped,
peremptory air with which she had addressed her
father on the occasion of their former meeting had
given place to the prettiest, easiest prattle.
"What sort of pictures have you in mind?" she
asked. "Sacred or profane?"
"Oh, a few of each. But I want something bright
and gay."
"Something gay? There's nothing very gay in
this solemn old Louvre. But we'll see what we can
find. You speak French to-day like a charm. My
father has done wonders."
"Oh, I'm a thankless subject," said Newman.
"I'm too old to learn a language."
"Too old ? Quelle folie! " she cried with a clear,
75
THE AMERICAN
shrill laugh. "You're a very beau jeune homme.
And how do you like my father?"
"He's a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs
at my blunders."
"He's very comme il faut, dear papa," said Ma¬
demoiselle Noemie, "and as honest as the day. Oh,
a probity that would take a prize! You could trust
him with millions."
"Do you always mind what he says?" asked
Newman.
"'Mind' it?"
"Do you do what he bids you."
The girl stopped and looked at him; she had a
spot of colour in either cheek, and in her prompt
French eye, too protrusive for perfect beauty, was a
sharp spark of freedom. "Why do you ask me
that ?"
"Because I want to know."
"You think me a bad little girl?" And she gave
a strange smile.
Newman looked at her a moment; he saw she was
pretty, but he was not in the least dazzled. He re¬
membered poor M. Nioche's solicitude for her inno¬
cence, and he laughed out again as his eyes met this
odd quantity. Her face was a rare mixture of youth
and maturity, and beneath her clear, charming fore¬
head her searching little smile seemed to contain a
world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty
enough, certainly, to make her father uneasy; _.but
as regards her innocence Newman felt ready on the
spot to affirm that she had never yet sacrificed it.
£hp had pimply npypr had any tn 1
ose; she had been
76
THE AMERICAN
looking at the wonderful world about her since she
was ten years old, and he would have been a wise
man who could tell her any secret of the town. In her
long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied
Madonnas and Saint Johns; she had kept an eye
upon the variously-embodied human nature in which
the scene no less abounded, and she had formed her
conclusions. In a degree, it seemed to Newman,
M. Nioche might be at rest; if his daughter should
assert her liberty in some unmistakeable way she
would yet never publish her imprudence. Newman,
with his long-drawn, leisurely smile and his articu¬
lation that suggested confidence in nothing but its
motive, was always mentally taking his time; so he
asked himself now what she was looking at him in
that way for. He had an impression she would like
him to confess that he did think her a wretch. "Oh
no," he said at last; " it would be very impolite in
me to judge you in any such way. I don't know
99
you.
"But my father has complained to you."
"He says you're a free spirit."
"He shouldn't go about saying such things to
gentlemen! But you don't believe it?"
"Well," said Newman conscientiously, "I don't
believe he meant any harm by it."
She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile,
and then pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage
of Saint Catherine. "How should you like that ?"
"It doesn't please me," he presently answered.
"The young lady in the yellow dress isn't pretty
enough."
77
THE AMERICAN
"Ah, you're a great connoisseur!" his companion
sighed.
"In pictures? Oh no; I'm only picking up the
rudiments of knowledge."
"In pretty women then ?"
"In that I may be coming on, but I've ground to
make up."
"What do you say to this?" the girl asked, indi¬
cating a superb Italian portrait of a lady. "I'll do
it for you on a smaller scale."
"On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the
original ?"
She glanced at the glowing splendour of the Vene¬
tian masterpiece and gave a toss of her head. "I
don't like that woman. She looks stupid."
"Well, she makes an impression on me," said
Newman. "Decidedly I must have her, and as large
as life. And just as shiningly stupid as she stands
there."
The 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!" And then as he but
opposed his vagueness she gave another shrug.
" Seriously, 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."
She turned away a moment, walked to the other
side of the hall and stood there looking vaguely
78
THE AMERICAN
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're going to travel about Europe
that way ?"
"Yes, I intend to travel," said Newman.
"Ordering, buying, spending money?"
"Of course I shall spend a certain amount of
money."
"You're very happy to have it. And you're per¬
fectly free ?"
"How do you mean, free ?"
"You have nothing to embeter you — no father,
no family, no wife, no fiancee?"
"Yes, I'm tolerably free."
"You're very very happy," said Mademoiselle
Noemie 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
girl went on.
"Only a few days more."
"Why do you go away?"
"It's getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland."
"To Switzerland ? That's a fine country. I would
give the clothes on my back to see it! Lakes and
mountains, deep green valleys, ranz-des-vaches! Oh
I congratulate you! Meanwhile I shall sit here
through all the hot summer daubing at your pic¬
tures."
"Ah, take your time about it," Newman urged.
"Do them at your convenience."
79
THE AMERICAN
They walked further and looked at a dozen other
things. He pointed out what pleased him, and
Mademoiselle Noemie generally criticised it and
proposed something else. Then suddenly she di¬
verged into the intimate. "What made you speak
to me the other day in the Salon Carre ?"
"I admired your picture."
" But you hesitated a long time."
"Oh, I do nothing foolish," he said.
"Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never sup¬
posed you were going to speak to me. I never dreamed
I should be walking about here with you to-day.
It's very remarkable."
"It's sufficiently natural," he calmly pleaded.
"Ah, I beg your pardon: not to me. 'Free spirit'
— in other words horrid creature — 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,"
Newman returned.
Mademoiselle Noemie remained silent; at last she
dropped into a seat. "Well then, for those five it's
fixed," she presently said. "Five copies as brilliant
and beautiful as I can make them. We've one more
to choose. Should n't you like one of those great
Rubenses — the Marriage of Marie de Medicis ?
Just look at it and see how handsome it is."
"Oh yes; I should like that," he allowed. "Finish
off with that."
"Finish off with that — good!" she laughed. She
sat a moment looking at him, then suddenly rose
80
THE AMERICAN
and stood before him with her arms expressively
folded. "Ah $a, I don't understand you," she
bravely broke out. "I don't understand how a man
can, be so ignorant."
"Oh, I'm ignorant certainly." And he put his
hands in his pockets.
"It's too ridiculous! I don't know how to paint
pour deux sous."
"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 met it with a grimace of his own. "Why
do you make that statement?"
" Because it irritates me to see a clever man so
bete. My copies are grotesque."
"And the one I possess — ?"
"That one's the flower of the dreadful family."
"Well," said Newman, "I never outgrew a mis¬
take but in my own time and in my own way."
She looked at him askance. "Your patience is
very gentille; it's my duty to warn you before you go
further. This commande of yours is impossible, you
know. What do you take me for ? It's work for ten
strong men. You pick out the six most difficult
pictures in the place, 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'd go."
Newman considered her in some perplexity. In
spite of the blunder of which he stood convicted he
was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a
81
THE AMERICAN
lively suspicion that her burst of confidence was not
essentially more honest than her original pretence.
She was playing a great game; she was not simply
taking pity on the bloom of his barbarism. What
was it she expected to gain ? The stakes were high
and the risk not small; the prize therefore must
have been commensurate. But even granting that
the prize might be great Newman could scarce resist
a movement of admiration for his young friend's
intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand,
whatever she might intend to do with the other, a
substantial sum of money. "Are you joking or
serious ?"
"Oh, d'un serieux/" she cried, but with her extra¬
ordinary smile.
"I know very little about pictures or how they're
really painted. If you can't do all, why then do what
you conveniently can."
" It will all be bad a jaire pleurer," said Mademoi¬
selle Noemie.
"Oh," Newman laughed, "if you want to swindle
me of course you can. But why do you go on paint¬
ing badly ?"
"I can do nothing else; I've neither eye nor hand
nor training. Above all I have n't patience."
"You're deceiving your father then."
The girl just hesitated. "He perfectly knows."
"No," Newman declared; "I'm sure he believes
in you."
"He's afraid of me, poor dear. I go on painting
badly, as you say, because it passes the time. I like
being here; it's a place to come to every day; it's
82
THE AMERICAN
better than sitting in a little dark damp room on
a court or than selling buttons and whalebones over
a counter."
"Of course it's much more amusing," said New¬
man. " But for a poor girl is n't it rather an expen¬
sive amusement?"
" Oh, I'm very wrong; there's no doubt about that,"
she answered. " But rather than earn my living as
some girls do — toiling with a needle in little black
holes out of the world — I'd throw myself into the
Seine."
"There's no need of that," he presently observed.
"Your father must have mentioned to you the reason
of my offer?"
"The reason —?"
"He wants you to marry, and I told him I'd 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
engagement. Do what you can, and I'll buy what
you do."
She stood some time in thought, her eyes on the
ground. At last looking up, "What sort of a hus¬
band 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 maitres de cafes?
I won't marry at all if I can't marry more proprement
than that."
83
THE AMERICAN
"I'd advise you not to be too fastidious," said
Newman. "That's all the advice I can give you."
"I'm vexed at what I've said!" cried his com¬
panion. "It has done me no good. But I couldn't
help it."
"What good did you expect it to do you ?"
"I could n't help it, simply."
He looked at her a moment. "Well, your painting
may be a fraud, but you're too honest for me all the
same. I don't understand you. Good-bye!" And he
put out his hand.
She made no response, she granted him no fare¬
well. 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 near her another moment, then he
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 de¬
scription of her as a free spirit.
V
When he had told Mrs. Tristram the story of his
fruitless visit to Madame de Cintre she urged him not
to be discouraged, but to carry out his plan of "seeing
Europe" during the summer — after which he might
return to Paris for the autumn and then settle down
comfortably for the winter. "Claire de Cintre will
be kept in a cool place for you," she reasoned; "she's
not a woman who'll change her condition from one
day to another." Newman made no distinct affirma¬
tion 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
Cintre's continued widowhood. This was a little
of a false note in his usual distinctness, and may
perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the incipient
stage of that passion which is more particularly
known as the romantic one. The truth is that the
expression of a pair of eyes, that were both intense
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 com¬
municated 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
85
THE AMERICAN
interview with Mademoiselle Noemie; and left the
old man nursing his breast-pocket in an ecstasy
which the sharpest paternal discomposure might have
been defied to dissipate.
He started on his travels with all his usual appear¬
ance of slow-strolling leisure and all his essential
directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed
less in a hurry and yet no man enabled brief periods
to serve him more liberally. He had practical in¬
stincts which signally befriended him 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 pos¬
session of the particular item he had desired to elicit.
His appetite for items was large, and although many
of tKose^he noted might have seemed woefully dry
and colourless to the ordinary sentimental traveller,
a careful inspection of the list would have shown
that his toughness had sensitive spots. In the charm¬
ing 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 Ameri¬
can civilisation; but he was also greatly struck with
the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hotel de Ville and
wondered if they might n't "get up" something like
it in San Francisco. He stood long 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
86
THE AMERICAN
Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names
of these gentlemen — for reasons best known to him¬
self — 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 Elysees 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 and satisfying best, he had not the grand
tour in the least on his conscience and was not given
to worrying the thing that amused him. He believed
serenelyjhj.LXiJUjop&-was-made for-him and not, hie
for Europe. He had said he wanted to improve his
mrn37~But he would have felt a certain embarrass¬
ment, a certain shame even — a false shame pos¬
sibly — if he had caught himself looking intellect¬
ually into the mirror. Neither in this nor in any other
respect had he a high sense of responsibility; it was
his prime conviction that a man's life should be a
man's ease and that no privilege was really great
enough to take his breath away. The world, to his'
vision, 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 claim of the obligatory pur¬
chase. He had not only a dislike but a sort of moral
mistrust of thoughts too admonitory; one should n't
hunt about for a standard as a lost dog hunts for
a master. One's standard was the idea of one's own
good-humoured prosperity, the prosperity which
enabled one to give as well as take. To expand
without too much ado — without "mean" timidity
87
THE AMERICAN
on one side or the bravado of the big appetite on the
other — to the full compass of any such experience
as was held to stir men's blood represented his nearest
approach to a high principle. He had always hated
to hurry to catch railroad-trains, and yet had always
caught them; and just so an undue solicitude for
the right side seemed a sort of silly dawdling at the
station, a proceeding properly confined to women,
foreigners and invalids. All this admitted, he enjoyed
his journey, when once he had fairly entered the cur¬
rent, as intimately as if he had kept a diary of rap¬
tures. He lounged through Belgium and Holland
and the Rhineland, through Switzerland and North¬
ern Italy, planning about nothing and seeing all
things. The guides and valets de place found him an
excellent subject. He was always approachable,
for he was much addicted to large lapses and long
intervals, to standing about in the vestibules and
porticoes of inns, and he availed himself little of the
opportunities for impressive seclusion so liberally
offered in Europe to gentlemen travelling with long
purses. When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a
ruin was proposed to him the first thing he usually
did, after surveying his postulant in silence and
from head to foot, was to sit down at a little table
and order some light refreshment, of which he more
often than not then forgot to partake. The cicerone,
during this process, commonly retreated to a respect¬
ful distance; otherwise I am not sure that Newman
would not have bidden him sit down and share, sit
down and tell him as a decent creature if his church
or his gallery were really worth one's trouble. At last
88
THE AMERICAN
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 and how far ?"
And whatever the case, thoupTTie might seem^ 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 prob¬
ability through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his
pilgrimage. When the goal was a disappointment,
when the church was meagre or the ruin a heap of
rubbish, he never protested nor berated his adviser;
he looked with an impartial eye upon great monu¬
ments and small, made the guide recite his lesson,
listened to it religiously, asked if there were nothing
else to be seen in the neighbourhood, and drove
back again at a rattling pace. It is to be feared that
his perception of the difference between the florid
and the refined had not reached the stage of con¬
fidence, and that he might often have been seen —
as we have already seen him —gazing with culpable
serenity at inferior productions. The wrong occasion
was a part of his pastime in Europe as well as the
right, and his tour was altogether a j(5astime.^ But
there is sometimes nothing like the imagination of
those people who have none, and Newman now and
then, in an unguided stroll through 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 deep com¬
motion. It was not an excitement, not a perplexity;
it involved an extraordinary sense of ^ecreation^
THE AMERICAN
He encountered by chance in Holland a young
American with whom he fell for a time into a tacit
travellers' partnership. They were men of different
enough temper, but each in his way so true to his
type that each might seem to have something of
value to contribute to the association. Newman's
comrade, whose name was Babcock, was a young
Unitarian minister; a small,*~ipSTe, neatly-attired
man, with a strikingly candid countenance. He was
a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and had
spiritual charge of a small congregation in another
suburb of the New England capital. 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 these delicacies fail to flourish under the table
d'hote 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 il¬
lustrated papers were also to be procured, and he
had carried it about with him and shown extreme
serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate posi¬
tion of having his hominy prepared for him and
served on odd occasions 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, the memory
of his visit always pressed the spring of mirth. 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-aliens cling
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together, on a strange soil, in spite of themselves;
but it was probable that at home these unnatural
intimates must have met only to part. They had
indeed by habit and form as little in common 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 conscien¬
tiously and, as he would have said, with detachment.
He was not sure it was a good thing for him to have
given himself up so unreservedly to our hero, whose
way of taking life was so little his own.
Newman was a spirit of easy power; Mr. Babcock
even at times saw it clear that he was one of nature's
noblemen, and certainly it was impossible not to
feel strongly drawn to him. But would it not be
desirable to try to produce an effect on him, to try to
quicken his moral life and raise his sense of respon¬
sibility to a higher plane ? He liked everything, he
accepted everything, he found amusement in every¬
thing; he was not discriminating, his values were
as vague and loose as if he had carried thetn in his
trousers pocket. The young man from Dorchester
accused Newman of a fault that he considered very
grave and did his best himself to avoid — of what
he would have called a want of moral reaction. Poor
Mr. Babcock was extremely fond of pictures and
churches, and kept Mrs. Jameson's volumes in his
trunk; he regarded works of art as questions and
his relations with them as experiences, and received
peculiar impressions from everything he saw. But
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' nevertheless in his secret soul he detested Europe
- and felt an irritated need to protest against Newman's
easy homage to so compromised a charmer, mistress
of a cynicism that appeared at times to have made him
cynical. Mr. Bab cock 'smo ral mala'is e, I am afraid,
lay deeper than where any definition of mine can
reach it." Me mistrusted the "European" tempera¬
ment, he suffered from the "European" climate, he
hated the "European" dinner hour; "European"
life seemed to him unscrupulous and impure. And
yet he had what he called an intimate sense of the
true beautiful in life, and as this element 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
bent on putting his finger on the boundary-line, in
the life of a School, between the sincere time and the
insincere, he could not bring himself to decide that
the kingdoms of the earth were utterly rotten. But
he thought them in a bad way, and his quarrel with
Newman was over some of the elements, insidious
forms of evil, that this promiscuous feeder at the
feast could swallow with no wry face. Babcock him¬
self really knew as little about the forms of evil, in
any quarter of the world, as about the forms of bank¬
ing; his most vivid realisation of the most frequent
form had been the discovery that one of his college
classmates, a student of architecture in Paris, was
carrying on a love-affair with a young woman who
did n't in the least count on his marrying her. Bab¬
cock had described this situation to Newman, and
our hero had applied an epithet marked by a rough
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but not unfriendly justice to the girl. The next day
his companion asked him if he were certain he had
used exactly the right word to characterise the young
architect's mistress. Newman wondered and seemed
amused. "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 had believed in his higher
nature ?"
"I'm afraid I don't know," Newman replied.
"Very likely she had; I've no doubt she judged it
by her own." He was willing to meet his friend on
any view of her.
"I didn't mean that either," said Babcock; "I'm
not sure that she has a higher nature. I'm not sure
— not very sure — every one has. I was only afraid
I might have seemed yesterday not to remember —
not to consider. Well, I think I'll write to Percival
about it."
And he had written to Percival (who had answered
him in a manner that was indubitably cynical) and
had reflected that Newman ought n't to be encouraged,
after all, to read a cheap idealism ihtoTlagrant cases
of itYimoiratftyT"The levity and brevity of his com¬
rade's judgements very often shocked and depressed
him. He had a way of damning people without further
appeal, or else of appearing almost in sympathy
with their sinister side, which seemed unworthy of a
man whose conscience could still pretend to a squirm.
And yet poor Babcock yearned toward him and
remembered that even if, decidedly, his sensibility
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would never work straight, 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 explain what he
meant by some of his principal doubts, but it was
like offering to read from a technical treatise. The
volume might deal lucidly with Mr. Babcock's sub¬
ject, but what was Mr. Babcock's subject without
Mr. Babcock's interest in it ? Newman could enter¬
tain a respect for any man's subject and thought his
friend fortunate to have so special a one. He accepted
all the proofs of its importance that were thus anx¬
iously offered him, and put them away in what he
supposed a very safe place; but poor Babcock never
afterwards recognised his gifts among the articles that
Newman had in daily use.
They travelled together through Germany and
into Switzerland, where for three or four weeks they
trudged over rough passes and smooth and lounged
by the edge and on the bosom of 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, pre¬
occupied; he got his plans into a tangle and talked
one molment of doing one thing and the next of doing
another. Newman led his own usual life, recklessly
made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries
and churches, spent an unconscionable amount of
time in strolling in Piazza San Marco, bought several
spurious pictures and for a fortnight enjoyed Venice
grossly. One evening, coming back to his inn, he
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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 solemn¬
ity that he was afraid they must part. Newman
expressed his surprise and regret; he wondered why
a parting had become necessary. "Don't be afraid
I'm tired of you," he said.
"You 're not tired of me ?" his companion asked,
fixing him with clear but almost tragic eyes.
"Why the deuce should I be ? You're a very nice
man. Besides, I don't break down so easily."
"We don't understand each other," said poor
Dorchester.
"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.
"But why should you mind that if I don't ?"
"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 all questions too hard, and I think you take them
too superficially. We can never agree."
"But we've agreed very well all along."
"No, I have n't agreed," said Babcock, shaking
his head. "I'm very uncomfortable. I ought to have
separated from you a month ago."
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"Oh, shucks! 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 observed. "I try to arrive at the truth
about everything. And therTvouL-pxx^tocriastr There
are^3Tings*of"which you take too little account. I
feel as if I ought to go over all this ground we've
traversed again by myself. I'm afraid I have made
a great many mistakes."
"Oh, you needn't give so many reasons," said
Newman. "You've simply had enough of me.
You've all your right to that."
"No, no, I've not had enough of you!" his friend
insisted. " It would be very wrong of me to have had
enough."
"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've seen
I make friends very easily. You'll be lonely your¬
self ; but drop me a line when you feel like it, and
I'll wait for you anywhere."
"I think I'll go back to Milan. I'm afraid I
did n't do justice to Luini."
"Poor old Luini!" said Newman.
"I mean I'm afraid I went too far about him. I
don't think he's as true as he at first seems."
"Luini?" Newman exclaimed. "There's some¬
thing in the look of his genius that's like the face of
a beautiful woman. It's as if she w^re coming
straight at you, or standing very close."
His companion frowned and winced. And it must
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be added that this was, for Newman, an unusually-
metaphysical flight, though in passing through Milan
he had found a great attraction in 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 his revisions of judgement.
But presently Newman heard from him.
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 pro¬
pose that we should part company, and this step
was not really so abrupt as it appeared. In the first
place, you know, I am travelling 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 these coun¬
tries. I feel therefore that I ought to use my time
to the very best advantage. I've 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'm not able to
emulate. I consider that I must arrive at some con¬
clusion and fix my convictions on certain points.
Art and Life seem to me intensely serious things, and
in our travels in Europe we should especially re¬
member the rightful, indeed the solemn, message of
Art. You seem to hold that if a thing amuses you for
the moment this is all you need ask of it; and your
relish for mere amusement is also much higher than
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mine. You put moreover a kind of reckless finality
into your pleasures which at times, I confess, has
seemed to me — shall I say it ? — almost appalling.
Your way, at any rate, is not my way, and it's un¬
wise that we should attempt any longer to pull to¬
gether. 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. Save for this
I should have left you long ago. But I was so deeply
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 harshly. I have a great personal esteem for
you and hope that some day when I have recovered
my balance we shall meet again. But I must recover
my balance first. I hope you will continue to enjoy
your travels; only do remember that Life and Art
are extremely solemn.
Believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher,
Benjamin Babcock.
P. S. I am very unhappy about Luini.
This letter produced in Newman's mind a singular
mixture of exhilaration and awe. Mr. Babcock's
tender conscience at first seemed to him as funny as
a farce, and his travelling back to Milan only to get
into a deeper muddle to be, for reward of his ped¬
antry, exquisitely and ludicrously just. Then he
reflected that these are mighty mysteries; that pos¬
sibly he himself was indeed almost unmentionably
"appalling," and that his manner of considering the
treasures of art and the privileges of life lacked the
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last, or perhaps even the very first, refinement. New¬
man hadja great esteem, after all, for refinement, a^icT
that evening, during the half-hour that he watched
the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked
and humiliated. He was unable to decide how to
answer this communication. His good-nature checked
his snubbing his late companion's earnestness, and
his tough, inelastic sense of humour forbade his
taking it seriously. He wrote no answer at all, but
a day or two after he found in a curiosity-shop a gro¬
tesque little statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth cen¬
tury, which he sent off to Babcock without a com¬
mentary. 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
symbolise ? Did it mean that he was going to try to
be as impressed with the solemnity of things as the
mo^k looked at first, but that he feared he should
succeed no better than this personage proved on a
closer inspection to have done ? It is not supposable
he intended a satire on Babcock's own asceticism,
for this would have been a truly cynical stroke. He
at any rate made his late companion a valuable little
present.
He went, on leaving Venice, through the Tyrol
to Vienna and then returned, westward, through
South Germany. The autumn found him at Baden-
Baden, where he spent several weeks. The charming
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place kept him from day to day ; he was looking
about him and deciding what to do for the winter.
His summer had been very full, and as 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, yet felt it
somehow, even at the age he had reached, as an
advantage. He remembered Mr. Babcock and his
desire to learn the great lesson, and he remembered
also that he had profited little by his friend's exhorta¬
tion to cultivate the same respectable habit. Could n't
he scrape together a few great lessons ? 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 the lesson
that was clearest. But he went on to reflect that he
had done very wisely to pull up stakes and come
abroad; the world was apparently such an interest¬
ing thing to see. He had drawn a few morals of his
own; he could n't say just which, but he had them
there under his hat-band. He had done what he
wanted; he had tackled the great sights and closed
with the great occasions, he had given his mind a
chance to "improve" if it would. He fondly believed
it had improved a good deal. Yes, these waters of the
free curiosity were very soothing, and he would
splash in them till they ran dry. Forty-two years as
he was on the point of numbering, he had a long
course in his eye, and if the haze of the future was
thick it was that of a golden afternoon. Where should
he take the world next ? I have said he remembered
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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 Madamede Cintre's.
If he wanted to make out where the golden afternoon
hung heaviest would n't the place perhaps be in
Madame de Cintre's eyes ? He would certainly find
something of interest there, call it all bravely bright
or call it engagingly obscure.
But there came to him sometimes too, through this
vague rich forecast, the 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 his
possible "haul." They seemed far away now, for
his present attitude was more than a holiday, it was
almost a repudiation. He had told Tom Tristram
the pendulum was swinging back, and the back¬
ward swing, visibly, had not yet ended. Still, the
possibility of hauls, which had dropped in the other
quarter, wore to his mind a different aspect at different
hours. In its train a thousand forgotten episodes
came trooping before him. Some of them he looked
complacently enough in the face; from some he
averted his head. They were old triumphs of nerve,
even of bluff, mere cold memories of the heat of
battle, the high competitive rage. Some of them, as
they lived again, he felt decidedly proud of; he ad¬
mired 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,
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the courage, the celerity, the clear eye and the firm
hand. Of certain other performances it would be
going too far to say he was ashamed of them, for he
had doubtless never had a stomach for dirty work.
He had been blessed from the first with a natural
impulse to disfigure with a direct unreasoning blow
the painted face of temptation. In no man, verily,
could a want of the stricter scruple have been less
excusable. Newman knew the crooked from the
straight at a glance, and the former had received
at his hands, early and late, much putting in its place.
None the less, however, some of his memories wore
at present a graceless and sordid mien, and it struck
him that if he had never incurred any quite inefface¬
able stain he had never on the other hand followed
the line of beauty, as a sought direction, for a single
mile of its course. He had spent his years in the un¬
remitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and
now that he stood so well outside of it the business
of mere money-getting showed only, in its ugliness,
as vast and vague and dark, a pirate-ship with lights
turned inward. It is very well, of a truth, to think
meanly of money-getting after you have filled your
pockets, and our friend, it may be said, should have
begun somewhat earlier to moralise with this super¬
iority. To that it may be answered that he might
have made another fortune if he chose; and we
ought to add that he was not exactly moralising. It
had come back to him simply that what he had been
looking at all summer was a very brave and bristling
world, and that it had not all been made by men
"live" in his old mean sense.
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During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a
letter from Mrs. Tristram, scolding him for the
scant tidings he had sent his friends and begging to
be definitely assured that he had not even thought of
not wintering within call of the Avenue d'lena.
Newman replied as to the blast of a silver bugle.
"I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-
writer and did n't expect anything of me. I guess
I've not struck off twenty letters of pure friendship
in my whole life; in America I conducted my cor¬
respondence altogether by telegrams and by dicta¬
tion to a shorthand reporter. This is a letter of
friendship undefiled; you've got hold of a curiosity —
you could really get something for it. If 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've had some one or other
of the sensations I was after. That has been about
my history ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland,
Switzerland, Germany, Italy — I've taken the whole
list as the bare-backed rider takes the paper hoops
at the circus, and I'm not even yet out of breath.
I carry about six volumes of Ruskin in my trunk;
I've seen some grand old things and shall perhaps
talk them over this winter by your fireside. You see
my face is n't altogether set against Paris. I have had
all kinds of plans and visions, but your letter has
blown most of them away. ' L*appetit vient en mange-
ant, ' says your proverb, and I find that the more
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sweet things I taste the more greedily I look over the
table. Now that I'm 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,
Trebizond, Samarcand, Bokhara. 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 is such a treat to be had
out there. I do want more treats, but I think frankly
I should like best to look for them in the Rue de
l'Universite. Do you ever hear from that handsome
tall lady ? If you can get her to promise she'll be at
home the next time I call I'll go back to Paris straight.
So there you have a bargain. I'm more than ever
in the state of mind I told you about that evening;
I want a companion for life and still want her to be
a star of the first magnitude. I've kept an eye on all
the possible candidates for the position who have
come up this summer, but none of them has filled
the bill or anything like it. I should have enjoyed the
whole thing a thousand times more if I had had
the lady just mentioned under my arm. The nearest
approach to her was a cultivated young man from
Dorchester Mass., who, however, very soon de¬
manded of me a separation for incompatibility of
temper. He told me I had n't it in me ever to raise
a "tone," and he really made me half-believe him.
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
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THE AMERICAN
as well as Tristram. We knocked about for a week
together, but he very soon gave me up in disgust.
He pronounced me a poor creature, incapable of the
joy of life — he talked to me as if I had come from
Dorchester. This was rather bewildering. Which of
my two critics was I to believe ? I did n't worry about
it and very soon made up my mind they don't know
everything. You come nearer that than any one I've
met, and I defy any one to pretend I'm wrong when
I'm more than ever your faithful friend C. N."
VI
He gave up Bagdad and Bokhara and, returning
to Paris before the autumn was over, established
himself in rooms selected by Tom Tristram in ac¬
cordance with the latter's estimate of his "social
standing." When Newman learned that this occult
attribute was to be taken into account he professed
himself utterly incompetent and begged Tristram to
relieve him of the care of it. " I did n't know I' stood,'
socially, at all — I thought I only sat round inform¬
ally, rather sprawling than anything else. Is n't
a social standing to know some two or three thou¬
sand people and invite 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's not very grateful to me," said Mrs. Tris¬
tram, "who introduced you last year to every crea¬
ture of my acquaintance."
"So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought
you wanted me to forget," said Newman in that
tone of surpassing candour which frequently marked
his utterance and which an observer would not have
known whether to pronounce a whimsical affectation
of ignorance or a modest aspiration to knowledge.
"You told me you yourself disliked them all."
"Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least
106
THE AMERICAN
very flattering. But in future," added Mrs. Tris¬
tram, "pray forget all the 'mean' things and remem¬
ber only the good. It will be easily done and won't
fatigue your memory. Only I forewarn you that if
you trust my husband to pick out your rooms you're
in for something hideous." .
"Hideous, darling?" her husband cried.
"To-day I utter nothing base; otherwise I should
use stronger language."
"What do you think she would say, Newman?"
Tristram asked. "If she really tried now? She can
polish one off for a wretch volubly — in two or three
languages; that's what it is to have high culture.
It gives her the start of me completely, since I can't
swear, for the life of me, except in pure Anglo-
Saxon. 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 would accept, in the way of a
lodging, with his eyes shut, anything that Tristram
should offer him. This was partly pure veracity on
our hero's part, but it was also partly charity. He
knew that to pry about and count casseroles and
make people open windows, to poke into beds and
sofas with his cane, to gossip with landladies and
ask who lived above and who below — he knew that
this was of all pastimes the dearest to his friend's
heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his
way as he was conscious he had suffered the warmth
of their ancient fellowship somewhat to abate. He
had besides no taste for upholstery; he had even
107
THE AMERICAN
no very exquisite sense of comfort or convenience.
He had a relish for luxury and splendour, but it was
satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely
knew a hard chair from a soft, and used an art in
stretching his legs which quite dispensed with ad¬
ventitious aids. His idea of material ease was to
inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of
them, and be conscious in them of a number of
patented mechanical devices, half of which he should
never have occasion to use. The apartments should
be clear and high and what he called open, and he
had once said that he liked rooms best in which
you should want to keep on your hat. For the rest
he was satisfied with the assurance of any respect¬
able person that everything was of the latest model.
Tristram accordingly secured for him an habitation
over the price of which the Prince of Morocco had
been haggling. It was situated on the Boulevard
Haussmann, was a 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, did n't haggle, thanked Tristram
heartily, immediately took possession, and had one
of his trunks standing for three months in the draw¬
ing-room.
One day Mrs. Tristram told him that their tall
handsome lady had returned from the country and
that she had met her three days before coming out of
the church of Saint Sulpice; she herself having jour¬
neyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure
lace-mender of whose skill she had heard high praise.
108
THE AMERICAN
"And how were those intense mild eyes?" New¬
man asked.
"They were red with weeping — neither more nor
less. She had been to confession."
"It does n't tally with your account of her," he
said, "that she should have sins to cry about."
"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 did n't press her to tell me. With her, some¬
how, one is very discreet. But I guessed easily enough.
She suffers from her grim old mother and from the
manner in which her elder brother, the technical head
of the family, abets and hounds on the Marquise.
They keep at her hard, they keep at her all the while.
But I can almost forgive them, because, as I told you,
she's simply a saint, and a persecution is all that she
needs to bring out what I call her quality."
"That's a comfortable theory for her. I hope
you'll never mention it to the old folks. But why
does she let them persecute her ? Is n't she, as a
married woman, her own mistress ?"
"Legally yes, I suppose; but morally no. In
France you may 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's ma mere, and
you 've no right to judge her. You 've simply to obey.
The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintre
bows her head and folds her wings."
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THE AMERICAN
"Can't she at least make her brother quit?"
"Her brother's the chef de la famille, the head of
the clan. With those people the family's everything;
you must act not for your own pleasure but for the
advantage of your race and name."
"But what do they want to get out of our lovely
friend?" Newman asked.
"Her submission to another marriage. They're
not rich, and they want to bring more money into
the house."
"There's where you come in, my boy!" Tristram
interposed.
"And Madame de Cintre doesn't see it?" New¬
man continued.
"She has been sold for a price once; she naturally
objects to being sold a second time. It appears that
the first time they greatly bungled their bargain.
M. de Cintre, before he died, managed to get through
almost everything."
"And to whom do they want then 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!" her
husband cried. "Observe the wealth of her imagin¬
ation. She has not asked a single question — it's
vulgar to ask questions — and yet she knows it all
inside out. She has the history of Madame de Cintre's
marriage at her fingers' ends. She has seen the lovely
Claire on her knees with loosened tresses and stream-
ing eyes and the rest of them standing over her with
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THE AMERICAN
spikes and goads and red-hot irons, ready to come
down if she refuses Bluebeard. The simple truth
is that they've made a fuss about her milliner's
bill or refused her an opera-box."
Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with
a certain reserve in each direction. "Do you really
mean," he asked of the latter, "that your friend is
being really hustled into a marriage she really shrinks
from ?"
"I think it extremely probable. Those people are
very capable of that sort of thing."
"It's like something in a regular old 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 coun¬
try, she tells me, and there, during the summer,
this scheme must have been hatched."
"Must have been; mind that!" Tristram echoed.
"After all," their visitor suggested after a pause,
"she may be in trouble about something else."
"If it's something else then it's something worse."
Mrs. Tristram spoke as with high competence.
Newman, silent a while, seemed lost in meditation.
"Is it possible," he asked at last, "that they can do
that sort of thing over here ? that helpless women
are thumb-screwed — sentimentally, socially, I mean
— into marrying men they object to."
"Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard
time of it," said Mrs. Tristram. "There's plenty
of the thumb-screw for them everywhere."
"A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in
in
THE AMERICAN
New York," said Tristram. "Girls are bullied or
coaxed or bribed, or all three together, into marry¬
ing, for money, horrible cads. There's no end of
that always going on in Fifth Avenue, and other bad
things besides. The Morals of Murray Hill! Some
one ought to show them up."
"I don't believe it!" — Newman took it very
gravely. "I don't see how, in America, such cases
can ever have occurred; for the simple reason that
the men themselves would be the first to make them
impossible. The American—fflaTr-somet-imes~takes
advantage —I've, known, .him. to. But he does_n't
take advantage of women."
'TTisten to the voice of the spread eagle!" cried
Tristram.
"The spread eagle should use his wings," said his
wife. "He should fly to the rescue of the woman of
whom advantage is being taken !"
"To her rescue— ?" Newman seemed to wonder.
" Pounce down, seize her in your talons and carry
her ofF. Marry her yourself."
Newman, for some moments, answered nothing;
but presently, "I guess she has heard enough of
marrying," he said. "The kindest way to treat her
would be to care for her and yet never speak of it.
But that sort of thing's infamous," he added. "It's
none of my business, but it makes me feel kind of
swindled to hear of it."
He heard of it, however, more than once after¬
wards. Mrs. Tristram again saw Madame de Cintre
and again found her looking very very sad. But on
these occasions there had been no tears; the intense
112
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mild eyes were clear and still. "She's 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 Cintre's acquaintance,
this lovely woman had found a smile in her despair
and expressed her regret at having missed his visit
in the spring and her hope that he had not lost cour¬
age. "I told her something about you," Newman's
hostess wound up.
"That's a comfort," he patiently answered. "I
seem to want people to know about me."
A few days after this, one dusky autumn after¬
noon, he went again to the Rue de l'Universite.
The early evening had closed in as he applied for
admittance at the stoutly-guarded Hotel de Belle-
garde. He was told that Madame la Comtesse was
at home, on which he crossed the court, entered
the further door and was conducted through a ves¬
tibule, vast, dim and cold, up a broad stone staircase
with an ancient iron balustrade, to an apartment
on the first floor. Announced and ushered in,
he found himself in a large panelled boudoir, at one
end of which a lady and a gentleman were seated
by the fire. The gentleman was smoking a cigar¬
ette; 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 recognised Madame la Comtesse. She
gave him her hand with a smile which seemed in
itself an illumination, and, pointing to her com¬
panion, murmured an allusion, "One of my bro-
113
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thers." The gentleman struck Newman as taking
him, with great good-nature, for a friend already
made, and our hero then perceived him to be the
young man he had met in the court of the hotel on his
former visit, the one who had appeared of an easy
commerce. " Mrs. Tristram has often mentioned you
to us." It had an effect of prodigious benignity as
Madame de Cintre resumed her former place.
Newman, noticing in especial her "us," began,
after he had seated himself, to consider what in
truth might be his errand. He had an unusual, un¬
expected sense of having wa"ndered into a strange
cornerTjf~the -WT>rld. " He was not "given, as a gen¬
eral thing, to "borrowing trouble" or to suspecting
danger, and he had had no social tremors on this
particular occasion. He was not without presence
of mind, though he had no formed habit of prompt
chatter. But his exercised acuteness sometimes pre¬
cluded _^t3cEme^iIIwiiHle5^rj^i«pe«k4on to take
things simply he could n't but feel that some of them
were less simple than others,. He felt as one feels in
missing a step, in an ascent, where one has expected
to find it. This strange pretty woman seated at fire¬
side talk with her brother in the grey depths of her
inhospitable-looking house — what had he to say
to her ? She seemed enveloped in triple defences
of privacy; by what encouragement had he pre¬
sumed on his having effected a breach ? It was for
a moment as if he had plunged into some medium
as deep as the ocean and must exert himself to keep
from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame
la Comtesse and she was settling herself in her chair
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and drawing in her long dress and vaguely, rather
indirectly, turning her face to him. Their eyes met;
a moment later she looked away and motioned to
her brother to put a log on the fire. But the moment,
and the glance that lived in it, had been sufficient
to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of sharp
personal e mbarrassmenthe was ever to know. He
performed the movement frequent with him and
which was always a symbol of his taking mental
possession of a scene — he extended his Jong legs.-
The impression his hostess had made on him at their
first meeting came back in an instant; it had been
deeper than he knew. She took on a light and a
grace, or, more definitely, an interest; he had opened
a book and the first lines heldjiis attention.
"~SKe asked him questions as if unaBIF'to'llo less:
how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram, how long
he had been in Paris, how long he expected to re¬
main there, how he liked it. She spoke English
without an accent, or rather with that absence of
any one of those long familiar to him which on his
arrival in Europe had struck him as constituting by
itself a complete foreignness — a foreignness that
in women he had come to like extremely. Here and
there her utterance slightly exceeded this measure,
but at the end of ten minutes he found himself wait¬
ing for these delicate discords. He enjoyed them,
marvelling to hear the possible slip become the
charming glide. "You have a beautiful country of
your own," she safely enough risked.
"Oh, very fine, very fine. You ought to come
over and see it."
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"I shall never go over and see it," she answered
with a smile.
"Well, why should n't you ?"
"We don't travel; especially so far."
"But you go away sometimes; you don't always
stay right here ?"
" I go away in summer — a little way, to the
country."
He wanted to ask her something more, something
personal and going rather far — he hardly knew
what. " Don't you find it rather lifeless here," he said;
"so far from the street?" Rather "lonesome" he
was going to say, but he deflected nervously, for
discretion, and then felt his term an aggravation.
"Yes, it's very lifeless, if you mean very quiet;
but that's exactly what we like."
"Ah, that's exactly what you like," he repeated.
He was touched by her taking it so.
" Besides, I've lived here all my life."
"Lived here all your life," Newman found he
could but echo.
"I was born here, and my father was born here
before me, and my grandfather and my great-grand¬
fathers. Were they not, Valentin?" — and she ap¬
pealed to her brother.
"Yes, it seems a condition of our being born at
all," the young man smiled as he rose and threw the
remnant of his cigarette into the fire. He remained
leaning against the chimney-piece, and an observer
would have guessed that he wished to take a better
look at their guest, whom he covertly examined
while he stroked his moustache.
116
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"Your house is tremendously old then?" New¬
man pursued.
"How old is it, brother?" asked Madame de
Cintre.
The young man took the two candles from the
mantel, lifted one high in each hand and looked up,
above the objects on the shelf, toward the cornice of
the room. The chimney-piece was in white marble
of the Louis-Quinze period, but much aloft was a
panelling of an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted
white and here and there gilded. The white had
turned to yellow and the gilding was tarnished.
On the top the figures ranged themselves into a
shield, on which an armorial device was cut. Above
it, in relief, was a number—1627. "There you
have a year," said the young man. "That's old or
new, according to your point of view."
"Well, over here," Newman replied, "one's point
of view gets shifted round considerably." And he
threw back his head and looked about. "Your house
is of a very fine style of architecture."
"Are you interested in questions of architecture ?"
asked the gentleman at the chimney-piece.
"Well, I took the trouble this summer to ex¬
amine — as well as I can calculate — some four
hundred and seventy churches. Do you call that in¬
terested ?"
"Perhaps you're interested in religion," said his
amiable host.
Newman thought. "Not actively." He found
himself speaking as if it were a railroad or a mine;
so that the next moment, to correct this, " Are you a
117
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Roman Catholic, madam ?" he inquired of Madame
de Cintre.
"I'm of the faith of my fathers," she gravely
replied.
He was struck with a sort of richness in the effect
of it — he threw back his head again for contem¬
plation. "Had you never noticed that number up
there?" he presently asked.
She hesitated a moment and then, "In former
years," she returned.
Her brother had been watching Newman's move¬
ment. "Perhaps you would like to examine the
house."
Our friend slowly brought down his eyes for re¬
cognition of this; he received the impression that
the young man at the chimney-piece had his forms,
and sought his own opportunities, of amusement.
He was a handsome figure of a young man; his face
wore a smile, his moustachios were curled up at
the ends and there was something — more than the
firelight — that played in his eyes. "Damn his
French impudence!" Newman was on the point of
inwardly growling. "What the deuce is he grin¬
ning at?" He glanced at Madame de Cintre, who
was only looking at the floor. But she raised her eyes,
which again met his, till she carried them to her
brother. He turned again to this companion and
observed that he strikingly resembled his sister.
This was in his favour, and our hero's first impres¬
sion of Count Valentin had moreover much engaged
him. His suspicion expired and he said he should
rejoice to see the house.
118
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The young man surrendered to gaiety, laying his
hand again on a light. "It will repay your curiosity.
Come then."
But Madame de Cintre rose quickly and grasped
his arm. "Ah Valentin, what do you mean to do ?"
"To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very
amusing to show Mr. Newman the house."
She kept her hand on his arm and turned to their
visitor with a smile. "Don't let him take you; you
won't find it remarkable. It is a musty old house
like any other."
"Ah, not like any other," the Count still gaily
protested. "It's full of curious things. Besides
a visit like Mr. Newman's is just what it wants and
has never had. It's a rare chance all round."
"You 're very wicked, brother," Madame de Cintre
insisted.
"Nothing venture, nothing have!" cried the young
man. "Will you come?"
She stepped toward Newman, clasping her hands
and speaking, to his sense, with an exquisite grave
appeal. "Would n't you prefer my society here by
my fire to stumbling about dark passages after —
well, after nothing at all ?"
"A hundred times! We'll see the house some
other day."
The young man put down his light with mock
solemnity, and, shaking his head, "Ah, you've de¬
feated a great scheme, sir!" he sighed.
"A scheme? I don't understand," said Newman.
"You'd have played your part in it all the better.
Perhaps some day I shall have a chance to explain it."
119
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"Be quiet and ring for tea," Madame de Cintre
gently concluded.
Count Valentin obeyed, and presently a servant
brought in a tray, which he placed on a small table.
Madame de Cintre, when he had gone, busied her¬
self, from her place, with making tea. She had but
just begun when the door was thrown open and a
lady rushed in with a loud rustling sound. She
stared at Newman, gave a little nod and a "Mon¬
sieur!" and then quickly approached Madame de
Cintre and presented her forehead to be kissed.
Madame de Cintre saluted her, but continued to
watch the kettle. The rustling lady was young and
pretty, it seemed to Newman; she wore her bonnet
and cloak and a train of royal proportions. She be¬
gan to talk rapidly in French. "Oh, give me some
tea, my beautiful one, for the love of God! I'm
aneantie, annihilated." Newman found himself quite
unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly
than M. Nioche.
"That's my wonderful sister-in-law," the young
man mentioned to him.
"She's very attractive," Newman promptly re¬
sponded.
"Fascinating," the Count said; and this time again
his guest suspected him of latent malice. His sister-in-
law came round to the other side of the fire with
her tea in her hand, holding it out at arm's length
so that she might n't spill it on her dress and utter¬
ing little cries of alarm. She placed the cup on the
chimney and began to unpin her veil and pull off her
gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman. " Is there any-
120
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thing I can do for you, my dear lady ?" the young
man asked with quite extravagant solicitude.
"Present me to monsieur," said his sister-in-law.
And then when he had pronounced their visitor's
name: "I can't curtsey to you, monsieur, or I shall
spill my tea. So Claire receives strangers like this ?"
she covertly added, in French to her brother-in-law.
"Apparently! Is n't it fun ?" he returned with en¬
thusiasm.
Newman stood a moment and then approached
Madame de Cintre, who looked up at him as if she
were thinking of something to say. She seemed to
think of nothing, however — she simply smiled. He
sat down near her and she handed him his cup. For
a few moments they talked about that, and mean¬
while he kept taking her in. 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
consider her not only without mistrust, but with¬
out uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from the
first moment he looked at her, had been so in her
favour. And yet if she was beautiful it was not from
directly dazzling him. She was tall and moulded in
long lines; she had thick fair hair and features un¬
even and harmonious. Her wide grey eyes were like
a brace of deputed and garlanded maidens waiting
with a compliment at the gate of a city, but they
failed of that lamplike quality and those many-col¬
oured fires that light up, as in a constant celebra¬
tion of anniversaries, the fair front of the conquering
type. Madame de Cintre was of attenuated substance
121
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and might pass for younger than she probably was.
In her whole person was something still young and
still passive, still uncertain and that seemed still to
expect to depend, and which yet made, in its dig¬
nity, a presence withal, and almost represented, in its
serenity, an assurance. 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 and lost on him: she must pile it
up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was
a clear, noble person — it was very easy to get on
with her. And was she then subject to that appli¬
cation of the idea of "rank" which made her a
kind of historical formation ? Newman had known
rank but in the old days of the army — where it
had not always amounted to very much either; and
he had never seen it attributed to women, unless
perhaps to two or three rather predominant wives
of generals. But the designations representing it in
France struck him as ever so pretty and becoming,
with a property in the bearer, this particular one,
that might match them and make a sense — some¬
thing fair and softly bright, that had motions of ex¬
traordinary lightness and indeed a whole new and
unfamiliar play of emphasis and pressure, a new
way, that is, of not insisting and not even, as one
might think, wanting or knowing, yet all to the effect
of attracting and pleasing. She had at last thought of
something to say. " Have you many friends in Paris
— so that you go out a great deal ?"
He considered — about going out. "Do you mean
if I go to parties — ?"
122
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" Do you go dans le monde, as we say ?"
"I've seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram
at least tells me I have. She has taken me about. I do
whatever she bids me."
" By yourself then you 're not fond of amusements ?"
"Oh yes, of some sorts. I'm not fond of very fast
rushing about, or of sitting up half the night; I'm
too old and too heavy. But I want to be amused;
I came to Europe for that."
She appeared to think a moment, and then with
a smile: "But I thought one can be so much amused
in America."
"I could n't; perhaps I was too much part of the
show. That's never such fun, you know, for the
animals themselves."
At this moment young Madame de Bellegarde
came back for another cup of tea, accompanied by
Count Valentin. Madame de Cintre, when she had
served her, began to talk again with Newman and
recalled what he had last said. " In your own coun¬
try you were very much occupied ?"
"I was in active business. I've been in active
business since I was fifteen years old."
"And what was your active business?" asked
Madame de Bellegarde, who was decidedly not so
pretty as Madame de Cintre.
"I've 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
123
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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 conscientious clearness,
but Madame de Bellegarde's tone made him go on,
after a meditative pause, with a certain light grim-
ness of pleasantry. "No, I lost money on wash-tubs,
but I came out pretty square on leather."
"I've made up my mind, after all," said the Mar¬
quise, "that the great point is — how do you call it?
— to come out square. I'm on my knees to money
and my worship is as public as you like. If you have
it I ask no questions. For that I'm a real radical —
like you, monsieur; at least as I suppose you. My
belle-s aur is very proud; but I find that one gets
much more pleasure in this sad life if one does n't
make too many difficulties."
"Goodness gracious, chere madame, how you rush
in!" Count Valentin gaily groaned.
"He's a man one can speak to, I suppose, since
my sister receives him," the lady more covertly an¬
swered. " Besides, it's very true; those are my ideas."
"Ah, you call them ideas?" the young man re¬
turned in a tone that Newman thought lovely.
"But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the
army — in your great war," his beautiful sister pur¬
sued.
"Yes, but that was not business — in the paying
sense. I could n't afford it often."
"Very true!" said Count Valentin, who looked
at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar
124
THE AMERICAN
facial play, in which irony and urbanity seemed per-'
plexinglycommingled. "Are you a brave man?"
"Well, try me."
"Ah then, there you are! In that case come
again."
"Dear me, what an invitation!" Madame de
Cintre murmured with a smile that betrayed em¬
barrassment.
"Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come — particu¬
larly," her brother returned. "It will give me great
pleasure. I shall feel the loss if I miss one of his visits.
But I maintain he must be of high courage. A stout
heart, sir, and a firm front." And he offered New¬
man his hand.
"I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see
Madame de Cintre," said Newman, bent on dis¬
tinctness.
"You '11 need, exactly for that, all your arms."
"Ah de grace!" she appealed.
"Decidedly," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "I'm
the only person here capable of saying something
polite! Come to see me; you '11 need no courage
at all, monsieur."
Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether
an assent; then, shaking hands all round, marched
away. Madame de Cintre failed to take up her sis¬
ter's challenge to be gracious, but she looked with
a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.
VII
One evening very late, about five days after this
episode, Newman's servant brought him a card which
proved to be 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 the greatest
of his gilded saloons and eyeing it from cornice to
carpet. Count Valentin's face, it seemed to him, ex¬
pressed not less than usual a sense of the inherent
comedy of things. "What the devil is he laughing
at now?" our hero asked himself; but he put the
question without acrimony, for he felt in Madame
de Cintre's brother a free and adventurous nature,
and he had a presentiment that on this basis of the
natural and the bold they were destined to under¬
stand each other. Only if there was food for mirth
he wished to have a glimpse of it too.
"To begin with," said the young man as he ex¬
tended his hand, "have I come too late?"
"Too late for what?"
"To smoke a cigar with you."
"You would have to come early to do that," New¬
man said. "I don't know how to smoke."
"Ah, you're a strong man!"
" But I keep cigars," he added. " Sit down."
His visitor looked about. " Surely I may n't smoke
here."
"What's the matter? Is the room too small?"
126
THE AMERICAN
"It's too large. It's like smoking in a ball-room
or a church."
"That's what you were laughing at just now?"
Newman asked; "the size of my room?"
"It's not size only, but splendour and harmony,
beauty of detail. It was the smile of sympathy and
of admiration."
Newman looked at him harder and then, "So it
is very ridiculous ?" he enquired.
"Ridiculous, my dear sir? It's sublime."
"That of course is the same thing," said New¬
man. "Make yourself comfortable. Your coming
to see me, I take it, is an act of sympathy and a sign
of confidence. You were not obliged to. Therefore
if anything round here amuses you it will be all in
a pleasant way. Laugh as loud as you please; I like
to have my little entertainment a success. 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."
His friend gave him a long look of unresentful
perplexity. He laid his hand on his sleeve and seemed
on the point of saying something, but suddenly
checked himself, leaned back in his chair and puffed
at his cigar. At last, however, breaking silence,
"Certainly," he began, "my coming to see you is the
frank demonstration you recognise. I have been,
nevertheless, in a measure encouraged — or urged —
to the step. My sister, in a word, has asked it of me,
and a request from my sister is, for me, a law. I was
near you just now and I observed lights in what I
supposed to be your rooms. It was not a ceremonious
127
THE AMERICAN
hour for making a call, but I was not sorry to do
something that would show me as not performing
a mere ceremony."
"Well, here I am for you as large as life," said
Newman as he extended his legs.
"I don't know what you mean," the young man
went on, "by giving me unlimited leave to laugh.
Certainly I'm a great laugher; it's the only way,
in general, is n't it ? not to — well, not to crever
d'ennui. But it's not in order that we may laugh
together — or separately — that I have, I may say,
sought your acquaintance. To speak with a con¬
fidence and a candour which I find rapidly getting
the better of me, you have interested me without
having done me the honour, I think, in the least
to try for it — by having acted so consistently in
your own interest: that, I mean, of your enlight¬
ened curiosity." All this was uttered, to Newman's
sense, with a marked proficiency, as from a habit of
intercourse that was yet not "office" intercourse,
and, in spite of the speaker's excellent English, with
the perfect form, as our friend supposed, of the
superlative Frenchman; but there was at the same
time something in it of a more personal and more
pressing intention. What this might prove to have
for him Newman suddenly found himself rather
yearning to know. M. de Bellegarde was a foreigner
to the last roll of his so frequent rotary r; and if he
had met him out in bare Arizona he would have felt
it proper to address him with a "How-d'ye-do,
Mosseer?" Yet there was that in his physiognomy
which seemed to suspend a bold bridge of gilt wire
128
THE AMERICAN
over the impassable gulf produced by difference of
race. He was but middling high an{£ of robust and
agile aspect. S^alenti-n de BeU£garde\his host was
afterwards to learn, had a mortal dread^ef not keep¬
ing the robustness down sufficiently to keep the
agility up; he was afraid of growing stout; he was
too short a story as he said, to afford an important
digression. He rode and fenced and practised gym¬
nastics with unremitting zeal, and you could n't
congratulate him on his appearance without making
him turn pale at your imputation of its increase. 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 enquiring rather
than of the dogmatic or sensitive cast, and a mous¬
tache as delicate as that of a page in a romance. He
resembled his sister not in feature, but in the ex¬
pression of his fair open eyes, completely void, as
they were in his case^of introspection, and in the fine
freshness of his smile,"w^hich jsvas like a gush of crys¬
talline water. The charm of his face was above all
in its being intensely, being frankly, ardently, gal¬
lantly alive. You might have seen it in the form of
a bell with the long "pull" dangling in the young
man's conscious soul; at a touch of the silken cord
the silver sound would fill the air. There was some¬
thing in this quick play which assured you he was
not economising his consciousness, not living in a
corner of it to spare the furniture of the rest. He was
squarely encamped in the centre and was keeping
open house. When he flared into gaiety it was the
movement of a hand that in emptying a cup turns
129
THE AMERICAN
it upside down; he gave you all the strength of the
liquor. He inspired Newman with something of
the kindness our hero used to feel in his earlier
years for those of his companions who could per¬
form strange and clever tricks — make their joints
crack in queer places or whistle at the back of their
mouths. "My sister told me," he said, "that I ought
to come and remove the impression I had taken such
apparent pains to produce on you; the impression of
my labouring under some temporary disorder. Did
it strike you that what I said did n't make a sense ?"
"Well, I thought I had never seen any one like
you in real life," Newman returned. "Not in real
quiet home life."
"Ah then Claire's right." And Count Valentin
watched his host for a moment through his smoke-
wreaths. "And yet even if it is the case I think we
had better let it stand. I had no idea of putting you
off by any violence of any kind; I wanted on the
contrary to produce a favourable impression. Since
I did nevertheless make a fool of myself I was per¬
haps luckily inspired, for I must n't seem to set up
a claim for consistency which, in the sequel of our
acquaintance, I may by no means justify. Set me
down as a shocking trifler with intervals of high
lucidity and even of extraordinary energy."
"Oh, I guess you know what you're about,"
said Newman.
"When I'm sane I'm very sane; that I admit,"
his guest returned. "But I did n't come here to talk
about myself. I should like to ask you a few ques¬
tions. You allow me?"
130
THE AMERICAN
"Well, give me a specimen."
"You live here all alone?"
"Absolutely. With whom should I live?"
"For the moment," smiled M. de Bellegarde, "I'm
asking questions, not answering them. You've come
over to Paris for your pleasure ?"
Newman had a pause. "Every one asks me that!"
he said with his almost pathetic plainness. "It
sounds quite foolish — as if I were to get my pleas¬
ure somehow under a writ of extradition."
"But at any rate you've a reason for being
here."
"Oh, call it for my pleasure!" said Newman.
"Though it represents me as trying to reclaim a hope¬
less absentee it describes well enough the logic of my
conduct."
"And you're enjoying what you find ?"
"Well, I'm keeping my head."
Count Valentin puffed his cigar again in silence.
"For myself," he resumed at last, "I'm entirely at
your service. Anything I can do for you will make
me very happy. Call on me at your convenience. Is
there any one you wish to know — anything you
wish to see ? It's a pity you should n't fully avail
yourself of Paris."
"Well, I guess I avail myself," said Newman
serenely. "I'm much obliged to you."
"Honestly speaking," his visitor went on, "there's
something absurd to me in hearing myself make
you these offers. They represent a great deal of
good-will, but they represent little else. You're
a successful man, and I am a rate — by which we
131
THE AMERICAN
mean a dead failure — and it's a turning of the
tables to talk as if I could lend you a hand."
"How does it come that you have n't succeeded ?"
Newman ingenuously asked.
"Oh, I'm not a failure to wring your heart,"
the young man returned. "I've not fallen from a
height, and my fiasco has made no noise and luckily
no scandal. But you stand up, so very straight, for
accomplished facts. You've made a fortune, you've
raised an edifice, you're a financial, practical power,
you can travel about the world till you've found a
soft spot and lie down on it with the consciousness
of having earned your rest. And all — so fabulously!
— in the flower of your magnificent manhood. Is
not that true ? Well, imagine the exact reverse of
all that and you have votre serviteur. I've done
nothing, and there 's not a poor pitiful thing for me
to do."
"Why what's the matter with all the things ?"
" It would take me time to say. Some day I '11 tell
you. Meanwhile I'm right, eh? You're a horrid
success? You've made more money than was ever
made before by one so young and so candid? It's
none of my business, but in short you're beastly
rich ?"
"That's another thing it sounds foolish to say,"
said Newman. " Do you think that's all I am ?"
"No, I think you're original — that's why I'm
here. We're very different, you and I, as products,
I'm sure; I don't believe there's a subject on which
we judge or feel alike. But I rather guess we
shall get on, for there's such a thing, you know,
132
THE AMERICAN
as being — like fish and fowl — too different to
quarrel."
"Oh, I never quarrel," said Newman rather
shortly.
"You mean you just shoot ? Well, I notify you
that till I'm shot," his visitor declared, "I shall have
had a greater sense of safety with you than I have
perhaps ever known in any relation of life. And as
a sense of danger is clearly a thing impossible to yon,
we shall therefore be all right."
With the preamble embodied in these remarks
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 strike larger from
a far-off belfry. Valentin de Bellegarde was by his
own confession at all times a great chatterer, and on
this occasion the habit of promptness of word and
tone was on him almost as a fever. It was a tradition
of his race that people of its blootTTlways conferred
alavour "by their attentions, and, as his real con¬
fidence was as rare as his general surface was bright,
he had a double reason for never fearing his friend¬
ship could be importunate. Late blossom though
he might be, moreover, of an ancient stem, tradi¬
tion (since I have used the word) had in his nature
neither visible guards nor alarms, but was as muffled
in sociability and urbanity as an old dowager in her
laces and strings of pearls. Valentin was by the
measure of the society about him a gentilhomme
of purest strain, and his rule of life, so far as it was
definite, had been to keep up the character. This,
it seemed to him, might agreeably engage a young
133
THE AMERICAN
man of ordinary good parts. But he attained his
best values by instinct rather than by theory, and
the amiability of his character was so great that
certain of the aristocratic virtues lost, at his touch,
their rigour without losing, as it were, their temper.
In his younger years he had been suspected of low
tastes, and his mother had greatly feared from him
some such slip in the common mire as might be¬
spatter 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 had never troubled
his deepest depths of serenity, and he had remained
somehow as fortunate as he was rash. He had long
been tied with so short a rope, however, that he had
now a mortal grudge against family discipline. He
had been known to say within the limits of the fam¬
ily that, featherhead though he might be, the honour
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 would see. He had missed no
secret for making high spirits consort with good
manners, and he seemed to Newman, as afterwards
young members of the Latin races often seemed to
him, now almost infantile and now appallingly ma¬
ture. In America, "Newman reflecTed7 " growing " men
had old heads and young hearts, or at least young
morals; here they had young heads and very aged
hearts, morals the most grizzled and wrinkled.
"What I envy you is yourTTberty," Count Valentin
found occasion to observe; "your wide range, your
freedom to come and go, your not having a lot of
134
THE AMERICAN
people, who take themselves all too seriously, ex¬
pecting something of you. I live," he added with
a sigh, "beneath the eyes of my admirable mother."
"Is n't it then your own fault ? What's to hinder
your ranging?" Newman asked.
"There's a delightful simplicity in that question.
Everything in life is to hinder it. To begin with I
have n't a penny."
"Well, I had n't a penny when I began to range."
"Ah, but your poverty was your capital! Being
of your race and stamp, it was impossible you should
remain what you were born, and being born poor
— do I understand it ? — it was therefore inevitable
you should become as different from that as possible.
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 round me and saw a world
with everything ticketed ' Don't touch,' and the
deuce of it was that the ticket seemed meant only
for me. I could n't go into business, I could n't
make money, because I was a Bellegarde. I could n't
go into politics because I was a Bellegarde — the
Bellegardes don't recognise the Bonapartes. I ^
could n't go into literature because I was a dunce.
I could n't marry a rich girl because no Bellegarde
had for ages married a roturiere and it was n't urgent
I should deviate. We shall have to face it, how¬
ever— you'll see. 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
135
THE AMERICAN
I did, punctiliously, and received an apostolic flesh-
wound at Castelfidardo. It did neither the Holy
Father nor me any good that I could make out.
Rome was doubtless a very amusing place in the
days of Heliogabalus, but it has sadly fallen off since.
I was immured for three years, like some of the
choicest scoundrels in history, in the castle of Saint
Angelo, and then I came back to secular life."
Newman followed very much as he had followed
ciceroni through museums. "So you've no active
interest ? — you do absolutely nothing ?"
"As hard as ever I can. I'm supposed to amuse
myself and to pass my time, and, to tell the truth,
I've had some good moments. They come some¬
how, in spite of one, and the thing is then to recog¬
nise them. But you can't keep on the watch for them
for ever. I'm good for three or four years more
perhaps, but I foresee that after that I shall spring
a leak and begin to sink. I shan't float any more,
I shall go straight to the bottom. Then, at the bot¬
tom, 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 put it on the shelf altogether."
"Do you attend church regularly?" asked New¬
man in a tone which gave the enquiry a quaint effect.
His friend evidently appreciated this element, yet
looked at him with due decorum. "I'm a very good
Catholic. I cherish the Faith. I adore the blessed
Virgin. I fear the Father of Lies."
136
THE AMERICAN
"Well then," said Newman, "you're very well
fixed. You've got pleasure in the present and para¬
dise in the future: what do you complain of?"
" It's a part of one's pleasure to complain. There's
something in your own situation that rubs me up.
You're the first man about whom I've ever found
mysdf"saying 'Uh"7TTT~~were he—!' It's singular,
but so it is. I've known many men who, besides any
factmrffl's advantages that I may possess, had money
and brains into the bargain, yet they've never dis¬
turbed my inward~peace. You've got something it
w6fnes~7ne to have missed. It's not money, it's not
even brains — though evidently yours have been
excellent for your purpose. It's not your superfluous
stature, though I should have rather liked to be a
couple of inches taller. It's a sort of air you have
of being imperturbably, being irremoveably and
indestructibly (that^s the thing!) at home in the
world". When I was a boy my father assured me
if~was~by just such an air that people recognised a
Bellegarde. He called my attention to it. He did n'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've always had the feeling
it represents. My place in life had been made for
me and it seemed easy to occupy. But you who, as
I understand it, have made your own place, you who,
as you told us the other day, have made and sold
articles of vulgar household use — you strike me,
in a fashion of your own, as a man who stands about
at his ease and looks straight over ever so many high
walls. I seem to see you move everywhere like a big
137
THE AMERICAN
stockholder on his favourite railroad. You make me
feel awfully my want of shares. And yet the world
used to be supposed to be ours. What is it I miss
"It'sjhe proud consciousness of honest toil, of
having produced something yourself that somebody
has been willing to pay you for — since that's the
definite measure. Since you speak of my wash-tubs
— which were lovely — isn't it just they and their
loveliness that make up my good conscience?"
"Oh no; I've seen men who had gone beyond
wash-tubs, who had made mountains of soap —
strong-smelling yellow soap, in great bars; and
they've left me perfectly cold."
"Then it's just the regular treat of being an
American citizen," said Newman. "That sets a man
right up."
"Possibly," his guest returned; "but I'm forced
to say I've seen a great many American citizens who
did n't seem at all set up or in the least like large
stockholders. I never envied them. I rather think
the thing's some diabolical secret of your own."
"Oh come," Newman laughed, "you'll persuade
me against my humility."
"No, I shall persuade you of nothing. You've
nothing to do with humility any more than with
swagger: that rs Just "tHe essence of your confounded
coolness. People swagger only when they've some¬
thing to lose, and show their delicacy only when
they've something to gain."
"I don't know what I may havejto lose," said
Newman, "but I can quite see a situation in which
I should have something, to gain."
THE AMERICAN
His visitor looked at him hard. "A situation — ?"
Newman hesitated. "Well, I '11 tell you more about
it when I know you better."
"Ah, you'll soon know me by heart!" the young
man sighed as he departed.
During the next three weeks they met again several
times and, without formally swearing an eternal
friendship, fell, for their course of life, instinctively
into step together. Valentin de Bellegarde was to,
Newman the typical, ideal Frenchman, the French¬
man of tradition and romance, so far as our hero wad
acquainted with these mystic fields. Gallant, ex-s
pansive, amusing, more pleased himself with the
effect he produced than those (even when they were
quite duly pleased) for whom he produced it; a
master of all the distinctively social virtues and a
votary of all the agreeable sensations; a devotee of
something mysterious and sacred to which he occa¬
sionally alluded in terms more ecstatic even than
those in which he spoke of the last pretty woman,
and which was simply the beautiful though some¬
what superannuated image of personal Honour;
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 combinations of the human mix¬
ture, mentally to have foreshadowed it. No two
parties to an alliance could have come to it from a
wider separation*, but it was what each brought out
of the queer dinuiistance that formed the odd attrac¬
tion for the other*..
139
THE AMERICAN
Valentin lived in the basement of an old house in
the Rue d'Anjou Saint Honore, and his small apart¬
ments lay between the court of the house and a gar¬
den of equal antiquity, which spread itself behind
— one of those large, sunless, humid gardens into
which you look unexpectingly in Paris from back
windows, wondering how among the grudging habita¬
tions they find their space. When Newman presently
called on him it was to hint that such quarters
were, though in a different way, at least as funny
as his own. Their oddities had another sense than
those of our hero's gilded saloons on the Boulevard
Haussmann: the place was low, dusky, contracted,
and was crowded with curious bric-a-brac. Their pro¬
prietor, penniless patrician though he might be, 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
French upholsterer's art is prolific; a curtained recess
with a sheet of looking-glass as dark as a haunted
pool; a divan on which, for its festoons and furbe¬
lows, you could no more sit down than on a dow¬
ager's lap; a fireplace draped, flounced, frilled, by
the same analogy, to the complete exclusion of fire.
The young man's possessions were in picturesque
disorder, and his apartment pervaded by the odour
of cigars, mingled, for inhalation, with other dim
ghosts of past presences. Newman thought it, as
a home, damp, gloomy and perverse, and was puz¬
zled by the romantic incoherence of the furniture.
140
THE AMERICAN
The charming Count, like most of his country¬
men, hid none of his lights under a bushel and made
little of a secret of the more interesting passages of
his personal history. He had inevitably a vast deal
to say about women, and could frequently indulge
in sentimental and ironical apostrophes to these
authors of his joys and woes. " Oh, the women, the
women, and the things they've made me do!" he
would exclaim with a wealth of reference. " C'est
egal, of all the follies and stupidities I've committed
for them there is n't one I would have missed!" On
this subject Newman maintained an habitual re¬
serve; to make it shine in the direct light of one's
own experience had always seemed to him a pro¬
ceeding vaguely analogous to the cooing of pigeons
and the chattering of monkeys, and even inconsistent
with a fully-developed human character. But his
friend's confidences greatly amused and rarely dis¬
pleased him, for the garden of the young man's past
appeared to have begun from the earliest moment to
bloom with rare flowers, amid which memory was
as easy as a summer breeze. "I really think," he
once said, "that I'm not more depraved than most
of my contemporaries. They 're joliment depraved,
my contemporaries!" He threw off wonderfully
pretty things about his female friends and, numerous
and various as they had been, declared that his curi¬
osity had survived the ordeal. "But you're not to
take that as advice," he added, "for as an authority
I must be misleading. I'm prejudiced in their favour;
I'm a sentimental — in other words a donkey."
Newman listened with an uncommitted smile and
141
THE AMERICAN
was glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings;
but he mentally repudiated the idea of a Frenchman's
having discovered any merit in the amiable sex he
himself did n't suspect. Count Valentin, however,
was not merely anecdotic and indiscreet; he wel¬
comed every light on our hero's own life, and so far
as his revelations might startle and waylay Newman
could cap them as from the long habit of capping.
He narrated his career, in fact, from the beginning,
through all its variations, and whenever his com¬
panion's credulity or his "standards" appeared to
protest it amused him to heighten the colour of the
episode. He had sat with Western humourists in
circles round cast-iron stoves and seen "tall" stories
grow taller without toppling over, and his imagina¬
tion had learnt the trick of building straight and
high. The Count's regular attitude became at last
that of lively self-defence; to mark the difference
of his type from that of the occasionally witless he
cultivated the wit of never being caught swallowing.
The result of this was that Newman found it impos¬
sible to convince him of certain time-honoured ver¬
ities.
"But the details don't matter," Valentin said,
"since you've evidently had some such surprising
adventures. You've seen some strange sides of life,
you've revolved to and fro over a continent as I walk
up and down the Boulevard. You're a man of the
world to a livelier tune than ours. You've spent
some awful, some deadly days, and you've done
some extremely disagreeable things: you've shov¬
elled sand, as a boy, for supper, and you've eaten
142
THE AMERICAN
boiled cat in a gold-digger's camp. You've stood
casting up figures for ten hours at a time and you've
sat through Methodist sermons for the sake of look¬
ing at a pretty girl in another pew. It can't all have
been very folichon. But at any rate you've done /
something and you are something; you've used your|
faculties and you've developed your character.}
You've not abruti yourself with debauchery, and
you've not mortgaged your fortune to social con-
veniencies. You take things as it suits you, and you've
fewer prejudices even than I, who pretend to have
none, but who in reality have three or four that stand
in my way. Happy man, you 're strong and you 're
free —nothing stands in yours. But what the
deuce," he wound up, " do you propose to do with
such advantages ? Really to use them you need a
better world than this. There's nothing worth your
while here."
"Oh, I guess there's something," Newman said.
"What is it?"
"Well," he sighed, "I'll tell you some other
time!"
In this way he delayed from day to day broaching
a subject he had greatly at heart. Meanwhile, how¬
ever, he was growing practically familiar with it;
in other words he had called again, three times, on
Madame de Cintre. On but two of these occasions
had he found her at home and on each of them she
had other visitors. Her visitors were numerous and,
to our hero's sense, vociferous, and they exacted much
of their hostess's attention. She found time none the
less to bestow a little of it on the stranger, a quantity
143
THE AMERICAN
represented in an occasional vague smile — the very
vagueness of which pleased him by allowing him to
fill it out mentally, both at the time and afterwards,
with such meanings as most fitted. He sat by without
speaking, looking at the entrances and exits, the
greetings and chatterings, of Madame de Cintre's
guests. He felt as if he were at the play and as if his
own speaking would be an interruption; some¬
times he wished he had a book to follow the dialogue;
he half expected to see a woman in a wThite cap and
pink ribbons come and offer him one for two francs.
Some of the ladies gave him a very hard or a very
soft stare, as he chose; others seemed profoundly
unconscious of his presence. The men looked only
at the mistress of the scene. This was inevitable,
for whether one called her beautiful or not she en¬
tirely occupied and filled one's vision, quite as an
ample, agreeable sound filled one's ear. Newman
carried away after no more than twenty distinct
words with her an impression to which solemn pro¬
mises could not have given a higher value. She was
part of the play he was seeing acted, as much a part
of it as her companions, but how she filled the stage
and how she bore watching, not to say studying and
throwing bouquets to! Whether she rose or seated
herself; whether she wTent 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
quiet, her face listening and smiling, she made this
particular guest desire to have her always before him,
144
THE AMERICAN
moving through every social office open to the genius
of woman, or in other words through the whole range
of exquisite hospitality. If it might be hospitality to
him it would be well; if it might be hospitality forj
him it would be still better. She was so high yet so*
slight, so active yet so still, so elegant yet so simple,*
so present yet so withdrawn! It was this unknownj
quantity that figured for him as a mystery; it was
what she was off the stage, as he might feel, that
interested him most of all. He could not have told
you what warrant he had for talking of mysteries;
if it had been Tus~Kabit to express himself in poetic
figures he might have said that in observing her he
seemed to see the vague circle sometimes attending
the partly-filled disc of the moon. It was not that
she was effaced, and still less that she was "shy";
she was, on the contrary, as distinct as the big figure
on a banknote and of as straightforward a pro¬
fession. But he. was_sure she had qualities as yet
unguessed even by herself and that it was kept for
Christopher Newman to bring out.
He had abstained for several reasons from saying
some of these things to her brother. One reason was
that before proceeding to any act he was always cir¬
cumspect, 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 just pleased, it occupied and excited him,
not to give his case, as he would have said, prematurely
away. But one day Valentine — as Newman con¬
veniently sounded the name — had been dining with
him on the boulevard and their sociability was such
145
THE AMERICAN
that they had sat long over their dinner. On rising
from it the young man 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 married to a Frenchman who
had proved a rake and a brute and the torment of her
life. Her husband had spent all her money and then,
lacking further means for alien joys, had taken, in
his more intimate hours, to beating her. She had
a blue spot somewhere which she showred to several
persons, including the said Valentine. She had ob¬
tained a legal separation, collected the scraps of her
fortune, which were meagre, and come to live in
Paris, where she was staying at an hotel garni. She
was always looking for an apartment and visiting,
with a hundred earnest questions and measurements,
those of other people. She was very pretty and child¬
like and made very extraordinary remarks. Valentin
enjoyed her acquaintance, and the source of his in¬
terest in her was, according to his declaration, an
anxious curiosity as to what would become of her.
"She's poor, she's pretty and she's silly," he said;
" it seems to me she can go only one way. It's a pity,
but it can't be helped. I '11 give her six months.
She has nothing to fear from me, but I'm watching
the process. It's merely a question of the how and ,
the when and the where. Yes, I know what you're
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 is now for me
a pleasure of the mind."'" ~~~
146
THE AMERICAN
"If she's 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."
At which the young man laughed. "'Some'?
How much? Heaven deliver us both! Imagine the
situation. Try giving her yourself exactly the right
amount."
After which it was that Newman had gone
with him to see Madame Dandelard. When they
came away Valentin reproached his companion.
"Where was your famous advice? I didn't hear
a word of it."
"Oh, I give it up," Newman simply answered.
"Then you 're as bad as I!"
"No, because I don't find it a pleasure of the mind
to watch 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," our friend asked in
a moment, " don't you get your sister to go and see
her?"
His companion stared. "Go and see Madame
Dandelard— my sister ?"
"She might talk to her to very good purpose."
Valentin shook his head with sudden gravity.
" My sister does n't have relations with that sort of
person. Madame Dandelard's nothing at all; they'd
never meet."
"I should think," Newman returned, "that Ma¬
dame de Cintre might see whom she pleased." And
he privately resolved that, after he should know her
a little better, he would ask her to go and pick up,
147
THE AMERICAN
for such "pressing" as might be possible, the little
spotted blown leaf in the dusty Parisian alley. When
they had dined, at all events, on the occasion I have
mentioned, he demurred to the latter's proposal that
they should go again and "draw" the lady on the
subject of her bruises. "I've something better in
mind; come home with me and finish the evening
before my fire."
Valentin always rose to any implied appeal to his
expository gift, and before long the two men sat
watching the blaze play over the pomp of Newman's
high saloon.
VIII
" Look here — I want to know about your sister,"
the elder abruptly began.
His visitor arched fine eyebrows. "Now that I
think of it you've never yet made her the subject of
a question."
"Well, I guess I know why."
"If it's because you don't trust me, you're very
right," said Valentin. "I can't talk of her rationally.
I admire her too much."
"Talk of her as you can," Newman returned,
"and if I don't like it I'll stop you."
"Well we're very good friends; such a brother
and sister as have n't been known since Orestes and
Electra. You've seen her enough to have taken her
in: tall, slim, imposing, gentle, half a grande dame
and half an angel; a mixture of 'type' and sim¬
plicity, of the eagle and the dove. She looks like
a statue that has failed as cold stone, resigned itself
to its defects and come to life as flesh and blood, to
wear white capes and long soft trains. All I can say
is that she really possesses every merit that the face
she has, the eyes she has, the smile she has, the
tone of voice she has, the whole way she has, lead
you to expect; and is n't it saying quite enough ? As
a general thing when a woman seems from the first
as right as that, she's altogether wrong — you've
only to look out. But in proportion as you take
149
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Claire for right you may fold your arms and let
yourself float with the current; you're safe. You'll
only never imagine a person so true and so straight.
She's so honest and so gentille. I've never seen a
woman half so charming. She has every blessed
thing a man wants and more; that's all I can say
about her. There!" Valentin concluded: "I told you
how much I should bore you."
Newman uttered no assurance that he was not
bored; he only said after a little: "She's remark¬
ably good, eh ?"
^ "She'd have invented goodness if it did n't exist."
" It seems to me," Newman remarked, " that you'd
have invented her—! But it's all right," he added
— "I'd have invented you! Is she clever ?" he then
asked.
"Try her with something you think so yourself.
Then you'll see."
" Oh, how can I try her ?" sighed Newman with
a lapse. But he picked himself up. "Is she fond of
admiration ?"
"Pardieu!" cried Valentin. "She'd be no sister
of mine if she were n't. What woman's not ?"
"Well, when they're too fond of it," Newman
heard himself hypocritically tempojise, "they com¬
mit all kinds of follies to get it."
"I did n't say she was 'too' fond!" Valentin ex¬
claimed. "Heaven forbid I should say anything so
idiotic. She's not too anything. If I were to say she's
ugly I should n't mean she's 'too' ugly. She's fond
of pleasing, and if you 're pleased she leaves it so. If
you're not pleased she lets it pass, and thinks the
150
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worse neither of you nor of herself. I imagine, though,
she hopes the saints in heaven are, for I'm sure
she's incapable of trying to please by any means of
which they'd disapprove."
"Is she happy then ?" Newman presently pursued.
"Oh, oh, oh! That's much to ask."
"Do you mean for me — ?"
"I mean for her. What should she be happy
about ?"
Newman wondered. "Then she has troubles ?"
"My dear man, she has what we all have — even
you, strange to say; She ha s- a h isto ry."
"That's just what I want to hear," said Newman.
Valentin hesitated—an embarrassment rare with
him. "Then we shall have to appoint a special
seance, with music or refreshments or a turn outside
between the acts. Suffice it for the present that my
sister's situation has been far from jolichonne. She
made, at eighteen, a marriage that was expected to be
brilliant, but that, like a lamp that goes out, turned all
to smoke and bad smell. M. de Cintre was fifty-five
years old and pas du tout aimable. He lived, how¬
ever, but three or four years, and after his death
his family pounced upon his money, brought a law¬
suit against his widow, pushed things very hard.
Their case was good, for M. de Cintre, 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 little to
her taste that she ceased to defend herself and washed
her hands of all her interests. This required some
I5I
THE AMERICAN
strength of conviction, for she was between two fires,
her husband's family opposing her and her own
family denouncing. 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 her
compromising the suit at the price of a promise."
"What was the promise ?"
"To do anything else whatever, for the next ten
years, that might be 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 vicious
French way," Newman continued — "by the two
families and without her having a voice ?"
" It was a first act for a melodrama. She saw M. de
Cintre 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 — I shall never forget her
face — till her wedding-day. The evening before the
ceremony her nerves completely gave way 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 really hold out I
would stand by her against all comers. I was sent
about my business and she became Comtesse de
Cintre."
"Your brother," said Newman reflectively, "must
be a very nice young man."
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THE AMERICAN
" He's very nice, though he's not very young. He's
now upwards of fifty; fifteen years my senior. He has
been a father to my sister and me. He's a type apart;
he has the best manners in France. He's extremely
clever; indeed he's full of accomplishment. He's
writing a history of The Unmarried Princesses of
the Maison de France." This was said by Valentin
with extreme gravity, in a tone that betokened no
mental reservation — or that at least almost be¬
tokened none.
Our friend perhaps discovered there what little
there was, for he presently said: "You could struggle
along without your brother."
"I beg your pardon"—the young man still as
gravely protested. "A house like ours is inevitably
9 9
one.
"Then you want some one to come right in and
break it up."
"Hein?" said Valentin.
On which Newman, after an instant, put the
matter another way. "Well, I'm glad I'm free not
to like him!"
"Wait till you know him!" Valentin returned —
and this time he smiled.
"Is your mother also then a type apart?" his
friend asked after a pause.
"For my mother," the young man said, now with
intense gravity, " I have the highest admiration.
She's a very extraordinary person. You can't ap¬
proach her without feeling it."
"She's the daughter, I believe, of an English
nobleman ?"
*53
THE AMERICAN
"Of Lord Saint Dunstans."
"And was he very grand ?"
"Not as grand as we. They date only from 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's where we
begin."
"There is no mistake about it?" Newman de¬
manded.
" I'm sure I hope not. We 've been mistaken at
least for several centuries."
"And you've always married into — what do you
call them ? — 'ancient houses' ?"
"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 cen¬
turies, took wives out of the bourgeoisie — accepted
lawyers' daughters."
"A lawyer's daughter — that's a come-down?"
Newman went on.
"A condescension. But one of us, in the Middle
Ages, did better: he married a beggar-maid, like
King Cophetua. That was really more convenient;
it was like pairing with a bird or a monkey; one
did n't have to think about her family at all. Our
women have always done well; they've never even
gone into the petite noblesse. There is, I believe, not
a case on record of a misalliance among ces dames."
Newman turned this over a while and then at
last: "You offered, the first time you came to see
*54
THE AMERICAN
me, to render me any service you could. I told you
I 'd sometime mention something you might do. Do
you remember ?"
" Remember ? I've been counting the hours."
"Very well; here's your chance. Do what you
can to make your sister think well of me."
The young man had a strange bright stare. "Why,
I'm sure she thinks as well of you as possible al¬
ready."
"An opinion founded on seeing me three or four
times ? That's putting me off with very little. I want
something more. I've been thinking of it a good deal
and at last I've decided to tell you. I should like
very much to marry Madame de Cintre."
Valentin had been looking at him with quickened
expectancy and with the smile with which he had
greeted his allusion to the promised request. At this
last announcement he kept his eyes on him, but their
expression went through two or three curious phases.
It felt, apparently, an impulse to let itself go further;
but this it immediately checked. Then it remained
for some instants taking counsel with the danger of
hilarity — at the end of which it decreed a retreat.
by the desire not i
in fine come into M. de bellegarde's tace; but he had j
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 his host. He was a longer time
thinking what to say than one would have expected.
"If you can't render me the service I ask," New-
It slowly effaced
155
THE AMERICAN
man pursued, "don't be afraid to tell me, for I'll
be hanged if I won't get on without you."
"Let me hear it again distinctly, the service you
ask. It's very important, you know," Valentin went
on. " I'm to plead your cause with my sister be¬
cause 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 at least what you take
me for."
This was, visibly, for the young man, a droll
simplification. "I shall have first, my dear fellow, to
know myself!"
But Newman went on unheeding. "What I want
chiefly, after all, is just to make you aware of what
I have in mind. I suppose that's what you all expect,
making you formally aware, is n't it ? I want always
to do, over here, what's customary, what you've
been used to. You seem more lost without what
you've been used to than we are. If there's anything
particular to be done let me know and I '11 make it
right. I would n't for the world approach Madame
de Cintre save by schedule. I'd go in to her on all-
fours if that's what's required. If I ought to speak
to your mother first why I '11 speak to her. If I ought
to speak even to your brother I '11 speak to htm.
I '11 speak to any one you like, to the porter in his
lodge or the policeman on his beat. As I don't know
any one else I begin by speaking to you. But that, if
it's a social obligation, is a pleasure as well."
"Yes, I see — I see," said Valentin, lightly strok-
156
THE AMERICAN
ing his chin. "You've a very right feeling about it,
but I'm glad you've 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 chimney with his hands in his
pockets and his eyes on his friend's evolution. This
personage came back and stopped in front of him.
"I give it up. I'll not pretend I'm not — well, im¬
pressed. Iam — hugely! Ouf! It's a relief."
"That sort of news is always a surprise," said New¬
man. "No matter what you've done, people are
never prepared. But if you're impressed I hope at
least you 're impressed favourably."
"Come!" the young man broke out; "I'm going
to let you have it. I don't know whether it lays me
flat or makes me soar."
"Well, if it corners you too much I'm afraid
you've got to stay there, for I assure you I mean
myself to fight out in the open."
"My dear man, Samson was in the open when he
pulled down the temple, but there was n't much left
of any one else." To which Valentin added: "You're
perfectly serious ?"
"Am I a futile Frenchman that I should n't be ?"
Newman asked. " But why is it, by the by — come
to talk —that you are prostrated ?"
The Count raised his hand to the back of his head
and rubbed his hair quickly up and down, thrust¬
ing out the tip of his tongue as he did so. "Well,
for instance you 're not, as we call it, if I'm not
mistaken, 'born.'"
"The devil I'm not!" Newman exclaimed.
157
THE AMERICAN
"Oh," said his friend a little more seriously, "I
did n't know you had — well, your quarterings."
"Ah, your quarterings are your little local mat-
. ter!"
Valentin just hesitated. "But aren't we all —
is n't my admirable sister in particular — our little
local matter ?"
Newman met his eyes with a long, hard look —
exhaling at last, however, a sigh as long. "Do you
mean that I must claim a social standing and hang
out my sign ? What sort of swagger's that ? If it's
a question of pretensions — pretensions, that is, to
effectively existing — let me make, to meet you on
your own ground, the very highest. Only it is n't, it
seems to me, for me vulgarly to make them; it's for
you, assuming them, to invalidate them. On you, in
other words, the burden of disproof."
Valentin's fine smile suffered a further strain.
"Haven't you manufactured and placed in the
market certain admirable wash-tubs ?"
"With great temporary success. But it isn't a
question of my achievements — it's a question of
my failures. You might catch me," said our friend,
"on two or three of those. Only then, you know,"
he added, "I should have the right to ask you about
yours."
"Oh, ours have partaken of our general brilliancy!
They have n't at any rate prevented the great thing."
"And what do you call the great thing ?"
"Well," Valentin smiled, "our being interesting."
Newman considered. "To yourselves ?"
"To the world. That has been our value — that
158
THE AMERICAN
we've had the world's attention. We've been felt
to be worth it."
"Oh," said Newman, "if it's but a question of
what you're worth— !" He hung fire an instant,
and then, "Should you like to know what I am?"
he demanded.
He had held his companion by his pause, and his
words prolonged a little the situation. "No, thanks,"
Valentin then replied. "It's none of my business.
It's enough for me that you're worth, delightfully,
my acquaintance and my wonder."
In recognition of these last words Newman for a mo¬
ment said nothing. He only coloured as with a flush
of hope. Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling and
stood looking at one of the rosy cherubs painted on
it. "Of course I don't expect to marry any woman
for the asking," he observed at last: "I expect first to
make myself acceptable to her. She must like me
to begin with. But what I feel is how she must —
from the moment she knows me as I want."
"As the prince of husbands ?"
"Well yes — call it the prince, as you speak of
such people."
"I believe," said Valentin after a moment, "that
you'd be as good a prince as another."
"I should be as good a husband."
"And that's what you want me to tell my sister ?"
"That's what I want you to tell her."
The young man laid his hand on his companion's
arm, looked at him critically, 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
*59
THE AMERICAN
of the room and again he came back and stationed
himself in front of Newman. "All this is very in¬
teresting and very curious. In what I said just now
I was speaking not for myself, but for my traditions
and my superstitions. For myself really your idea stirs
me up. 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 would n't, I think, follow me.
After all, I don't see why you need; it's no great
loss."
"Oh, if there's anything more to explain try me
with it. I guess I've had to understand some queerer
things than any you're likely to tell."
"No," said Valentin, "we'll do without them;
we '11 let them go. I took you for somebody — God
knows whom or what — the first time I saw you, and
I '11 abide by that. It would be quite odious for me
to come talking to you as if I could patronise you.
I've told you before that I envy you; vous mim-
posez, as we say — I did n't know you much till these
last five minutes. So we'll let things go, and I'll
say nothing to you that, with our positions reversed,
you would n't say to me."
I know not whether in renouncing the mysterious
opportunity to which he alluded Valentin felt him¬
self do something very generous. If so he jazas..not
rewarded; his,generosity was not appreciated. New¬
man faijed to recognise any power to disconcert pr
to wound him, and he had now no sense of coining
off" easily. He had not at his command the gratitude
even of a glance; and he was in truth occupied with
a particular fear, which he presently expressed. "Do
160
THE AMERICAN
you think she may be by chance determined not to
marry at all ?"
"Oh, I quite think it! But that's not necessarily
too much against you. Such a determination never
yet spoiled a right opportunity."
"But suppose I don't seem a right one. I'm afraid
it will be hard," Newman said with a gravity that
appeared to signify at the same time a sort of lucid
respect for the fact.
"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 draw¬
backs. Why should she put her head back into the
noose ? Her usual motive is ambition — if a man can
offer her a great position, make her a princess or an
ambassadress."
"And — in that way — is Madame de Cintre
ambitious ?" ... -
"Who knows?" her brother* asked with slightly
depressing detachment. "I don't pretend to say all
she is or all she is n't. 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 affecting her as unusual, unex¬
pected, original. Don't try to be any one else; be
simply yourself as hard as ever you can, and harder
perhaps indeed (if you understand) than you've ever
been before. Something or other can't fail to come of
that. I'm very curious to see what."
161
THE AMERICAN
"I'm much obliged to you for your curiosity,"
Newman said — "if I may take it as your advice.
I'm glad for your sake at least that I'm likely to prove
so amusing."
His friend, who had been staring at the fire a
minute, looked up. " It's a pity you don't fully under¬
stand me, that you don't know just what I'm doing."
"Oh," laughed Newman, "don't do anything
wrong! Leave me to myself rather, or defy me out
and out to try it. I would n't lay any load on your
conscience."
Valentin sprang up again, evidently quite inflamed.
"You'll never understand — you'll never know;
and if you succeed and I turn out to have helped you
you'll never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you
should be. You'll be an excellent fellow always, but
you'll not be grateful. But it does n't matter, for I
shall get my own fun out of it." And he broke into
an extravagant laugh. "You look worried," he added;
"you look almost alarmed."
"It's a pity," said Newman, "that I don't wholly
catch on. I shall lose some very good sport."
" I told you, you remember, that we 're very strange
people," his visitor pursued. " Well, I give you warn¬
ing again. We're fit for a museum or a Balzac novel.
My mother's strange, my brother's strange, and I
verily believe I'm stranger than either. You'll
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're eight
hundred years old!"
"Very good," said Newman; "that's the sort of
162
THE AMERICAN
thing I came to Europe for. You're made for me to
work right in."
"Touchez-la then," Bellegarde returned, putting
out his hand. "It's a bargain; I accept you, I es¬
pouse your cause. It's because I like you, in a great
measure; but that's not the only reason." And he
stood holding Newman's hand and looking at him
askance.
"What's the other one ?"
"Well, I'm in the Opposition. I've a positive
aversion —!"
"To your brother?" asked Newman in his un¬
modulated voice.
Valentin laid a finger on his lips with a whispered
hush! "Old races have strange secrets! Put your¬
self into motion. Come and see my sister and be
assured of my sympathy!" With which he took
leave while his host dropped into a chair before the
fire. Newman stared long and late into the blaze.
IX
He called on Madame de Cintre the very next day,
and learnt from 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, but the footman told him
that Madame la Comtesse would presently appear.
He had time, while he waited, to wonder if Belle-
garde had seen his sister since the evening before
and if in this case he had spoken to her of their talk.
In that event Madame de Cintre's receiving him
was not, as he would have said, a bucket of cold
water. 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
on it in her eyes; but the apprehension conveyed no
chill. 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 re¬
serve, she would n't make him pay for it in the least
to his ruin. He had a belief that if she could only
look at the bottom of his heart and see it all bared
to the quick for her she would be entirely kind.
She came in at last, after so long an interval that he
wondered if she had been hesitating. She smiled
164
THE AMERICAN
at him, as usual, without constraint, and her great
mild eyes, while she held out her hand, seemed to
shine at him perhaps even straighter than before.
She then remarkably observed, 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
diffidence worn away by contact with the world, but
the more perceptible the more closely she was ap¬
proached. This subtle shyness gave a peculiar value
to what was definite and assured in her manner,
making it an acquired accomplishment, a beautiful
talent, something that one might compare to an
exquisite touch in a pianist. It was, .in fact, her
"authority," as they say of artists, that especially
impressed and fascinated him; he always came b-ack
to the^feeifng that, when he should have rounded out
his "success" by the right big marriage, this was the
way he should like his wife to express the^size pf it
to the world. The only trouble indeed was that when
the instrument was so perfect it seemed to interpose
too much between the audience and the composer.
She gave him, the charming woman, 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 deep social needs. All this, as
I have noted, 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 every¬
thing about him of the best would taste of triumph
in possessing. Yet looking at the matter with an eye
165
THE AMERICAN
to private felicity he asked himself where, in so ex¬
quisite a compound, nature and art showed their
dividing-line. Where did the special intention separ¬
ate from the habit of good manners ? Where did
fine urbanity end and fine sincerity begin ? He in¬
dulged in these questions even while he stood ready
to accept the admired object in all its complexity;
he felt indeed he could do so in profound security,
examining its mechanism afterwards and at leisure.
"I'm very glad to find you alone. You know I've
never had such good luck before."
"But you've seemed before very well contented
with your luck," said Madame de Cintre. "You've
sat and watched my visitors as comfortably as from
a box at the opera. What have you thought of our
poor performance ?"
" Oh, I've thought the ladies very bright and very
graceful, wonderfully quick at repartee. But what
I've chiefly thought has been that they only help
me to admire you." This was not the habit of the
pretty speech on Newman's part, the art of the pretty
speech never having attained great perfection with
him. It was simply the instinct of the practical man
who had made up his mind to what he wanted
and was now beginning to take active steps to ob¬
tain it.
She started slightly and raised her eyebrows; she
had evidently not expected so straight an advance.
"Oh, in that case," she none the less gaily said, "your
finding me alone is n't good luck for me. I hope
some one will come in quickly."
"I hope not," Newman returned. "I've some-
166
THE AMERICAN
thing particular to say to you. Have you seen your
brother Valentine ?"
"Yes, I saw him an hour ago."
"Did he tell you that he had seen me last night ?"
"I think he spoke of it."
"And did he tell you what we had talked about ?"
She visibly hesitated. While Newman made these
enquiries she had grown a little pale, as if taking
what might impend for inevitable rather than con¬
venient. " Did you give him a message to me ?"
"It was not exactly a message. I asked him to
render me a service."
"The service was to sing your praises, was it not ?"
She had been clearly careful to utter this question in
the tone of trifling.
"Yes, that is what it really amounts to," said New¬
man. "Did he therefore sing my praises ?"
"He spoke very well of you. But when I know
that it was by special request I must of course take
his eulogy with a grain of salt."
"Ah, that makes no difference," Newman went
on. "Your brother would n't have spoken well of
me unless he believed what he was saying. He's
too honest for that."
"Are you a great diplomatist?" she answered.
"Are you trying to please me by praising my bro¬
ther ? I confess it's a good way."
"For me any way that succeeds will be good. I '11
praise your brother all day if that will help me. I just
love him, you know, and I regard him as perfectly
straight. He has made me feel, in promising to do
what he can to help me, that I can depend upon him."
167
THE AMERICAN
"Don't make too much of that," said Madame de
Cintre. "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 consent¬
ing to see me, after what he told you, you almost
seem to be giving me a chance."
" I'm seeing you," she slowly and gravely pro¬
nounced, " because I promised my brother I would."
"Blessings on your brother's head then!" New¬
man cried. "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 extraordinarily to make
you my wife." He spoke these words _vyith
directness and firmness and without any sense of
cdnfusion. He wasTuTT of his idea, he had completely
mastered it, and he seemed to. look down on the
woman he addressed, and on all her gathered graces,
fromthFTieight of his bracing good conscience. It
is probable that this particular tone and manner were
the very best he could have adopted; yet the light,
just visibly forced smile with which she had listened
to him died away and she sat looking at him with
her lips parted and her face almost as portentous
as a tragic mask. There was evidently an incon¬
venience amounting to pain for her in this extrava¬
gant issue; her impatience of it, however, found no
angry voice. Newman wondered if he were hurting
her; he could n't imagine why the liberal devotion
he meant to express should be offensive. He got up
and stood before her, leaning one hand on the chim¬
ney-piece. " I know I 've seen you very little to say
this, so little that it may make what I say seem dis-
168
THE AMERICAN
respectful. But that's my misfortune. I could have
said it at 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, you
can at least believe, is not mere grand talk in the air,
an exaggerated compliment. I can't talk for any
effect but one I want very much to bring about, and
I would n't to you if I could. What I say is as serious
as such words can be. I feel as if I knew you and
knew how fine and rare and true you are. I shall
know better perhaps some day, but I have a general
notion now. You're just the woman I've been look¬
ing for, except that you're far more perfect. I won't
make any protestations and vows, but you can trust
me. It's very soon, I know, to say all this; it may
almost shock you. But why not gain time if one can ?
And if you want time to reflect — as of course you'd
do — the sooner you begin the better for me. I don't
know what you think of me; but there's no great
mystery, nor anything at all difficult to tell, about
me — nor difficult to understand. Your brother tolcH
me that my antecedents and occupations will be
against me; that your family has a social standing so
high that I can't be taken as coming up to it. Well,
I don't know about coming 'up' — I don't think,*
you can very well keep me down, anywhere. You
can't make a man feel low unless you can make
him feel base; and if you may fit yourself into any
class you see your way to, you can't fit him where
he won't go. But I don't believe you care anything
about that. I can assure you there's quite enough
of me to last, and that if I give my mind to it I can
169
THE AMERICAN
arrange things so that in a very few years I shall not
need to waste time in explaining who I am and how
much I matter. You'll decide for yourself if you like
me or not. I honestly believe IVe no hidden vices
nor nasty tricks. I'm kind, kind, kind! Everything
that a man can give a woman I '11 give you. I've
a large fortune, a very large fortune; some day, if
you '11 allow me, I '11 go into details. If you want
grandeur, everything in the way of grandeur that
money can give you, why you shall have it. And as
regards anything you may give up, don't take for
granted too much that its place can't be filled. Leave
that to me — I've filled some places. I '11 take care
of you; I shall know what you need. I would n't
talk if I did n't believe I knew how. I want you to
feel I'm strong, because if you do that will be enough.
There; I have said what I had on my heart. It was
better to get it off. I'm very sorry if it worries you;
but the air's clearer — don't you already see? If
I've made a mistake we had better not have met at
all; and I can't think that, Madame de Cintre, can
you?" Newman asked. "Don't answer me now, if
you don't wish it. Think about it; think about it
only a little at a time, if you want. Of course I have n't
said, I can't say, half I mean, especially about my
admiration for you. But take a favourable view of
me; it will only be just."
During this speech, the longest personal plea, of any
kind, that he had ever uttered in his life, she kept her
gaze fixed on him, and it expanded at the last into
a sort of fascinated stare. When he ceased speaking
she lowered it and sat for some moments looking
170
THE AMERICAN
down and straight before her. Then she slowly rose
to her feet, and a pair of exceptionally keen eyes
would have made out in her an extraordinarily fine
tremor. She still looked extremely serious. "I'm
very much obliged to you for your offer. It seems
to me very strange, but I'm glad you spoke without
waiting any longer. It's better the subject should
be dismissed between us. I appreciate immensely
all you say; you do me great honour. But I've de¬
cided not to marry."
"Oh, don't say that!" cried Newman with the
very innocence of pleading desire. She had turned
away, and it made her stop a moment with her back
to him. "Think better of that. You're too young,
too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to
make others happy. If you 're afraid of losing your
freedom I can assure you that this freedom here,
the life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what
I'll offer you. You shall do things that I don't think
you 've ever thought of. I '11 take you to live anywhere
in the wide world you may want. Are you unhappy ?
You give me a feeling that you are unhappy. You've
no right to be, or to be made so. Let me come in
and put an end to it."
The young woman waited, but looking again all
away from him. If she was touched by the way he
spoke the thing was conceivable. His voice, always
very mild, almost flatly soft and candidly interroga¬
tive for so full an organ, had become as edgeless
and as tenderly argumentative as if he had been talk¬
ing to a much-loved child. He stood watching her,
and she presently turned again, but with her face
171
THE AMERICAN
not really meeting his own; and she spoke with a
quietness in which there was a visible trace of effort.
"There are a great many reasons why I shouldn't
marry — more, I beg you to believe, than I can ex¬
plain to you. As for my happiness, I'm perfectly
content. If I call your proposal 'strange' it's also
for more reasons than I can say. Of course you've
a perfect right to make it. But I can't accept it —
that's impossible. Please never speak of the matter
again. If you can't promise me this I must ask you
not to come back."
"Why is it impossible?" he demanded with an
insistence that came easily to him now. "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 '11 think of it a good while you may finally be
satisfied."
" I don't know you," she returned after a moment.
"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
simply to put me off. I only ask you to let me 'stay
round,' and by so doing to let me hope. I '11 wait as
long as ever you want. Meanwhile you can see more
of me and know me better, look at me in the light —
well, of my presumption, yes, but of other things too.
You can make up your mind."
Something was going on, rapidly, in her spirit;
she was weighing a question there beneath his eyes,
weighing it and deciding it. "From the moment
I don't very respectfully beg you to leave the house
and never return I listen to you — I seem to give
172
THE AMERICAN
you hope. I have listened to you — against my judge¬
ment. It's because, you see, you're eloquent. Yes,"
she almost panted, "you touch me. If I had been
told this morning that I should consent to consider
you as a person wishing to come so very near me
I should have thought my informant a little crazy.
I am listening to you, you see!" And she threw her
arms up for a moment and let them drop with a
gesture in which there was just an expression of
surrendering weakness.
"Well, as far as saying goes, I've said everything,"
Newman replied. "I believe in you without restric¬
tion, and I think all the good of you it's possible to
think of a human creature. I firmly believe that in
marrying me you'll be safe. As I said just now,"
he went on with his smile as of hard experience,
"I've no bad ways. I can reall^j/o^gt) much for you!
And if you're afraid that I'm not what you've been
accustomed to, not as refined and cultivated, or even
as pleasant all round, as your standard requires, you
may easily carry that too far. I am refined — I am
pleasant. Just you try me!"
Claire de Cintre got still further away and paused
before a great plant, an azalea, which flourished 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 a consent that he should say
more. She might almost be liking it.
"Why should you say it's impossible you should
marry?" he therefore continued. "The only thing
that could make it really impossible would be your
173
THE AMERICAN
being already subject to that tie!—which must be
awful, I admit, when it's only a grind. Is it because
you've been unhappy in marriage ? That's all the
more reason. Is it because your family exert a press¬
ure on you, interfere with you or worry you ? That's
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 witness smile. "Whatever way you
feel about them is the right way, and anything you
should wish me to do to make myself agreeable to
them I '11 do as well as I know how. They may put
me through what they like — I guess I shall hold out!"
She rose again and came to the fire near which he
had hovered. The expression of pain and embarrass¬
ment had passed out of her face, and it had sub¬
mitted itself with a kind of grace in which there
might have been indeed a kind of art. She had the
air of a woman who had stepped across the frontier of
friendship and looks round her a little bewildered
to find the spaces larger than those marked in her
customary chart. A certain checked and controlled
exaltation played through the charm of her~Hii;nity.
1 J , , M .... * " — - <3 J
"I won't refuse to see you again, because much of
what you've 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 long time."
"What do you mean by 'long long' — ?"
"Well, I mean six months. It must be a solemn
promise."
"Very good; I promise."
174
THE AMERICAN
"Good-bye then." And she put out her hand.
He held it a moment as if to say more. But he only
looked at her — "long, long"; then he took his
departure.
That evening, on the Boulevard, he met Valentin
de Bellegarde. After they had exchanged greetings
he told him he had seen his sister a few hours before.
"I know it, pardieu!" said Valentin. "I dined
la-bas." With which, for some moments, both men
were silent. Newman wished to ask what visible
impression his visit had made, but the Count had
a question of his own and he ended by speaking first.
"It's none of my business, but what the deuce did
you say to Claire ?"
" I'm quite willing to tell you 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 my sister — ?" he discreetly added.
"She did n't close with me."
"She could n't, you know, in that way."
"But I'm to see her again," said Newman.
"Oh, the strangeness of ces dames!" Then he
stopped and held Newman off at arm's length. "I
look at you with respect! You've achieved what we
call a personal success! Immediately, now, I must
present you to my brother."
"Whenever you like !" said Newman.
X
Newman continued to see his other good friends
with scarce-diminished frequency, though if you had
listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter
you would have supposed 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 've
become the fashion and have your pick every day
of three invitations to dinner, we're tossed into the
corner. I'm 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 she moral¬
ised over Newman's so-called neglect, which was in
truth a most excellent constancy. Of course she was
joking, but she embroidered with a sharp needle.
" I know no better proof that I've treated you very
well," Newman had said, "than the fact that you
make so free with my character. I've let you tweak
my nose, I've allowed you the run of the animal's
cage. If I had a little proper pride I'd stay away a
while and, when you should ask me to dinner, say
I'm going to Princess Borealska's. But I have n't
any pride where my pleasure's concerned, and to
keep you in the humour to see me — if you must see
me only to call me bad names — I '11 agree to any-
176
THE AMERICAN
thing you choose; I '11 admit I'm the biggest kind of
a sneak." Newman in fact had declined an invita¬
tion personally given by the Princess Borealska, an
enquiring Polish lady to whom he had been pre¬
sented, 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'lena that he was faithless to his early friendships.
She needed the theory to explain one of her fine
exasperations. Having launched our hero on the
current that was bearing him so rapidly along she
felt but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had suc¬
ceeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly
and wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her,
in due season, that her friend was " quite satisfactory."
The epithet was not romantic, hut 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
her guest'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. He was only abounding in her
own sense, but his temperate raptures exerted a sin¬
gular effect on that enthusiasm with which she had
overflowed a few months before. She now seemed
inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame
de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that she
did n't in the least pretend to have gone into a final
analysis of her life, or in other words of her honesty.
"No woman" — she played with this idea — "can
177
THE AMERICAN
be so good as that one seems. Remember what
Shakespeare calls Desdemona: 'a supersubtle Vene¬
tian.' Claire de Cintre's a supersubtle Parisian.
She's a charming creature and has five hundred
merits; but you had better keep her supersubtlety in
mind." Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding herself
jealous of her special favourite on the other side of
the Seine, so that in undertaking to provide Newman
with an ideal wife she had counted too much on the
lapse of her own passions and her immunity from
wild yearnings ? We may be permitted to doubt it.
The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d'lena had
an insuperable need of intellectual movement, of
critical, of ironic exercise. She had a lively imagina¬
tion, and was capable at times of holding views, of
entertaining beliefs, directly opposed to her most
cherished opinions and convictions. She got tired of
thinking right, 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 ad¬
mirable flashes of justice. One of these occurred
when Newman mentioned to her that he had made
their beautiful friend a formal offer of his hand. He
repeated in a few words what he had said, and in
a great many what she had answered, and Mrs. Tris¬
tram listened with extreme interest.
"But after all," he admitted, "there's nothing to
congratulate me upon. It is not much of a triumph."
"I beg your pardon; it's a great triumph. It's
really dazzling that she did n't silence you at the
first word and request you never to come near her
again."
i78
THE AMERICAN
"Well, she would n't have got much by that," he
made answer.
She looked at him a moment. "No one, I think,
gets as much by anything as you. When I told you
to go your own way and do what came into your head
I had no idea you'd go over the ground so fast. I
never dreamed you'd propose after five or six morn¬
ing calls. What had you done as yet 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, it only remains to be criticised. What will
come of it remains to be seen. That you should
make but a mouthful of her marrying you 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 takes you the
affair will be marked by the usual justice of all human
judgements of women. You'll think you take gener¬
ous views of her, but you'll never begin to know
through, what a strange sea of feeling she '11 have
front of you the other day she plunged into it. She
said 'Well, why not ?' to something that 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 till
that instant. When I think of it, when I think of
Claire de Cintre and all that she represents, there
seems to me something very fine in it. When I re¬
commended you to try your fortune with her I of
course thought well of you, and in spite of your base
you. As she stood there in
179
THE AMERICAN
ingratitude I think so still. But I confess I don't see
quite what you are and what you've done to make
such a woman go these extravagant lengths for you."
"Oh, there's something very fine in it!" — New¬
man laughed as he repeated her words. He took an
extreme satisfaction in hearing that there was some¬
thing very fine in it. He had not the least doubt of
this himself, but he had already begun to value the
world's view of his possible prize as adding to the
prospective glory of possession.
It was immediately after this passage that Valentin
de Bellegarde came to conduct his friend to the Rue
de l'Universite and present him to the other members
of his family. "You're already introduced and you've
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've spoken of you as an American of immense
wealth, and the best fellow in the world, who's
looking for something quite superior in the way of
a wife."
" Do you suppose," asked Newman, "that Madame
de Cintre has reported to your mother the last con¬
versation I had with her ?"
" I'm very certain she has n't; she '11 keep her own
counsel. Meanwhile," Valentin said, "you must
make your way with the rest of the family. Thus
much is known about you — that you've made a
great fortune in trade, that you're a frank outsider
and an honest eccentric, and that you furiously ad¬
mire our charming Claire. My sister-in-law, whom
you remember seeing in Claire's sitting-room, took,
180
THE AMERICAN
it appears, a marked fancy to you; she has described
you as having beaucoup de cachet. My mother is
therefore curious to see you."
"She expects to laugh at me, eh ?" said Newman.
"She never laughs —or at least never expects to.
If she does n't like you don't hope to purchase favour
by being funny. I'm funny—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'Uni-
versite into which he had not yet penetrated, the
salon of the dowager Marquise. It was a vast high
room, with elaborate and ponderous mouldings,
painted a whiteish grey, 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; with a Turkey carpet, in light colours,
still soft and rich despite great antiquity, on the floor;
and with portraits of each of Madame de Bellegarde's
children at the age of ten suspended against an old
screen of red silk. The dimness was diminished,
exactly enough for conversation, by half a dozen
candles placed in odd corners and 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 and playing a very
expressive waltz. In this latter person Newman re¬
cognised the younger Marquise.
Valentin presented his friend, and Newman came
sufficiently near to the old lady by the fire to take in
that she would offer him no handshake — so that
he knew he had the air of waiting, and a little like
181
THE AMERICAN
a customer in a shop, to see what she would offer. 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 clear¬
ness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard
at him and refused what she did refuse with a sort
of British positiveness which reminded him that she
was the daughter of the Earl of Saint Dunstans.
Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him
an agreeable smile. He 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've paid several visits to my
daughter."
"Oh yes," Newman liberally smiled; "Madame de
Cintre and I are old friends by this time."
"You've gone very fast," she went on.
"Not so fast as I should like."
"Ah, you're very ambitious," the old woman re¬
turned.
"Well, if I don't know what I want by this time
I suppose I never shall."
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 for some moments
engaged; then she looked away and, without smiling,
" I'm 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 as an insect might re-
182
THE AMERICAN
semble a flower. The colouring in Madame de
Cintre 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 small pair of lips at once plump and pinched, that
suggested, when closed, that they could scarce open
wider than to swallow a gooseberry or to emit an
"Oh dear no!" and which had probably been
thought to give the finishing touch to the aristocratic
prettiness of the Lady Emmeline Atheling as repre¬
sented, half a century beTore, in several Books of
Beauty. Madame de Cintre'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 circum¬
scribed smile, figured a document signed and sealed,
a thing of parchment, ink and ruled lines. "She's
a woman of conventions and proprieties," he said to
himself as he considered her; "her world's the world
of things immutably decreed. But how she's 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
EdeTTfajri^ when she sees 'This is genteel' or 'This
is improper' Written on a milestone she stops as
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 was
wrapped in an old black cashmere shawl. "You're
an American ?" she went on presently. " I've seen
several Americans."
183
THE AMERICAN
"There are several in Paris," Newman jocosely
said.
"Oh, really? 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 'm told your
ladies are very pretty. One of these ladies was very
pretty — with such a wonderful complexion. She
presented me a note of introduction from some one
— I forget 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've forgotten them
now — it's so many years ago. Since then I've seen
no more Americans. I think my daughter-in-law
has; she's a great gadabout; she sees every one."
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 that were strangely red.
She reminded Newman of his friend Mademoiselle
Nioche; this was what that much-hindered 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 the small of your back," he
said very gravely. "You might as well wear a stand¬
ing ruff as such a dress as that."
The young woman turned to the mirror over the
chimney-piece the part of her person so designated,
and glanced behind her to verify this judgement.
184
THE AMERICAN
The mirror descended low and yet reflected nothing
but a large unclad flesh-surface. Its possessor put
her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to
the waist of her dress. " Like that, you mean ?"
"That's a little better," said Valentin in the same
tone, " but it leaves a good deal to be desired."
"Oh, I never go to extremes." And then turning
to Madame de Bellegarde, "What were you calling
me just now, madame?" her daughter-in-law en¬
quired.
"I called you a gadabout. But I might call you
something else too."
"A gadabout? What an ugly word! What does
it mean ?"
"A very beautiful lady," Newman ventured to say,
seeing that it was in French.
"That's a pretty compliment but a bad transla¬
tion," the young Marquise returned. After which,
looking at him a moment: " Do you dance ?"
"Not a step."
"You lose a great deal," 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.
"I think that must be the matter with me," he
smiled. And then he added with a friendly intona¬
tion: "Don't you like it?"
"I can't say I know it. I know my house — I
know my friends — I don't know Paris."
"You lose a great deal, as your daughter-in-law
says," Newman replied.
iSs
THE AMERICAN
Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably
the first time she had been condoled with on her
losses. "I'm content, I think, with what I have,"
she said with dignity. Her visitor's eyes were at this
moment 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 content¬
ment of his hostess was quite natural — she had so
much; but the idea did n't occur to him during the
pause of some moments which followed.
"Well, my dear mother," said Valentin while he
came and leaned against the chimney-piece, "what
do you think of my good friend ? Is n't he the re¬
markably fine man I told you of?"
"My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not
gone very far," Madame de Bellegarde replied. "I can
as yet only appreciate his great politeness."
"My mother's a great judge of these matters,"
Valentin went on to Newman. "If you've satisfied
her it's a triumph."
"I hope I shall satisfy you some day," said New¬
man to the old lady. "I've done nothing yet."
"You mustn't listen to my son; he'll bring you
into trouble. He's a sad scatterbrain," she de¬
clared.
Newman took it genially. "Oh, I've got to like
him so that I can't do without him."
"He amuses you, eh ?"
"I think it must be that."
186
THE AMERICAN
"Do you hear that, Valentin?" said his mother.
"You exist for the amusement of Mr. Newman."
"Perhaps we shall all come to that!" Valentin
exclaimed.
"You must see my other son," she pursued.
" He's much better than this one. But he '11 not amuse
you.
"I don't know — I don't know!" Valentin thought¬
fully objected. "But we shall very soon see. Here
comes monsieur mon frere." The door had just
opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped
forward and whose face Newman remembered as
that of the author of his discomfiture the first time
of his calling. Valentin went to meet his brother,
looked at him a moment and then, taking him by the
arm, led him up to their guest. "This is my excellent
friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly. "You
must know him if you can."
"I'm delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the
Marquis with an unaccompanied salutation.
"He's the old woman at second-hand," Newman
reflected with the sense of having his health drunk
from an empty glass. And this was the starting-point
of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late
head of this noble family 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
found small comfort in his wife he had found much
in his two younger children, who were after his own
heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with
her eldest-born.
187
THE AMERICAN
"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; after which he assumed a position
before the chimney-piece. With his long lean face,
his high-bridged nose and small opaque eyes he
favoured, in the old phrase, the English strain in his
blood. His whiskers were fair and glossy and he had
a large dimple, of unmistakeable British origin, in the
middleof 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 mam^""*
tainecPattitude; he felt himself in presence of some¬
thing high and unusual.
"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'm dressed."
"That's a good idea — to show what you claim
for it," Valentin commented.
"I'm at your orders, dear friend," said M. de
Bellegarde. "Only you must allow me first the
pleasure of a little conversation with Mr. Newman."
"Oh, if you're going to a party don't let me keep
you; I'm so sure we shall meet again. Indeed if
you'd like to meet me I'll 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
188
THE AMERICAN
before the fire, caressing one of his fair whiskers with
one of his white hands and looking at our friend,
half-askance, with eyes from which a particular ray
of observation made its way through a general mean¬
ingless smile. "It's very kind of you to make such
an offer. If I'm not mistaken your occupations are
such as to make your time precious. You're in —
a — as we say — a — dans les affaires ?"
"In business, you mean? Oh no, I've thrown
business overboard for the present. I'm regularly
'loafing,' as we say. My time's quite my own."
"Ah, you're taking a holiday," rejoined M. de
Bellegarde. "'Loafing.' Yes, I've heard that ex¬
pression."
"Mr. Newman's a distinguished American,"
Madame de Bellegarde observed.
"My brother's a great ethnologist," said Valentin.
"An ethnologist?" — and Newman groped for
gaiety. "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 their
new acquaintance with sustained urbanity: "You're
travelling for pure recreation ?"
"Well, I'm visiting your country, sir," Newman
replied with a certain conscious patience — a pa¬
tience he felt he on his side too could push, should
need be, to stiffness; "and I confess I'm having a
good time in it. Of course I get a good deal of pleas¬
ure out of it."
"What more especially interests you?" the Mar¬
quis benevolently pursued.
189
THE AMERICAN
"Well," our friend continued, "the life of the
people, for one thing, interests me. Your people are
very taking. But economically, technically, as it were,
manufactures are what I care most about."
"Those — a — products have been your special¬
ity ?"
"I can't say I have had any speciality. My special¬
ity has been to accumulate the largest convenient
competency in the shortest possible time." Newman
made this last remark very designedly and deliber¬
ately; he wished to open the way, should it be neces¬
sary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. "I hope you
enjoy the sense of that success."
"Oh, one has still, at my age, the sense also of
what's left to do. I'm not so very old," our hero
candidly explained.
"Well, Paris is a very good place to spend a for¬
tune. I wish you all the advantages 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 fair, fat hands into the pearly kid, and as he did
so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Belle-
garde's good wishes seemed to flutter down on him
from the cold upper air with the soft, scattered move¬
ment of a shower of snowflakes. Yet he was not irri¬
tated; he did n't feel that he was^being patronised;
he was conscious ofjio especial impulse to introduce
a discord into so noble a harmony.. Only he felt him¬
self suddenly in personal contact with the forces with
which his so valued backer had told him that he
190
THE AMERICAN
would have to contend, and he became sensible of
their intensity. He wished to makejsome answering
manifestation, to stretch himself out at his own
length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of his
scaled It must be added that if this impulse was
neither vicious nor malicious, it was yet by no means
unattended by the play in him~of his occasional dis¬
position" tcTironic adventure. He hated the idea of
shocking people, he respected the liability to be
shocked. But there were impressions that threw him
back, after all, on his own measures of proportion.
"Paris," he presently remarked, "is a very good
place for people who take a great deal of stock, as we
say, in their location, and want to be very much
aware of it all the time; or it's a very good place
if your family has been settled here for a long time
and you've made acquaintances and got your rela¬
tions round you; or if you've got a big house like
this and a wife and children and mother and sister —
everything right there. I don't like that way that
prevails in many of your districts of people's living
all in rooms door to door with each other. But I'm
not, as I may put it, a natural, a real inspired loafer.
I'm a poor imitation and it goes against the grain.
My business habits are too deep-seated. Then I
have n'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 pretty
small, and I have n't what a man has when he
has taken the regular way to get it — if I express
myself clearly; and I often miss that pleasantness
very much. So vousee I'msometimes rather conscious
191
THE AMERICAN
of a void. I'm not proficient in literature, as you
are,""sir," and I get tired of dining out and going to
the opera."! 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 've never had my hand.
off the plough. I miss the regular call on my atten¬
tion/'"
This speech was followed by a profound silence
of some moments on the part of Newman's enter¬
tainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly,
hands in pockets, and then slowly, with a half-
sidling motion, went out of the room. The Marquis
continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benig-
nantly. ''You began to earn your living in the
cradle?" said the old Marquise, who appeared to
.wish to encourage, a little grimly, yet not wholly
without an effect of pleasantry, her guest's auto¬
biographic strain.
"Well, madam, I'm not absolutely convinced I had
a cradle!"
"You say you're not proficient in literature,"
M. de Bellegarde resumed; "but yoii must do your¬
self the justice to remember that your studies were
interrupted early."
"That's very true; on my tenth birthday my
schooling stopped short. 1 thought that a grand
way to keep it. Still, I have picked up knowledp
Newman smiled.
"You have some sisters?" Madame de Belle-
garde enquired.
"Yes, two splendid sisters. I wish you knew
them /"
192
THE AMERICAN
"I hope that for ces dames the hardships of life
commenced less early."
"They married very early indeed, if you call that
a hardship — as girls do in our Western'country.
The husband of one of them is the owner of the larg¬
est india-rubber house in the West." ,
"Ah, you make houses also of,.«||ndia-rubber ?"
the Marquise asked. ^6
"You can stretch them as your family increases,"
said her daughter-in-law, now enveloped in a soft
shining cape. Newman indulged at this in a burst
of hilarity and explained that the house in which
his relatives lived was a large wooden structure,
but that they 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," the young
Marquise accordingly pursued. "I wonder if your
brother-in-law made them."
" I guess he did, — and if he did you may be very
sure you've got a good article."
"Well, yoiji mustn't be too much discouraged,"
said M. de Bellegarde with vague benevolence.
"Oh, I don't mean to be. I've a project — really
a grand one — which gives me plenty to think about,
u and that's an occupation." And then Newman
vaited, hesitating yet debating rapidly; he wished
again to get near his point, though to do so forced
him to depart still further from the form of not ask¬
ing favours. He had to ask that of their attention.
"Nevertheless," he continued, addressing himself to
old Madame de Bellegarde, " I '11 tell you my great
193
THE AMERICAN
idea; perhaps you can help me. I want not only to
marry, but to marry remarkably well."
"It's a very good project, but I never made a
match in all my life," said his hostess with her odd
mincing plainness.
Newman looked at her an instant and then all
sincerely, " I should have thought you a great hand,"
he declared.
Madame de Bellegarde might well have thought
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've
a message for you," he said to his sister-in-law.
"Claire bids me ask you not to start for your ball.
If you'll wait a minute she'll go with you."
" Claire will go with us ?" cried the young Mar¬
quise. "En voila du nouveau/"
"She has changed her mind; she decided half an
hour ago and is sticking the last diamond into her
hair!" said Valentin.
"What on earth has taken possession of my daugh¬
ter?" Madame de Bellegarde asked with a coldness
of amazement. "She has not been this age where
any candle was lighted. 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's more beautiful than ever,
you'll see — has no right to bury herself alive."
"You should have referred Claire to her mother,
194
THE AMERICAN
my brother," said M. de Bellegarde in French.
"This is not the way —! "
"I refer her to the whole company!" Valentin
broke in. "Here she comes!" — and he went to the
open door, met Madame de Cintre on the threshold,
took her by the hand and led her into the room.
She was dressed in white, but a cloak of dark blue,
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 un¬
covered. 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 at this moment far and away the hand¬
somest woman he had ever seen. He had a chance
to look her full in the face, for she stood a little in
the centre of the room, where she seemed to con¬
sider what she should do, without meeting his eyes.
Then she went up to her mother, who sat in the deep
chair by the fire with an air of immeasurable detach¬
ment. Her back turned to the others, Madame de
Cintre held her cloak apart to show her dress.
"What do you think of me ?"
"I think you seem to have lost your head. It was
but three days ago, when I asked you as a particular
favour to myself to go to the Duchesse de Lusig-
nan's, that you told me you were going nowhere and
that one must be consistent. Is this your consist¬
ency ? Why should you distinguish Madame Robin-
eau ? Who is it you wish to please to-night ?"
"I wish to please myself, dear mother," said
195
THE AMERICAN
Madame de Cintre. And she bent over and kissed
the old lady.
"I don't like violent surprises, my sister," said
Urbain de Bellegarde; "especially when one's on
the point of entering a drawing-room."
Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak.
"Oh, if you're going anywhere with this lady you
need n't be afraid of being noticed yourself!"
M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with an in¬
tense little glare. "I hope you appreciate a compli¬
ment that's paid at your brother's expense. Fenez
done, madame." And offering Madame de Cintre
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 reflexion. With
a leave-taking smile she sought the complement of
her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor,
and, perceiving in them an almost unnatural glitter,
not improbably may have flattered herself she had
found it.
Newman, left alone with his hostess, if she might
so be called, stood before her a few moments in
silence. "Your daughter's very beautiful," he said
at last.
" She's very perverse," the old woman returned.
" I'm glad to hear it," he smiled. " It makes me
hope."
" Hope what ?"
"That she'll consent some day to marry me."
196
THE AMERICAN
She slowly got up. "That really is your 'great
idea'?"
"Yes. Will you give it any countenance?"
Madame de Bellegarde looked at him hard and
shook her head. Then her so peculiarly little mouth
rounded itself to a "No!" which she seemed to blow
at him as for a mortal chill.
"Will you then just let me alone with my chance ?"
"You don't know what you ask. I'm a very proud
and meddlesome old person."
"Well, I'm very rich," he returned with a world
of desperate intention.
She fixed her eyes on the floor, and he thought it
probable she was weighing the reasons in favour of
resenting his so calculated directness. But at last
looking up, "How rich ?" she simply articulated.
He gave her, at this, the figure of his income —
gave it in a round number which had the magnificent
sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when
translated into francs. He added to the enunciation
of mere brute quantity certain financial particulars
which completed a sufficiently striking presentment
of his resources.
Madame de Bellegarde had let him enjoy her
undisguised attention. "You're very frank," she
finally said, "and I'll be the same. I would rather,
on the whole, get all the good of you there is — rather,
I mean, than, as you call it, let you alone. I would
rather," she coldly smiled, "take you in our way
than in your way. I think it will be easier."
"I'm thankful for any terms," Newman quite
radiantly answered. "It's enough for me to feel
197
THE AMERICAN
I'm taken. But it need n't be, for you," he at the
same time rather grimly laughed, "in too big doses
to begin with. Good-night!" — and he rapidly
quitted her.
XI
He had not, on his return to Paris, resumed the study
of French conversation with M. Nioche; he had been
conscious of too many other uses for his time. That
amiable man, however, came to see him very promptly,
having ascertained his whereabouts by some art of
curiosity too subtle to be challenged. He repeated
his visit more than once; he seemed oppressed by
an humiliating sense of having been overpaid, and
wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer
of grammatical and statistical information in small
instalments. He exhaled the same decent melancholy
as a few months before; a few months more or less
of brushing could make little difference in the an¬
tique lustre of his coat and hat. But his spirit itself
was a trifle more threadbare; it had clearly received
some hard rubs during the summer. Newman asked
with interest about Mademoiselle Noemie, and
M. Nioche at first, for answer, simply looked at him
in lachrymose silence.
"Don't press me on that subject, sir. I sit and
watch her, but I can do nothing."
"Do you mean she gives you serious cause — ?"
"I don't know, sir, what I mean! I can't follow
her. I don't understand her. She has something in
her head; who can say what's in the head of a little
person so independent, so dreadful —- and so pleas¬
ing ? She's too deep for her poor papa."
199
THE AMERICAN
" Does she continue to go to the Musee ? Has she
made any of those copies for me?" Newman con¬
tinued.
"She goes to the Musee, but I see nothing of the
copies. She has something on her easel; I suppose
it's one of the pictures you ordered. Such a splendid
commission ought to give her fairy fingers. But she's
not in earnest. I can't say anything to her; I'm
afraid of her, if you must know. One evening last
summer when I took her to walk in the Champs
Elysees she said to me things that made me turn
cold."
"And what things ?"
"Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,"
said M. Nioche while he unfolded his calico pocket-
handkerchief.
Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle
Noemie another visit at the Louvre. He was curious
of the progress of his copies, but it must be added
that he was still more curious of the personal pro¬
gress of the copyist. He went one afternoon to the
great museum, but wandered through several of the
rooms without finding her; after which, on his way
to the long hall of the Italian masters, he stopped
face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde. The young
Frenchman eagerly greeted him, assuring him he was
a godsend. He himself was in the worst of humours
and wanted some one to contradict. "In a bad hu¬
mour among all these beautiful things ? I thought
you were so fond of pictures, especially the grand old
black ones," Newman said. "There are two or three
here that ought to keep you in spirits."
200
THE AMERICAN
"Oh, to-day," Valentin returned, "I'm not in a
mood for gimcracks, and the more remarkable they
are the less I like them. The great staring eyes and
fixed positions of all these dolls and mannikins irri¬
tate me. I feel as if I were at some big dull party,
a roomful of people I should n't wish to speak to.
What should I care for their beauty ? It's a bore
and, worse still, it's a reproach. I've a tas d'ennuis.
I feel damnably vicious."
"If this grand sight works you up so why do you
expose yourself?" Newman asked with his quiet
play of reason.
"That's one of my worries. I came to meet my
cousin — a dreadful English cousin, a member of
my mother's family — who's in Paris for a week
with 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've undertaken to play valet de place
this afternoon. They were to have met me here at
two o'clock, and I've been waiting for them twenty
minutes. Why does n'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 to toss up my
hat for the joy of escaping them."
"I think in your place I'd be furious," said New¬
man, "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 n't know what to do — well, with your hat."
201
THE AMERICAN
"You give me excellent advice, and I already feel
better. I'll be furious; I'll let them go to the deuce
and I myself will go with you — unless by chance
you too have a rendezvous."
"It's not exactly a rendezvous," Newman re¬
turned. " But I've 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's 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."
The young man breathed all his sadness. "And
on that assurance I must part with you ?"
"I'm not certain of finding my young lady," said
Newman, " and I'm not quite prepared to lose your
company on the chance. It does n't strike me quite
as good business to introduce you to her, and yet I
should rather like to have your opinion of her."
"Is she formed to please ?"
"Well, I guess you'll think so."
Valentin passed his arm into that of his compan¬
ion. "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 our friend, after
202
THE AMERICAN
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 further end of it Mademoiselle Nioche sat be¬
fore 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 had relapsed into her
seat to look 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 splendour and their long silken trains and
furbelows were spread over the polished floor. It was
on their dresses the young woman had fixed her eyes,
though what she was thinking of I am unable to say.
I hazard the hypothesis of her mutely remarking
that to carry about such a mass of ponderable pleas¬
ure would surely be one of the highest uses of free¬
dom. Her reflections, at any rate, were disturbed by
the advent of her unannounced visitors, whom, as
she rose and stood before her easel, she greeted with
a precipitation of eye and lip that was like the glad
clap of a pair of hands.
" I came here on purpose to see you — seulement
vous, expray, expray," Newman said in his fairest,
squarest, distinctest French. And then, like a good
American, he introduced Valentin formally: "Allow
me to make you acquainted with Comte Valentin
de Bellegarde."
Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to
her quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his
title, but the graceful brevity of her response was
203
THE AMERICAN
a negation of underbred surprise. She turned to
her generous patro , putting up her hands to her
hair and smoothing its delicately-felt roughness.
Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that graced her
easel over on its face. "You've not forgotten me ?"
"I shall never forget you. You may be sure of
that."
"Oh," she protested, "there are a great many dif¬
ferent ways of remembering a person." And she
looked straight at the Comte de Bellegarde, who was
looking at her as a gentleman may when a verdict is
expected of him.
"Have you painted me a pretty picture?" New¬
man went on. "Have you shown beaucoup d'In¬
dustrie?"
"No, I've done nothing." And, taking up her
palette, she began to mix her colours at random.
" But your father tells me your attendance has been
regular."
"I 've nowhere else to go! Where do you suppose,
cher monsieur — ? Here, all summer, one could
breathe at least."
"Being here then," said Newman, "don't you
think you might have tried something?"
"I told you before," she sweetly answered, "that
I have n't the advantage of knowing how to paint."
"But you've something of interest on your easel
now," Valentin gaily objected, "if you'd only let me
see it."
She spread out her two hands, with the fingers ex¬
panded, over the back of the canvas — those hands
which Newman had called pretty and which, in spite
204
THE AMERICAN
of several little smudges of colour, Valentin could
now admire. "My painting is r't of interest."
"It's the only thing about you that is not, then,
mademoiselle," the young man gallantly returned.
She took up her shamefaced study and silently
passed it to him. He looked at it, and in a moment
she said: "I'm sure you're a great judge."
"Yes," he admitted; "I recognise merit."
"Only when it's there, I hope! I've given up,"
she bravely declared, "trying to have it."
He faced her, with a smile, over her demoralised
little daub. "If one has n't one sort one can always
have another."
She considered with downcast eyes — which, how¬
ever, she presently raised. "We're talking of the
sort of which you're a judge." Then, as to antici¬
pate too obvious a rejoinder, she turned, for more
urgent good manners, to Newman. "Where have you
been all these months ? You took those great jour¬
neys, you amused yourself well ?"
"Oh yes," our hero returned — "always beau-
coup, beaucoup!"
"Ah, so much the better." She spoke with charm¬
ing unction and, having taken back her canvas from
Valentin, who meanwhile had looked at his friend
with eyes of rich meaning, began again to dabble in
her colours. She was singularly pretty, with the look
of serious sympathy she threw into her face. "Tell
me," she continued, "a little of all you've done."
"Oh, I went to Switzerland — to Geneva and
Zermatt and Zurich and all those places, you know;
and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and
20 5
THE AMERICAN
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
their companion, and then with all the candour of
her appeal: "I don't understand monsieur when he
says so much at once. Would you be so good as to
translate ?"
"I'd rather talk to you out of my own head," Val¬
entin boldly declared.
"No," said Newman gravely, still in his formal
French, "you must n't talk to Mademoiselle Nioche,
because you say discouraging things. You ought to
tell her to work, to persevere."
"And we Parisians, mademoiselle," the young
man exclaimed, "are accused of paying hollow com¬
pliments and of being false flatterers!"
"Ah, I don't want any compliments," the girl pro¬
tested, "I want only the cruel truth. But if I did n't
know it by this time —!"
"I utter no truth more cruel," Valentin returned,
"than that there are probably many things you can
do very well."
"Oh,I can at least do this!" And dipping a brush
into a clot of red paint she drew a great horizontal
daub across her unfinished picture.
"What are you making that mark for?" New¬
man asked with his impartial interest.
Without answering, she drew another long crim¬
son daub, in a vertical direction, down the middle of
her canvas and so in a moment completed the rough
indication of a cross. " It's the sign of the cruel truth."
206
THE AMERICAN
The two men looked at each other, Valentin as
with vivid intelligence. "You've spoiled my pic¬
ture," said his friend.
"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's more interesting. It tells
a little story now. Is it for sale, mademoiselle ?"
"Everything I have is for sale," she promptly
replied.
"How much then is this object ?"
"Ten thousand francs — and very cheap!"
"Everything mademoiselle may do at present is
mine in advance," Newman interposed. "It makes
part of an order I gave her some months ago. So you
can't have that!"
"Monsieur will lose nothing by it," said made¬
moiselle with her charming eyes on Valentin. And
she began to put up her utensils.
"I shall have gained an ineffaceable memory,"
Valentin smiled. "You're going away? your day's
over ?"
"My father comes to fetch me," the young lady
replied.
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 patient shuf¬
fle, indulging in a low salute to the gentlemen who
had done him the honour to gather about his daugh-
207
THE AMERICAN
ter. Newman shook his hand with muscular friend¬
liness and Valentin returned his greeting with high
consideration. While the old man stood waiting for
Noemie to make a parcel of her implements he let his
mild oblique gaze play over this new acquaintance,
who was watching her put on her bonnet and mantle.
Valentin was at no pains to disguise the benevolence
of his own interest. He looked at a pretty person as
he would have listened to a good piece of music. In¬
telligent participation was in such a case simple good
manners. M. Nioche at last took his daughter's paint¬
box in one hand and the bedaubed canvas, after giv¬
ing it a solemn puzzled stare, in the other, and led the
way to the door. Noemie followed him after making
her late interlocutors the formal obeisance of the per¬
fectly-educated female young.
"Well," said Newman, "what do you think of
her?"
"She's very remarkable. Diable, (liable, diable /"
his friend reflectively repeated; "she's the perfection
of the type."
"I'm afraid she's a sad little trifler," Newman
conscientiously remarked.
"Not a little one — rather an immense one. She
has all the material." And ValentinJbegan to walk
slowly off, looking vaguely, though with eyes now so
opened, at the pictures on the walls. Nothing could
have appealed to his imagination more than the pos-
sihleTutiiitvof a young ladv so eqiiippi^ for futility.
"She's very interesting," he went on. "Yes, the type
shines out in her."
"'The type' ? The type of -what
208
THE AMERICAN
"Well, of soaring, of almost sublime ambition!
She's a very bad little copyist, but, endowed with the
artistic sense in another line, I suspect her none the
less~of~^r strong feeling for heir great originals."
Newman wondered, but presently followed. "Surely
her great originals will have had more beauty."
"Not always. She has enough to look as if she
had more, and that's always plenty. It's a face and
figure in which everything tells. If she were prettier
she would be less intelligent, and her intelligence is
half her charm."
"In what way does her intelligence strike you as
so remarkable?" asked Newman, at once puzzled,
impressed and vaguely scandalised by his friend's
investment of such a subject with so much of the dig¬
nity of demonstration.
"She has taken the measure nf life., and hnc
determined to be something — to succeed at any cost.
Her smearing of colours is of course a mere trick to
gain time. She's waiting for her chance; she wishes
to launch herself, and to do it right. Nobody, my
dear man, can ever have had such a love of the right.
She knows her Paris. She's one of fifty thousand, so
far as her impatiences and appetites go, but I'm sure
she has an exceptional number of ideas."
Newman raised his strong eyebrows. "Are you
also sure they're really good ones ?"
"Ah, 'good, good'!" cried Valentin: "you people
are too wonderful with your goodness. Good for
what, please — ? They'll be excellent, I warrant, for
some things! They'll be much better than the hope¬
less game she has just given up. They'll be good
209
THE AMERICAN
enough to make her, I dare say, one of the celebrities
of the future."
"Lord o' mercy, you have sized her up! But don't
— I must really ask it of you — let her quite run
away with you," Newman went on. "I shall owe it
to her good old father not to have upset her balance.
For he's a real nice man."
"Oh, oh, oh, her good old father!" Valentin in¬
corrigibly mocked. And then as his companion looked
grave: "He expects her to assure his future."
"I thought he rather expected me! And don't you
judge him, as a friend of mine," Newman asked,
"too cruelly ? He's as poor as a rat, but very high-
toned."
"Why, mon cher, I should adore his tone, and
you're right to do the same: it's much better than
mine, and he'll do you more good as a companion,
he '11 protect your innocence better, than ever I shall.
I don't mean," Valentin explained, "that he would n't
much rather his daughter were a good girl, that she
remained as 'nice' — as worthy, that is, say, of your
particular use — as he may himself remain. But all
the same he won't, if the worst comes to the worst —
well, he won't do what Virginius did. He does n't
want her to be a failure — as why should he ? — and
if she is n't a failure it's plain she '11 be a success. On
the whole he has confidence."
"He has touching fears, sir — I admit he has be¬
trayed them to me." Newman felt himself loyally
concerned to defend a character that had struck him
as pleasingly complete — though completeness was,
after all, what Valentin also claimed for it. The dif-
210
THE AMERICAN
ference was in their view of that picturesque grace,
and Newman would, to an appreciable degree, have
sentimentally suffered from not being able to keep
Monsieur Nioche before him as he had first seen him.
He was, to an extent he never fully revealed, a col¬
lector of impressions as romantically concrete, even
when profane, as the blest images and sanctified
relics of one of the systematically devout, and he at
bottom liked as little to hear anything he had picked
up with the hand of the spirit pronounced unauthen¬
tic. "I don't quite remember what Virginius did,"
he presently pursued, "and I don't say for certain
that my old friend would shoot. He does n't affect
me — no — as a shooting man. But I guess he
would n't want to make very much out of anything."
"Then he'll be very different," Valentin laughed,
"from any of the rest of his species! Why, my dear
fellow, we all here in Paris want to make as much
as possible out of everything. That's how we differ,
I conceive, from the people of your country: the ob¬
jects of your exploitation appear to be fewer, and
above all of fewer kinds. I don't mind telling you,"
he declared in the same tone, "that I don't see the
end of what I might be capable of making out of this."
"Of'this' —?"
"Of the relation of Monsieur Nioche to his daugh¬
ter, and of the relation of his daughter to — well, to
as many other persons as you like!"
"I shan't at all like you to be one of them," New¬
man still gravely returned. " I did n't ask you to come
round with me just to set you after her."
The young man appeared for an instant embar-
211
THE AMERICAN
rassed. "Do you object then to her having engaged
my enlightened curiosity?"
Newman considered. "Well, no — since, from
the moment I recognise she '11 never deliver my goods
I don't quite see where I stand or how I can improve
her."
"Oh, you certainly can't improve her!" Valentin
gaily cried.
""" Newman looked at him a moment. " I should like
then to improve you. I guess at any rate you had
better leave her alone."
"Oh, oh, oh!" his companion exclaimed, at this,
with an accent that made him pull up. "Do you
mean, my dear fellow, that you warn me off?"
They had stopped a minute before, and he stood
there staring. "Hanged if I don't believe you sup¬
pose I'm afraid of you!"
Valentin had given a cock to his moustache, and
he stroked it an instant, meeting this exclamation
with a glance of some ambiguity and a smile just
slightly strained. "Oh, I should n't put it that way:
you don't even yet know me enough to fear me!
Which gives you the advantage — for you've your¬
self attitudes that, I confess, make me tremble. I
think you're afraid, at most," he continued, "of my
bad example."
Newman had again — for he had had it before —
a strange fine sense of something he would have called,
in relation to this brilliant friend, the waste of anim¬
adversion. It was somehow one with the accepted
economic need of keeping him pleasantly in view.
Even to argue with him was somehow to misuse a
212
THE AMERICAN
luxury, and to think of him as perverse was some¬
how to miss an occasion. No one had ever given him
that impression, which he might have compared to
the absolute pleasure, for the palate, of wine of the
highest savour. One didn't put anything "into"
such a vintage and there was a way of handling the
very bottle. The grace of him, of Valentin, was all
precious, the growth of him all fortunate, the quan¬
tity of him elsewhere all doubtless limited. "I might
perhaps have been a factor in that young lady's
moral future," Newman presently said — " but I don't
come in now. And evidently," he added "you've
no room for me in yours."
The young man gave a laugh, and the next mo¬
ment, arm in arm, they had resumed their walk. " Oh,
on the contrary," Valentin then replied; "since what
I want, precisely, is to keep it spacious and capacious
— at least on the scale, if you please, of my moral
past; which indeed seems to me, when I look back
on it, as boundless as the desert. It's a prospect that,
at all events, such figures as you and your wonderful
friends help to people. And I may say about them"
he went on, "that I should like really — in the inter¬
est of the impression that I confess the young lady
makes on me — to propose to you a fair agreement."
On which, amusedly enough, Newman debated as
they went. "That I shall shut my eyes to what you
want to do ?"
"Well, yes—say I may expect you'll shut them
to me as soon as I shall find you've opened them to
the grand manner in which your old gentleman is a
man of the world. You'll be obliged, I 'm convinced,
213
THE AMERICAN
to recognise it, and I only ask you to let me know, in
all honesty, when you've done so."
"So that you, in all honesty — ?"
"Well, call it in all delicacy!" Valentin suggested.
Newman continued to wonder. "May have a free
hand — ?"
"Without your being shocked," the young man
gracefully said.
But it only made our friend rather quaintly groan.
"I think it's your delicacies, all round, that shock
me most!"
"Ah, don't say," Valentin pleaded, "that I'm not
at the worst a man of duty! See for yourself!" His
English cousins had come into view, and he advanced
gallantly to meet the lady in the green crape bonnet.
XII
Coming in toward evening, three days after his in¬
troduction to the family of Madame de Cintre, New¬
man found on his table the card of the Marquis de
Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note
informing him that this gentleman's mother requested
the pleasure of his company at dinner. He went of
course, though he had first to disengage himself from
appeals that struck him as in comparison the babble
of vain things. 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 illumined the very small pink
shoes of a lady who, from a low chair, stretched
out her toes to it. This lady was the younger Ma¬
dame de Bellegarde, always less effectively present,
somehow, than perceptibly posted. Madame de Cin¬
tre, not posted at all, but oh so present, 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. Val¬
entin had perched 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
chimney, his head erect and his hands behind him in
an attitude of formal expectancy.
215
THE AMERICAN
The old Marquise stood up to give Newman her
greeting, and there was that in the way she did so
which seemed to measure narrowly the quantity of
importance such a demonstration might appear to
attach to him. "We're all alone, you see; we've
asked no one else," she said austerely.
"I'm very glad you didn't; this is much more
sociable. I wish you good-evening, sir" — and New¬
man offered his hand to the Marquis.
M. de Bellegarde was affable, yet in spite of his
dignity was restless. He changed his place, fidgeted
about, looked out of the long windows, took up books
and laid them down again. Young Madame de Belle-
garde gave their guest her hand without moving and
without looking at him.
"You may think that's coldness," Valentin freely
explained; "but it's not, it's the last confidence, and
you'll grow up to it. It shows she's treating you
as an intimate. Now she detests me, and yet she's
always looking at me."
"No wonder I detest you if I'm always looking at
you!" cried the lady. "If Mr. Newman doesn't
like my way of shaking hands I'll do it for him
again."
But this charming privilege was lost on our hero
who was already making his way over to Madame
de Cintre. She raised her eyes to him as she accepted
from him the customary form, 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 immensely gazed at
216
THE AMERICAN
her. "But in the end the young prince married the
beautiful Florabella, 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
mentioned 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," Madame de
Cintre insisted. "That quite set her up again."
"What a strong constitution and what a chequered
career!" said Newman. "Are you very fond of chil¬
dren ?" He was certain she must be, but wished to
make her say it.
"I like to talk with them; we can talk with them
so much more seriously than with grown persons.
That's great nonsense I've been telling Blanche, but
it has much more value than most of what we say in
society."
"I wish you would talk to me then as if I were
Blanche's age," Newman laughed. "Were you happy
at your ball the other night ?"
" Extravagantly!"
"Now you're talking the nonsense that we talk in
society," said Newman. "I don't believe that."
"It was my own fault if I was n't happy. The ball
was very pretty and every one very amiable."
"It was on your conscience," he presently risked,
"that you had annoyed your mother and your
brother."
217
THE AMERICAN
She looked at him a moment in silence. "That's
possible — I had undertaken more than I could carry
out. I've very little courage; I'm not a heroine."
She said this, he could feel, to be very true with him;
and it touched him as if she had pressed into his hand,
for reminder, some note she had scrawled or some
ribbon or ring she had worn. 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 he betook himself to
the side of old Madame de Bellegarde. The dining-
room, at the end of a cold corridor, was vast and som¬
bre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent.
Newman wondered if the daughtetof the house had
had to do with ordering th^ repast,~jtnd, with a fine
applied power of remote"projection, hoped this might
have been. Once seated at table, with the various
members of so rigidly closed a circle round 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 favour? He was
on his guard; he was watchful and conjectural, yet
af the sa^ne~time he was"vaguely mdirterent. Whether
they gave him a long rope or a short he was there now,
and^vf^dan^'deX^intre was opposite him. She had""'"
aTaircandlestick on each iide of her; she would sit
there for the next hour, and that was enough. The
dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he won-
218
THE AMERICAN
dered if this was always the state of things in old fam¬
ilies. 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 on
the table-service. The Marquis appeared to have
decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of
conversation, as not leading to uncouth personal re¬
velations. Every now and then, having learned from
Newman that he had been through the museums of
Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism on the
flesh-tints of Rubens or the good taste of Sansovino.
He struck his guest as precautionary r-a-s apprehen¬
sive; "his manner seemed to indicate a fine nervous
dread that something disagreeable might happen if
the atmosphere were not kept clear of stray currents
from windows opened at hazard. "What under the
sunts he afraid of ?" Newman asked hrms^if. "Does
he think I'm going to offer to swap jack-knives with
himT^Tt was useless to shut his eyes to the fact that
the Marquis was as disagreeable to him as some
queer, rare, possibly dangerous biped, perturbingly
akin to humanity, in one of the cages of a "show."
He had never been a man of strong personal aver¬
sions; his nerves had not been at the mercy of the
mystical qualities of his neighbours. But here was
a figure in respect to which he was irresistibly in op¬
position; a figure of forms and phrases and postures;
a figure of possible impertinences and treacheries.
Mrde"Bellegarde made him feel as if he were stand¬
ing barefooted on a marble floor; and yet to gain his
desire, he felt perfectly able to stand. He asked him¬
self what Madame de Cintre thought of his being
219
THE AMERICAN
accepted — if it was acceptance that was thus con¬
veyed to him. There was no judging from her face,
which expressed simply the desire to show kindness
in a manner requiring as little explicit recognition as
possible. Young Madame de Bellegarde had always
the same manner; preoccupied, distracted, listening
to everything and hearing nothing, looking at her
dress, her rings, her finger-nails and seeming inef¬
fably bored, she yet defied you to pronounce on her
ideal of social diversion. Newman was enlightened
on this point later. Even Valentin failed quite to
seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful and
forced, but his friend felt his firm eyes shine through
the lapses of the talk very much as to the effect of
one's being pinched by him very hard in the dark.
Newman himself, for the first time in his life, was not
himself; Ke~measuT^^1l~motl6hs "arid counted his
words; he had the sense of sitting in a boat that re¬
quired inordinate trimming and that a wrong move- -
ment might cause to overturn.
After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed the smok¬
ing-room and led the way to a small and somewhat
musty apartment, the walls of which were orna¬
mented with old hangings of stamped leather and
trophies of rusty arms. Newman refused a cigar, but
established himself on one of the divans while the
Marquis puffed his own weed before the fireplace
and Valentin sat looking through the light fumes of
a cigarette from one to the other. "I can't keep quiet
any longer," this member of the family broke out at
last. " I must tell you the news and congratulate you.
My brother seems unable to come to the point; he
220
THE AMERICAN
revolves round his announcement even as the priest
round the altar. You're accepted as a candidate for
the hand of our sister."
"Valentin, be a little proper!" murmured the
Marquis, the bridge of whose high nose yielded to
a fold of fine irritation.
"There has been a family council," his brother
nevertheless continued; "my mother and he have
put their heads together, and even my testimony
has not been altogether excluded. My mother and
Urbain 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 Legislatif. 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'd
have taken you for a duke — an American duke, the
Duke of California. I said I could warrant you grate¬
ful for the smallest favours — modest, humble, un¬
assuming. I was sure you'd know your own place
always and never give us occasion to remind you of
certain differences. You could n't help it, after all,
if you had not come in for a dukedom. There were
none in your country; but if there had been it was
certain that with your energy and ability you'd have
got the pick of the honours. At this point I was
ordered to sit down, but I think I made an impression
in your favour."
M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother as New¬
man had seen those unfortunates looked at who have
told, before waiting auditors, stories of no effect.
Then he removed a spark of cigar-ashes from the
221
THE AMERICAN
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 apologise to you for Valentin's inveterate
bad taste, as well as notify you that this is probably
not the last time that his want of tact will cause you
serious embarrassment."
"No, I confess, I've no tact," said Valentin. "Is
your embarrassment really serious, Newman ? Urbain
will put you right again; he'll know just how you
feel."
"My brother, I'm sorry to say," the Marquis
pursued, " has never had the real sense of his duties
or his opportunities —of what one must after all call
his position. It has been a great pain to his mother,
who's 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" — Newman was all
good-humour. "I know what the Valentines of this
world amount to."
"In the good old times," the young man said,
"marquises and counts used to have their appointed
buffoons and jesters to crack jokes for them. Now¬
adays we see a great strapping democrat keeping
one of 'us,' as Urbain would say, about him to play
the fool. It's a good situation, but I certainly am very
degenerate."
The Marquis fixed his eyes for some time on the
floor. "My mother has let me know," he presently
resumed, "of the announcement that you made her
the other evening."
"That I want so much to marry your sister ?"
222
THE AMERICAN
"That you desire to approach the Comtesse de
Cintre with that idea, and ask of us therefore your
facility for so doing. The proposal gave my mother
— you can perhaps even yourself imagine — a great
deal to think about. She naturally took me into her
counsels, and the subject has had my most careful
attention. There was a great deal to be considered;
more than you perhaps appear to conceive. We
have viewed the question on all its faces, we have
weighed one thing against another. Our conclusion
has been that we see no reason to oppose your pre¬
tension — though of course the matter, the question of
your success, rests mainly with yourself. My mother
has wished me to inform you then of our favourable
attitude. She'll have the honour of saying a few
words to you on the subject herself. Meanwhile you
have our sanction, as heads of the family."
Newman got up and came nearer. "You person¬
ally will do all you can to back me up, eh ?"
" I engage to you to throw my weight into the scale
of your success."
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 re¬
ceive, as he might say, this prodigious person's
damned permission. The idea of having the elder
M. de Bellegarde mixed "up wifK~~hTs wooing, and
wedding was more and more unpleasant to him.
But he Tilcf resolved to go through the mill, as he
had imaged it, and he would n't cry out at the first
turn of the wheel. He was silent a while and then
223
THE AMERICAN
said with a certain dryness which Valentin told him
afterwards had a very grand air: " I'm 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 more to say. "I must do
my mother the justice, I must do myself the justice,
to make the point that our decision was not easy.
Such an arrangement was not what we had expected.
The idea that my sister should marry a gentleman
so intimately involved in — a — business, was some¬
thing of a novelty."
"So I told you, you know!" Valentin recalled to
Newman with a fine admonitory finger.
"The incongruity has not quite worn off, I confess,"
the Marquis went on; "perhaps it never will entirely.
But possibly that's not altogether to be regretted";
and he went through that odd dim form of a smile
that affected his guest as the scraping of a match that
doesn't light. "It may be that the time has come
when we should make_some concession to the~spirrt~
of the day. There had been no such positive sacrifice
in our housefor a greatmanyyearsTTmadeTthe remark
to my mother, and she did me the honour 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 by
her small respect for abstract reasoning. Are you
very sure she replied to your striking proposition in
the gracious manner you describe ? You know how,
224
THE AMERICAN
when it suits her, she goes straight to the point —
au pas de charge! Did n't she rather do you the
honour to say: 'A fiddlestick for your fine phrases!
There are better reasons than that' ?"
"Other reasons were discussed," said the Marquis
without looking at Valentin, but with a slightly more
nasal pitch; "some of them possibly were better.
We're highly conservative, Mr. Newman, but we
have never, I trust, been stupidly narrow. We're
judging this so interesting question on its merits only.
We've no doubt we shall be fully justified. We've
no doubt everything will be comfortable."
Newman had stood listening to these remarks
with his arms folded and his eyes fastened on the
speaker. "Justified?" he echoed with his way of
putting rather less than more sense into words he
repeated. "Why shouldn't we be? I assure you
I've no fear for myself. Why should n't we be com¬
fortable? If you're not it will be your own fault.
I've everything to make me so."
"My brother means that with the lapse of time
you may get used to the difference." And Valentin
paused to light another cigarette.
"What difference?" Newman unimaginatively
asked.
"Urbain," said Valentin very gravely, "I'm afraid
that Mr. Newman does n't quite realise the difference.
We ought to insist on that."
"My brother goes too far," M. de Bellegarde
observed to Newman. "He has no nice sense of
what should n't be said. It's my mother's wish and
mine that no comparisons should be made. Pray
225
THE AMERICAN
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 feel
no explanations necessary. With a little tact on both
sides everything ought to be easy. That's exactly
what I wished to say — that we quite understand
what we've undertaken and that you may depend on
our not breaking down."
VaTentlrTshook his hands in the air and then
buried his face in them. "I don't quite steer clear
myself, no doubt, but oh, my brother, if you knew
what you are saying!" And he went off into a sound
that combined a long laugh with a long wail.
M. de Bellegarde's face flushed a little, but he
held his head higher, as if to repudiate this concession
to vulgar perturbability. " I'm sure you quite know
what I mean," he said to Newman.
" Oh no, not quite — or perhaps not at all," New¬
man answered. " But you need n't mind that. I
don't care whether I know — or even, really, care,
I think, what you say; for if I did there might be
things I should n't like, should in fact, quite ^z.flike,
and that would n't suit me at all, you know. I want,
very originally, no doubt, but very obstinately, to
marry your sister and nobody other whomsoever —
that's all; to do it as quickly as possible and to do
as little else among you besides. I don't care there¬
fore how I do it — as regards the rest of you! And
that's all I have to say."
"You had better, nevertheless, receive the last
word from my mother," said the Marquis, who
had n't blanched.
226
THE AMERICAN
"Very good; I'll go and get it." And Newman
prepared to return to the drawing-room.
M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass
first, and on his doing so shut himself into the room
with Valentin. Newman had been a trifle bewildered
by the free play of his friend's wit and had not needed
its aid to feel the limits of the elder brother's. That
was what he had heard of as patronage — a great
historic and traditionary force that he now per¬
sonally encountered for the first time in his life.
Did n't it consist in calling your attention to the
impertinences it spared you ? But he had recognised
all the bravery of Valentin's backing that underlay
Valentin's comedy, and he was unwilling so fine a
comedian should pay a tax on it. He paused a moment
in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps, expect¬
ing 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 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. Madame de Bellegarde was in her place
by the fire, talking to an antique gentleman in a wig
and a profuse white neckcloth of the fashion of 1820.
Madame de Cintre had bent a listening head to the
historic confidences of an old lady who was pre¬
sumably the wife of this personage, an old lady in
a red satin dress and an ermine cape, whose forehead
227
THE AMERICAN
was adorned with a topaz set in a velvet band. The
young Marquise, when he came in, left some people
among whom she was sitting and took the place she
had occupied before dinner. Then she gave a little
push to the puff that stood near her and seemed to
indicate by a glance that she had placed it in position
for him. He went and took possession of it; the
young Marquise 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 in effect to marry a very
tall and very thin woman. You must know that I've
spoken in your favour, I'm really on your side and
in your interest. You owe me a famous taper!"
"You've spoken well of me to Madame de Cintre ?"
Newman asked.
"Oh no, not that. You may think it strange, but
my sister-in-law and I are not so intimate as that.
Taking my courage in my hands, I put in my word
for you to my husband and to my mother-in-law.
I said I was sure we could do what we choose with
you.
" I'm much obliged to you," laughed Newman,
"but I guess you'll find you can't."
"I know that very well; I did n't believe a word of
it. But I wanted you to come into the house; I thought
we should be friends."
" I'm very sure of it," said Newman.
"Don't be too sure. If you like the Comtesse so
much perhaps you won't like me. We're as differ¬
ent — well, as this fan and that poker. But you and
228
THE AMERICAN
I have something in common. I've come into this
family by marriage; you want to come into it in the
same way."
"Oh no, I don't want to come into it at all," he
interrupted — " not a wee mite! I only want to take
Madame de Cintre 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, is n't it ? But I shall ask you
some stranger ones yet."
"Perhaps a stranger one will be easier to answer,"
Newman said. "You might try me."
"Oh, you get off very well; the old Comte de la
Rochefidele, yonder, could n't do it better. I told
them that if we only gave you a chance you'd be one
of our plus fins causeurs. I know something about
men. Besides, you and I belong to the same camp.
I'm a ferocious modern. I'm more modern than
you, you know — because I've been through this
and come out, very far out; which you have n't.
Oh, you don't know what this is! Vous allez bien
voir. By birth I'm vielle 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 de race. We 're much better than the
Bellegardes. at any rate, fiut I don't care a pin for
my pedigree — I only want to belong to my time.
So,~BHng~!T reactionary— from the reaction — I^m
sure r go beyorid youT That 's what you look, you
know — that you're not reactionary enough. But
I like clever people, wherever they come from, and
229
THE AMERICAN
I take my amusement wherever I find it. I don't pout
at the Empire; here all the world pouts at the Em¬
pire. Of course I've to mind what I say, but I ex¬
pect to take my revenge with you." The little lady
discoursed for some time longer in this sympathetic
strain, with an eager abundance indicating that her
opportunities for revealing her esoteric philosophy
were indeed rare. She hoped Newman would never
be afraid of her, however he might be with the others,
for really she went very far indeed. "Strong people"
— les gens forts — were in her opinion equal all the
world over. Newman listened to her with an atten¬
tion at once beguiled and irritated. He wondered
what the deuce she too was driving at, with her hope
he would n't be afraid of her and her protestations
of equality. In so far as he could understand her she
w*aT"wrong — he did n't admit her equality; a silly
rattling woman was never on a level with a sensible
man, a man preoccupied with an ambitious passion.
The young Marquise stopped suddenly and looked
at him sharply, shaking her fan. "I see you don t
believe me, you're too much on your guard. You
won't form an alliance, offensive or defensive ?
You're very wrong; I could really 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 Cintre.
" I 've been telling Madame de la Rochefidele that
you're an American," she said as he came up. "It
interests her greatly. Her favourite uncle went over
with the French troops to help you in your battles in
230
THE AMERICAN"
the last century, and she has always, in consequence,
wanted greatly to see one of your people. But she has
never succeeded till to-night. You're the first — to
her knowledge — that she has ever looked at."
Madame de la Rochefidele had an aged cadaverous
face, with a falling of the lower jaw which prevented
her bringing her lips together and reduced her con¬
versation to a series of impressive but inarticulate
gutturals. She raised an antique eye-glass, elaborately
mounted in chased silver, and looked at Newman
from head to foot. Then she said something to which
he listened deferentially but which conveyed to him
no idea whatever.
"Madame de la Rochefidele says she's convinced
she must have seen Americans without knowing it,"
Madame de Cintre explained. Newman thought it
probable she had seen a great many things without
knowing it; and the old lady, again addressing her¬
self to utterance, declared — as interpreted by
Madame de Cintre — that she wished she had
known it.
At this moment the old gentleman who had been
talking to their hostess drew near, leading that lady
on his arm. His wife pointed out Newman to him,
apparently explaining his remarkable origin. M. de la
Rochefidele, whose old age was as rosy and round
and polished as an imitation apple, spoke very neatly
and cheerily; almost as prettily, Newman thought,
as M. Nioche, and much more hopefully. When he
had been enlightened he turned to Newman with an
inimitable elderly grace. "Monsieur is by no means
the first American I have seen. Almost the first
231
THE AMERICAN
person I ever saw — to notice him — was an Ameri¬
can."
"Ah!" said Newman sympathetically.
"The great Dr. Franklin. Of course I was very
very young. I believe I had but just come into the
world. He was received very well dans le notre."
"Not better than Mr. Newman," said Madame
de Bellegarde. "I beg he '11 offer me his arm into the
other room. I could have offered no higher privilege
to Dr. Franklin." Newman, complying with her
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 separa¬
tion from them, but if the Marquis had been ruffled he
stepped all the more like some high-crested though
distinctly domestic fowl who had always the alter¬
native of the perch. Valentin, on his side, was kissing
ladies' hands as much as ever as if there were nothing
else in the world but these and sundry other invita¬
tions to the moustachioed lip. Madame de Bellegarde
gave a glance at her elder 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 privacy. She disengaged herself from
Newman's arm and rested her hand on that of their
companion; and in this position she stood a moment,
bridling, almost quivering, causing her ornaments,
her earrings and brooches and buckles, somehow
doubly to twinkle, and pursing, as from simple force
of character, her portentous little mouth. I am afraid
the picture was lost on Newman, but she was in
fact at this moment a striking image of the dignity
232
THE AMERICAN
which — even Jn_±he--€as€ of a small time-shrunjcen
old lady — may reside in the habit of unquestioned
authority and the absoluteness of a social theory
favourable to the person holding it. "My son has
spoken to you as I desired, and you'll understand
that you've nothing to fear from our opposition. The
rest will lie with yourself."
" M. de Bellegarde told me several things I did n't
understand," said Newman, "but I made out that.
You'll let me stand on my merits. I 'm rnuch obliged."
^"wish nevertheless to add a word that my son
probably did n't feel at liberty to say," the Marquise
pursued. "I must say it for my own peace of mind.
We've stretched a point; we've gone very far to meet
you."
"Oh, your son said it very well; didn't you,
Marquis ?" Newman asked.
"Not so well as my mother,"the Marquis declared.
"Well," Newman returned, "I don't know what
I can do but make a note of it and try to profit by it."
"It's proper I should tell you," Madame de Belle-
garde went on as if to relieve an insistent inward need,
"that I'm a very stiff old person and that I don't
pretend not to be. I may be wrong to feel certain
things as I do, but it's too late for me to change. At
least I know it — as I know also why. Don't flatter
yourself that my daughter also isn't proud. She's
proud^liTTier own way — a somewhat different way
from mine. You'll have to make your terms with
that. Even Valentin's proud, if you touch the right
spot — or the wrong one. Urbain's proud — that
you see for yourself. Sometimes I think he's a little
233
THE AMERICAN
too proud; but I wouldn't change him. He's the
best of my children; he cleaves to his old mother.
I've said, in any case, enough to show you that
we are all very much aware of ourselves and very
absurd and rather impossible together. It's well
you should know the sort of people you have come
among."
"Well," said Newman, "I can only say that I hope
I'm as little like youjthen as may be. But though
I don't thmFT'm easy to scare, you speak as if you
quite intended to be as disagreeable as you know
how."
His hostess fixed him a moment. "I shall not en¬
joy it if my daughter decides to 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's all I ask of you," Newman
replied. " Keep your hands off — I shall mind my
own business. I'm very much in earnest and there's
not the slightest danger of my getting discouraged
or backing out. You'll have me constantly before
your eyes, so that if you don't like it I'm sorry for
you. I '11 do for your daughter, if she '11 accept me,
everything that a man can do for a woman. I'm
happy to tell you that, as a promise — a pledge. I
consider that on your side you take an equally de¬
finite engagement. You'll not back out, eh ?"
"I don't know what you mean by 'backing out,'"
said the Marquise with no small majesty. "It sug¬
gests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has
ever been guilty."
234
THE AMERICAN
"Our word's our word," Urbain pronounced.
"We recognise that we've given it."
"Well then," said Newman, "I'm very glad of
your pride and your pretensions. You '11 have to keep
your word to keep them up."
The Marquise was silent a little; after which, sud¬
denly, "I shall always be polite to you, Mr. New¬
man," she declared, "but decidedly I shall never
like you."
"Don't be too sure, madam!" her visitor laughed.
"I'm so sure that I shall ask you to take me
back to my armchair without the least fear of hav¬
ing my sentiments modified by the service you
render me." And Madame de Bellegarde took his
arm and returned to the salon and to her custom¬
ary place.
M. de la Rochefidele and his wife were preparing
to take their leave, and Madame de Cintre's inter¬
view 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 ap¬
proached. "Your mother has given me leave — very
solemnly — to come here often. I intend 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 day you came to see me ? — that we 're a
strange, strange family."
235
THE AMERICAN
" It was n't the first day I came, but the second,"
Newman amended.
"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'll see!" And Madame de
Cintre turned away.
He watched her a while as she talked with other
people and then took his leave. It was practically
indeed to Valentin alone that he so addressed him¬
self, and his friend followed him to the top of the
staircase. "Well, you've taken out your passport,"
said that young man. "I hope you liked the process
and that you admire our red tape."
"I like your sister better than ever. But don't
worry your poor brother any more for my sweet sake,"
Newman added. "There must be something the
matter with him."
"There's a good deal!"
"Well, I don't seem to mind him — I don't seem
to mind anything!" Newman just a bit musingly
acknowledged. "I was only afraid he came down on
you in the smoking-room after I went out."
"When my brother comes down on me," said Val¬
entin, "he drops hard. I've a particular way of re¬
ceiving him. I must say," he continued, "that they've
fallen into line — for it has been a muster of all our
forefathers too! — sooner than I expected. I don't
understand it; they must really have put forward
their clock! It's a tribute to your solidity."
"Well, if my solidity's all they want—!" New¬
man again rather pensively breathed.
"You can cut them a daily slice of it and let them
236
THE AMERICAN
have it with their morning coffee?" But he was
turning away when Valentin more effectually stopped
him. "I should like to know whether, within a few
days, you've seen your venerable friend M. Nioche."
"He was yesterday at my rooms."
"What had he to tell you ?"
"Nothing particular."
"You did n't see the weapon of Virginius 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'm delighted to
hear of his high spirits — they make me so beauti¬
fully right and so innocently happy. For what they
mean, you see, must be that his charming child is
favourably placed, at last, for the real exercise of her
talents, and that the pair are relieved, almost equally,
from the awkwardness of a false position. And M.
Nioche is rather cheerful — for him! Don't brandish
your tomahawk at that rate," the young man went
on; "I've not seen her nor communicated with her
since that day at the Louvre. Andromeda has found
another Perseus than I. My information's exact; on
such matters it always is. I suppose," he wound
up, "that I may now cease so elaborately to neglect
her?"
Newman, struggling up out of intenser inward
visions, listened as he could, and then, having listened,
remained with his eyes on his friend's face. " It would
do you good to fall in love. You want it badly,"
he at last remarked.
"Well, that's perhaps exactly what, according to
237
THE AMERICAN '
my perpetual happy instinct, I'm now trying to
do!"
"Oh hell!" said our hero impatiently as he broke
away again.
XIII
He kept his promise, or his menace, of presenting
himself often in the Rue de l'Universite, and during
the next six weeks saw Madame de Cintre more times
than he could have numbered. He flattered himself
he had not fallen, and hadn't needed to fall, after
the fashion enjoTneTTSy him on Valentin, in love, but
hisTmJgYapheFmay be supposed to know better what,
as hFwould have said, was the matter with him. He
claimed certainly none of the exemptions and emol¬
uments of the merely infatuated state. That state,
he considered, was too consistent with asininity, and
he had never had a firmer control of his reason or
a higher opinion of his judgement. What he was con¬
scious of, none the less, was an intense all-consum¬
ing tenderness, which had for its object an extraor¬
dinarily graceful and harmonious, yet at the same
time insidiously agitating woman who lived in a grand
grey house on the left bank of the Seine. His theory
of his relation to her was that he had become con¬
scious of how beautifully she might, for the question
of his future, come to his aid; but this left unex¬
plained the fact that his confidence had somehow
turned to a strange, muffled heartache. He was in
truth infinitely anxious, and, wTfen he questioned his
anxiety, knew it was not all for himself. If she might
come to his ai'd he might come to hers; and he had
the imagination — more than he had ever had in his
239
THE AMERICAN
life about anything — of fantastic straits or splendid
miseries in the midst of which, standing before her
with wide arms out, he would have seen her let her¬
self, even if still just desperately and blindly, make
for his close embrace as for a refuge.
He really would n't have minded if some harsh
need for mere money had most driven her; the creak
of that hinge would have been sweet to him had it
meant the giving way of the door of separation. What
he wanted wasto take her, and that her feeling her¬
self taken should come back^ to him for their com¬
mon relief. The full surrender, so long as she did n't
make it, left the full assurance an unrest and a yearn¬
ing— From which all his own refuge was in the fine
ingenuity, the almost grim extravagance, of the pro¬
spective provision he was allowing to accumulate.
She gave him the sense of "suiting" him so, exactly
as she was, that his desire to interpose* for her and
close about her had something of the quality of that
solicitude with which a fond mother might watch
from the window even the restricted garden-play of
a child recovering from an accident. But he was
above all simply charmed, and the more for feeling
wonderstruck, as the days went on, at the proved
Tightness both of the instinct and of the calculation
that had originally moved him. It was as if there took
place for him, each day, such a revelation of the
possible number of forms of the "personal" appeal
as he could otherwise never have enjoyed, and as made
him yet ask himself how, how, all unaided (save as
Mrs. Tristram, subtle woman, had_aided him!) he
could have known. For he had, amazingly, known.
240
THE AMERICAN
And the impression must now thereby have been for
him, he thought, very much that of the wistful critic
or artist who studies "style" in some exquisite work
or some quiet genius, and who sees it come and come
and come, and still never fail, like the truth of a per¬
fect voice or the safety of a perfect temper. Just
as such a student might say to himself, " How could
I have got on without this particular research ?" so
Christopher Newman could only say, "Fancy this
being to be had and — with my general need — my
not having it!"
He made no violent love and, as he would have
said, no obvious statements; he just attended regu¬
larly, as he would also have said, in the manner of
the "interested party" present at some great liquida¬
tion where he must keep his eye on what concerns
him. He never trespassed on ground she had made
him regard, ruefully enough, as forbidden; but he
had none the less a sustaining sense that she knew
better from day to day all the good he thought of
her. Though in general no great talker, and almost
incapable, on any occasion, of pitching his voice for
the gallery, he now had his advances as well as his
retreats, and felt that he often succeeded in bringing
her, as he might again have called it, into the open.
He determined early not to care if he should bore
her, whether by speech or by silence — since he cer¬
tainly meant she should so suffer, at need, before he
had done; and he seemed at least to know that even
if she actually suffered she liked him better, on the
whole, with too few fears than with too many. Her
visitors, coming in often while he sat there, found
241
THE AMERICAN
a tall, lean, slightly flushed and considerably silent
man, with a lounging, permanent-looking seat, who
laughed out sometimes when no one had meant to
be droll, and yet remained grave in presence of those
calculated witticisms and those initiated gaieties for
the appreciation of which he apparently lacked the
proper culture and the right acquaintances. It had
to be confessed that the number of the subjects upon
which he was without ideas was only equalled by the
number of the families to which he was not allied;
and it might have been added more gravely still that
as regards those subjects upon which he was without
ideas he was also quite without professions. He had
little of the small change of conversation and rarely
rose to reach down one of those ready-made forms
and phrases that drape, whether fresh or frayed, the
hooks and pegs of the general wardrobe of talk —
that repository in which alone so many persons qual¬
ify for the discipline of society, as supernumerary
actors prepare, amid a like provision, for the ordeal
of the footlights. He was able on the other hand, at
need, to make from where he sat one of the long arms
that stretch quite out of the place — to the effect, as
might mostly be felt, of coming back with some pro¬
position as odd as a single shoe.
Bent, at any rate, on possession, he had at his
command treasures of attention and never measured
the possibilities of interest in a topic by his own power
of contribution to it: he liked topics to grow at least
big enough for him to walk round them and see.
This made, for his advantage, to his being little ac¬
quainted with satiety either of sound or of sense; he
242
THE AMERICAN
was not himself more often bored than he was often
alarmed, and there was no man with whom it would
have been a greater mistake than to take his inter¬
missions always for absences or his absences always
for holidays. What it was that entertained or that
occupied him during some of his speechless sessions
I shall not, however, undertake fully to say. The
Marquise Urbain had once found occasion to declare
to him that he reminded her, in company, of a swim¬
ming-master she had once had who would never
himself go into the water and who yet, at the baths,
en costume de vtlle, managed to control and direct the
floundering scenewithout so much as getting splashed.
He had so made her angry, she professed, when he
turned her awkwardness to ridicule. Newman af¬
fected her in like manner as keeping much too dry:
it was urgent for her that he should be splashed —
otherwise what was he doing at the baths ? — and
she even hoped to get him into the water. We know
in a general way that many things which were old
stories to those about him had for him the sharp high
note, but we should probably find a complete list of
his new impressions surprising enough. He told Ma¬
dame de Cintre stories, sometimes not brief, from
his own repertory; he was full of reference to his own
great country, over the greatness of which it seldom
occurred to him that every one might n't, on occasion
offered, more or less insatiably yearn; and he ex¬
plained to her, in so discoursing, the play of a hun¬
dred of its institutions and the ingenuity of almost
all its arrangements. Judging by the sequel, judging
even by the manner in which she suffered his good
243
THE AMERICAN
faith to lay an apparent spell upon her attitude,
she was mildly — oh mildly and inscrutably! — be¬
guiled; but one would n't have been sure before¬
hand of the shade of her submission. As regards any
communication she herself meanwhile made him he
could n't nevertheless but guess that on the whole
she "wanted" to make it. This was in so far an
amendment to the portrait Mrs. Tristram had drawn
of her.
He had been right at first in feeling her a little —
or more than a little — proudly^shy; her shyness, in
a woman whose circumstances and tranquil beauty
afforded every facility for sublime self-possession, was
only a charm the more. For Newman it had lasted
some time and had, even when it went, left something
behind it that for a while performed the same office.
Was this the uneasy 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 marked by outlines perhaps rather
too emphatic ? He supposed so, yet to find himself,
as a result, wondering rather less what Madame de
Cintre's secrets might consist of, and convinced
rather more that secrets would be in themselves hate¬
ful and inconvenient things, things as depressing and
detestable as inferior securities, for such a woman to
have to lug, as he inwardly put it, round with her.
She was a creature for the sun and the air, for no
sort of hereditary shade or equivocal gloom; ancLher
natural line was neither imposed reserve nor mys¬
terious melancholy., Jbut positive, life, the life of the
great world — his great world, not the grand monde as
244
THE AMERICAN
there understood if he was n't mistaken, which seemed
squeezeable into a couple of rooms of that inconven¬
ient and ill-warmed house: all with nothing worse to
brood about, when necessary, than the mystery per¬
haps of the happiness that would so queerly have
come to her. To some perception of his view and his
judgement, and of the patience with which he was
prepared to insist on them, he fondly believed him¬
self to be day by day bringing her round. She
might n't, she could n't yet, no doubt, wholly fall in
with them, but she saw, he made out, that he had
built a bridge which would bear the very greatest
weight she should throw on it, and it was for him
often, all charmingly, as if she were admiring from
this side and that the bold span of arch and the high
line of the parapet — as if indeed on occasion she
stood straight there at the spring, just watching him
at his extremity and with nothing, when the hour
should strike, to prevent her crossing with a rush.
He often spent an evening's end, when she had so
appointed — her motives and her method and her
logic being meanwhile something of her own, though
something thus beautifully between them, even if
never named, and which he would n't for the world
have asked her to name — he often passed a stiff
succession of minutes at the somewhat chill fireside
of Madame de Bellegarde; contenting himself there
for the most part with looking across the room,
through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress, who
always made a point, before her family, of talking
to some one else. Her mother, on that scene, would
sit by the fire conversing neatly and coldly with
245
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whomsoever approached her and yet detaching for
his own especial benefit a glance that seemed to say:
"See how completely I'm interested, how agreeably
I'm occupied, how deeply I'm absorbed." He often
wondered what those supposedly honoured by this
intensity of participation thought of her at such mo¬
ments, and he sometimes answered her look by look¬
ing at them; but no one, for all the fine community
of taste, that air in the place as of bitter convictions
dissolved in iced indifference and partaken of for
refreshment with small rare old "family" spoons,
appeared to meet him on any such particular ques¬
tion any more intimately than on any other — and all
by direct default of ability; which would have made
him again ask himself, but for his constant anxious
ache, what he was doing in so deadly a hole at all.
To ache very hard at one point, he found, was prac¬
tically to be unconscious of punctures at any other.
When he at all events made his bow to the old lady
by the fire 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. Talking of her once
to Mrs. Tristram he had remarked,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 that you designate
the Marauise ?"
le's a bad, bold woman. She's a wicked
„.ien has been her sin ?"
He thought a little. " I should n't wonder if she
246
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had done some one to death — all of course from
a high sense of duty."
"How can you be so dreadful?" Mrs. Tristram
had luxuriously sighed.
"I'm not dreadful. I am speaking: of her favour¬
ably."
" Pray what will you say then when you want to be
severe ?"
"I shall keep my severity for some one else — say
for that prize donkey of a 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, but it's something very
nice of its kind — I mean of a kind elegantly sneak¬
ing and fastidiously base; not redeemed as in his
mother's case by a fine little rage of passion at some
part of the business. If he has never committed
murder he has at least turned his back and looked
the other way while some one else was committing it."
In spite of this free fancy, which indeed struck his
friend as, for a specimen of American humour, ex¬
ceptionally sardonic, Newman did his best to main¬
tain 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 was capable of a good
deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the work¬
ing of the relation) to assume them to be of a human
substance and a social elasticity not alien to his own.
He did his best to treat the Marquis as practically
akin to him; he believed honestly, moreover, that he
could n't in reason be such a confounded fool as he
247
THE AMERICAN
seemed. Newman's assumptions, none the less, were
never importunate; his habit of .sinldn^_differences
and supposing equalities was not an aggressive taste
nor an aesthetic theory, but something as natural
and organic as a physical appetite which had never
been put on a scant allowance and had consequently
never turned rabid. His air as of not having to
account for his own place in the social scale' was
probably irritating to Urbain, for whom it could but
represent a failure to conceive of other places either,
and who thus saw himself reflected in the mind of his
potential brother-in-law in a crude and colourless
form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the impressive image
thrown upon his own intellectual mirror. He never
forgot himself an instant, and replied with mechanical
politeness to the large bright vaguenesses that he was
apparently justified in regarding as this visitor's
wanton advances. Newman, who was constantly
forgetting himself and indulging in an unlimited
amount of irresponsible enquiry and conjecture, now
and then found himself confronted by these obscure
abysses of criticism. What in the world M. de Belle-
garde was falling back either from or on he was at
a loss to divine. M. de Bellegarde's general orderly
retreat may meanwhile be supposed to have been,
for himself, a compromise between a great many
emotions. So long as he ambiguously smiled — and
what could make more for order ? — he was polite,
and it was proper he should be polite. A smile more¬
over committed him to nothing more than politeness;
it left the degree of politeness agreeably vague.
Civil ambiguity too — and it was perfectly civil —
248
THE AMERICAN
was neither dissent, which was too serious, nor
agreement, which might have brought on terrible
complications. And then it covered his own personal
dignity, which at such a crisis 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 could but hold
his breath so as not to inhale the strong smell —
since who liked such very strong smells ? — of a
democracy so gregarious as to be unable not to
engender heat and perspiration.
Newman was far from being versed in " European "
issues, as he liked to call them; but he was now on
the very basis of aspiring to light, and it had more
than once occurred to him that he might here both
arrive at it and give this acquaintance the pleasure of
his treating him as an oracle. Interrogated, however,
as to what he thought of public affairs, M. de Belle-
garde answered on each occasion, and quite indeed
as if thanking him for the opportunity, that he thought
as ill of them as possible, that they were going from
bad to worse, though there was always at least the
comfort of their being too dreadful to touch. This
gave our friend, momentarily, almost an indulgence
for a spirit so depressed; he pitied the man who had
to look at him in such a fashion when he ventured
to insist, particularly about their great shining
France, "Why, don't you see anything anywhere?"
— and he was brought by it to an attempt, possibly
indiscreet, to call attention to some of the great
features of the world's progress. This had presently
249
THE AMERICAN
led the Marquis to observe, once for all, that he enter¬
tained but a single political conviction — dearer to
him, however, than all the others, put together, that
other people might entertain: he believed, namely,
in the divine right of Henry of Bourbon, Fifth of his
name, to the throne of France. This had in truth,
upon Newman, as many successive distinct effects as
the speaker could conceivably have desired. It made
him in the first place look at the latter very hard,
harder than he had ever done before; which had the
appearance somehow of affording M. de Bellegarde
another of the occasions he personally appreciated.
It was as if he had never yet shown how he could
return such a look; whereby, producing that weapon
of his armoury, he made the demonstration brilliant.
Then he reduced his guest, further, just to staring
with a conscious, foolish failure of every resource,
at one of the old portraits on the wall, out of which
some dim light for him might in fact have presently
glimmered. Lastly it determined on Newman's part
a wise silence as to matters he did n't understand.
He relapsed, to his own sense, into silence very
much as he would have laid down, on consulting it
by mistake, some flat-looking back-number or some
superseded time-table. It might do for the "collec¬
tion" craze but would n't do for use.
One afternoon, on his presenting himself, he was
requested by the servant to be so good as to wait,
a very few minutes, till Madame la Comtesse should
be at liberty. He moved about the room a little, tak¬
ing up a book here and there as with a vibration of
tact in his long and strong fingers; he hovered, with
250
THE AMERICAN
a bent head, before flowers that he recognised as of
a "lot" he himself must have sent; he raised his
eyes to old framed prints and grouped miniatures
and disposed photographs, ten times as many of
which she should some day possess; 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 more than once in enter¬
ing 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 sufficiently assured him 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. "The
Countess begs you'll kindly wait, sir. She has just
come in; she'll soon have finished dressing."
"Oh, I '11 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 the message advanced into
the room. She looked about her a moment and pre¬
sently went to a table and began to dispose again
several small articles. Newman was struck with the
high respectability of her appearance; he was afraid
to address her as a servant. She busied herself with
ordering various trifles, with patting out cushions
and pulling curtains straight, while our hero rather
attentively hovered. He perceived at last, from her
reflexion in the mirror as he was passing, that her
251
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hands were idle and her eyes fixed on him. She
evidently wished to say something, and, now aware
of it, he helped her to begin.
"I guess you're English, ain't you ?"
"Oh dear, yes," she answered, quickly and softly.
"I was born in Wiltshire, sir."
"And what do you think of Paris ?"
"Oh, I don't think of Paris, sir," she said in the
same tone. " It's so long that I've been here."
"Ah, you have been here very long?"
"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 married. I
was my lady's own woman."
"And you've been with her ever since ?"
" I've been in the house ever since. My lady has
taken a younger person. You see I'm very old. I do
nothing regular now. But I keep about."
"You keep about remarkably well," said New¬
man, observing the erectness of her figure and
a certain venerable pink in her cheek. "I like," he
genially added, "to see you about."
"Very good of you, sir. Thank God I'm not ill.
I hope I know my duty too well to go panting and
coughing over the house. But I'm an old woman,
sir, and it's as an old woman that I venture to speak
to you."
"Oh, speak, if you like, as you never spoke!" said
Newman curiously. "You need n't be afraid of me."
"Yes, sir, I think you're kind. I've seen you
before."
252
THE AMERICAN
"On the stairs, you mean ?"
"Yes, sir. When you've been coming to see the
Countess. I've taken the liberty of noticing that
you come often."
"Oh yes; I come very often," he laughed. "You
need n't have been very much emancipated to notice
that."
"I've noticed it with pleasure, sir," said this in¬
teresting member of the family. And she stood look¬
ing at him with a strange expression of face. The
old instinct of deference and humility was there; the
habit of decent self-effacement and the knowledge of
her appointed orbit. But there mingled with it an
impulse born of the occasion and of a sense, probably,
of this free stranger's unprecedented affability; and,
beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties,
as if my lady's own woman had at last begun to re¬
flect that, since my lady had taken another person,
she had a slight reversionary property in herself.
"You take a great interest in our friends?" he
asked.
She looked at him as if she admired that expression
and had never heard anything quite like it. "A deep
interest, sir. Especially in the Countess."
"I'm glad of that," said Newman. And he smil¬
ingly followed it up. "You can't take more than I
do!"
"So I supposed, sir. We can't help noticing these
things and having our ideas; can we, sir?"
"You mean as an old employee?"
"Ah, there it is, sir. I'm afraid that when I let
my thoughts meddle with such matters I rather step
253
THE AMERICAN
out of my place. But I'm so devoted to the Countess;
if she were my own child I could n't love her more.
That's how I come to be so bold, sir." Her boldness
failed her a moment, but she brought it round with
a turn. "They say in the house, sir, that you want
to marry her."
Newman eyed his interlocutress, and, as if some¬
thing had suddenly begun to depend on it, made up
his mind about her. Something at least passed be¬
tween them with his exchange of distinct truths, and
at the end of a minute he felt almost like a lost child
kindly taken by the hand. He gave the hand a re¬
sponsive grasp. He looked quite up into the deep mild
face. "I want to marry Madame de Cintre more
than I ever wanted anything in my life."
"And to take her away to America ?"
" I '11 take her wherever she wants to go."
"The further 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 about the house or the family, sir.
But I think a great change would do the poor Countess
good. There's no very grand life here."
"Oh, grand life —!" he quite sarcastically sighed.
"But Madame de Cintre," he added, "has great
courage in her heart."
"She has everything in her heart that's good.
You'll not be vexed to hear that she has been more
her natural self these two months past than she had
been for many a day before."
Newman was delighted to gather this testimony
254
THE AMERICAN
to the progress of his suit, but he kept his expres¬
sion within bounds. "Had she been very long as you
did n't want to see her ?"
"Well, sir, she had good reason not to be gay.
The Count was no natural husband for a young
lady like that. And it is n't as if, in this house, there
were other great pleasures — to make up, I mean,
for anything so sad. It's better, in my humble opin¬
ion, that she should leave it altogether. So if you'll
pardon my saying such a thing, I hope very much
she'll see her blessed way—!"
"You can't hope it as much as I do!" Newman
returned.
" But you must n't lose courage, sir, if she does n't
make up her mind at once. That's what I wanted to
beg of you," his friend proceeded. "Don't give it
up, sir. You '11 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 take
advantage of a good, kind, respectable gentleman I
think she had better make up her mind. They speak
very well of you, sir, in the house — I mean in my
part of it; and, if you'll allow me to say so, there's
everything in your appearance— ! You've a very
different one to the late Count; he was n't, really
sir, much more than five feet high. And they say
your fortune's beyond everything. There 's no harm
in that. So I entreat you to be patient, sir, and to
bide your time. If I don't say it to you perhaps no
one will. Of course it's not for me to make any
promises. I can answer for nothing. But I believe in
your chance because I believe in your spirit. I'm
255
THE AMERICAN
nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner,
but one of us poor things here may understand
another, and I don't think I could ever mistake 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. If you'll but hold on fast,
sir — and you look as if you would — I think we
may see it."
Newman had listened to this slow, plain, deliberate
speech, the first evidently of much waiting and wish¬
ing, with as hushed and grateful a pleasure as he
had ever had for some grand passage at the opera.
"Why, my dear madam, I just love you for your en¬
couragement. One can't have too much, and I mean
to hold on fast —you may bet your life on that. And
if Madame de Cintre does see her way you must just
come and live with her."
The old woman looked at him with grave lifeless
eyes. " It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when
one has been forty years in a house, but I promise
you I should like to leave this place."
"Why, it's just the time to promise," said New¬
man with ingenuity. " After forty years one wants
a big change. That's what I'm going in for," he
smiled.
"You're very kind indeed, sir," — and this faith¬
ful servant dropped another curtsey and seemed
disposed to retire. She moved slowly, however, and
gave while she lingered a dim joyless smile. New¬
man was disappointed, and his fingers stole so im¬
patiently to his waistcoat-pocket that his informant
256
THE AMERICAN
noticed the gesture. "Ah, thank God I'm not a
mercenary French person! 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. Yet
let me tell you so after all in my own decent English
way. It is worth something."
"How much, please ?"
"Simply this, sir: your solemn promise not to hint
by a single word to the Countess that I've gone so
far."
"Oh, I promise all right," said Newman. "And
when I promise—!"
"I do believe you keep, sir! That's all, sir. Thank
you, sir. Good-day, sir." And having once more
slid down telescope-wise into her scant petticoats,
his visitor departed. At the same moment Madame
de Cintre came in by an opposite door. She noticed
the movement of the other portiere and asked Newman
who had been entertaining him.
"The British female — in her most venerable
form. An old lady in a black dress and a cap, who
bobs up and down and expresses herself ever so
well."
"An old lady who bobs and expresses herself?
Ah, you mean poor Mrs. Bread. I happen to know
you've made a conquest of her."
"Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called," Newman
declared. "She's very sweet. She's a delicious old
woman."
His friend looked at him a moment. "What can
she have said to you ? She's an excellent creature,
but we think her rather dismal."
2 57
THE AMERICAN
"I suppose," he presently answered, "that I like
her so much because she has lived near you so long.
Since your birth, she told me."
"Yes — such an age as that makes! She's very
faithful," Madame de Cintre went on simply. "I can
absolutely trust her."
Newman, however that might be, had never made
a reflexion to this lady on her mother and her brother
Urbain — he had given no hint of the impression
they made on him. But, as if she could perfectly
guess his feeling and subtly spare his nerves, she had
markedly avoided any 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, it was true, of Valen¬
tin, and she had made no secret of her extreme affec¬
tion for her younger brother. Newman listened
sometimes with a vague, irrepressible pang; if he
could only have caught in his own cup a few drops of
that overflow! She once spoke to him with candid
elation of something Valentin had done which she
thought very much to his honour. It was a service he
had rendered to an old friend of the family — some¬
thing more "serious" and useful than he was usually
supposed capable of achieving. Newman said he
was glad to hear of it, and then began to talk of a
matter more personal to himself. His companion
listened, but after a while she said: "I don't like the
way you speak of poor Valentin." At which, rather
surprised, he protested he had never spoken of him
save in kindness.
"Well, it's just the sort of kindness," she smiled,
258
THE AMERICAN
"the kindness that costs nothing, the kindness you
show to a child. It's as if you rather looked down
on him. It's as if you did n't respect him."
"Respect him ? Why, respect's a big feeling. But
I guess I do."
"You guess ? If you're not sure, it's no respect."
"Do you respect him ?" Newman asked. "If you
do then I do."
"If one loves a person, that's a question one's not
bound to answer," said Madame de Cintre.
"You shouldn't have asked it of me then. I'm
very fond of your brother."
"He amuses you. But you would n't like to re¬
semble him."
"I should n't like to resemble any one. It's hard
enough work resembling one's self."
"What do you mean," she demanded, "by re¬
sembling one's self?" #
"Why, doing what's expected of one. Doing one's
duty."
" But that's hard — or at any rate it's urgent —
only when one's very good."
"Well, a great many people are good enough —
so long as they insist on being so!" he optimistically
laughed. "Valentine, at all events, is good enough
for me."
She was silent a little, and then, with inconse¬
quence, "Ah, I could wish him rather better!" she
declared. "I could wish he would do something."
Her companion considered: after which, candidly:
"What in the world can Valentine 'do' ?"
"Well, he's very clever."
259
THE AMERICAN
"But I guess it's a proof of power," Newman
reasoned, "to be so happy without doing anything."
"Ah, but I don't think Valentin's really so happy.
He's intelligent, generous, brave — but what is there
to show for it ? To me there's something sad in his
life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about
him. I don't know why, but it seems to come to
me that he may have some great trouble — perhaps
a really unhappy end."
"Oh, leave him to me," Newman cheerfully re¬
turned. "I guess I can keep him all right."
One evening, however, in spite of such passages as
these, the conversation in Madame de Bellegarde's
own apartment had flagged most sensibly. The
Marquis walked up and down in silence, like a senti¬
nel at the door of some menaced citadel of the pro¬
prieties; his mother sat staring at the fire; his wife
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
even of the most assiduous. In the long silences the
howling of the wind and the beating of the rain were
distinctly audible. Newman sat perfectly still, watch¬
ing the clock, determined to stay till the stroke of
eleven and not a moment longer. Madame de Cintre
had turned her back to the circle and had been stand¬
ing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a
window, her forehead against the pane and her eyes
reaching out to the deluged darkness. Suddenly she
turned round to her sister-in-law. "For heaven's
sake," she said with peculiar eagerness, "go to the
piano and play something."
260
>
THE AMERICAN
The young Marquise held up her tapestry and
pointed to a little white flower. " Don't ask me to
leave this. I'm in the midst of a masterpiece. My
little flower's going to smell very sweet; I'm putting
in the smell with this gold-coloured silk. I'm holding
my breath; I can't leave off*. Play something your¬
self."
"It's absurd for me to play when you're present,"
Claire returned; yet the next moment she had
plunged, as it were, into the source of music, had
begun to strike the keys with vehemence. She
sounded them for some time, to a great, and almost
startling effect; when she stopped Newman went
over and asked her to begin again. She shook her
head and, on his insisting, said: "I've not been
playing for you, I've been playing for myself." She
went back to the window again and looked out, and
shortly afterwards she left the room.
When he took leave Urbain de Bellegarde accom¬
panied him, as always, 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 Cintre come to him across the vestibule. "Shall
you be at home on Friday ?" he asked.
She looked at him a moment before answering,
and the servant moved away to the great house-door.
"You don't like my mother and my brother. Ah, but
not the least little bit!"
He hesitated a moment and then said ever so mildly:
"Well, since you mention it—!"
She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared
to ascend the stairs, fixing her eyes on the first step.
261
THE AMERICAN
"I shall be at home on Friday," she brought out;
and she passed up while he watched her. But on the
Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to be so
good as to tell her why he had such an aversion to her
family.
"Such an aversion ? Did I call it that ? Don't think
I make too much of it. See how easily I work it."
" I wish you would tell me what you think of them,"
she simply said.
"I don't think of any of them but you."
"That's because you dislike them too much.
Speak the truth; you can't offend me."
"Well, I could live at a pinch without the Marquis,"
Newman confessed. "It comes to me now, if you
mention it. But what's the use of our bringing it up ?
I don't think of him."
"You're too good-natured," Madame de Cintre
gravely said. Then, as if to avoid the appearance of
inviting him to speak ill of her brother, she turned
away, motioning him to sit down.
But he remained there before her. "What's of
much more importance is that they can scarcely
stand me."
"Scarcely," she said with the gentlest, oddest
distinctness.
"And don't you think they're wrong? I don't
strike myself as a man to hate."
" I suppose a man who may inspire strong feelings,"
she thoughtfully opined, " must take his chance of
what they are. But have my brother and my mother
made you hate them ?"
" Oh, I don't sling my passions about — I've put
262
THE AMERICAN
all my capital into one good thing," he smiled. "Yet
I may have spent about ten cents on the luxury of
rage.
"You've never then let me see you doing it."
"Ah, I don't do it here," he still sturdily smiled.
She dropped her eyes, and it somehow held him a
minute in suspense. But "They think they 've treated
you rather handsomely " was, however, all she said
at last.
"Well, I've no doubt they could have been much
worse. They must have let me off" pretty easily,"
he went on; "for see how little I feel damaged. And
I think I show you everything. Honestly."
She faced him again, at this, as if really to take the
measure, more than she had done yet, of what he
showed her. "You're very generous. It's a painful
position."
"For them, you mean. Not for me."
"For me," said Madame de Cintre.
"Not when their sins are forgiven!" Newman
laughed. "They don't think I'm as good as them¬
selves. I do, you see. What should I be — well,
even for you — if I did n't ? But we shan't quarrel
about it."
" I can't even agree with you without saying some¬
thing that has a sound I dislike. The presumption,
if I may put it so, was against you. That you prob¬
ably don't understand."
He sat down before her, all carefully and consider¬
ately, as he might have placed himself at the feet of
a teacher. "I don't think I really understand it. But
when you say it I believe it."
263
THE AMERICAN
She gave, still with her charming eyes on him, the
slowest, gentlest headshake. "That's a poor rea-
son.
" No, it's a very good one. I believe everything you
say, and I know why — if you '11 let me tell you.
You've 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. Yet you do also think
of me, I guess, as a sort of animal that has had no
idea in life but to make money and drive sharp bar¬
gains. Well, that's a fair description," he pursued,
"but it's not the whole. A man ought to care for
something else — I'm alive to that and always
was, even if I don't know exactly for what. I cared
for money-making, but I never cared so very terribly
for the money. There was nothing else to do, and I
take it you don't see me always on the loaf. I've been
very easy to others, and I've tried always to know
where I was myself. I've done most of the things
that people have asked me — I don't mean scound¬
rels. I guess no one has suffered by me very badly.
As regards your mother and your brother," he added,
"there's only one point on 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 against me to you at all badly"
— and he just paused — "why I'd have to come in
somewhere on that."
She reassured him. "They've let me alone, as you
say. They have n't talked against you to me at all
badly."
264
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It gave him, and for the first time, the exquisite
pleasure of her apparently liking to use and adopt
his words. "Well then I'm ready to declare them only
too good for this world!"
This brought something into her face that — as
it seemingly was n't relief — he did n't quite under¬
stand, and she might have spoken in a sense to ex¬
plain it if the door at the moment had not been thrown
open and Urbain de Bellegarde had not stepped
across the threshold. He appeared surprised at find¬
ing Newman; but his surprise was but a momentary
shadow across the surface of an unwonted cheer. His
guest had never seen him so exhilarated; he pro¬
duced the effect of an old faded portrait that had
suddenly undergone restoration. He held open the
door for some one else to enter, and was presently
followed by the old Marquise, supported on the arm
of a gentleman whom Newman saw for the first time.
He was already on his feet, and Madame de Cintre
rose, as she always did before her mother. The Mar¬
quis, who had greeted him almost genially, stood
apart and slowly rubbed his hands ; his mother came
forward with her companion. She gave Newman a
majestic little nod and then released the other visitor,
that he might make his bow to her daughter. " I've
brought you an unknown relative, Lord Deepmere,
Lord Deepmere who's our cousin, but who has done
only to-day what he ought to have done long ago,
come to make our acquaintance."
Madame de Cintre dropped her soft but steady
light on this personage, who had advanced to take
her hand. "It's very extraordinary," he ingenuously
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THE AMERICAN
remarked, "but this is the first time in my life I've
been in Paris for more than three or four weeks."
"And how long have you been here now?" she
enquired with a certain detachment.
" Oh, for the last two months." The young man —
he was still a young man — showed no hesitation.
His artless observations might have constituted an
impertinence; but a glance at his face would have
satisfied you, as it apparently satisfied Madame de
Cintre, that nothing about him could well be explained
save in the light of his simplicity. When their group
was seated Newman, who was out of the conversation,
reflected, observing him, that unless he had the
benefit of that he had n't the benefit of very much.
His other advantages — beyond his three or four
and thirty years — were a scant stature and an odd
figure, a bald head, a short nose, round clear blue
eyes and a frank and natural smile, which made the
loss of a couple of front teeth by some rude misad¬
venture constantly conspicuous. Perceptibly em¬
barrassed, by more than one sign, he laughed as if
he were bold and free, catching his breath with a
loud startling sound. He admitted that Paris was
charming, but pleaded that he was a wild, bog-
trotting Paddy who preferred his Dublin even to his
London and who would never be caught where they
had caught him save for his taste for light music. He
came over for the new Offenbach things, since, though
they always brought them out in Dublin, it was per¬
haps with a whiff" too much of the brogue. He had
been nine times to hear "La Pomme de Paris." Had
Madame de Cintre ever been to Dublin ? They must
266
THE AMERICAN
all come over some day and he'd show them some
grand old Irish sport. His younger kinswoman,
leaning back with her arms folded and her eyes set
in a certain dimness of wonder, might have been
drifting away from him, conveniently and resignedly,
on some deep slow current. Her mother's face, on
the other hand, was lighted as if in honour of the
hour, and Newman felt himself make out in it a
queer prehistoric prettiness. The Marquis noted i
that among light operas his favourite was "La Gazza
Ladra." The Marquise, however, began a series of
enquiries about the duke and the cardinal, the old
duchess and Lady Barbara, after listening to which
and to Lord Deepmere's somewhat irreverent re¬
sponses for a quarter of an hour, our friend rose to
take his leave. The Marquis went with him their
three usual steps into the hall.
"He is a real Paddy!" — and Newman nodded in
the direction of the visitor.
His companion took it coldly. "His mother was
the daughter of Lord Finucane; he has great Irish
estates. Lady Bridget, in the complete absence of
male heirs, either direct or collateral — a most ex¬
traordinary circumstance — came in for no end of
things. Lord Deepmere takes his principal title,
however, from his English property, which is im¬
mense. He's a charming young man."
Newman answered nothing, but he detained the
Marquis as the latter was beginning gracefully to
recede. "It's a good time for me to thank you for
sticking so punctiliously to our bargain — for doing
so much to help me with your sister."
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The Marquis stared. "Really, I've done nothing
that I can boast of."
"Oh, don't be modest," Newman genially urged.
" I can't flatter myself I'm doing so well — so well,
that is, as I hope and pray — simply by my own
merit. Please tell your mother too, won't you ? how
thoroughly I feel it." And, turning away with a
sense of the fair thing done now, after all, all round,
he left M. de Bellegarde looking after him more
ambiguously than he knew.
XIV
The next time Newman came to the Rue de l'Uni-
versite he had the good fortune to find Madame de
Cintre alone. He arrived with a definite intention
and lost no time in applying it, for she wore even
to his impatience an expectant, waiting look. "I've
been coming to see you for six months now and 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've acted with great delicacy," she said.
"Well, I'm going to change now. I don't mean
I'm going to risk offending, but I'm going to go
back to where I began. I am back there. I 've been
all round the circle. Or rather I've never been away
from there. I've never ceased to want what I wanted
then. Only now I'm more sure of it, if possible; I'm
more sure of myself and more sure of you. I know
you better, though I don't know anything I did n't be¬
lieve three months ago. You're everything, you're be¬
yond everything, I can imagine or desire. You know
me now—you must know me. I won't say you've seen
the best, but you've seen the worst. I hope you've
been thinking all this while. You must have seen I
was only waiting; you can't suppose I was changing.
What will you say to me now ? Say that everything
is clear and reasonable and that I've been very patient
and considerate and deserve my reward. And then
269
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give me your hand. Madame de Cintre, do that.
Do it."
"I knew you were only waiting," she answered,
"and I was sure this day would come. I've thought
about it a great deal. At first I was half afraid of it.
But I'm not afraid of it now." She paused a moment
and then added: "It's a relief."
She sat on a low chair and Newman 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've not waited for nothing." She looked at him a
moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. "With
me," he went on, "you'll be as safe — as safe" —
and even in his ardour he hesitated 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 flowed; then
she buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa
beside her chair and broke into noiseless sobs. "I'm
weak — I'm weak," it made him fairly tremble to
hear her say.
"All the more reason why you should give your¬
self up to me," he pleaded. "Why are you troubled ?
There's nothing here that should trouble you. I
offer you nothing but happiness. Is that so hard to
believe ?"
"To you everything seems so simple," she said as
she raised her head. " But things are not so. I like
you — oh, I like you. I liked you six months ago,
and now I'm sure of it, as you say you're sure. But
it's not easy, simply for that, to decide for what you
ask. There are so many things to think about."
270
THE AMERICAN
"There ought to be only one thing — that we love
each other." And as she remained silent he quickly
added: "Very good; if you can't accept that, don't
tell me."
"I should be very glad to think of nothing," she
returned 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 ever marry again," she continued, "and it
seems to me too 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 n't formed."
His smile lighted her own face. "Have you formed
it ?" 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 went*,
on — "I care so very little. I think that if I were to^
marry you I could live almost anywhere. You've
some false ideas about me, you think I need a great
many things — that I must have a brilliant worldly
life. I'm sure you're prepared to take a great deal
of trouble to give me such things. But that's very
arbitrary; I've done nothing to show that." She
paused again, looking at him, and her mingled sound
and silence were so sweet to him that he had no
more wish to hurry her than he would have had to
hurry the slow flushing of the east at dawn. "Your
271
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being so different, which at first seemed a difficulty,
a danger, 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. And I don't mean simply my family."
" They at least would have said I was a queer
monster, eh ?" he asked.
"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, before his golden sunrise, he felt
the impulse to grasp at a rosy cloud. "Your only
reason is that you love me!" he almost groaned for
deep insistence; and he laid his two hands on her
with a persuasion that she rose to meet. He let her
feel as he drew her close, bending his face to her, the
fullest force of his imposition; and she took it from
him with a silent, fragrant, flexible surrender which—
since she seemed to keep back nothing — affected him
as sufficiently prolonged to pledge her to everything.
He came back the next day and in the vestibule,
as he entered the house, encountered his friend Mrs.
Bread. She was wandering about in honourable idle¬
ness and when his eyes fell upon her delivered to him
straight one of her Wiltshire curtsies; then turning
to the servant who had admitted him she said with
a cognate respectability to which evidently a proper
pronunciation of French had never had anything to
add: "You may retire ; I '11 have the honour of con-
272
THE AMERICAN
ducting monsieur." In spite of this clean conscious¬
ness, however, it appeared to Newman that her
voice had a queer quaver, as if the tone of uncontested
authority were riot 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 put forth two arms with an ample rest
between. In a niche of this landing stood an indif¬
ferent statue of an eighteenth-century nymph, sim¬
pering with studied elegance. Here Mrs. Bread stopped
and looked with shy kindness at her companion. " I
know the good news, sir."
"You've a good right to be first to know it; you've
taken such a friendly interest." And then as she
turned away and began to blow the dust off the image
as if this might but be free pleasantry, "I suppose
you want to congratulate me," Newman went on, "and
I'm greatly obliged." To which he added: "You
gave me much pleasure the other day."
She turned round, apparently reassured. "You're
not to think I 've been told anything — I 've only
guessed. But when I looked at you as you came in
I was sure I had guessed right."
"You're really a grand judge," said Newman.
" I'm sure that what you don't see isn't worth seeing."
"I'm not a fool, sir, thank God. I've guessed
something else beside," said Mrs. Bread.
"What's that?"
"I needn't tell you, sir; I don't think you'd
believe it. At any rate it would n't please you."
"Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me,"
he laughed. "That's the way you began."
273
THE AMERICAN
"Well, sir," she went on, "I suppose you won't
be vexed to hear that the sooner everything's over
the better."
" The sooner we 're married, you mean ? The
better for me, certainly."
"The better for every one."
"The better for you perhaps. You know you're
coming to live with us," said Newman.
"I'm extremely obliged to you, sir, but it's not
of my poor self I was thinking. I only wanted, if I
might take the liberty, to recommend you to lose no
time."
"Who are you afraid of?"
Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then
down, and then looked at the undusted nymph as
if she possibly had sentient ears. "I'm afraid of
every one."
"What an uncomfortable state of mind!" said
Newman. "Does 'every one' wish to prevent my
marriage?"
" I'm 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 kept her course up the
staircase again and led him into her mistress's salon.
Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation
when he found this lady not alone. With her sat her
mother, and toward the middle of the room stood
young Madame de Bellegarde in bonnet and mantle.
The old Marquise, who leant back in her chair clasp¬
ing the knob of each arm, looked at him hard and
without moving. She seemed barely conscious of his
greeting; she might have had too much else to think
274
THE AMERICAN
of. Newman said to himself that her daughter had
been announcing their engagement and that she found
the morsel hard to swallow. But Madame de Cintre,
as she gave him her hand, gave him also a look by
which she appeared to mean that he should under¬
stand 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've not told my mother," said Madame de
Cintre abruptly and with her eyes on him.
"Told me what ?" the Marquise demanded. "You
tell me too little. You should tell me everything."
" That's what I do," laughed Madame Urbain with
all her bravery.
"Let me tell your mother," said Newman.
The old woman stared at him again and then
turned to her daughter. "You're going to marry
him ?" she brought out.
"Oui, ma mere," said Madame de Cintre.
"Your daughter has consented, to my very great
happiness," Newman announced.
"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?" the
Marquise further enquired of her daughter. She
spoke without irritation, with cold, noble displeasure.
Madame de Cintre stood silent and with her eyes
on the ground. "It's over at all events now."
2 75
THE AMERICAN
" Where's my son — where's Urbain ?" asked the
Marquise. " Send for your brother and let him know."
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 enquiry.
"Send for your brother," the old lady went on to
Claire.
But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak
— and to speak in a certain way. " Please tell the
Marquis we want him immediately," he said to Mrs.
Bread, who quietly retired.
Young Madame de Bellegarde approached her
sister-in-law and embraced her, and then she turned,
intensely smiling, to Newman. "She's as charming
as you like. I congratulate you."
"I do the same, Mr. Newman," said Madame de
Bellegarde with extreme solemnity. "My daughter's
an extraordinarily good woman. She may have
faults, but I don't know them."
"My mother does n't often make jokes," Madame
de Cintre observed; " but when she does they're
terrible."
"She's a pearl, she's adorable," the Marquise
Urbain resumed, looking at her sister-in-law with her
head on one side. "Yes, I congratulate you."
Madame de Cintre 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
276
THE AMERICAN
hat in hand and irreproachably gloved, and was
followed by his brother Valentin, who appeared to
have just entered the house. The Marquis looked
round the circle and administered to Newman his
due little measure of recognition. Valentin saluted
his mother and sisters and, as he shook hands with
his friend, appeared to put him a sharp mute question.
" Arrivez done, messieurs!" cried the young
Marquise. "We've great news for you."
"Speak to your brother, my daughter," said the
old woman to Claire.
Madame de Cintre had been looking at her tap¬
estry, but on this she raised her eyes. " I've accepted
Mr. Newman, Urbain."
"Yes, sir, your sister has nobly consented," said
Newman. "You see after all I knew what I was
about."
"I beg you to believe I'm charmed!" M. de Belle-
garde replied with superior benignity.
"So am I, my dear man," said Valentin to New¬
man. "The Marquis and I are charmed. I can't
marry myself, but I can understand it in others when
the inducements to it are overwhelming. I can't stand
on my head, but I can applaud a clever acrobat when
he brings down the house. My dear sister, I bless
your union with this delightful gentleman."
The Marquis stood looking for a while into the
crown of his hat. "We've been prepared," he said
at last, "but it's inevitable that in the face of the
event we should eprouver a certain emotion." And
he gave the oddest smile his visitor had ever be¬
held.
2 77
THE AMERICAN
"I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly pre¬
pared for," his mother, upon this, remarked.
"I can't say that for myself," said Newman, who
felt in his face a different light from that of the Mar¬
quis. "I'm distinctly happier than I expected to be.
I suppose it's the sight of all your happiness!"
"Don't exaggerate that," said Madame de Belle-
garde as she got up and laid her hand on her daugh¬
ter's arm. " You can't expect an honest old woman to
thank you for taking away her beautiful only daugh¬
ter."
"You forget me, dear madame," the young Mar¬
quise demurely interposed.
"Yes, she's very, very beautiful," Newman
agreed while he covered Claire with his bright still
protection.
"And when is the wedding, pray?" asked young
Madame de Bellegarde. "I must have a month to
think over the question of my falbalas."
"Ah, the time must be particularly discussed,"
said the Marquise.
" Oh, we '11 discuss it thoroughly, and we'll promptly
let you know!" Newman gaily declared.
"I make very little doubt we shall agree," said
Urbain.
"If you don't agree with Madame de Cintre you'll
be very unreasonable," his visitor went on.
"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 and her eyes on her face. Madame
de Cintre had got up; she seemed inscrutably to
278
THE AMERICAN
wait. Her mother exhaled a long heavy breath. "No,
I can't say I had been sure of you. You're a very
lucky gentleman," she added with a rather grand
turn to their guest.
"Oh, I know that!" he answered. "I feel tre¬
mendously proud. I feel like crying it on the house¬
tops — like stopping people in the street to tell them."
Madame de Bellegarde narrowed her lips. "Pray
do nothing of the sort."
"Oh, the more people who know it the better,"
Newman roundly returned. "I haven't yet an¬
nounced it here, but I cabled it this morning to
America."
"'Cabled' it?" She spoke as if — what indeed
well might be—she had never heard the expression.
"To New York, to Saint Louig and to San Fran¬
cisco; those are the principal cities you know. To¬
morrow I shall tell my friends here."
"Have you so many?" asked Madame de Belle-
garde in a tone of which he perhaps 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 own
friends."
^Our own won't use the telegraph," said the
Marquise as she took 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 very pertinently and said with a more
persuasive accent than the latter had ever heard him
279
THE AMERICAN
use: "I beg you to count on me for everything."
Then his wife led him away.
Valentin, on this, stood looking from his sister to
his friend. "I hope you've both reflected very
seriously."
Madame de Cintre smiled. "We've neither your
powers of reflexion nor your depth of seriousness, but
we've done our best."
"Well, I've a great regard for each of you," the
young man continued. "You're charming, innocent,
beautiful creatures. But I'm 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're the salt of the earth. But I don't
mean to be invidiQus; the marrying people are often
very gentils."
"Valentin holds that women should marry and that
men should n't," said Madame de Cintre. "I don't
know how he arranges it."
"I arrange it by adoring you, my sister," he
ardently answered.
"You had better adore some one you can marry,
by my example," Newman laughed. "I'll arrange
that for you some day. I foresee I'm going to turn
apostle."
Valentin was on the threshold; he looked back a
moment with a face that had grown grave. "I adore
some one I cant marry!" And he dropped the
portiere and departed.
"They don't really like it, you know," Newman
said as he stood there before his mistress.
280
THE AMERICAN
"No," she returned after a moment, "they don't
really like it."
"Well now, do you mind that?" he asked,
"Yes!" she said after another interval.
"But is n't that a mistake ?"
"It may be, but I can't help it. I should prefer
that my mother were pleased."
"Why the dickens then," he yearningly enquired,
" is n't she pleased ? She gave you leave to accept me."
"Very true; I don't understand it. And yet I do
'mind' it, as you say. You'll call that superstitious."
"That will depend on how much you let it worry
you. Then I shall call it an awful bore."
"I'll keep it to myself," said Madame de Cintre.
"It shall not, I promise, worry you." And they then
talked of their marriage-day, and she assented un¬
reservedly to his desire to have it fixed for an early
date.
His messages by cable were answered promptly
and with interest. Having despatched in reality but
three of these, he received, for fruit of his investment,
as he called it, no less than eight electrical outpourings,
all concisely humorous, which he put into his pocket-
book and, the next time he encountered Madame de
Bellegarde, drew forth and displayed to her. This,
it must be confessed, was a slightly malicious stroke;
the reader will judge in what degree the offence was
venial. He knew she would dislike his barbaric
trophies, but he was himself possessed by a certain
hardness of triumph. Madame de Cintre, on the
other hand, quite artlessly, quite touchingly admired
them, and, most of them being of a wit quainter than
281
THE AMERICAN
any she had ever encountered, laughed at them
immoderately and enquired 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 the Bellegardes
of 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 their windows.
No honest man ever enjoys any sign of his not being
acknowledged in his totality, and yet our friend,
with his lucid vision, was not conscious of humilia¬
tion. He had not this good excuse for his somewhat
aggressive impulse to promulgate his felicity; his
sentiment was of another degree. He wanted for
once to make the heads of the house of Bellegarde
simply feel the weight of his hand; for when should
he have another chance ? He had had for the past
six months a sense of the old woman's and her elder
son's 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's like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine's
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
— it's natural enough they should hang fire a little.
They thought they accepted you when you made
your application; but they're not people of imagina-
282
THE AMERICAN
tion, they could n't project themselves into the future,
and now they'll have to begin again. But they are
people of honour and they'll do whatever's neces-
sary.
Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed
meditation. "I'm not hard on them," he presently
said, " and to prove it I '11 invite them all to a festival."
"A festival — ?"
"You've been laughing at my great gilded rooms
all winter; I '11 show you they're good for something.
I'll give a party. What's the grandest thing one can
do here ? I '11 hire all the great singers from the opera
and all the first people from the Theatre Fran^ais,
and I '11 hold an entertainment — the biggest kind
of show."
"And who will you invite ?"
"You two, first of all. And the old woman, damn
her, and her son and her son's wife. And Valentin
of course — for the fun of him. And then every one
of their friends whom I have met at their house or
elsewhere, every one who has shown me the minimum
of politeness, every duke of them, such as they are,
every doddering old duchess, every 'great name' in
the place. And then all my friends, without excep¬
tion — Miss Kitty Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, Gen¬
eral Packard, C. P. Hatch, every pet horror even of
yours. And every one shall know what it's about —
to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de
Cintre, who shall sit, through it all, on a golden chair
above their heads and look as beautiful — and per¬
haps, poor dear, as bored — as a saint in paradise.
What do you think of the idea ?"
283
THE AMERICAN
"I think it odious!" said Mrs. Tristram. And
^then in a moment: "I think it delicious!"
The very next evening Newman repaired to
Madame de Bellegarde's own drawing-room, where
he found her surrounded by her children and invited
her to honour his poor dwelling by her presence on
a certain evening a fortnight distant.
The Marquise stared a moment. " My dear sir,"
she cried, "what on earth 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 him she had turned perceptibly pale.
She opened her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last
century, and looked at the picture, which represented
a fete champetre — a lady singing to a guitar and a
group of dancers round a garlanded Hermes. "We
go out so little," her elder son murmured, "since my
poor father's death."
"But my poor father's still alive, my friend," said
his wife. " I'm only waiting for my invitation to
accept it;" and she glanced with amiable confidence
at Newman. " It will be magnificent, I'm 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 her
284
THE AMERICAN
mother-in-law. Madame de Bellegarde looked up
at last with a prodigious extemporised grace. "I
can't think of letting you offer me a fete until I've
offered you one. We want to present you to our
friends; we'11 invite them all. We have it very much
at heart. We must do things in order. Come to me
about the twenty-fifth; I'll let you know the exact
day immediately. We shall not have any one so fine
as Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very
good people. After that you may talk of your own
party." She 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 replied after a little discussion that
he would be glad to come on the twenty-fifth or any
other day, and that it mattered very little whether he
met his friends at her house or his own. We have
noted him for observant, yet on this occasion lie failed
to catch a thin sharp eyebeam, as cold as a flash of
steel, which passed between Madame de Bellegarde
ancT tTie Marquis and which we may presume to
have^~eena commentary on the innocence displayed
in jjKat_ latter..xlause~o£-his speech.
Count Valentin walked away with him that even¬
ing and, when they had left the scene of so many
anxieties well behind them, said reflectively: "My
mother's very strong — ah, but uncommonly strong."
Then in answer to an interrogative movement of
Newman's: "She was driven to the wall, but you'd
never have thought it. Her party on the twenty-fifth
was an invention of the moment. She had no idea
285
THE AMERICAN
whatever of giving one, but, finding it the only issue
from your proposal, she looked straight at the dose
— pardon the expression — and bolted it, as you
saw, without winking. She's really rather grand,
you know."
"Well, I wonder!" said Newman, divided, this
time, rather whimsically, quite appreciatively, be¬
tween the sense of his own force and the sense of
hers. " I don't care a straw for her fiddles and ices;
I'm willing to take the will for the deed."
"No, no!" — and Valentin showed an inconse¬
quent touch of family pride. "The thing will be
done now, and I dare say it will be quite folichon!"
XV
Valentin's ironic forecast of the secession of Made¬
moiselle Nioche from her father's domicile and his
irreverent reflexion on 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
his friend's expert analysis of the old man's phil¬
osophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indi¬
cate that he had not given himself up to a noble
despair, our hero thought it possible he might be
suffering more keenly than he allowed to become
flagrant. 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 suc¬
cess with which he had patched up his sorrow. New¬
man presently gathered in the bright garden of
Valentin's talk several of the flowers of the young
woman's recent history.
"I told you she was remarkable," this consistent
reasoner declared, "and it's proved by the way she
has managed this most important of all her steps.
She has had other chances, but she was resolved to
take none but the best. She did you the honour to
think for a while that you might be such a chance.
You were not; so she gathered up her patience and
287
THE AMERICAN
waited a little longer. At last her occasion arrived,
and she made her move with her eyes open. I'm
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 requirements have been met.
Well, they've been met in a superior form. The
form's fifty years old, baldheaded and deaf, but he's
very easy about money."
"And where in the world," asked Newman, "did
you pick up this valuable information ?"
"In animated conversation. Remember my frivol¬
ous habits. Conversation — and this time not crim¬
inal ! — with a young woman engaged in the humble
trade of glove-cleaner who keeps a small shop in
the Rue Saint-Roch. M. Nioche lives in the same
house, up six pairs of stairs, across the court in and
out of whose ill-swept doorway Miss Noemie 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 — the foolish friend of a foolish
friend—who has married and given up friendship.
I often saw her in his society. As soon as I made
her out behind her clear little window-pane I recol¬
lected 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'll clean them for you for nothing.'
288
THE AMERICAN
She had instantly recognised me and I had to hear
her history from ever so far back. But after that I
put her on that of her neighbours. She knows and
admires Noemie, and she told me what I've just re¬
peated."
A month elapsed without any reappearance of
M. Nioche, and Newman, who every morning read,
for practice, about the suicides of the day in a news¬
paper, 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
the poor gentleman's address in his pocket-book,
and, finding himself one day in the quartier, de¬
termined, so far as he might, to clear up his doubts.
He repaired to the house in the Rue Saint-Roch which
bore the recorded number, and observed in a neigh¬
bouring basement, behind a dangling row of neatly
inflated gloves, the unmistakeable face of Valentin's
informant — a sallow person in a dressing-gown —
peering into the street as if in expectation that this
amiable nobleman would pass again. But it was not
to her that Newman applied ; he simply enquired 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 resources
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 Cafe de la Patrie, round
the second turning to the left, at which establishment
289
THE AMERICAN
he regularly spent his afternoons. Newman thanked
her for the information, took the second turning to
the left and arrived at the Cafe de la Patrie. He felt
a momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather
mean to press so hard on humiliated dignity ? 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. But 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 and with a lady seated
in front of him. The lady's back was presented, but
her companion promptly perceived and recognised
his visitor. Newman had gone forward, and the
old man rose slowly, gazing at him with a more
blighted expression even than usual.
"If you're drinking hot punch," Newman said,
"I suppose you're not dead. That's all right. You
need n't move to show it."
M. Nioche stood staring with a fallen jaw, not
risking any confidence. The lady who faced him
turned round in her place and glanced up with a
spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable
features of his daughter. She looked at Newman
hard, 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, mon¬
sieur ?" asked M. Nioche very softly.
290
THE AMERICAN
"I went to your house to see what had become of
you. I thought you might be sick," monsieur said
mildly enough.
"It's very good of you, as always," the old man
returned. "No, I'm not well. Yes, I'm seek."
"Ask monsieur to sit down," said Mademoiselle
Nioche. ''Garcon, bring a chair for monsieur."
"Will you do us the honour to seat?" M. Nioche
enquired timorously and with a double foreignness
of accent.
Newman said to himself that he had better see the
thing out, and he took a place at the end of the table
with the brilliant girl on his left and the dingy old
man on the other side. "You'll take something of
course," said Miss Noemie, who was sipping a
brown madere. Newman said he guessed not, and then
she turned to her parent with a smile. "What an
honour, eh ? — he has only come for us." M. Nioche
drained his pungent glass at a long draught and
looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence.
" But you did n't come for me> eh ?" Noemie went on.
"You did n't expect to find me here ?"
He observed the change in her appearance and
that she was very elegant, really prettier than before;
she looked a year or two older, and it was noticeable
that, to the eye, she had only added a sharp accent
to her appearance of "propriety," only taken a
longer step toward distinction. She was dressed in
quiet colours and wore her expensively unobtrusive
gear with a grace that might have come from years of
practice. Her presence of mind, her perfect equi¬
librium, struck Newman as portentous, and he in-
291
THE AMERICAN
clined to agree with Valentin that the young lady
was very remarkable. "No, to tell the truth, I did n't
come for you," he said, "and I did n't expect to find
you. I was told," he added in a moment, "that you
had left your good father."
" Quelle horreur/" she cried with the brightest of
all her smiles. "Does one ever leave one's good
father? You've the happy proof of the contrary."
"Yes, convincing proof," said Newman with his
almost embarrassed eyes on M. Nioche. The old
man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded
deprecation, and then, lifting his empty glass, pre¬
tended to drink again.
"Who told you that ?" Noemie demanded. "But
I know very well. It was M. de Bellegarde. Why
don't you say yes ? You're not polite."
" I'm so shy and simple and stupid," Newman
said with a certain fond good faith.
" I set you a better example. I know M. de Belle-
garde 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 is n't true. In the
first place I have n't left my father, any more than
he has left me. I'm much too fond of him, and
never so fond as now, when he has been gentil, mats
gentil —! Is n't it so, little father ? Have n't you been
gentil, mats gentil? M. de Bellegarde's a charming
young man ; it's impossible to mieux causer. 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 from you."
292
THE AMERICAN
"Just as you please," his young friend placidly
returned. "I don't depend on you, nor does M. de
Bellegarde either. He's very much interested in me,
he can be left to his own devices. He's a contrast to
you, monsieur," Noemie went on with a fine little
flight of dignity.
"Oh, he's a great contrast to me, I've 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 expressively paused. "I won't say that's in
his favour, for I do you justice. What led you, by
the way, to make me such a monstrous offer? You
did n't care for me."
"Oh yes — I did," said Newman.
"Well, how much ?"
"It would have given me real pleasure to see you
married to a respectable young fellow."
"With six thousand francs of income!" Noemie
cried. "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. "I say!" he
exclaimed, "that's rather strong. I had no idea I had
been so shabby."
She laughed out as she took up her muff— it was
almost her only hint of vulgarity. "It's 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
on his hands, the thin white fingers of which were
293
THE AMERICAN
pressed over his ears. In this position he stared
fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass, and New¬
man supposed he was not hearing. Noemie buttoned
her furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting
a glance charged with the consciousness of an ex¬
pensive appearance first down over her flounces
and then up at Newman.
"You had better have remained an honest girl,"
his obstinate sense of his old friend's painful situa¬
tion prompted him at last to remark.
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 a while," she added. "I mean to succeed;
that's what I mean to do. I leave you; I don't mean
to be seen in such places as this, for one thing. I
can't think what you want of my poor father; he's
very comfortable now. It is n'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 again at their visitor. "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 dis¬
mally foolish. "So you determined not to shoot her,
after all," Newman said presently.
M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and
let all their confession quite dismally and abjectly
294
THE AMERICAN
come. They did n't somehow presume to ask for
pity, yet they doubtless pretended even less to a
rugged ability to do without it. They might have
expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect,
flat in shape, 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 profes¬
sion of moral flatness. "You despise me terribly,"
he said in the weakest possible voice.
" Oh no; it's not your own affair. And hanged if
I understand your institutions anyway!"
"I made you too many fine speeches," M. Nioche
added. "I meant them at the time."
" I'm sure I'm very glad you did n't shoot her,"
Newman went on. "I was afraid you might have
shot yourself. That's why I came to look you up."
And he began to button his coat.
"Neither, helas! You despise me and I can't ex¬
plain to you. I hoped I should n't see you again."
"Why, that's pretty mean," said Newman. "You
should n't drop your friends that way. Besides, the
last time you came to see me I thought you felt rather
fine."
"Yes, I remember" — M. Nioche musingly re¬
called it. "I must have been, I was, in a fever. I
did n't know what I said, what I did. I spoke, no
doubt, wild words."
"Ah well, you're quieter now."
M. Nioche bethought himself. "As quiet as the
grave," he then struck off.
"Are you very unhappy?" Newman more in¬
genuously asked.
295
THE AMERICAN
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've always been unhappy. My daughter does what
she will with me. I take what she gives me — I make
a face, but I take it. I've no pluck, and when you've
no pluck you must keep quiet: you can't go about
telling people. 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 he nevertheless appealed feebly from
his patron's faint praise. "After all she's my daugh¬
ter and I can still look after her. If she has her bad
idea, why she has it and she won't let go of it. And
then now," he pointed out — " it's fine talking! But
there are many different paths, there are degrees.
I can place at her disposal the benefit, the benefit"
— and he paused, staring vaguely at his friend, who
began to suspect his mind of really giving way —
"the benefit of my experience."
"Your experience?" Newman inquired, both
amused and amazed.
"My experience of business," said M. Nioche
gravely.
"Ah yes," Newman laughed, "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 sup¬
pose you think my wits are going. Very likely; I've
296
THE AMERICAN
always a payi in my head. That's why I can't ex¬
plain, I can't present the case. 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 his visitor. His little white eyes ex¬
panded and glittered for a moment like those of a cat
in the dark. " It's not as it seems. I have n't for¬
given her. Oh, par exemple, no!"
"That's right, don't let up on it. If you should,
you don't know what she still might do!"
"It's horrible, it's terrible," 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're here in
my waistcoat-pocket. Now I hate her almost cruelly.
No, I have n't forgiven her."
Newman had a return of his candour. "Why then
did you accept the money ?"
"If I hadn't I should have hated her still more.
That, you see, is the nature of misery. No, I have n't
forgiven her."
"Well, take care you don't hurt her!" Newman
laughed again. And with this he took his leave. As
he passed along the glazed side of the cafe, on reach¬
ing the street, he saw the old man motion the waiter,
with a melancholy gesture, to replenish his glass.
A week after his visit to the Cafe de la Patrie he
called one morning on Valentin de Bellegarde and
by good fortune found him at home. He 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
297
THE AMERICAN
together in amity; the old gentleman's rigour was
purely theoretic. Newman confessed he was dis¬
appointed ; he should have expected to see his ven¬
erable friend take high ground.
"High ground, my dear fellow!" Valentin re¬
turned; "there's no high ground for him to take.
The only perceptible eminence in M. Nioche's hori¬
zon is Montmartre, which is n't an edifying quarter.
You can't go mountaineering in a flat country."
"He remarked indeed," said Newman, "that he
had not forgiven her. But she'll never find it out."
"We must do him the justice to suppose he in¬
tensely disapproves. His gifted child," Valentin
added, "is like one of the great artists whose bio¬
graphies we read, those who at the beginning of their
career suffered opposition in the domestic circle.
Their vocation was not recognised by their families,
but the world has done it justice. Noemie has a vo¬
cation."
"Damn her vocation! Oh," added Newman im¬
patiently, "you're a cold-blooded crew!"
Valentin sounded him a moment with curious
eyes. "You must be very fond of boiled beef and
cabbage to have such a suspicion of ripe peaches
and plums."
But Newman sturdily met his look. "I should n't
think I'd have to tell you what fruit I gather!"
The young man, at this, closed his eyes an instant
and then, with a motion of his hand, shook his head.
After which he gravely said: " I back you more than
ever!"
"Let me then," his companion returned, "do
298
THE AMERICAN
what I suppose you'd call the fair thing by you.
Miss Noemie desired me to tell you — but hanged
if I know what!"
"Bless your quiet imagination," said Valentin,
"do you suppose I've been waiting for you? I've
been to see her for myself— no less than three times
these live days. She's a charming hostess; we attack
the noblest subjects of discussion. She's really very
clever and a rare and remarkable type; not at all
low nor wanting to be low — determined not to be.
She means to take very good care of herself. She's
as perfect as you please, and as hard and clear-cut
as some little figure of a sea-nymph on an antique
intaglio; and I warrant she has n't a grain more
true sensibility than if she were scooped out of a big
amethyst. You can't scratch her even with a dia¬
mond. Extremely pretty — really, when you know
her, she's wonderfully pretty — intelligent, deter¬
mined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of seeing
a man strangled without changing colour, she's, upon
my honour, remarkably agreeable."
"Well," said Newman after reflexion, "I once
saw in a needle-factory a gentleman from the city,
who had stopped too near a machine that struck
him as curious, picked up as clean as if he had been
removed by a silver fork from a china plate, and
swallowed down and ground to small pieces!"
Re-entering his rooms late in the evening, three
days after Madame de Bellegarde had struck her
bargain with him, as he might feel, over the enter¬
tainment at which she was to present him to the
world, he found on his table a goodly card of an-
299
THE AMERICAN
nouncement to the effect that she would be at home
on the twenty-seventh of the month and at ten o'clock
in the evening. He stuck it into the frame of his
mirror and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed
to him a document of importance and an emblem of
triumph. Stretched out in a chair he looked at it lov¬
ingly, and while he so revelled Valentin was shown
into the place. The young man's glance presently
followed the direction of Newman's and he perceived
his mother's invitation.
"And what have they put into the corner? Not
the customary 'music,' 'dancing,' or 'tableaux
vivants' f They ought at least to put ' An American
of Americans.'"
"Oh, there are to be several of us," Newman said.
"Mrs. Tristram told me to-day she had received a
card and sent an acceptance."
"Ah then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband
you'll have support. My mother might have put on
her card 'Three Americans in a Row' —which you
can pronounce in either way you like, though I know
the way I should suppose most American. I dare
say at least you'll not lack amusement. You'll see
a great many of the best people in France — I mean
of the long pedigrees, and the beaux noms, and the
great fidelities, and the rare stupidities, and the faces
and figures that, after all, sometimes, I suppose
God did make. We've already shown you speci¬
mens in numbers — you know by which end to take
them."
" Oh, they have n't hurt me yet," said Newman,
"and I guess they would, by this time, if they were
3 00
THE AMERICAN
going to. I seem to want to like people, these days
— seem regularly to like liking them, and almost
any one will do. I feel so good that if I was n't sure
I'm going to be married I might think I'm going to
die."
"Do you make," the young man enquired, "so
much of a distinction ?" But he dropped rather
wearily into a chair and went on before his host
could answer. "Happy man, only remember that
there are poor devils whom the flaunted happiness
of others sometimes irritates."
"Do you call a person a poor devil," demanded
'Newman, "who's as good as my brother-in-law?"
"Your brother-in-law ?" his friend a trifle musingly
echoed.
"Say then my brother," Newman kindly returned
— "and leave the other description for yours."
It made Valentin after an instant rise to him.
"You're really very charming. You have your own
way for it — which must have been your way of
making love. Well," he sighed with a dimmer smile
than usual, "I don't wonder and I don't question!
Only you are, I understand" — he immediately
took himself up — "' really and truly' in love ?"
"Yes, sir!" said Newman after a pause.
"And do you hold that she is ?"
"You had better ask her," Newman answered.
"Not for me, but for yourself."
"I never ask anything for myself. Haven't you
noticed that ? Besides, she would n't tell me, and
it's after all none of my business."
Newman hesitated, but "She doesn't know!" he
301
THE AMERICAN
the next thing brought out. "However, she will
know."
"Ah then, you will—which I see you don't yet.
But what you '11 know will-be what you want, for
that's the way things turn out for you." And Valen¬
tin's grave fine eyes, as if under some impression
oddly quickened, measured him again a moment up
and down. "The way you cover the ground! How¬
ever, being as you are a giant, you move naturally in
seven-league boots." With which again he turned
restlessly off.
Newman's attention, from before the lire, followed
him a little. "There's something the matter with
you to-night: you're kind of perverse—you're
almost kind of vicious. But wait till I 'm through
with my business — to which I wish to give just now
my undivided attention — and then we '11 talk. By
which I mean I '11 fix you somehow."
"Ah, there will be plenty of me for you, such as
I am — for you always. Only when, then," Valentin
asked, " is the event ?"
"About five weeks hence — on a day not quite yet
settled."
He accepted this answer with interest, in spite of
which, however, "You feel very confident of the
future?" he next attentively demanded.
"Confident," said Newman with the large accent
from which semitones were more than ever absent.
"I knew what I wanted exactly, and now I know
what I've got."
"You're sure then you're going to be happy?"
" Sure ?" — Newman competently weighed it. " So
302
THE AMERICAN
foolish a question deserves a foolish answer. Yes
— I'll be hanged if I ain't sure!"
Well, if Valentin was to pass for perverse it would
not be, he seemed to wish to show, for nothing.
"You're 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 regard as a tremendous sell. I want
to live and I mean to live: I mean to have a good
time. I can't die of sickness, because I'm naturally
healthy, 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 can't lose my money,
or much of it — I've fixed it so on purpose. So what
have I to be afraid of?"
"You're not afraid it may be rather a mistake
for such an infuriated modern to marry — well, such
an old-fashioned rococo product; a daughter, as one
may say, of the Crusaders, almost of the Patriarchs ?"
Newman, who had been moving about as they
talked, stopped before his visitor. "Does that mean
you're worried for her ?"
Valentin met his eyes. "I'm worried for every¬
thing."
"Ah, if that's all — !" And then: "Trust me —
because I'm modern and can compare all round —
to know where I stand!" With which, as from the
impulse to celebrate his happy certitude by a bonfire,
he turned to throw a couple of logs on the already
blazing hearth. Valentin watched a few moments
the quickened flame; after which, with his elbow
supported on the chimney and his head on his hand,
THE AMERICAN
he gave an expressive sigh. "Got a headache?"
Newman asked.
"Je suis triste" he answered with Gallic sim¬
plicity.
Newman stared at the remark as if it had been
scrawled on a slate by a school-boy — a weakling
whom he would n't wish, however, too harshly to
snub. "You've got a sentimental stomach-ache, eh ?
Have you caught it from the lady you told me the
other night you adored and could n't marry ?"
"Did I really speak of her?" Valentin asked as
if a little struck. "I was afraid afterwards I had
made some low allusion — for I don't as a general
thing (and it's a rare scruple I have!) drag in ces
dames before Claire. But I was feeling the bitter¬
ness of life, as who should say, when I spoke; and
— yes, if you want to know — I've my mouth full
of it still. Why did you ever introduce me to that
gW?"
"Oh, it's Noemie, is it? Lord deliver us! You
don't mean to say you're 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's al-
. ways running in my head. It's a striking and a vile
\ contrast to your noble and virtuous attachment. It's
j rather pitiful that it should be the best I'm able to
J do for myself at my present respectable age. I'm
304
THE AMERICAN
a nice young man, eh, en somme? You can't warrant
my future as you do your own."
"Drop the creature right here," said Newman;
"don't go near her again, and your future will be all
right. Come over to America and I '11 get you a place
in a bank."
"It's easy to say drop her"— Valentin spoke
with a certain gravity in his lucidity. "You might as
well drop a pretty panther who has every one of her
claws in your flesh and who's in the act of biting
your heart out. One has to keep up the acquaintance,
if only to show one is n't afraid."
"You've better things to keep up, it seems to me,
than such acquaintances. Remember too," Newman
went on, "that I did n't want to introduce you to
her; you insisted. I had a sort of creepy feeling about
it even at the time."
"Oh, I no more reproach you with misleading
my innocence than I reproach myself with prac¬
tising on hers. She's really extraordinary. The way
she has already spread her wings is amazing. I
don't know when a woman has amused me more.
But pardon me," he added in an instant; "she
does n't amuse you, at second-hand; your interest
appears to flag just where that of many men would
wake up. Let us talk of something else." Valentin
introduced another topic, but he had within five
minutes reverted by a bold transition to Mademoiselle
Nioche and was throwing off pictures of her "home"
and quoting specimens of her mots. These latter
were very droll and, for a young woman who six
months before had been dabbling in sacred subjects,
3°5
THE AMERICAN
remarkably profane. 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 on his rare young
friend. "Yes," he wound up, "she's a beautiful
little monster!"
XVI
The next ten days were to be the happiest Newman
had ever known. He saw Madame de Cintre every
day, and never saw either her mother or the elder
of his prospective brothers-in-law. The woman of
his choice at last seemed to think it becoming to
apologise for their never being present. "They're
much taken up," she said, "with doing the honours
of Paris to Lord Deepmere." Her gravity as she
made this declaration was almost prodigious, and it
even deepened as she added: "He's our seventh
cousin, you know, and blood's thicker than water.
And then he's so interesting!" And with this she
strangely smiled.
He met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three
times, always roaming about with graceful vagueness
and as if in search_x£_aiL unattainable idealof. di¬
version. She reminded him of some elegant painted
phial, cracked and fragrantly exhaling; but he felt
he owed indulgence to a lady who on her side owed
submission to Urbain de Bellegarde. He pitied that
nobleman's wife the more, also, that she was a silly,
thirstily-smiling little brunette with a suggestion of
the unregulated heart. The small Marquise some¬
times looked at him with an intensity too marked
not to be innocent, since vicious advances, he con¬
ceived, were usually much less direct. She apparently
wanted to ask him something; he wondered what
3°7
THE AMERICAN
it might be. But he was shy of giving her an oppor¬
tunity, 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 round behind her) with a little passionate
hiss: "I know you detest my husband; let me have
the pleasure of promising you that you're right.
Pity a poor woman who's married to a clock-image
in papier-mache !" Possessing, at any rate, in de¬
fault 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
proper position to keep on his guard; he was not
going to put it into the power of these people to say
he had done in their house anything not absolutely
straight. 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 elbow,"
she would say. "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 sort of cuisse de nymphe
pink. And then I pass through strange desolate
phases in which neither blue nor pink says anything
to me. And yet I must have the bows."
"Have them green or yellow," Newman some¬
times suggested.
" Malheureux /" the little Marquise would then
piercingly cry. " I hope you 're not going to pretend
308
THE AMERICAN
to dress your wife. Claire 's an angel, yes, but her
bows, already, are — well, quite of another world!"
Madame de Cintre was calmly content before
society, but her lover had the felicity of feeling that
before him, when society was absent, her sense of
security overflowed. She said charming and 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 wrong or queer or dreadful, and yet you
won't even look as if you were trying to do right..
You're easier than we are, you're easier than I am,*
and I quite see that you've reasons, of some sort,
that are as good as ours. It's dull for me therefore,"
she smiled, "and it's rather disappointing, not to
have anything to show you or to tell you or to teach
you, anything that you don't seem already quite
capable of knowing and doing and feeling. What's
left of all the good one was going to do you ? It 's;
very stupid, there's no excitement for me; I might
as well be marrying some one — well, some one not
impossible."
"I'm afraid I'm as impossible as I know how to
be, and that it's all the worst I can do in the time,"
Newman would say in answer to this. " Kindly make
the best of any inconvenience." He assured her that
he would never visit on her any sense of her own
deficiencies; he would treat her at least as if she were
perfectly satisfactory. "Oh," he then broke out, "if
you only knew how exactly you're what I coveted!
I'm beginning to understand why I wanted it; the
having it makes all the difference that I expected.
3°9
THE AMERICAN
Never was a man so pleased with his good fortune.
You've 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've just
the taste in dress I want her to have. In short you
come up to the mark, and, I can tell you, my mark
was high."
These assurances tended to make his friend more
grave. At last she said: "Depend on it I don't
come up to the mark at all; your mark's much too
high. I'm not all you suppose; I'm a much smaller
affair. She's a magnificent person, the person you
imagine. Pray how did she come to such perfection ?"
"She was never anything but perfection," New¬
man replied.
"I really believe," his companion went on, "that
she's better than any fond flight of my own ambition.
Do you know that's a very handsome compliment?
Well, sir, I'll make her my ambition!"
Mrs. Tristram came to see her dear Claire after
Newman had announced his engagement, and she
observed to our hero the next day that his fortune
was simply absurd. "For the ridiculous part of it is
that you 're evidently going to be as happy as if you
were marrying Miss Smith or Miss Brown. I call
it a brilliant match for you, but you get brilliancy
without paying any tax on it. Those things are usually
a compromise, but here you've everything, and
nothing crowds anything else out. You'll be bril¬
liantly happy — with the rest of the brilliancy. I
consider really that I've done it for you, but it's
3IQ
THE AMERICAN
almost more than I can myself bear." Newman
thanked her for her pleasant encouraging way of
saying things; no woman could encourage or dis¬
courage better. Tristram's way was different; he had
been taken by his wife to call on Madame de Cintre
and he gave an account of the expedition.
"You don't catch me risking a personal estimate
this time, I guess, do you ? I put my foot in it for you
once. That's a jolly underhand thing to do, by the
way — coming round to sound a fellow on the wo¬
man you're 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 spiteful
wretch the first time he calls. I'll do you the justice
to say, however, that you don't seem to have told
your present friend — or if you did she let me down
easy. She was very nice; she was tremendously
polite. She and Lizzie sat on the sofa pressing each
other's hands and calling each other chere belle, and
Madame de Cintre sent me every third word a mag¬
nificent smile, as if to give me to understand that
I too was a beauty and a darling. She 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 any good friends of
yours. I did n'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 looked
me into obedience. So they marched off arm-in-arm
and I followed as I could. We found the old lady
311
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in her armchair twiddling her aristocratic thumbs.
She eyed Lizzie hard, 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. New¬
man. The Marquise stared a moment and then said:
'Oh, Mr. Newman ? My daughter has made up her
mind to marry a Mr. Newman.' Then Madame de
Cintre began to fondle Lizzie again and said it was
this dear lady who had had the idea and brought
them together. ' Oh, it's you I have to thank for my
American son-in-law ?' Madame de Bellegarde said
to Mrs. Tristram. 'It was a very clever thought of
yours. Be sure of my high appreciation.' With
which she began to look at me too, and presently
said: 'Pray, are you engaged in some species of
manufacture ?' I wanted to say that I manufactured
broomsticks for old witches to ride on, but Lizzie
got in ahead of me. 'My husband, madame la Mar¬
quise, belongs to that unfortunate class of persons who
have no profession and no occupation, and who
thereby do very little good in the world.' To get her
poke at the old woman she did n't care where she
shoved me. 'Dear me,' said the Marquise, 'we all
have our duties.' 'I'm 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 time-honoured term."
" Oh," Newman made answer, " my mother-in-law
desires nothing better than to let me alone!"
Betimes, on the evening of the twenty-seventh, he
went to Madame de Bellegarde's ball. The old house
in the Rue de l'Universite shone strangely in his eyes.
312
THE AMERICAN
In the circle of light projected from the outer gate
a detachment of the populace stood watching the car¬
riages roll in; the court was illumined with flaring
torches and the portico draped and carpeted. When
Newman arrived there were but few persons present.
The Marquise and her two daughters were on the top
landing of the staircase, where the ancient marble
nymph peeped out from a bower of plants. Madame
de Bellegarde, in purple and pearls and fine laces,
resembled some historic figure painted by Vandyke;
she made her daughter, in comparative vaguenesses
of white, splendid and pale, seem, for his joy of
possession, infinitely modern and near. His hostess
greeted him with a fine hard urbanity and, looking
round, called to several of the persons standing at
hand. They were elderly gentlemen with faces as
marked and featured and filled-in, for some science
of social topography, as, to Newman's whimsical
sense, any of the little towered and battered old
towns, on high eminences, that his tour of several
countries during the previous summer had shown
him; they were adorned with strange insignia, cor¬
dons and ribbons and orders, as if the old cities were
flying flags and streamers and hanging out shields
for a celebration, and they approached with meas¬
ured alertness while the Marquise presented them
the good friend of the family who was to marry her
daughter. The good friend heard a confused enum¬
eration of titles and names that matched, to his
fancy, the rest of the paraphernalia; the gentlemen
bowed and smiled and murmured without reserve,
and he indulged in a series of impartial hand-shakes,
313
THE AMERICAN
accompanied in each case by a "Very happy to meet
you, sir." He looked at Madame de Cintre, but her
attention was absent. If his personal self-conscious¬
ness had been of a nature to make him constantly
refer to her as to 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 on him. It is a reflexion he did n't make, but
we may nevertheless risk it, that in spite of this cir¬
cumstance she probably saw every movement of his
little finger. The Marquise Urbain was wondrously
dressed in crimson crape bestrewn with huge silver
moons — full discs and fine crescents, half the fea¬
tures of the firmament.
"You don't say anything about my toilette," she
impatiently observed to him.
"Well, I feel as if I were looking at you through
a telescope. You put me in mind of some lurid comet,
something grand and wild."
"Ah, if I'm grand and wild I match the occasion!
But I'm not a heavenly body."
"I never saw the sky at midnight that particular
shade of crimson," Newman said.
"That's just my originality: any fool could have
chosen blue. My sister-in-law would have chosen a
lovely shade of that colour, with a dozen little delicate
moons. But I think crimson much more amusing.
And I give my idea, which is moonshine."
"Moonshine and bloodshed," said Newman.
"A murder by moonlight," the young woman
laughed. "What a delicious idea for a toilet! To
make it complete there 's a dagger of diamonds, you
3*4
THE AMERICAN
see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deep-
mere," she added in a moment; "I must find out
what he thinks of it." Lord Deepmere came up very
red in the face and very light, apparently, at heart;
at once very much amused and very little committed.
"My Lord De£pme£e can't decide which he prefers,
my sister-in-law or me," Madame Urbain went on.
"He likes Claire because she's his cousin, and me
because I'm not. But he has no right to make love
to Claire, whereas I'm perfectly dtsponible. It's very
wrong to make love to a woman who's engaged, but
it's very wrong not to make love to a woman who's
married."
"Oh, it's very jolly making love to married wo¬
men," the young man said, "because they can't ask
you to marry them."
"Is that what the others do — the spinsters?"
Newman enquired.
"Oh dear, yes — in England all the girls ask a
fellow to marry them."
"And a fellow brutally refuses," Madame Urbain
commented.
"Why, really, you know, a fellow can't marry any
girl that asks him," said his lordship.
"Your cousin won't ask you. She's going to
marry Mr. Newman."
"Oh, that's a very different thing!" Lord Deep-
mere readily agreed.
"You'd 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 man. "I take them all."
3*5
THE AMERICAN
"Ah, what a horror! I won't be taken in that way,
especially as a'thing,'" cried his interlocutress. "Mr.
Newman's much better; he knows how to choose.
Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle. He
prefers the Comtesse to any rival attraction, however
brilliant."
"Well, you can't help my being her cousin," said
Lord Deepmere to Newman with candid hilarity.
" Oh no, I can't help that," Newman laughed 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," Newman returned. " But unfortunately I
don't know how to dance."
"Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may
you not, milord?" Madame Urbain asked. But to
this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought to
know how to dance if he did n't want to make an ass
of himself; and at this same moment the Marquis
joined the group, slow-stepping and with his hands
behind him.
"This is a very splendid entertainment," Newman
cheerfully observed. "The old house looks very
pleasant and bright."
"If you're pleased we're content." And the Mar¬
quis lifted his shoulders and bent them forward.
"Oh, I suspect every one's pleased," said New¬
man. "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 of light and
of charity ?"
3l6
THE AMERICAN
"Yes, she's very beautiful," the Marquis a little
distantly admitted. "But that's not so great a source
of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as to you."
"Well, I am satisfied and suited, Marquis —
there's no doubt but what I am" said Newman with
his protracted enunciation. "And now tell me,"
he added, taking in more of the scene, "who some
of these pleasant folks 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 place,
all light and colour and fine resonance, looked rich
and congressional. It borrowed its splendour largely
from the shining shoulders and profuse jewels of the
women, and from the rest of their festal array. There
were uniforms, but not many, as Madame de Belle-
garde's door was inexorably closed against the mere
myrmidons of the upstart power which then flour¬
ished on the soil of France, and the great company
of smiling and chattering faces was not, as to line
and feature, a collection of gold or silver medals. It
was a pity for our friend, nevertheless, that he had
not been a physiognomist, for these mobile masks,
much more a matter of wax than of bronze, were
the picture of a world and the vivid translation, as
might have seemed to him, of a text that had had
otherwise its obscurities. If the occasion had been
different they would hardly have pleased him; he
would have found in the women too little beauty and
in the men too many smirks; but he was now in a
3*7
THE AMERICAN
humour to receive none but fair impressions, and it
sufficed him to note that every one was charged with
some vivacity or some solemnity and to feel that the
whole great sum of character and confidence was
part of his credit. " I '11 present you to some people,"
said M. de Bellegarde after a while. "I'll make a
point of it in fact. You'll allow me? — if I may
exercise my judgement."
"Oh, I'll shake hands with any one you want,"
Newman returned. "Your mother just introduced
me to half a dozen old gentlemen. Take care you
don't pick out the same parties again."
"Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother
presented you ?"
"Upon my word I forget them," Newman had to
confess. "I'm afraid I've got them rather mixed;
and don't all Chinamen — even great mandarins!
— look very much the same to Occidentals ?"
"I suspect they've 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 on in silence. At last, reaching the
further end of the apartments, Newman found him¬
self in the presence of a lady of monstrous pro¬
portions seated in a very capacious armchair and
with several persons standing in a semicircle round
her. This little group had divided as the Marquis
came up, and he stepped forward and stood for an
instant silent and obsequious, his flattened hat raised
to his lips as Newman had seen gentlemen stand in
churches as soon as they entered their pews. The lady
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THE AMERICAN
indeed bore a very fair likeness to a revered 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 pair of eyes that
twinkled in her face like a pair of polished pin-heads
in a cushion, a vast expanse of uncovered bosom, a
nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes and gems,
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 gaze at the newcomers.
"Dear Duchess," said the Marquis, "let me pre¬
sent you our good friend Mr. Newman, of wl^gm
you've heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr. New¬
man known to those who are dear to us, I could n't
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 per¬
formed with all his length his liberal obeisance. He
always made his bow, as he wrote his name, very
distinctly. "I came on purpose to see monsieur. I
hope he appreciates the compliment. You've only
to look at me to do so, sir," she continued, sweeping
her person with a much-encompassing glance. New¬
man hardly knew what to say, though it seemed
that to a duchess who joked about her corpulence
one might say almost anything. On hearing she
had come on purpose to see this object of interest the
gentlemen who surrounded her turned a little and
looked at him with grave, with almost overdone
3J9
THE AMERICAN
consideration. The Marquis, with supernatural
gravity, mentioned to him the name of each, while
the gentleman who bore it bowed; and these pro¬
nouncements again affected Newman as some enum¬
eration of the titles of books, of the performers on
playbills, of the items of indexes. "I wanted ex¬
tremely to see you," the Duchess went on. "C'est
positif. In the first place I'm very fond of the person
you're going to marry; she's the most charming
creature in France. Mind you treat her well or you'll
have news of me. But vous avez Fair bien honnete,
and I'm told you're very remarkable. I've heard
all sorts of extraordinary things about you. Voyons,
ar^. they true ?"
"I don't know what you can have heard," New¬
man promptly pleaded.
"Oh, you've had your legende. You've had a
career the most chequered, the most bizarre. What's
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 ? Is n't it half a
million, messieurs? You're exclusive proprietor of
the wonderful place and are consequently fabu¬
lously rich, and you'd be richer still if you did n't
grant lands and houses free of rent to all newcomers
who '11 pledge themselves never to smoke cigars. At
this game, in three years, we're told, you're going
to become President of all the Americas."
The Duchess recited this quaint fable with a
smooth self-possession which gave it to Newman's
ear the sound of an amusing passage in a play inter¬
preted by a veteran comic actress. Before she had
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THE AMERICAN
ceased speaking he had relieved himself, applausively,
by laughter as frank as clapping or stamping. " 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 great lady,
was certain of being listened to, and, as a garrulous
woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors.
"But I know you're very remarkable. You must
be, to have endeared yourself to our good Urbain and
to his admirable mother. They don't scatter their
approval about. They're very exacting. I myself
am not very sure at this hour of really enjoying their
esteem — eh, Marquis ? But your real triumph,
cher monsieur, is in pleasing the Comtesse; she's
as difficult as a princess in a fairy-tale. Your suc¬
cess is a miracle. What's your secret ? I don't ask
you to reveal it before all these gentlemen, but you
must come and see me some day and show me how
you proceed."
"The secret is with Madame de Cintre," New¬
man found a face to answer. "You must ask her for
it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity."
"Very pretty!" the Duchess pronounced. "That,
to begin with, is a nice specimen of your system.,,
What, Marquis, are you already taking monsieur
away ?"
"I've a duty to perform, dear friend," said Urbain,
pointing to the other groups.
"Ah, for you I know what that means! Well,
I've seen monsieur; that's what I wanted. He can't
321
THE AMERICAN
persuade me he has n't something wonder-working.
Ail revoir, monsieur."
As Newman passed on with his host he asked who
the Duchess might be. " The greatest lady in Franee!"
the Marquis hereupon reservedly replied. He then
presented his prospective brother-in-law to some
twenty other persons of both sexes, selected appar¬
ently for some recognised value of name or fame or
attitude. In some cases their honours were written in
a good round hand on the countenance of the wearer;
in others Newman was thankful for such help as his
companion's impressively brief intimation, measured
as to his scant capacity, contributed to the discovery
of them. There were large, heavy imperturbable
gentlemen and small insinuating extravagant ones;
there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint
jewels, and pretty ladies with reaches of white de¬
nudation that even their wealth of precious stones
scarce availed to overtake. Every one gave Newman
extreme attention, every one lighted up for him re¬
gardless, as he would have said, of expense, every one
was enchanted to make his acquaintance, every
one looked at him with that fraudulent intensity of
good society which puts out its bountiful hand but
keeps the 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 show thus its
companion-piece, the general impression appeared
that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity.
Newman found his reception in the charmed circle
very handsome — he liked, handsomely, himself, not
to say less than that for it. It was handsome to be
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treated with so much explicit politeness; it was
handsome to meet civilities as pointed as witticisms,
and to hear them so syllabled and articulated that-
they suggested handfuls of crisp counted notes I
pushed over by a banker's clerk; it was handsome of I
clever Frenchwomen—-they all seemed clever —to
turn their backs to their partners for a good look
at the slightly gaunt outsider whom Claire de Cintre
was to marry, and then shine on the subject as if they
quite understood. At last as he turned away from
a battery of vivid grimaces and other amenities,
Newman caught the eye of the Marquis fixed on
him inscrutably, and thereupon, for a single instant,
he checked himself. "Am I behaving like a blamed
fool?" he wondered. "Am I stepping about like a
terrier on his hind legs ?" At this moment he per¬
ceived Mrs. Tristram at the other side of the room
and waved his hand in farewell to M. de Bellegarde
in order to make his way toward her.
"Am I holding my head too high and opening
my mouth too wide ?" he demanded. "Do I look as
if they were saying 'Catch' and I were snapping
down what they throw me and licking my lips ?"
"You look like all very successful men—fatuous
without knowing it. Women triumph with more
tact, just as they suffer with more grace. Therefore
it's the usual thing for such situations—neither
better nor worse. I've been watching you for the
last ten minutes, and I've been watching M. de
Bellegarde. He does n't like what he has to do."
"The more credit to him for putting it through,"
Newman returned. "But I shall be generous. I
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shan't trouble him any more. Only I 'm very happy.
I can't stand still here. Please take my arm and
we'll go for a walk."
He led Mrs. Tristram from one room to another,
where, scattering wide glances and soft, sharp com¬
ments, she reminded him of the pausing wayfarer
who studies the contents of the confectioner's win¬
dow, with platonic discriminations, through a firm
plate of glass. But he made vague answers; he
scarcely heard her; his thoughts were elsewhere.
They were lost in the vastness of this attested truth
of his having' come out where He wanted. His mo¬
mentary consciousness of perhaps too broad a grin
passed away, and he felt, the next thing, almost
solemnly quiet. Yes, he had "got there," and now
it was, all-powerfully, to stay. These prodigies of
gain were in a general way familiar to him, but the
sense of what he had "made" by an anxious opera¬
tion had never been so deep and sweet. The lights,
the flowers, the music, the "associations," vague
and confused to him, yet hovering like some odour
of dried spices, something far-away and, as he had
hinted to the Marquis, Mongolian; the splendid
women, the splendid jewels, the strangeness even of
the universal sense of a tongue that seemed the
language of society as Italian was the language of
opera: these things were all a gage of his having
worked, from the old first years, under some better
star than he knew. Yet if he showed-again and again
so many of his fine-strong teeth, it was not tickled
vanity that pulled the exhibition-string: he had no
wish to be pointed at with the finger or to be con-
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sidered by these people for himself. If he could have
looked down at the scene invisibly, as from a hole in
the roof, he would have enjoyed it quite as much.
It would have spoken to him ~~of ~h is orierp-y and
prosperity and—deepened that xiew of his effective
" handling" jq£—li£eL_to which, sooner or later, he
made all experience contribute. __Just now the cup
seemed full.
"It's all very fine and very funny, I mean very
special and quite thrilling and almost interesting,"
said Mrs. Tristram while they circulated. "I've
seen nothing objectionable except my husband lean¬
ing against that adorably faded strawberry damask
of the other room and talking to an individual whom
I suppose he takes for a prince, but whom I more
than suspect to be the functionary taking care of the
lamps. Do you think you could separate them ? Do
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
Cintre's youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram, for
whose rather shy and subtle merit the young man
promptly professed an intelligent relish and to whom
he had paid several visits.
"Did you ever read," she asked, "Keats's 'Belle
Dame sans Merci' ? You remind me of the hero of
the ballad:
" ' Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering ? ' "
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"If I'm alone it's because I've been deprived
of your society," Valentin returned. "Besides, it's
good manners for no man except Newman to look
happy. This is all to his address. It's not for you
and me to go before the curtain."
"You prophesied to me last spring," said New¬
man to Mrs. Tristram, "that six months from that
time I should get into a tearing rage. It seems to me
the time's up, and yet the nearest I can now come to
doing anything rough is to offer you a cafe glace."
"I promised you we should do things grandly,"
Valentin observed. "I don't allude to the cafes
glaces. But every one's here, and my sister told me
just now that Urbain has been adorable."
"He's a real nice man — all the way through. If
I don't look out," Newman went on — "or if he
does n't — I shall begin to love him as a brother.
That reminds me that I ought to go and say some¬
thing enthusiastic to your mother."
"Let it be something very enthusiastic indeed,"
said Valentin. "It may be the last time you'll feel
so much in the vein."
Newman walked away almost disposed to clasp
Madame de Bellegarde round the waist. He passed
through several rooms and at last found her in the
first saloon, seated on a sofa with her young kins¬
man Lord Deepmere beside her. The young man
unmistakeably felt the strain; his hands were thrust
into his pockets and his eyes fixed on the toes of his
shoes, his feet being thrust out in front of him. His
hostess appeared to have been addressing him with
some intensity and to be now waiting for an answer
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to what she had said or for some other sign of the
effect of her words. Her hands were folded in her
lap and she considered his lordship's simple physi¬
ognomy as she might have studied some brief but
baffling sentence in an obscure text. He looked up as
Newman approached, met his eyes and changed
colour. On which the latter said: "I'm afraid I dis¬
turb an interesting interview."
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 brought out with a smile: "It
would be amiable for Lord Deepmere to say it was
very interesting."
"Oh, I'm not amiable!" cried his lordship. "But
it was all right."
"Madame de Bellegarde was giving you some
good advice, eh ?" Newman asked: "preaching you,
with her high authority, the way you should go ? In
your place I'd go it then — blind!"
"I was giving him some excellent advice," said the
Marquise, fixing her fresh cold eyes on our hero.
"It's for him to take it."
"Take it, sir, take it!" Newman exclaimed. "Any
advice she gives you to-night must be good; for to¬
night, Marquise, you must speak from a cheerful,
comfortable spirit, and that makes for good ideas.
You see everything going on so brightly and success¬
fully round you. Your party's magnificent; it was
a very happy thought. It's a much better show than
that feeble effort of mine would have been."
" If you 're pleased I'm satisfied," she answered
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with rare accommodation. " My desire was to please
you."
"Do you want to please me a little more then?"
Newman went on. "Just let Lord Deepmere digest
your wisdom and take care of himself a little; and
then take my arm and walk through the rooms."
"My desire was to please you," the Marquise
rather stiffly repeated; and as she liberated her com¬
panion our friend wondered at her docility. " If this
young man is wise," she added, "he'll go and find
my daughter and ask her to dance."
" I've been endorsing your advice," said Newman,
bending over her and laughing; "I suppose there¬
fore I must let him cut in where I can neither lead
nor follow."
Lord Deepmere wiped his forehead and departed,
and Madame de Bellegarde took Newman's arm.
"Yes, it has been a real friendly, hearty, jolly idea,"
he declared as they proceeded on their circuit. " Every
one seems to know every one and to be glad to see
every one. 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 still more to express appreciation without
an afterthought, "that I shall always remember, and
remember very pleasantly."
"I think it's an occasion that we shall none of us
ever 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
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of which she accepted with a smooth good grace.
But though she smiled on every one she said nothing
till she reached the last of the rooms, where she
found her elder son. Then "This is enough, sir,"
she observed with her dignity of distinctness, turning
at the same time from Newman to Urbain. He put
out both his hands and took both hers, drawing her
to a seat with an air of the tenderest veneration. It
appeared to attest between them the need of more
intimate communion, and Newman discreetly re¬
tired. 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 the Marquis had presented
him, and expending generally the surplus of his equa¬
nimity. He continued to find it all a regular celebra¬
tion, but even the Fourth of July of his childhood
used to have an end, and the revelry on this occa¬
sion began to deepen to a close. The music was
sounding its last strains and people about to take
their leave were looking for their hostess. There
seemed to be some difficulty in finding her, and he
caught a report that she had left the ball in an access
of fatigue or of faintness. "She has succumbed to
the emotions of the evening," he heard a voluble
lady say. "Poor dear Marquise; I can imagine all
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 final honours from mem¬
bers of her own sex who insisted upon her not rising.
He himself had set out in quest of Madame de Cintre,
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whom he had seen move past him many times in the
rapid circles of a waltz, but with whom, also, con¬
forming to her explicit instructions, he had exchanged
no word since the beginning of the evening. The
whole house having been thrown open the apart¬
ments of the rez-de-chaussee 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 gentle¬
man; the lady Newman, from within the room and
although she had turned her back to it, immediately
recognised as his friend. He hesitated as to whether
he should 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's almost a pity not to tell Mr. Newman," she
said with restraint, but in a tone Newman could
hear.
"Tell him if you like!" the gentleman answered
in the voice of Lord Deepmere.
"Oh, tell me by all means!" — and our hero came
straight forward.
Lord Deepmere, he observed, was very red in the
face and had twisted his gloves into as tight a cord
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as if squeezing them dry. These, presumably, were
tokens of violent emotion, and it struck him that the
traces of a corresponding agitation were visible in
Madame de Cintre. The two had been talking
with extreme animation. "What I should tell you is
only to milord's credit," said Madame de Cintre,
however, with a clear enough smile.
" It would n't please him any better for that!" cried
milord with his awkward laugh.
"Come; what's the mystery?" Newman de¬
manded. "Clear it up. I don't like what I don't
understand."
"We must have some things we don't like, and
go without some we do," said the ruddy young noble¬
man, still almost unnaturally exhilarated.
"It's to Lord Deepmere's credit, but it's not to
every one's," Madame de Cintre imperfectly ex¬
plained. "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 with more force than grace.
"And now go and dance hard!" she said.
"Oh yes, I feel awfully like dancing hard! I shall
go and drink champagne — as hard as I can!" And
he walked away with a gloomy guffaw.
"What has happened between you?" Newman
asked.
"I can't tell you — now," she said. "Nothing
that need make you unhappy."
"Has that weak brother been trying to make love
to you ?"
She hesitated, then uttered a grave "No! — He's
a perfectly honest young man."
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"But you've been somehow upset and are still
worried. Something 's the matter."
"Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy.
I've completely recovered my balance — if I had
lost it: which I had n't! Some day I'11 tell you what
it was; not now. I can't now," she insisted.
"Well, I confess," Newman returned, "I don't
want to hear anything out of key. I'm satisfied with
everything — most of all with you. I've seen all the
ladies and talked with a great many of them; but
I'm really satisfied with you." The charming
woman covered him for a moment with her bright
mildness, and then turned her eyes away into the
starry night. So they stood silent a moment, side by
side. "Say you're really satisfied with me" Newman
said.
He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it
came at last, low yet distinct. " I'm very very happy."
It was presently followed by a few words from
another source which made them both turn round.
"I'm sadly afraid Madame la Comtesse will take
a chill. I've ventured to bring a shawl." Mrs.
Bread stood there softly solicitous, holding a white
drapery in her hand.
"Thank you, ma bonne" said Madame de Cintre;
"the sight of those cold stars gives one a sense of
frost. I won't take your shawl, but we'll 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
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greeting. "Oh yes," he said, "you must come and
live with us."
"Well then, sir, if you will," she answered, "you've
not seen the last of me!"
XVII
Newman was fond of music, and went often to the
opera, where, a couple of evenings after Madame de
Bellegarde's ball, he sat listening to " Don Giovanni";
having in honour 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 group of his com¬
patriots; 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 or
taking them to drive on mail-coaches and dine at res¬
taurants renowned, by what he could a trifle artlessly
ascertain, for special and incomparable dishes. He
liked doing things that involved his paying for people;
the vulgar truth is he enjoyed "treating" them. This
was not because he was what is called purse-proud;
handling money in public was, on the contrary, posi¬
tively 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 nobly dressed, just
so it was a private satisfaction (for he kept the full
flavour of it quite delicately to himself) to see people
occupied and amused at his pecuniary expense and
by his profuse interposition. To set a large body of
them in motion and transport them to a distance, to
have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages
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THE AMERICAN
and steamboats, harmonised with his relish for bold
processes and made hospitality the potent thing it
should ideally be. A few evenings before the occa¬
sion of which I speak he had invited several ladies
and gentlemen to the opera to listen to the young and
wondrous Adelina Patti —- a party which included
Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that Miss Dora
Finch, sitting near him in the box, discoursed bril¬
liantly, not only during the entr'actes but during
many of the finest portions of the performance, so
that he had really come away with an irritated sense
that the new rare diva had a thin, shrill voice and
that her roulades resembled giggles. After this he
promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.
When the curtain had fallen on the first act of
"Don Giovanni" he turned round in his place to
observe the audience. Presently, in one of the boxes,
he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife.
The little Marquise swept the house very busily with
a glass, and Newman, supposing she saw him, deter¬
mined to go and bid her good-evening. M. de Belle-
garde leaned against a column, motionless, looking
straight in front of him, 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 French are called, not inaptly, bath¬
tubs, from their promoting at least immersion through
the action of the pores, a face which even the dim
light and the distance could not make wholly indis¬
tinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman,
crowned with an arrangement of pink roses and dia-
335
THE AMERICAN
monds. This person looked round the house while
her fan moved with practised grace; when she low¬
ered it Newman perceived a pair of plump white
shoulders and the edge of a rose-coloured dress.
Beside her, very close to the shoulders and talking,
apparently with an earnestness which it suited her
scantly to heed, sat a young man with a red face and
a very low shirt-collar. A moment's consideration
left Newman no doubts; the pretty young woman was
Noemie 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 passed beneath
the baignoire of his former client. She saw him as
he approached, giving him a nod and smile which
seemed meant as a hint that her enviable rise in the
world had not made her inhuman. He passed into
the foyer and walked through it, but suddenly to
pause before a gentleman seated on one of the divans.
The gentleman's elbows were on his knees; he leaned
forward and stared at the pavement, lost apparently
in meditations of a gloomy cast. But in spite of his
bent head Newman recognised him and in a moment
had 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 ?"
"A subject that requires hard thinking to do it jus¬
tice," Valentin promptly replied. " My immeasurable
idiocy."
"What's the matter now?"
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"The matter now is that, as I'm a madman with
lucid intervals, I'm having one of them now. But
I came within an ace of entertaining a sentiment —!"
"For the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire,
in a pink dress?"
"Did you notice what a rare kind of pink it was ?"
Valentin enquired by way of answer. "It makes her
look as white as new milk."
Newman had a stare of some wonderment, and
then: "Is she what you call creme de la creme?" But
as Valentin's face pronounced this a witticism below
the Parisian standard he went on: "You've stopped
then, at any rate, going to see her ?"
"Oh bless you, no. Why should I stop? I've
changed, but she has n't," said Valentin. "The more
I see her the more sure I am — well, that I see her
right. She has awfully pretty arms, and several other
things, but she's not really a bit gentille. The other
day she had the bad taste to begin to abuse her
father, to his face, in my presence. I should n't have
expected it of her; it was a disappointment. Heigho!"
"Why, she cares no more for her father than for
her door-mat," Newman declared. "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 base in
her to call him bad names; it spoiled my reckoning
and quite threw me off. It was about a frilled petti¬
coat that he was to have fetched from the washer¬
woman's; he appeared to have forgotten the frilled
petticoat. She almost boxed his ears. He stood there
staring at her with his little blank eyes and smooth-
337
THE AMERICAN
ing 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 even to an
unnatural father. 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 could n't have the inconvenience of form¬
ing her manners; I had had an idea they were already
formed, after the best models. She had quite put me
out. 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 added in another tone: "I wish you'd think
of what I said to you the other day. Come over to
America with us and I '11 put you in the way of doing
some business. You've got a very fine mind if you'd
only give it a chance."
Valentin made a genial grimace. "My mind's
much obliged to you: you make it feel finer than
ever. Would the 'chance' be that place in a bank ?"
"There are several places, but I suppose you'd
consider the bank the most aristocratic."
Valentin burst into a laugh. "My dear fellow, at
night all cats are grey! When one falls from such
a height there are no degrees!"
Newman answered nothing for a minute. Then,
"I think you '11 find there are degrees in success," he
said with his most exemplary mild distinctness.
Valentin had leaned forward again with his elbows
on his knees and was scratching the pavement with
his stick. At last, looking up, "Do you really think
I ought to do something ?" he asked.
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THE AMERICAN
Newman laid his hand on his companion's arm
and eyed him a moment through measuring lids.
"Try it and see. I'm not sure you 're not too bright
to live; but why not find out how bright a man can
afford to be?"
"Do you really think I can make some money?
Once when I was a small boy I found a silver piece
under a door-mat. I should like awfully to see how
it feels to find a gold one."
"Well, do what I tell you and you shall find salva¬
tion," said Newman. "Think of it well." And he
looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way
to Madame de Bellegarde's box.
"Upon my honour I will think of it,"Valentin
returned. "I '11 go and listen to Mozart another half-
hour — I can always think better to music — and
profoundly meditate on it."
The Marquis was with his wife when Newman
entered their box; he was as remotely bland as usual,
but the great demonstration in which he had lately
played his part appeared to have been a drawbridge
lowered and lifted again. Newman was once more
outside the castle and its master perched on the
battlements. "What do you think of the opera?"
our hero none the less artlessly demanded. "What
do you think of the cool old Don ?"
"He does n't remain so very cool," the Marquis
amusedly replied. "But we all know what Mozart
is; our impressions don't date from this evening.
Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility —
facility perhaps a little too unbroken. But the exe¬
cution is here and there deplorably rough."
339
THE AMERICAN
"I 'm very curious to see how it ends," Newman
less critically continued.
"You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the
Figaro," observed the Marquis. "You've surely seen
the opera before?"
"Never —-1'm sure I should have remembered it.
Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintre;
I don't mean in her situation, but in her lovely tone."
"It's a very nice distinction," the Marquis neatly
conceded. "There's no possibility, I imagine, of my
sister's being forsaken."
"That's right, sir," Newman said. "But what
becomes of the Don?"
"The Devil comes down — or comes up — and
carries him off," MadameUrbain replied. "I suppose
Zerlina reminds you of me."
"I '11 go to the foyer for a few moments," said her
husband, " and give you a chance to say that I'm like
the Commander — the man of stone." With which
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, but
turned suddenly and laid her closed fan on his
arm. "I'm very glad you came in; I want to ask
you a favour. 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 prayer then;
not that you look particularly doleful now. It's some¬
thing you must promise me; now's the time to take
340
THE AMERICAN
you; after you 're married you '11 be good for nothing.
J lions, 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 '11 hold
your hand. Voyons, before you put your head into
the noose you ought to be thankful for me giving
you a chance to do something amusing."
"If it's so amusing," said Newman, "it will be in
even better season after I'm married."
"In other words," she cried, "you '11 not do it at
all, for then you '11 be afraid of your wife."
"Oh, if the thing violates the moral law — pardon
my strong language! — I won't go into it. If it
does n't I shall be quite as ready for it after my
marriage."
"Oh, you people, with your moral law — I wonder
that with such big words in your mouth you don't all
die of choking!" Madame Urbain declared. "You
talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into
the bargain. Promise then after you're married," she
went on. "After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it."
"Well, then after I'm married," said Newman
serenely.
She hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he
wondered what was coming. "I suppose you know
what my life is," she presently said. "I've no pleas¬
ure, 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 gadabout;
accuses me of going to unheard-of places and thinks
it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and
34i
THE AMERICAN
count over my ancestors on my fingers. But why
should I bother about my ancestors ? I'm sure they
never bothered about me. I don't propose to live
with a green shade over my eyes; I hold that the only
thing you can do with things arranged in a row before
you is see them. My husband, you know, has prin¬
ciples, and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are
dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar his
principles are imbecile. If I chose I might have prin¬
ciples 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 New¬
man, fantastically wondering if she might n't wish
him to smooth her way to the imperial halls through
some ingenious use of the American Legation.
The Marquise gave a little sharp laugh. "You 're
a thousand miles away. I '11 take care of the Tuile¬
ries myself; the day I decide to go they'll be glad
enough to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in
an imperial quadrille. I know what you 're going to
say: 'How will you dare?' But I shall dare. I'm
afraid of my husband; he's soft, smooth, irreproach¬
able, everything you know; but I'm 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.
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THE AMERICAN
"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students
dance with their mistresses. Don't tell me you've
not heard of it."
"Oh yes," said Newman; "I've heard of it; I re¬
member now. I've even been there. And you want
to go there?"
"It's bete, it's low, it's anything you please. But
I want to go. Some of my friends have been, and
they say it's very curious. My friends go every¬
where; it's only I who sit moping at home."
"It seems to me you 're not at home now," said
Newman, "and I shouldn't exactly say you were
moping."
"I'm bored to death. I've been to the opera
twice a week for the last eight years. Whenever I ask
for anything my mouth is stopped with that: Pray,
madame, have n't you your loge aux Italiens ? Could
a woman of taste want more ? In the first place my
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 in the imperial intimite. But as I'm
not yet for a little in the imperial intimite — which
must be charming — why should n't I look in where
you can get the nearest notion of it ? It's my dream
at any rate; it's a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to
give me your arm; you 're less compromising than
any one else. I don't know why, but you are. I can
343
THE AMERICAN
arrange it. I shall risk something, but that's my
own affair. Besides, fortune favours 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, only to have
centred one's aspirations upon the sight of fifty
young ladies kicking off the hats of a hundred young
men. It struck him as a theme for the moralist, but
he had no time to moralise. The curtain rose again; M.
de Bellegarde returned and he went back to his seat.
He observed that Valentin 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 wasn't bad," Valentin replied.
"I wasn't thinking of that girl. I listened to the
music and, heedless of the play and without looking
at the stage, turned over your handsome proposal.
At first it seemed quite fantastic. And then a cer¬
tain fiddle in the orchestra — I could distinguish it
— began to say as it scraped away: 'Why not, 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, why
not?' I'm sure I can't say! I don't see why not.
I don't see why I should n't do something. It appears
344
THE AMERICAN
to me a really very bright idea. This sort of thing is
certainly very stale. And then I should come back
with a trunk full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly
find it amusing. They call me an extravagant
raffine; who knows but that I might discover an
unsuspected charm in shopkeeping ? It would really
have a certain rare and romantic side; it would look
well in my biography. It would look as if I were *
a strong man, an homme de premier ordre, a man who!
dominated circumstances."
"I guess you had better not mind how it would
look," said Newman. "It always looks well to have
half a million of dollars. There 's no reason why you
should n't have them if you '11 mind what I tell you
— I alone — and not fool round with other parties."
He passed his arm into that of his friend, 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 this irresistible
idler into a first-class man of business. He felt for"
the moment a spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propa- >
gandist. Its ardour was in part the result of that
general discomfort which the sight of all uninvested
capital produced in him; so charming an intelligence
ought to be dedicated to fine uses. The finest uses
known to Newman's experience were transcendent
operations in ferocious markets? "And then his zeaF
was quickenecTlry personal kindness; he entertained
a form of pity which he was well aware he never
could have made the Comte de Bellegarde under¬
stand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that
so bright a figure should think it a large life to revolve
345
THE AMERICAN
in varnished boots between the Rue d'Anjou and the
Rue de l'Universite, taking the Boulevard des Italiens
on the way, when over there in America one's prome¬
nade was a continent and one's boulevard stretched
from one world-sea to another. It mortified him
moreover to have to understand that Valentin wanted
for money; it was n't business, that was what was the
matter with it, he would have said; it was unprac¬
tical, unsuitable, unsightly — very much as if he
had n't known how to spell or to ride. There was
something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman
in the sight of lively pretensions unaccompanied by
a considerable control of Western railroads; though
I may add that he would not have maintained that
such advantages were in themselves a proper ground
for pretensions. "I '11 put you into something," he
said at any rate; "I '11 see you through. I know half
a dozen things in which we can make a place for you.
You '11 find it a big rush and you '11 see some high
jumps; it will take you a little while to get used to
the scale. But you '11 work in before long and at the
end of six months — after you've tasted blood, after
you've done a thing or two on your own account —
you '11 have some good times. 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,
Valentine," he continued, pressing his comrade's arm
genially, "I think I see just the opening for you.
Keep quiet, and I'll find something nice — I '11 fix
you all right."
Newman pursued this favouring strain over a wide
stretch of prospect; the two men strolled about for
346
THE AMERICAN
a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and ques¬
tioned, making his friend laugh at his ignorance of
the very alphabet of affairs, smiling himself too, half
ironical and half curious. And yet he was serious
and nearly convinced, fascinated as by the biggest,
plainest map of the great land of El Dorado ever
spread before him. It is true, withal, that if it might
be bold, original and even amusing to surrender his
faded escutcheon to the process, the smart patent
transatlantic process, of heavy regilding, he did n't
quite relish the freedom with which it might be
handled, and yet suddenly felt eager to know the
worst that might await him. So that when the bell
rang to indicate the close of the entr'acte there was
a certain mock-heroism in his saying all gaily: "Well
then, put me through; locate me and fix me! 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
door-knob. "Oh come, are you going back there ?"
Newman hereupon asked.
"Mow Dieu, out," said Valentin.
"Have n't you another place ?"
"Yes, I've my usual place in the stalls."
"You had better go then and occupy it."
"I see her very well from there too," Valentin went
on serenely; "and to-night she 's worth seeing. But,"
he added in a moment, "I've a particular reason for
going back just now."
347
THE AMERICAN
"Oh, I give you up," said Newman. "You're
sunk in depravity and don't know the light when
you see it."
"No, it's only this. There's a young man in the
box whom I shall worry by going in, and I really
want to worry him."
"Why, you cold-blooded calculating wretch!" New¬
man cried. " Can't you give the poor devil a chance ?"
"No, he has trod with all his weight on my toes.
The box is not his; Noemie came 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 greedy ouvreuse
had carried off, with her eye to a fee, instead of
hanging it up on a peg. In my absence a gentleman
came in and took the chair beside her in which I had
been sitting. My reappearance put him out, and he
had the grossness to show it. He came within an ace
of being impertinent. I don't know who he is —
a big hard-breathing red-faced animal. I can't think
where she picks up such acquaintances. He has been
drinking too, but he knows what he's about. Just
now, in the second act, the brute did unmistakeably
betray an intention. I shall put in another appear¬
ance for ten minutes — time enough to give him an
opportunity to commit himself if he feels inclined.
I really can't let him suppose he's keeping me out of
the box."
"My poor dear boy," said Newman remonstrantly,
"why should n't he have his good time ? You 're not
going to pick a quarrel about such an article as that,
I hope."
348
THE AMERICAN
"The nature of the article — if you mean of the
young lady — has nothing to do with it, and I 've no
intention of picking a quarrel. I'm not a bully nor
a fire-eater, I simply wish to make a point that a
gentleman must."
"Oh, damn your point!" Newman impatiently
returned. "That's the trouble with you Frenchmen;
you must be always making points. Well," he added,
"be lively, or I shall pack you off first to a country
where you '11 find half your points already made and
the other half quite unnoticed."
"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you
like. But if I go to America I must n't let the fellow
suppose it's to run away from him."
And they separated. At the end of the act New¬
man 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 Noemie's
retreat saw his friend pass out accompanied by the
young man who had been seated beside its more
interesting occupant. The two 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 quiet enough, but the
stranger, who was strikingly 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. Noemie turned on him a glitter of interest.
"Ah, if you've at last decided to come and see me
you but just save your politeness. You find me in
349
THE AMERICAN
a fine moment. Sit down." She looked, it had to be
owned, exceedingly pretty and perverse and animated
and elegant, and quite as if she had had some very
good news.
"Something has happened here!" Newman said
while he kept his feet.
"You find me in a very fine moment," she
repeated. "Two gentlemen — one of them's M. de
Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe
to you — have just had words about your humble
servant. Very sharp words too. They can't come off
without its going further. A meeting and a big noise
— that will give me a push!" said Noemie, clapping
with a soft thud her little pearl-coloured hands.
"C'est ga qui pose une femme!"
"You don't mean to say Bellegarde 's going to
fight about you!" Newman disgustedly cried.
"Nothing less !"—and she looked at him with
a hard little smile. "No, no, you 're not galant! And
if you prevent this affair I shall owe you a grudge
— and pay my debt!"
Newman uttered one of the least attenuated im¬
precations that had ever passed his lips, and then,
turning his back without more ceremony on the pink
dress, went out of the box. In the corridor he found
Valentin and his companion walking toward him.
The latter had apparently just thrust a card into his
waistcoat pocket. Noemie's jealous votary was an
immense, robust young man with a candid, excited
glare, a thick nose and a thick mouth, the certainty
of a thick articulation; also with a pair of very large
white gloves and a very massive, voluminous watch-
350
THE AMERICAN
chain. When they reached the box Valentin, over
whom he towered, made with an emphasised bow
way for him to pass in first. Newman touched his
friend's arm as a sign he wished to speak with him,
and Valentin answered that he would be with him in
an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust
young man, but a couple of minutes later reappeared
in a state of aggravated gaiety. "She's immensely
set up — she says we '11 make her fortune. I don't
want to be fatuous, but I think it very possible."
"So you 're going to fight ?" Newman asked.
"My dear fellow, don't look at me as if I had told
you I'm not! It was not my own choice. The
thing's perfectly settled."
"I told you so!" groaned Newman.
"I told him so," smiled Valentin.
"What the hell did he ever do to you ?"
"My good friend, it does n't matter what. It seems
to me you don't understand these things. He used an
expression — I took it up."
"But I insist on knowing; I can't, as your elder
brother, let you give way to public tantrums — !"
"I'm, as your younger brother, very much obliged
to you," said Valentin. " I've nothing to conceal, but
I can't go into particulars now and here."
"We '11 leave this place then. You can tell me
outside."
"Oh no, I can't leave this place; why should I
hurry away ? I '11 go to my stall and sit out the
opera."
"You '11 not enjoy it."
Valentin looked at him a moment, coloured a little,
351
THE AMERICAN
smiled and patted his arm. "You'd have been
an ornament to the Golden Age. Before an affair
a man's 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. Your quietness will
drown the orchestra. I'm not so undeveloped. It's
the damnedest foolery."
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
his friend again, and they went out into the street
together. The young man shook his head at the pro¬
posal that he should get into Newman's own vehicle
and stopped on the edge of the pavement. "I must
go off alone; must look up a couple of friends who '11
be so good as to act for me."
"I'll be so good as to act for you," Newman
declared. "Put the case into my hands."
"You're very kind, but that's hardly possible.
In the first place you 're, as you said just now,
almost my brother; you 're going to marry my sister.
That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your
impartiality. And if it did n't it would be enough for
me that you have n't, as I say, God forgive you, the
sentiment of certain shades. You'd only try to pre¬
vent a meeting."
"Of course I should," said Newman. "Whoever
your friends are they '11 be ruffians if they don't do
that."
"Unquestionably then they '11 do it. They '11 urge
352
THE AMERICAN
that excuses be made, the most proper excuses. But
you'd be much too coulant. You won't do."
Newman was silent a moment. He was in pre¬
sence, it seemed to him, of a vain and grotesque
parade, poor, restricted, indirect as a salve to an
insult or a righting of a wrong, and yet pretentious
and pompous as an accommodation. But he saw it
useless to attempt interference. "When is this pre¬
cious performance to come off?" he could only ask.
"The sooner the better. The day after to-morrow
I hope."
"Well," Newman went on, "I've certainly a claim
to know the facts. I can't consent to shut my eyes to
a single one of them."
"I shall be most happy to tell you them all then.
They 're very simple and it will be quickly done.
But now everything depends on my putting my hands
on my friends without delay. I '11 jump into a cab;
you had better drive to my rooms and wait for me
there. I '11 turn up at the end of an hour."
Newman assented protestingly, let him go, and
then betook himself to the encumbered little apart¬
ment 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 access¬
ories and that this gentleman had taken upon him¬
self the care of securing the other. Newman had
been sitting without lights by the faded fire, on which
he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the rich
multifarious properties of the place and produced fan¬
tastic gleams and shadows. He listened in silence to
Valentin's account of what had passed between him
353
THE AMERICAN
and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket —
M. Stanislas Kapp of Strasbourg — after his return
to the society of their common hostess. This acute
young woman had espied an acquaintance on the
other side of the house and had expressed her dis¬
pleasure 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 on his fellow-guest with the utmost
ferocity. 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 had
exclaimed: "And I shall be delighted to fling you into
the pit!" Valentin had as promptly retorted. "Oh
do make a rumpus and get into the papers!" Miss
Noemie 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
had 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 ex¬
change of cards. M. Stanislas Kapp had pressed on
his intention, the flat-faced imbecile, with all his
weight; and there were fifty tons, at the least, of that.
"Well, say there are! If you hadn't gone back
into the box the thing would n't have happened."
"Why, don't you see," Valentin replied, "that the
event proves the extreme propriety of my going back
354
THE AMERICAN
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 're going to
be offensive —!' "
"'You must manage it by yourself; damned if I '11
help you!' That would have been a thoroughly sen¬
sible thing to say. The only attraction for you seems
to have been the idea that you could help him," New¬
man went on. "You told me you were not going
back for that minx herself."
"Oh, don't mention her ever, ever any more!"
Valentin almost plaintively sighed. "She's really
quite a bad bore."
"With all my heart. But if that's the way you feel
about her, why could n'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."
"Then you are doing it for her?" Newman railed.
"I'm doing it for myself, and you must leave me
judge of what concerns my honour."
"Well, I '11 leave you judge if you '11 leave me to,
quite impartially, kick somebody!"
"It's vain talking," Valentin replied to this.
"Words have passed and the thing's settled."
Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then paus¬
ing as if with interest, his hand on the door: "You 're
going to use knives ?"
355
THE AMERICAN
"That's 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. "Iwishitwere
guns," he said. "I could show you how to hold one."
Valentin gave him a hard look and then broke into
a laugh. "Murderer!" he cried with some intensity,
but agreeing to see him again on the morrow, after
the details of the meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp
should have been arranged.
In the course of the day Newman received three
lines from him to the effect that it had been decided
he should cross the frontier with his adversary, and
that he was accordingly to take the night express to
Geneva. They should have time, however, to dine
together. In the afternoon Newman called on
Madame de Cintre for the single daily hour of rein-
voked and reasserted confidence — a solemnity but
the more exquisite with repetition — to which she
had, a little strangely, given him to understand it was
convenient, important, in fact vital to her, that their
communion, for their strained interval, should be
restricted, even though this reduced him for so many
other recurrent hours, the hours of evening in par¬
ticular, the worst of the probation, to the state of a
restless, prowling, time-keeping ghost, a taker of long
night-walks through streets that affected him at
moments as the alleys of a great darkened bankrupt
bazaar. But his visit to-day had a worry to reckon
with — all the more that it had as well so much of
356
THE AMERICAN
one to conceal. She shone upon him, as always, with
that light of her gentleness which might have been
figured, in the heat-thickened air, by a sultry harvest
moon; but she was visibly bedimmed, and she con¬
fessed, on his charging her with her red eyes, that she
had been, for a vague vain reason, crying them half
out. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours
before and had somehow troubled her without in the
least intending it. He had laughed and gossiped, had
brought her no bad news, had only been, in taking
leave of her, rather "dearer," poor boy, than usual.
A certain extravagance of tenderness in him had in
fact touched her to positive pain, so that on his
departure she had burst into miserable tears. She
had felt as if something strange and wrong were
hanging about them — ah, she had had that feeling
in other connexions too; nervous, always nervous, she
had tried to reason away the fear, but the effort had
only given her a headache. Newman was of course
tongue-tied on what he himself knew, and, his power
of simulation and his general art of optimism break¬
ing down on this occasion as if some long needle¬
point had suddenly passed, to make him wince,
through the sole crevice of his armour, he could, to
his high chagrin, but cut his call short. Before he
retreated, however, he asked if Valentin had seen his
mother.
"Yes; but he did n't make her cry!"
It was in Newman's own apartments that the
young man dined, having sent his servant and his
effects to await him at the railway. M. Stanislas
Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and
357
THE AMERICAN
he on his side had obviously none to offer. Valentin
had found out with whom he was dealing, and that
his adversary was the son and heir of a rich brewer
of Strasbourg, a youth sanguineous, brawny, bull-
headed, and lately much occupied in making ducks
and drakes of the paternal brewery. Though passing
in a general way for a good companion, he had
already been noted as apt to quarrel after dinner and
to be disposed then to charge with his head down.
"Que voulez-vous ?" said Valentin: "brought up on
beer how could he stand such champagne as Noemie,
cup-bearer to the infernal gods, had poured out for
him ?" He had chosen the weapon known to New¬
man as the gun. Valentin had an excellent appetite:
he made a point, in view of his long journey, of eating
more than usual: one of the points, no doubt, that his
friend had accused him of always needing to make.
He took the liberty of suggesting to the latter the
difference of the suspicion of a shade in the composi¬
tion of a fish-sauce; he thought it worth hinting, with
precautions, to the cook. But Newman had no mind
for sauces; there was more in the dish itself, the mix¬
ture now presented to him, than he could swallow; he
was in short "nervous" to a tune of which he felt
almost ashamed as he watched his inimitable friend
go through their superior meal without skipping a
step or missing a savour; the exposure, the possible
sacrifice, of so charming a life on the altar of a stupid
tradition struck him as intolerably wrong. He exag¬
gerated the perversity of Noemie, the ferocity of
M. Kapp, the grimness of M. Kapp's friends, and
only knew that, he did yearn now as a brother. '
358
THE AMERICAN
"This sort of thing may be all very well," he broke
out at last, "but I '11 be blamed if I see it. I can't
stop you perhaps, but at least I can swear at you
handsomely. Take me as doing so in the most awful
terms."
"My dear fellow, don't make a scene "— Valentin
was almost sententious. "Scenes in these cases are in
very bad taste."
"Your duel itself is a scene," Newman said;
"a scene of the most flagrant description. It's
a wretched theatrical affair. Why don't you take
a band of music with you outright ? It's G— d—
barbarous, and yet it's G— d— effete."
"Oh, I can't begin at this time of day to defend the
theory of duelling," the young man blandly reasoned./
"It's our only resource at given moments, and I hold
it a good thing. Quite apart from the merit of the
cause in which a meeting may take place, it strikes
a romantic note that seems to me in this age of vile
pros^greatly to recommend it. It's a remnant of
a higTier^tempered time; one ought to cling to it. It's
a way of more decently testifying. Testify when you
can!"
"I don't know what you mean by a higher-tem¬
pered time," Newman retorted. " Because your great¬
grandfather liked to prance, is that any reason for
you, who have got beyond it ? For my part I think we
had better let our temper take care of itself; it gen¬
erally seems to me quite high enough; I'm not more
of a fire-eater than most, but I'm not afraid of being
too mild. If your great-grandfather were to make him¬
self unpleasant to me I think I could tackle him yet."
359
THE AMERICAN
"My dear friend"—Valentin was perfectly patient
with him—"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 ?" New¬
man groaned. "Does it satisfy you to put yourself at
the disposal of a bigger fool even than yourself ? I'd
see him somewhere first! Does it satisfy you that he
should set up this ridiculous relation with you ? I'd
like to see him try anything of the sort with me! If
a man has a bad intention on you it's his own affair
till it takes effect; but when it does, give him one in
the eye. If you don't know how to do that — straight
— you 're not fit to go round alone. But I'm talking
of those who claim they are, and that they don't
require some one to take care of them."
"Well," Valentin smiled, "it would be interesting
truly to go round with you. But to get the full good
of that, alas, I should have begun earlier!"
Newman could scarcely bear even the possible per¬
tinence of his " alas." " See here," he said at the last:
"if any one ever hurts you again —!"
"Well, mon bon ?" — and Valentin, with his eyes
on his friend's, might now have been much moved.
"Come straight to me about it. / '// go for him."
"Matamore!" the young man laughed as they
parted.
XVIII
It was the next morning that, by exception, Newman
went to see Madame de Cintre, timing his visit so as
to arrive after the noonday breakfast. In the court
of the hotel, before the portico, stood Madame de
Bellegarde's old square heavy carriage. The servant
who opened the door answered his enquiry with a
slightly embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at
the same moment Mrs. Bread appeared in the back¬
ground, dim-visaged as usual and wearing a large
black bonnet and shawl.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Is Madame
la Comtesse at home or not ?"
Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes on 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." And the good woman
held out the missive, which he took.
"Left it? Is she out? Is she gone away?"
"She 's going away, sir; she's leaving town," said
Mrs. Bread.
"Leaving town!" he exclaimed. "What in the
world has happened ?"
"It is not for me to say, sir." And Mrs. Bread
cast her eyes to the ground. " But I thought it would
come."
"What would come, pray?" Newman demanded.
He had broken the seal of the letter, but he
36r
THE AMERICAN
still questioned. "She's in the house? She's vis¬
ible?"
"I don't think she expected you this morning,"
his venerable friend replied. "She was to leave im¬
mediately."
"Where is she going?"
"To Fleurieres."
"Away off there"? But surely I can see her?"
Mrs. Bread hesitated, but then, clasping together
her black-gloved hands, "I '11 take you!" she rather
desperately said. And she led the way upstairs. At
the top of the staircase, however, she paused and
fixed her dry sad eyes on him. " Be very easy with
her. Nobody else is." Then she went on to Madame
de Cintre's apartment. Newman, perplexed and
alarmed, followed her fast. She threw open the door
and he pushed back the curtain at the further side
of its deep embrasure. In the middle of the room
stood Madame de Cintre; her face was flushed and
marked and she was dressed for travelling. Behind
her, before the fireplace, stood Urbain de Bellegarde
and looked at his finger-nails; near the Marquis sat
his mother, buried in an armchair and with her eyes
immediately fixing themselves on the invader, as he
felt them pronounce him. He knew himself, as he
entered, in the presence of something evil; he was
as startled and pained as he would Have "been by
a threatening cry in the stillness of the night. He
walked straight to Madame de Cintre and seized her
by the hand.
"What's the matter?" he asked commandingly;
"what's happening?"
362
THE AMERICAN
Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place
and came and leaned on the back of his mother's
chair. Newman's sudden irruption had evidently
discomposed them both. Madame de Cintre stood
silent and with her eyes resting on her friend's.
She had often looked at him with all her soul, as it
seemed to him; but in this present gaze there was
a bottomless depth. She was in distress, and — mon¬
strously — was somehow to her own sense helpless.
It would have been the most touching thing he had
ever seen if it had n't been the most absurd. 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 of which she
had possessed herself.
"Something very grave has happened," she brought
out. "I can't marry you."
Newman dropped her hand — as if, suddenly and
unnaturally acting with the others, she had planted
a knife in his side: he stood staring, first at her and
then at them. "Why not ?" he asked as quietly as his
quick gasp permitted.
Madame de Cintre almost smiled, but the attempt
was strange. "You must ask my mother. You must
ask my brother."
"Why can't she marry me ?" — and he looked all
at them.
Madame de Bellegarde never moved in her seat,
but her consciousness had paled her face. The Mar¬
quis hovered protectingly. She said nothing for some
moments, but she kept her keen clear eyes on
their visitor. The Marquis drew himself up and con-
363
THE AMERICAN
sidered the ceiling. "It's impossible!" he finely
articulated.
"It's improper," said Madame de Bellegarde.
Newman began to laugh. "Oh, you're fooling!"
he exclaimed.
"My sister, you've no time; you're losing your
train," the Marquis went on.
"Come, is he mad?" Newman asked.
"No; don't think that," said Madame de Cintre.
" But I'm going away."
"Where are you going ?"
"To the country; to Fleurieres; to be alone."
"To leave me alone ?" Newman put it.
"I can't see you now," she simply answered.
"'Now'—why not?"
"I'm ashamed," she still more simply confessed.
^ Newman turned to 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 deliberate-
ness; it was the plunger stripped.
"It means that I've given you up," said Madame
de Cintre. "It means that."
Her appearance was too charged with tragic ex¬
pression not fully to confirm her words. Newman
was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no re¬
sentment against her. He was amazed, bewildered,
and the presence of the Marquise and her son
seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of a watch¬
man's lantern. "Can't I see you alone?" he
asked.
364
THE AMERICAN
"It would be only more painful. I hoped I
should n't see you — that I should escape. I wrote
to you, but only three words. Good-bye." And she
put out her hand again.
Newman put both his own into his pockets. "I '11
simply go with you."
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. Peace I say—though
it's really 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 strong lines formed beside his mouth
and riding hard, as it were, his restive moustache,
might have at first suggested a wide grimace. I have
said that his excitement was an intenser deliberate-
ness, and now his deliberation was grim. "It seems
very much as if you had interfered, Marquis," he
said slowly.. "I thought you said you would n't inter¬
fere. I know you did n't like me; but that does n't
make any difference. I thought you promised me you
would n't interfere. I thought you swore on your
honour that you would n't interfere. Don't you re¬
member, 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 lean-
365
THE AMERICAN
ing over the edge of a pulpit or a lecture-desk. He
did n't smile, but he looked softly grave. "Pardon
me, sir — what I assured you was that I would n't
influence my sister's decision. I adhered to the letter
to my engagement. Did I not, my sister ?"
"Don't appeal, my son," said the Marquise.
"Your word's all sufficient."
"Yes — she accepted me," said Newman.
"That 's very true; I can't deny that. At least," he
added in a different tone while he turned to Madame
de Cintre, "you did accept me ?" The effect of deep
irony in it — even if there had been nothing else —
appeared to move her strongly, and she turned away,
burying her face in her hands. "But you've inter¬
fered now, have n't you ?" he went on to the Mar¬
quis.
"Neither then nor now have I attempted to influ¬
ence my sister. I used no persuasion then — I've
used no persuasion to-day."
"And what have you used ?"
"We've used authority," said Madame de Belle¬
d-garde in a rich, bell-like voice.
"Ah, you've used authority!" Newman won¬
derfully echoed. 'They've used authority—" He
turned to Madame de Cintre. "What in the world is
their authority and how do they apply it ?"
"My mother addressed me her command," Ma-
^dame de Cintre said with a sound that was the
strangest yet.
"Her command that you should give me up —
I see. And you obey — I see. But why do you
obey?" Newman pursued.
366
THE AMERICAN
Madame de Cintre looked across at the old Mar¬
quise, measuring her from head to foot. Then she
spoke again with simplicity. "I'm afraid of my
mother."
Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quick¬
ness. "This is a most indecent scene!"
"I've no wish to prolong it," said Madame de
Cintre; and, turning to the door, she put out her
hand again. "If you can pity me a little, let me go
alone."
Newman held her quietly and firmly. "I '11 come
right down there." The portiere dropped behind
her, and he 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 Belle-
garde and Urbain. There was a long silence. They
stood side by side, their heads high and their hand¬
some eyebrows arched. "So you make a distinc¬
tion ?" he went on at last. "You make a distinction
between persuading and commanding ? It's very
neat. But the distinction's in favour of command¬
ing. That rather spoils it."
"We've not the least objection to defining our
position," said M. de Bellegarde. "We quite under¬
stand that it should n't at first appear to you alto¬
gether clear. We rather expect indeed that you '11
not do us justice."
"Oh, I '11 do you justice," said Newman. "Don't
be afraid. Only give me a chance!"
The Marquise laid her hand on her son's arm as if
to deprecate the attempt to marshal reasons or to
meet their friend again, on any ground, too inti-
36 7
THE AMERICAN
mately. "It's quite useless," she opined, "to try
and arrange this matter so as to make it agreeable
to you. It's a disappointment, and disappointments
are — I grant it — sometimes odious things, I
thought our necessity over — that of letting you know
that we don't after all see our way! I considered
carefully and tried to arrange it better; but I only
gave myself bad headaches and lost my sleep. Say
what we will you '11 think yourself ill-treated and will
publish your wrong among your friends. But we 're
not afraid of that. Besides, your friends are not our
friends, and it will matter by so much the less. Think
of us as you like — you don't really know us. I only
beg you not to be violent. I've never in my life been
present at any sort of roughness, and I think my age
should now protect me."
"Is that all you have to say?" asked Newman,
slowly rising from 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 watchguard. "But it's perhaps right
I should add another word. We of course quite re¬
pudiate the charge of having broken faith with you.
We left you entirely at liberty to make yourself agree¬
able to my sister. We left her quite at liberty to
entertain your proposal. When she accepted you we
said nothing. We therefore wholly 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 per-
368
THE AMERICAN
haps if we had spoken before. But really, you see,
nothing has yet been done."
"Nothing has yet been done?"— Newman re¬
peated the words as if 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 he understood, in
his deep and simple wrath, 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 from you?" he wonderingly asked. "Do you
suppose it can matter to me what you say ? Do
you suppose I'm an idiot that you can so put
off?"
Madame de Bellegarde gave a rattle of her fan in
the hollow of her hand. " If you don't take it you can
leave it, sir. It matters very little what you do. The
simple fact is that 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," the Mar¬
quis fluted.
"Poor stricken woman, poor bleeding heart, what
damnable thing have you done to her?" Newman
demanded.
"Gently, gently!" murmured M. de Bellegarde as
he rocked on his neat foundations.
"She told you," his mother said. "I expressed my
final wish."
Newman shook his head heavily. "This sort of
thing can't be, you know. A man can't be used in
this fashion. You not only have no right that is n't
369
THE AMERICAN
a preposterous pretence, but you have n't a penny¬
worth of power."
"My power," Madame de Bellegarde observed,
"is in my children's obedience."
"In their fear, your daughter said. There's some¬
thing very strange in it. Why should any one be
afraid of you ?" added Newman after looking at her
a moment. " There has been something at play I don't
know and can't guess."
She met his gaze without flinching and as if neither
hearing nor heeding. "I did my best," she said qui¬
etly. "I could bear it no longer."
"It was a bold experiment!" the Marquis pursued.
Newman felt disposed to walk to him and clutch
his neck with irresistible firm fingers and a prolonga¬
tion of thumb-pressure on the windpipe. "I need n't
tell you how you strike me," he said, however, instead
of this; "of course you know that. But I should
think you'd be afraid of your friends — all those
people you introduced me to the other night. There
were some decent people apparently among them;
you may depend upon it there were some good,
honest men and women."
"Our friends approve us," said M. de Bellegarde;
"there's not a responsible chef de famille among
them who would have acted otherwise. And however
that may be we take the cue from no one. We've
been much more used — since one really has to tell
you — to setting the example than to waiting for it."
"You'd have waited long before any one would
have set you such an example as this, I guess!"
Newman cried. "Have I done anything wrong or
370
THE AMERICAN
mean or base ?" he rang out. "Have I given you any
reason to change your opinion ? Have you found out
anything against me? Hanged if I can imagine!"
"Our opinion," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is
quite the same as at first — exactly. We 've no ill-
will towards yourself; we're very far from accusing
you of misconduct. Since your relations with us
began you've been, I frankly confess, less eccentric
than I expected. It's not your personal character
that we object to, it's your professional — it's your
antecedents. We really can't reconcile ourselves to
a commercial person. We tried to believe in an evil
hour it was possible, and that effort was our great
misfortune. We determined to persevere to the end
and to give you every advantage. I was resolved you
should have no reason to accuse me of a 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 suc¬
cumbed to the scene that took place the other night
in these rooms. You must pardon me if what I say
is disagreeable to you, but you've insisted, with
violence, on an explanation."
"There's no better proof of our good faith," the
Marquis superadded, "than our committing our¬
selves to you in the eyes of the world three evenings
since. We endeavoured to bind ourselves — to tie
our hands and cut off our retreat. Could we have
done more ?"
"But it was that," his mother subjoined, "that
opened our eyes and broke our bonds. We should
have been deeply uncomfortable with any such con-
371
THE AMERICAN
tinuance. You know," she wound up in a moment,
"that you were forewarned as to our high, stiff way
of carrying ourselves. Oh, I grant you that we 're
as proud and odious as you please! But we didn't
seek your acquaintance. You sought ours."
Newman took up his hat and began mechanically
to smooth it; the very fierceness of his scorn kept
him from speaking. "You 're certainly odious
enough," he cried at last, "but it strikes me your
pride falls short altogether."
"In the whole matter," said the Marquis, still as
with a fine note of cool reason, " I really see nothing
but our humility."
"Let us have no more painful discussion than is
necessary," his mother resumed. " My daughter told
you everything when she said she gives you up."
" I'm not in the least satisfied about your daugh¬
ter," Newman insisted: " I want to know what you did
to her. It's all very easy talking about authority and
saying she likes your orders. She did n't accept me
blindly and she would n't give me up blindly. Not
that I believe yet she has really done it after what
has passed between us; she'll talk it over with me.
But you've frightened her, you've bullied her,
you've hurt her. What was it you did to her ?"
"I had very little to do," said Madame de Belle-
garde in a tone which gave him a chill when he after¬
wards remembered it.
"Let me remind you that we offered you this
amount of consideration," the Marquis observed,
"with the express understanding that you should
abstain from intemperance."
372
THE AMERICAN
"I'm not intemperate," Newman answered; "it's
you who are intemperate. You stab me in the back
and I turn on you; is it I who am offensive ? But
I don't know that I've much more to say to you.
What you expect of me, apparently, is to go on my
way — in the manner most convenient to you —
thanking you for favours received and promising
never to trouble you again."
"We expect of you to act like an homme d'esprit"
said Madame de Bellegarde. "You've shown your¬
self remarkably that, already, and what we've done
is altogether based upon your being so. When one
must recognise a situation — well, one must. That's
all that we've done. Since my daughter absolutely
withdraws, what do you gain by making a noise
under our windows ? You proclaim, at the best, your
discomfiture."
"It remains to be seen if your daughter absolutely
withdraws. Your daughter and I are still very good
friends; nothing's changed in that. As I say, there
has been that between us that must make her re¬
cognise at least my claim to some light of mercy from
her."
"I recommend you in your own interest not to
expect more than you '11 get," the Marquis returned
with firmness. "I know her well enough to know
that a meaning signified as she just now signified
hers to you is final. Besides, she has given me her
word."
" I've no doubt her word's worth a great deal
more than your own," said Newman. "Nevertheless
I don't give her up."
373
THE AMERICAN
"There 's nothing of course to prevent your saying
so! But if she won't even see you — and she won't —
your constancy must remain very much on your
hands."
Newman feigned in truth a greater confidence than
he felt. Madame de Cintre's strange intensity had
really struck a chill to his heart; her face, still im¬
pressed on his vision, had been a terrible image of
deep renunciation. He felt sick and suddenly help¬
less. He turned away and stood a moment with his
hand on the door; then he faced about and, after the
briefest hesitation, broke out with another accent.
"Come, think of what this must be to me, and leave
her to herself and to the man whom, before God
I believe, she loves! Why should you object to me —
what's the matter with me? I can't hurt you,
I would n't if I could. I'm the most unobjectionable
man in the world. What if I am a commercial person ?
What under the sun do you mean ? A commercial
person ? I '11 be any sort of person you want. I never
talked to you about business — where on earth does
it come in ? Let her go and I '11 ask no questions.
I '11 take her away and you shall never see me or
hear of me again. I '11 stay in America if you like.
I '11 sign a paper promising never to come back to
Europe. All I want is not to lose her!"
His companions exchanged a glance of mutual
re-enforcement, and Urbain said: "My dear sir, what
you propose is hardly an improvement. We've not
the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable
foreigner, and we've every reason for not wishing to
be eternally separated from my sister. We object
374
THE AMERICAN
to her marriage; and in that way" — M. de Belle-
garde gave a small, thin laugh — "she'd be more
married than ever."
"Well then," Newman presently broke out again,
"where's this interesting place of yours—Fleurieres ?
I know it's near some old city on a hill."
"Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill," the Marquise
admitted. "I don't know exactly how old it is.
We 're not afraid to tell you."
"It's Poitiers, is it? Very good," said Newman.
"I shall immediately follow Madame de Cintre."
"The trains after this hour won't serve you,"
Urbain appeared to judge it his duty to mention.
"I shall then hire a special train."
"That will be a very foolish waste of money,"
said Madame de Bellegarde.
"It will be time enough to talk about waste three
days hence," Newman answered; with which, clap¬
ping his hat on his head, he departed.
He didn't immediately start for Fleurieres; 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 stony circle
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 as he strode along tapping
the trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and
inwardly raging. To lose such a woman after taking
such jubilant and triumphant possession of her was
as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury
375
THE AMERICAN
to his happiness. And to lose her by the interference
and the dictation of others, by an impudent old hag's
and a pretentious coxcomb's stepping in with their
"authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too
pitiful. Upon what he deemed the unblushing
treachery of the Bellegardes he wasted little thought;
he consigned it once for all to eternal perdition. But
the treachery of Madame de Cintre 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 she was
happy in the prospect of their marriage. What was
the meaning of the change ? of what infernal potion
had she tasted ? He had. however, a terrihle appre¬
hension that she had really changed. His very admi¬
ration for her attached the idea of force and weight
to her rupture. But he did n't 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 and unbroken quay.
He had left Paris behind and was almost in the
country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil.
He stopped at last, looked about at it without seeing
or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned
round 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 chords. He felt
376
THE AMERICAN
he needed to pour out his ire, and he took the road
to her house. She was at home and alone, and as
soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the
room, she told him she knew what he had come for.
He sat down heavily, in silence, with his eyes on her.
"They've backed, out!" she said without his even
needing to tell her. "Well, you may think it strange,
but I felt something the other night in the air."
Presently he gave her his account; she listened while
her whole face took it in. When he had finished she
said quietly: "They want her to marry Lord Deep-
mere." NewTman starefEh^ he did n't know shFlcnew
anything about Lord Deepmere. " But I don't think
she will," Mrs. Tristram added.
"She marry that poor little cub!" cried Newman.
"Oh Lord save us! And yet why else can she have
so horribly treated me?"
"But that is n't the only thing," said Mrs. Tris¬
tram. "They really could n't live with you any longer.
They had overrated their courage. I must say, to
give the devil his due, that there's something rather
fine in that. It was your commercial quality in the
abstract, and the mere historic facts of your wash-
tubs and other lucrative wares, that they could n't
swallow. That's really consistent — the inconsist¬
ency had been the other way. They wanted your
money, but they've given jyou up for an idea."
NewmanTrowned most ruefully and took up his
hat again. "I thought you'd encourage me!" he
brought out with almost juvenile sadness.
" Pardon my trying to understand — of course it
does n't concern you to understand," she answered
377
THE AMERICAN
very gently. "I feel none the less sorry for you,
especially as I'm at the bottom of your troubles.
I've not forgotten that I suggested the marriage to
you. I don't believe Claire has any intention of con¬
senting to marry Lord Deepmere. It's true he's not
younger than she, as he might pass for being. He's
thirty-three years old; I looked in the Peerage.
But no — I can't believe her so hideously, cruelly
false."
"Please say nothing against her!" Newman
strangely cried.
"Poor woman," she none the less continued, "she
is cruel. But of course you '11 go after her and you '11
plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now,"
Mrs. Tristram added with characteristic audacity of
comment, "you 're extremely eloquent, even without
speaking ? To resist you a woman must have a very
fixed idea or a very bad conscience. I wish I had done
you a wrong — that you might come to me and make
me so feel it; and feel you, dear man, just you."
She looked at him an instant, then had one of her
odd little outbreaks. "You 're lamentable — you 're
splendid! Go to Madame de Cintre, at any rate, and
tell her that she's a puzzle even to one of the intelli¬
gent, like me, who so greatly admires her. I'm very
curious to see how far family discipline in a fine case
like this does go."
Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on
his knees and his head in his hands, and Mrs. Tris¬
tram continued to temper charity with reason and
compassion with criticism. At last she inquired:
"And what does Count Valentin say to it?" New-
378
THE AMERICAN
man started; he had not thought of Valentin and his
errand on the Swiss frontier since the morning.
The reflexion made him restless again, and he broke
away on a promise that his hostess should have with¬
out delay his next news. He went straight to his
apartment, where, on the table in the vestibule, he
found a waiting telegram. "I'm seriously ill and
should be glad to see you as soon as possible.—Val¬
entin." He had a savage groan for this miserable
news and for the interruption of his journey to Fleur-
ieres. But he addressed to Madame de Cintre a
brief, the briefest, statement of these things; it formed
a response as well to the ten words of the note that
had come to him by Mrs. Bread, and was now all
the time allowed him.
"I don't give you up and don't really believe you
speak your own intention. I don't understand it, but
am sure we shall clear it up together. I can't follow
you to-day, as I'm called to see a friend at a distance
who's very ill, perhaps dying. Why should n't I tell
you he's your brother ? — C. N."
XIX
He had a rare gift for sitting still when nothing else
would serve, and rare was his opportunity to use it
on his journey to Switzerland. The successive hours
of the night brought him no sleep; but he kept motion¬
less in his corner of the railway-carriage, his eyes
closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travellers
might have envied him his apparent rest. Toward
morning rest 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 attach
themselves to one of the snow-powdered peaks of the
Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with
the dawn. But he took in neither the cold mountain
nor the warm light: 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 — alighted in the pale early glow
and 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, a man of about
forty, showed a tall lean figure, a long brown face,
marked eyebrows, high moustaches and fresh light
gloves. He took off his hat, looking very grave, and
articulated,"Monsieur!" To which our hero replied:
"You: 've been acting, in this tragedy, for the Count ?"
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"I unite with you in having been chosen for that
sad honour," said the gentleman. "I had placed
rnyself at M. de Bellegarde's service in this melan¬
choly affair, together with M. de Grosjoyaux, who
is now at his bedside. M. de Grosjoyaux, I believe,
has had the honour 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 the rascal?" said Newman. "He
was badly hit ?"
"The doctor has condemned him; we brought a
surgeon with us. But he will die in the best senti¬
ments. I sent last evening for the cure of the nearest
French village, who spent an hour with him. The
cure was quite satisfied."
"Heaven forgive us!" groaned Newman. "I'd
rather the surgeon were so! 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 this 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 're old companions-in-arms," the personage
said; "it's not the first time one of us has helped the
other to lie easy. It's a very nasty wound, and the
nastiest thing about it is that Valentin's adversary
was no shot. He put his beastly bullet where he
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could. It entered, accursedly, our poor friend's left
side, just below the heart."
As they picked their way, in the grey, deceptive
dawn, between the manure-heaps of the village street,
Newman's new acquaintance narrated the particu¬
lars of the meeting. The conditions had been that
if the first exchange of shots should fail to satisfy one
of the parties a second should take place. Valentin's
first bullet had done exactly what Newman's com¬
panion 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
then, on Valentin's absolute insistence, granted.
But Valentin had fired into space, and the young
Alsatian had done effective execution. "I saw, when
we met him on the ground," said Newman's inform¬
ant, "that he was not going to be commode. A mix¬
ture of the donkey and the buffalo — with no sense
whatever of proportion." Valentin had immediately
been installed at the inn, while M. Stanislas and his
friends had withdrawn to regions unknown. The
police authorities of the canton had waited upon the
others, had placed them under technical arrest and
had drawn up a long proces-verbal; but as the wine
had been drawn — alas! — the powers would have
to drink it. Newman asked if a message had not
been sent to the family, and learned that up to a late
hour of the previous night Valentin had opposed it.
He had refused to believe his wound dangerous.
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After his interview with the cure, however, he had
consented, and a telegram had been despatched to
his mother. "But the Marquise will scarcely have
time—!" So judged Newman's conductor.
"Well, it's a wicked, wanton, infernal affair!"
So judged Newman himself.
"Ah, you don't approve?" his friend gravely
questioned, while he himself remained passionately
careless of the involved reflexion on this gentleman's
control of the encounter.
"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 supporter opened his eyes and shook
his head up and down two or three times, porten¬
tously, with a little flute-like whistle. But he had
evidently been prepared, in respect to this outer bar¬
barian, for some oddity of emotion and expression.
They had in any case reached the inn, where a stout
maid-servant in a nightcap was on the threshold,
with a lantern, to take the traveller's 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 pass¬
age and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to
the visitor, who advanced and looked into the room,
lighted by a single shaded candle. Beside the fire
sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown —
a short stout fair man, with an air of gay surprise,
whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin's
company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still,
his eyes closed — a figure very shocking to Newman,
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who had known it hitherto awake to its finger-tips.
M. de Grosjoyaux's colleague pointed to an open
door beyond and whispered that the doctor was within,
where he kept guard. So long as Valentin slept, or
seemed to sleep, of course he was not to be
approached; 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 in¬
troduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster,
in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane. He lay
down and, in spite of his counterpane and most other
things, slept for three or four hours. When he awoke
the morning was advanced and the sun filling his
window, outside of which he heard the clucking of
hens.
While he was dressing there came to his door
a message from M. de Grosjoyaux and his com¬
panion, who amiably proposed 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 nightcap, was serving the
repast. M. de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly
fresh for a gentleman who had been playing sick-
nurse half the night; he now rubbed his hands very
constantly and very hard and watched the breakfast-
table attentively. Newman renewed acquaintance
with him and learned that Valentin was still in a doze;
the doctor, who had had a fairly tranquil night, was
at present sitting with him. Before M. de Grosjoy¬
aux's associate reappeared Newman learned that
his name was M. Ledoux and that Bellegarde's
acquaintance with him dated from the days when
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they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves. M.
Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultra¬
montane bishop. At last he came in with an effect
of dress in which an ingenious attempt at adjustment
at once to a confirmed style and to the peculiar situ¬
ation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by
a decent deference to the best breakfast the Croix
Helvetique had ever set forth. Valentin's servant,
who was allowed but with restrictions the honour of
attending his master, had been lending a light Pa¬
risian hand in the kitchen. The two Frenchmen did
their best to prove that if circumstances might over¬
shadow they could n't really obscure the national
gift for good talk, and M. Ledoux delivered a neat
little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pro¬
nounced the most charming Englishman he had ever
known.
"Do you call him an Englishman?" Newman
asked.
M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then just fell
short of an epigram: "C'est plus quun Anglais, le
cher homme — c est un Anglomane /" Newman re¬
turned, sturdily and handsomely, that any country
might have been proud to claim him, and M. de
Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon to
deliver a funeral oration on poor Bellegarde. "Evi¬
dently," 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 sal¬
vation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems
almost a pity he should put it in peril again by com¬
ing back to the world." M. Ledoux was a great
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Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture.
His countenance, by daylight, had an amiably satur¬
nine cast; he had a large lean nose and looked like an
old Spanish picture. He appeared to think the use of
pistols at thirty paces a very perfect arrangement, pro¬
vided, should one get hit, one might promptly see the
priest. He took, clearly, a great satisfaction in Valen¬
tin's interview with that functionary, and yet his gen¬
eral tone was far from indicating a sanctimonious
habit of mind. M. Ledoux had evidently a high
sense of propriety and was furnished, in respect to
everything, with an explanation and a grave grin that
combined together to push his moustache up under
his nose. Savoir-vivre — knowing how to live — was
his strong point, 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 mastery of this latter
resource. M. de Grosjoyaux was quite of another
complexion and could but have regarded his friend's
theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly
superior spirit. His surprise was so bright that it
made him look amused; as if, under the impression
of M. Kapp's mere mass, he could n't recover from
the oddity of these hazards, that of the translation of
so much large looseness into a thing so fine as a
direction — even, as it were, a dreadfully wrong one.
He could have understood the coup if it had been his
own indeed, and he kept looking through the window,
over the shoulder of M. Ledoux, at a slender tree by
the end of a lane opposite the inn, as if measuring its
distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing
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that, since the association of ideas was so close, he
might indulge in a little speculative practice.
Newman found his company depressing, almost
irritating. He himself could neither eat nor talk; his
soul was sore with grief and anger and the weight of
his double sorrow intolerable. He sat with his eyes
on 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 Cintre and his lost
happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute
the next, for the egotism of his impatience. He at
least was poor enough company, and even his acute
preoccupation and his general lack of the habit, de¬
termined by all his need, of pondering the impression
he produced, did n't prevent his guessing the others
to be puzzled at poor Bellegarde's taking such a fancy
to a dull barbarian as to desire him at his deathbed.
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 who showed their
hugely-darned stocking-heels at the end of their
slowly-clicking sabots, as well as at the beautiful view
of snowy Alp and purple Jura hanging across either
end of the rude street. The day was brilliant; early
spring was in the air and the sunshine, and the
winter's damp trickled out of the cottage eaves. It
was birth and brightness for all nature, even for
chirping chickens and other feathered waddling par¬
ticles, and it was to be death and burial for poor fool¬
ish, generous, precious Valentin. Newman walked as
far as the village church and went into the small
graveyard beside it, where he sat down and looked at
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the awkward tablets planted about. They were all
sordid and hideous, and he could feel only the hard¬
ness 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 if he might n't be allowed to
relieve him; he had a great desire to be useful to their
patient. This was, through M. Ledoux, easily ar¬
ranged; 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
Honour in his buttonhole; Newman listened atten¬
tively to his instructions and took mechanically from
his hand an old book that had lain on the window-
seat of the inn, recommended by him as a help to
wakefulness and which proved an odd volume of
"Les Liaisons Dangereuses."
Valentin still lay with his eyes closed and without
visible change of condition. Newman sat down near
him and for a long time narrowly watched him. Then
he let his vision stray with his consciousness of his
own situation — range away and rest on the chain of
the Alps disclosed by the drawing of the scant white
cotton curtain of the window, through which the sun¬
shine passed and lay in squares on the red-tiled floor.
He tried to interweave his gloom with strains of hope,
but only half succeeded. What had happened to him
was violent and insolent, like all great strokes of evil;
unnatural and monstrous, it showed the hard hand
of the Fate that rejoices in the groans and the blood
388
THE AMERICAN
of men, in the tears and the terrors of women, and
he had no arms against it. At last a sound struck on
the stillness and he heard Valentin's voice.
"It can't be about me you're pulling that long
face!" He found when he turned that his patient lay
in the same position, but with eyes now open and
showing the glimmer of a smile. It was with a very
slender strength that he felt the pressure of his hand
answered. "I've been watching you for a quarter of
an hour," Valentin went on; "you've been looking
as if you too had had to swallow some vile drug.
You 're greatly disgusted with me, I see. Well, of
course! So am I!"
"Oh, I shan't abuse you," said Newman. "I feel
too badly. And how are you getting on ?"
"Oh, I'm getting off ! They've quite settled that.
Are n't you here to see me off?"
"That's for you to settle; you can get well if you
try," Newman declared with a queer strained quaver.
"My dear fellow, how can I try ? Trying's violent
exercise, and that sort of thing is n't in order for
a man with a hole in his side as big as your hat,
which begins to bleed if he moves a hair's breadth.
I knew you'd 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 did n't see
how I could keep still without you. 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's more like
twenty days." Valentin's speech was slowly taken,
with strange precautions and punctuations, but it
389
THE AMERICAN
had, however faint, the flicker of his gaiety, and
he seemed almost to say what he wanted. It was
visible, however, that he was in extreme pain, and
at last he again closed his eyes. Newman begged
him to make no effort — just, as he called it, to take
his ease; the doctor had left urgent orders against
worry. "Oh," returned 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 must n't use such big words. I was always a chat¬
terer; Lord, how I've bavarde in my day!"
"That's a reason for keeping quiet now," said
Newman. "We know how beautifully you talk—it's
all right about that."
But Valentin, without heeding him, went on with
the same effect of trouble and of pluck. "I wanted
to see you because you've seen my sister. Does she
know — will she come?"
Newman felt himself the poorest of deceivers.
"Yes, by this time she must know."
" Did n't you tell her ?" Valentin asked. And then,
in a moment: "Did n't you bring me any message
from her?" His eyes now covered his friend like
lifted lamps.
" I did n't see her after I got your telegram. I wrote
to her."
"And she sent you no answer ?"
Newman managed to reply that Madame de Cintre
had left Paris. "She went yesterday to Fleurieres."
"Yesterday — to Fleurieres? Why did she go to
390
THE AMERICAN
Fleurieres ? What day is this ? What day was yester¬
day ? Ah then, I shan't see her," Valentin moaned.
"Fleurieres is too far!" And he became dark and
dumb again, only breathing a little harder. Newman
sat silent, invoking duplicity, but was relieved at
being able soon to believe him really too weak to be
curious. He did, however, at last break out again.
"And my mother — and my brother — will they
come ? Are they at Fleurieres ?"
"They were in Paris, but I did n't see them either,"
Newman answered. "If they received your telegram
in time they '11 have started this morning. Otherwise
they '11 be obliged to wait for the night express and
change, and will arrive at the same hour I did."
"They won't thank me — they won't thank me,"
Valentin murmured. "They '11 pass an atrocious
night, and Urbain does n'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 —
had n't I ? And then I want to see my mother sit
there where you sit and say good-bye to her — hear
her above all say hers to me. Perhaps, after all,
I don't know her — she may 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 — what do you call it ? — a red cent. Have you
then green sous or blue ones or any other colour ?
Ah vous, mon cher, vous en avez, vous, de toutes les
391
THE AMERICAN
couleurs ! But what's the matter — while I've been
dreaming of her ? Why did she go to Fleurieres
to-day ? She never told me. What has happened ?
Ah, she ought to have guessed I'm here — in this
bad way. It's the first time in her life she ever dis¬
appointed me. Poor, poor Claire!"
"You know we 're not man and wife quite yet —
your sister and I," said Newman. "She does n't yet
account to me for all her actions." He tried to throw
off this statement with grace, but felt how little the
muscles of his face served him.
Valentin looked at him harder. "Have you two
unimaginably quarrelled?"
"Never, never, never!" Newman exclaimed.
"How happily you say that!" said Valentin.
"You 're going to be happy — la-la!" 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 ridiculous grin, for the conscious
failure of which he then more ridiculously blushed.
Valentin, still playing over him the fitful light of
fever, presently said: "But something is the matter
with you. I watched you just now; you have n't a
bridegroom's face."
"My dear fellow," Newman desperately pleaded,
"how can I show you a bridegroom's face? If you
think I enjoy seeing you lie here and not being able
to help you —!"
"Why, you 're just the man to be jolly and — what
do you call it ? — to crow; don't forfeit your right to
it! I'm a proof of your wisdom. When was a man
ever down when he could say'I told you so!' You
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THE AMERICAN
told me so, you know. You did what you could about
it. You said some very good things; I've thought
them carefully 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 better."
" For instance ?"
"Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated
you as a vicious small boy and have locked you up."
"Well, I'm a very small boy now," Valentin softly
sighed, "and God knows I've been vicious enough!
I'm even rather less than an infant. An infant's
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 on 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've always been an
observer of backs; yours is quite out of sorts."
Newman returned to his bedside and begged him
to be quiet. "Only rest and get well, give yourself
the very best chance. That's what you want and
what you must do. Get well and help me."
"I told you you were in trouble! But how can
I 'help' you?" Valentin wailed.
"I '11 let you know when you 're better. You were
always awfully enquiring; there's something to get
well for!" Newman answered with resolute anima¬
tion.
Valentin relapsed once more and lay a long time
without speaking. He seemed even to have fallen
393
THE AMERICAN
asleep. But at the end of half an hour he was again
conversing. " I'm rather sorry about that place in
the bank. Who knows but I might have become
another Rothschild ? But I was n't meant for a
banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don't you
think I've 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!' This beastly underbred life of ours
does n'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. I've
seen men in the worst kind of holes — worse even
than yours. But it always seemed more natural; they
were of no account compared to you — and at any
rate I did n't care. But now — damnation, damna¬
tion! You might have done something more to the
purpose. It's about the meanest wind-up of a man's
legitimate business I can imagine!"
Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. " Don't
insist — don't insist! It's taking a mean advantage.
For you see at the bottom — down at the bottom
in alTttle 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 his charge was awake, came in to
feel his pulse. He shook his head and declared he
394
THE AMERICAN
had talked too much — ten times too much. "Non¬
sense!" his patient protested; "a man sentenced to
death is allowed to get in first all he can. He can't
talk after, and if he was ever a talker—! Have you
never read an account of an execution in a news¬
paper?" he went on. "Don't they always set a lot
of people at the prisoner — lawyers, reporters, priests
— to make him talk ? But it's not Newman's fault;
he sits there as mum as a death's-head."
The doctor observed that it was time the 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, learning from his fellow-watchers
in the other room that they had received a telegram
from the Marquis to the effect that their message had
been delivered in the Rue de l'Universite too late to
allow him to take the morning train, but that he
would start with his mother in the evening. Our
friend wandered away into the village again and
walked about restlessly for two or three hours. The
day had, in its regulated gloom, the length of some
interminable classic tragedy. At dusk he came back
and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The
dressing of Valentin's wound had been a very critical
business; the question was definitely whether he
could bear 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 Belle-
garde; more than any one else, apparently, he had the
flattering but fatal gift of interesting him more than
he could bear. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of
395
THE AMERICAN
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,
flinging himself too on his bed at his grim length, he
lay staring, for blank weariness, at the lighted candle
and thinking that Valentin was dying downstairs.
Late, when the candle had burnt low, came a soft tap
at his door. The doctor stood there with another
light and a motion of despair.
"He must faire la fete toujours! He insists on see¬
ing you, and I'm afraid you must come. I think that
at this rate he '11 hardly outlast the night."
Newman went back to Valentin's room, which he
found lighted by a taper on the hearth, but with its
occupant begging for something brighter. " I want to
see your face. They say you work me up," he went
on as Newman complied with this request, "and
I confess I've felt worked up; but it is n't you — it's
my own great intelligence, that sacred spark, of which
you've such an opinion. Sit down there and let me
look at you again." Newman seated himself, folded
his arms and bent a heavy gaze on his friend. He
felt as if he were now playing a part, mechanically,
in the most lugubrious of comedies. Valentin faced
him thus for some time. "Yes, this morning I was
right; you've something on your mind heavier than
ever I've had. Come, I'm a dying man, and it's
indecent to deceive me. Something happened after
I left Paris. It was n't for nothing that my sister
started off at this season of the year for Fleurieres.
Why was it ? It sticks in my crop. I've been think¬
ing it over, and if you don't tell me I shall guess."
396
THE AMERICAN
"I had better not tell you," Newman mildly rea¬
soned. "It won't do you any good."
" If you think it will do me any good not to tell me
you 're very much mistaken. There's trouble about
your marriage."
"Yes. There's trouble about my marriage."
"Good!" With which Valentin again waited a little.
"They've stopped it off."
"They've stopped it off," Newman admitted.
Now that he had spoken out he found in it a relief
that deepened as he went on. "Your mother and
brother have broken faith. They've decided that it
can't take place. They've decided I'm not good
enough — when they come to think of it. They've
taken back their word. Since you want to know,
there it is!" Valentin uttered a strange sound, thrice
lifting his hands and letting them drop. "I'm sorry
not to have anything better to tell you of them," New¬
man pursued. "But it's not my fault. I was indeed
bewildered enough when your telegram reached me;
I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether
I feel any better now."
Valentin gasped and moaned as if his wound were
throbbing. "Broken faith, broken faith! And my
sister — my sister?"
"Your sister's very unhappy; she has consented
to give me up. I don't know why — I don't know
what they've done to her; it must be something
pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know.
They've made her suffer — what it is they must have
put her through! I have n't seen her alone, but only
before them. We had an interview yesterday morn-
397
THE AMERICAN
ing. They let me have it full in the face. They told
me to go about my business. It seems to me a very
bad case. I'm sorry to have such a report to make of
them. I'm angry, I'm sore, I'm sick."
Valentin lay there staring, his eyes more brilliantly
lighted, his lips soundlessly parted, a flush of colour
in his pale face. Newman had never before uttered
so many words in the plaintive key, but now, in
speaking to his friend in that friend's extremity, he
had a sense of making his lament somewhere within
theTpieserice of the power that men pray toTntrofrble;
he felt his outgush oF resentmeliFa's a spiritual act,
an appeal to higher protection. "And Claire," the
young man breathed; "Claire? She has given you
up ?"
"I don't really believe it."
"No, don't believe it, don't believe it. She's
gaining time. Believe that."
"I immensely pity her!" said Newman.
"Poor, poor Claire!" Valentin sighed. "But they
— but they — ?" And he paused again. "You saw
them; they dismissed you, face to face?"
"Face to face — rather!"
"What did they say ?"
"They said they could n't stand a commercial
person."
Valentin put out his hand and laid it on New¬
man's arm. "And about their promise — their en¬
gagement with you?"
"They made a distinction. They said it was to
hold good only until Madame de Cintre accepted
me."
398
THE AMERICAN
"But since she did—!"
"Well, since she did — after she did — they found,
as I understand, that they could n't."
Valentin lay staring — his flush died away. "Don't
tell me any more. I'm ashamed."
"You ? You 're the soul of honour," said New¬
man very simply.
Valentin groaned and averted his head. For some
time nothing more was said. Then he turned back
again and found a certain force to press Newman's
arm. "It's very bad — very bad. When my pejople
— when my 'race' — come to that, it ts time for me
to pass away. I believe in my sister; she '11 explain.
Pardon her^ allow for her, be patient with her; wait
for that. If she can't — if she can't make her con¬
duct clear: well, forgive her somehow; at any rate
don't curse her. She'll pay — she has paid; with
her one chance of happiness. But for the others it's
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 stirred his companion to depths down
into which he now shrank from looking. Presently
ValeTntin fixed him again, releasing his arm. "I
apologise. Do you understand ? Here on my death¬
bed. I apologise for my family. For my mother.
For my brother. For the name I was proud of.
Voila!" he added softly.
Newman for all answer took his hand and kept
it in his own. He remained quiet, and at the end of
half an hour the doctor noiselessly returned. Behind
him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the
399
THE AMERICAN
two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and
Ledoux. The doctor laid a hand on the patient's
wrist and sat looking at him. He gave no sign, and
the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first
beckoned to some one outside. This was M. le cure,
who carried in his hand an object unknown to New¬
man and covered with a white napkin. M. le cure
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, folding his hands 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 cure had gone to sleep. At last, abruptly,
their friend pronounced Newman's name. This
visitor went to him and he said in French: "You 're
not alone. I want to speak to you alone." Newman
looked at the doctor and the doctor looked at the
cure, who looked back at him; and then the
doctor and the cure together gave a shrug. "Alone
— for five minutes," Valentin repeated. "Please
leave us." The cure 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, who had watched all this in¬
tently.
"It's very bad, it's very bad," he said after New¬
man had seated himself close. "The more I think
of it the worse it is."
"Oh, don't think of it!" Newman groaned.
400
THE AMERICAN
But his friend 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, coerce them."
"A secret!" Newman repeated, The idea of Jet¬
ting Valentin, on his deathbed, confide to him any
matter"sacredly intimate, shocked him, for the mo¬
ment, arid 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 reducing Madame de Belle-
garde and her son to the forms of submission became
of the~sptnf~for which he had felt such a kindness,
he brought his head nearer. For some time, however,
nothing more came. Valentin but covered him with
kindled, expanded, troubled eyes, and he began to
believe he had spoken in delirium. But at last he
spoke again.
"There was something done — something done
at Fleurieres. It was some wrong, some violence,
I believe some cruelty. It may have been — God
forgive me now — some crime. My father — some¬
thing happened to him: I don't know what; I've
been ashamed, afraid, to know. But a bad business
— a worse even than yours — there was that. My
mother knows — Urbain knows."
401
THE AMERICAN
"Something happened to your father?" Newman
permitted himself to ask.
Valentin looked at him still more wide-eyed. "He
did n't get well. They did n't let him."
"4 Let' him ?" — Newman stared back. " Get well
of what ?"
But the immense effort he 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 pre¬
sently. "At Fleurieres. You can find out. Mrs.
Bread knows. Tell her I made this point — at this
hour —"of your asking her. She '11 give you the
truth itself — and then you '11 show them you know
it. It may do something for you. It may make the
difference. If it does n't, tell every one. It will — it
will" — here Valentin's voice sank to the feeblest
murmur — "it will pay them."
"Pay them?" — Newman wondered.
"What you owe them!"
The words died away in a long vague wail. New¬
man stood up, deeply impressed, not knowing what
to say; his heart was beating as never. "Thank you,"
he said at last. "I'm 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 cure re-entered, bearing his sacred
vessel and followed by a young ministrant at his altar
in a white stole, by the three gentlemen and by Val¬
entin's servant. It was quite processional.
XX
Valentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as
the cold faint March dawn began to clear the grave
faces of the little knot of friends gathered about his
bedside. An hour later 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 re¬
mained. 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 Cintre, detailing 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 she would consent
to see him. M. Ledoux had told him he had reason
to know that Valentin's will — he had had a great
deal of light but pleasant personal property to dis¬
pose of—contained a request that he should be
buried near his father in the churchyard of Fleur-
ieres, 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
honours 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 Cintre's answer to his letter
enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurieres. This
answer was very brief; it ran as follows*
403
THE AMERICAN
"I thank you for your letter and for your being
with Valentin. It is the most inexpressible sorrow to
me that I was not. To see you will be only anguish;
there's 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. — C. de C."
On receipt of this Newman had gone straight to
Paris and to Poitiers. The journey had taken him far
southward, through green Touraine and across the
far-shining Loire, into a country where the early
spring deepened divinely about him, but he had
never made one during which he had heeded less the
lay of the land—-He alighted at an hotel in respect to
which he scarce knew whether the wealth of its pro¬
vincial note more graced or compromised it, and the
next morning drove in a couple of hours to the village
of Fleurieres. But here, for all his melancholy, he
could n't resist the intensity of an impression. The
petit bourg lay at the base of a 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 that 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 gener¬
ous enough width to have given up its quaintest
corner to a small place of interment. Here the very
headstones themselves seemed to sleep as they slanted
into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held
404
THE AMERICAN
them together on one side, and in front, far beneath
their mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances
stretched away. The approach to the church, up the
hill, defied all wheels. It was lined with peasants two
or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame
de Bellegarde slowly ascend on the arm of her elder
son and behind the pall-bearers of the other. New¬
man chose to lurk among the common mourners who
murmured "Madame la Comtesse" as a particular
tall slimness almost bowed beneath its ensigns of woe
passed before them. He stood in the dusky little
church while the service was going forward, but at
the dismal tombside he turned away and walked
down the hill. He went back to Poitiers and spent
two days in which patience and revolt were con¬
founded in a single ache. On the third day he sent
Madame de Cintre a note to the effect that he would
call on her in the afternoon, and in accordance with
this he again took his way to Fleurieres. He left his
vehicle at the tavern in the village street and obeyed
the simple instructions given him for finding the
chateau.
"It's just beyond there," said the landlord, and
pointed to the tree-tops of the pare above the oppo¬
site 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 further he found him¬
self before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he
paused a moment, looking through the bars. The
residence was near the road, as if the very highway
belonged to it; this gave it a fine old masterly air.
405
THE AMERICAN
Newman learned afterwards, from a guide-book of
the province, that it dated from the reign of Henry
III. It presented to the wide-paved area which pre¬
ceded it, and which was edged with shabby farm-
buildings, an immense facade of dark time-stained
brick, flanked by two low wings, each of which ter¬
minated in a little Dutch-looking pavilion capped
with a fantastic roof. Two towers rose behind, and
behind the towers was a grand group of elms and
beeches, now just faintly green. The great feature,
however, was a wide green river, which washed the
foundations of the pile. The whole mass rose from
an island in the circling stream, so that this formed
a perfect moat, spanned by a two-arched bridge with¬
out 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 them¬
selves in the quiet water.
Newman rang at the gate, and was almost fright¬
ened at the tone with which a big rusty bell above his
head replied to him. An old woman came out from
the gatehouse and opened the creaking portal just
wide enough for him to pass, on which he went in and
across the dry bare court and the little cracked white
slabs of the causeway on the moat. At the door of the
house he waited for some moments, and this gave him
a chance to observe that Fleurieres was not "kept
up" and to reflect that it was a melancholy place
of residence. "It looks," he said to himself — and
I give the comparison for what it is worth — "like
a Chinese penitentiary." At last the door was opened
406
THE AMERICAN
by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in
the Rue de l'Universite. The man's dull face bright¬
ened as he perceived our hero, the case always being
that Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the
confidence of the liveried gentry. The footman led
the way across a great main vestibule, with a pyramid
of plants at its centre and glass doors all around, to
what appeared to be the principal saloon. The
visitor crossed the threshold of a room of superb
proportions, which made him feel at first like a tour¬
ist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee.
But when his guide had left him alone after observ¬
ing that he would call Madame la Comtesse, he saw
the place contained little that was remarkable beyond
a dusky ceiling with curiously carved beams, a set of
curtains of elaborate antiquated tapestry and a dark
oaken floor polished like a mirror. He waited some
minutes, walking up and down; then at last, as he
turned at the end of the room, saw Madame de
Cintre had come in by a distant door. She wore
a black dress — she stood looking at him. As the
length of the immense room lay between them he had
time to take her well in before they met in the middle
of it.
He was dismayed at the change in her appearance.
Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard, with a monastic
rigidity in her dress, she had little but her pure fea¬
tures in common with the woman whose radiant good
grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest
on his own and surrendered to him her hand; but
the eyes were like two rainy autumn moons and the
touch portentously lifeless. "I was at your brother's
407
THE AMERICAN
funeral," he said. "Then I waited three days. But
I could wait no longer."
"Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting," she
answered. " But it was very considerate of you to
wait, horribly wronged as you've been."
"I'm glad you think I've been horribly wronged,"
said Newman with that vague effect of whimsicality
with which he often uttered words of the gravest
meaning.
"Do I need to say so ?" she asked. "I don't think
I've 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 that I know it, that I feel it. But such words are
pitifully poor."
"Oh, they're a great step forward!" said Newman
with a fixed and ah — as he even himself felt —
such an anxious smile of encouragement. He pushed
a chair toward 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 and stood rest¬
lessly before her. She remained there like a troubled
creature who had passed through the stage of rest¬
lessness.
"I say nothing's to be gained by my seeing you,"
she went on, "and yet I'm very glad you came. Now
I can tell you what I feel. It's a selfish pleasure, but
it's one of the last I shall have." And she paused
with her great misty eyes on him. "I know how I've
deceived and injured you; I know how cruel and
cowardly I've been. I see it as vividly as you do —■
I feel it to the ends of my fingers." And she un-
408
THE AMERICAN
clasped her hands, which were locked together in her
lap, lifted them and dropped them at her side. "Any¬
thing 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 've
said nothing hard of you. The very worst thing I've
said of you yet is that you 're the most perfect of
women." And he seated himself before her again
abruptly.
She flushed a little, but even her flush was dim.
"That's because you think I '11 come back. But
I shall not come back. It's in that hope you have
come here, I know; I'm very sorry for you. I'd 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 apologise — that's easy enough. I should not,
heaven forgive me, have wronged you." She stopped
a moment, always with her tragic eyes on him, but
motioned him to let her talk. "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 does n't matter.
I've given you up."
Newman gave a great thump with his clenched fist
upon his knee. "Why, why, why ?" he cried. "Give
me a reason — a decent reason. You 're not a child-
— you're not a minor nor an idiot. You're not
obliged to drop me because your mother told you to.
Such a reason is n't worthy of you."
409
THE AMERICAN
"I know that; it's not worthy of me. But it's the
only one I have to give. After all," said Madame de
Cintre, throwing out vain hands, "think me an idiot
and forget me! That will be the simplest way."
He 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 win¬
dows and looked out at the stiffly-embanked river and
the formal gardens beyond it. When he turned round
she had risen; she stood there silent and passive,
so passive that it told terribly of her detachment.
"You 're not frank," he began again; "you 're not
really honest any more than you 're merciful. In¬
stead of saying you 're 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'm 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, lifting the strong arms to
which she would n't come. She but turned away and
began to leave him. "You told me the other day that
you were afraid of your mother," he followed her to
say. "It must have meant something. What there¬
fore did it mean ?"
She shook her head. "I remember. I was sorry
afterwards."
"You were sorry when she came down on you and
used some atrocious advantage. In God's name, what
is it she does to you ?"
410
THE AMERICAN
"Nothing. Nothing that you can understand.
And now that I've given you up I must n't complain
of her to you."
"That's no reasoning!" cried Newman. "Com¬
plain of her, on the contrary, for all you 're worth.
To whom on God's earth but to me? Tell me all
about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and
we '11 talk it over so satisfactorily that you '11 keep
your plighted faith."
Madame de Cintre looked down some moments
fixedly; at last she raised her eyes. "One good at
least has come of this: I've made you judge me more
fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me great
honour; I don't know why you had taken it into-
your head. But it left me no loophole for escape —
>no chance to bgtHecommon weak creature J hm7 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, rais¬
ing her voice with a tremor that even then and there
he found all so inconsequently sweet. "I'm too
proud to be honest, I'm not too proud to be faithless.
I'm timid and cold and selfish. I'm afraid of being
uncomfortable."
"And you call marrying me uncomfortable?" he
stared.
She flushed as with the sense of being only shut up
in her pain, and seemed to say that if begging his
pardon in words had that effect of an easy condition
for her she might at least thus mutely express her per-
411
THE AMERICAN
feet comprehension of his finding her conduct odious.
"It's not marrying you; it's 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 — ?" Again she broke
down.
"When what ?" he pressed.
"When others have so suffered."
"What others ?" he demanded. "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 strangely con¬
tradict yourself."
"Yes, I strangely contradict myself; that shows
you — strangely enough too — that I'm not even
intelligent."
"You're laughing at me!" he cried. "It's as if
you were horribly mocking!"
She looked at him intently, and an observer might
have believed her to be asking herself if she should n't
most quickly end their common pain by confessing to
some such monstrosity. Yet "No; I'm not," was
what she presently said.
"Granting that you 're not intelligent," he went
on, "that you 're weak, that you 're common, that
you 're nothing I've believed you to be — what I ask
of you is not an heroic effort, it's a very easy and
possible effort. There's a great deal on my side to
make it so. The simple truth is that you don't care
enough for me to make it."
" I'm cold," said Madame de Cintre. " I 'm as cold
as that flowing river."
412
THE AMERICAN
Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his
stick and a long grim laugh. "Ah, not you! You go
altogether too far — you overshoot the mark. There
is n't a woman in the world as bad as you would make
yourself out. I see your game; it's what I said.
You 're blackening yourself to whiten others. You
don't want to give me up at all; you like me — you
like me, God help you! I know you do; you 've
shown it, and I've felt it and adored you for it!
After that you may be as cold as you please! They've
bullied you, I say; they've tortured you. It's an out¬
rage, and I insist on saving you from the extrava¬
gance of your generosity. Would you chop off your
hand if your mother required it ?"
She gave at this the long sigh of a creature too hard
pressed. "I spoke of my mother too blindly the other
day. I'm 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 then seems to me rather extra¬
ordinarily mixed!" he passionately returned.
"It has been in great trouble, but now it's very
clear. 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," he agreed. "I won't pretend, even to pro¬
voke you, that I think that. But that's what your
mother and your brother wanted, and your mother,
413
THE AMERICAN
at that villainous ball of hers — I liked it at the time,
but the very thought of it now is a bath of fire! —
tried to push him on to make up to you."
"Who told you this ?" she asked with her strange,
stricken mildness.
"Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I
did n't know at the time that I was observing it, but
it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you recol¬
lect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conserva¬
tory. You said then that you would tell me at
another time what he had said to you."
"That was before — before this," she immediately
pleaded.
"It does n'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 — getting rid of me easily, or at least
decently, somehow. Lord Deepmere is n't remark¬
ably bright, 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 did n't like being mixed up
with that sort of treachery, and he came to you
and told tales. That was about the size of it,
was n't it ? And then you said you were perfectly
happy."
"I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deep-
mere," she returned. "It was n't for that you came
here; and about my mother it does n't matter what
you suspect and what you know. When once my
414
THE AMERICAN
mind has been made up, as it is now, I should n't
discuss these things. Discussing anything now is very
vain and only a fresh torment. We must try and live
each as we can. I believe you'll be happy again;
even, sometimes, when you think of me. When you
do so, think this — that it was not easy and that
I drd"~TKe TiTest I muld. I 've things to reckon with
that you don't know. I mean I've feelings. I must
do alTthey force me — I must, I must. They'd haunt
me otherwise," she cried, with vehemence; "they'd
give' me~""no rest and would kill me!"
"I know what your feelings are: they're pervers¬
ities and superstitions! They're the feeling that after
all, though I am a good fellow, I've 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 great order,
your order, that they should have a hand in every¬
thing you do. It makes my blood boil. That is cold;
you're right. And what I feel here," and Newman
struck his heart and became more eloquent than he
knew, "is a glowing fire!"
A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de
Cintre'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 her voice might betray her. "No, I was
not right — I'm not cold! I believe that if I'm doing
what seems so bad it's not mere weakness and falsity.
My dear friend, my best of friends, it's like a religion.
415
THE AMERICAN
I can't tell you — I can't! It's cruel of you to insist.
I don't see why I should n'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've been
too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered
me a great chance — besides my liking you. I liked
you more than I ever liked any one," she insisted to
him with a beauty and purity of clearness, and yet
with the sad fallacy of thinking, apparently, that she
made the case less tragic for him by making it more
tragic for herself. "It seemed good to change com¬
pletely, to break, to go away. And then I admired
you, I admired you," she so nobly and decently re¬
peated. "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
beauty 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'm afraid, for my life, 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'm
not meant for that — I'm 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 she quavered heartbreakingly on: "I was made to
do gladly and gratefully what's expected of me. My
mother has always been very good to me; that's all
I can say. I must n't judge her; I must n't criticise
416
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her. If I did it would come dreadfully back to me.
I can't change!"
"No," said Newman bitterly; "/ must change —
if I break in two in the effort!"
"You're different. You're a man; you'll get over
it. You'll live, you'll do things, you can't not do
good, therefore you can't not be happy: you'll find all
kinds of consolation.'You were born — you were
trained — to changes. Besides, besides, I shall al¬
ways think of you."
"I don't care for that!" he almost shouted.
"You're cruel —you're terribly cruel, God forgive
you! You may have the best reasons and the finest
feelings in the world; that makes no difference.
You're a mystery to me; I don't see how such hard¬
ness can go with anything so divine!"
Madame de Cintre fixed him a moment with her
swimming eyes. "You believe I'm hard then?"
He glared as if at her drowning beyond help; then
he broke out: "You're a perfect, faultless, priceless
creature! For God's sake, stay by me!"
"Of course I'm hard in effect," she pitifully rea¬
soned; "though if ever a creature was innocent, in
intention— ! Whenever we give pain we're hard.
And we must give pain; that's the world — the hate¬
ful miserable world! Ah!" and she gave a sigh as
sharp as the shudder of an ague, "I can't even say
I'm glad to have known you — though I am. That
too is to wrong you. I can say nothing that's 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,
417
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and then raised his eyes to her face. He felt in them
the rising tears of rage. "What do you mean to do ?
Where are you going?"
"Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no
more evil. I'm going out of the world."
"Out of the world ?"
" I 'm going into a convent."
" Into a convent!" He repeated the words with the
deepest dismay; it was as if she had said she was go¬
ing into an hospital for incurables. "Into a convent
— you !
"I told you that it was not for my worldly ad¬
vantage or pleasure I was leaving you."
But still he hardly understood. "You're going to
be a nun," he went on; "in a cell — for life — with
a gown and a black veil ?"
"A nun — a blest Carmelite nun," said Madame
de Cintre. "For life, with God's leave and mercy."
The image rose there, at her words, too dark and
horrible for belief, and affected him as if she had told
him 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 Cintre, don't, don't, I beseech you!
On my knees, if you like, I'll beseech you."
She laid her hand on his arm with a tender, pity¬
ing, almost reassuring gesture. "You don't under¬
stand, you've wrong ideas. It's nothing horrible.
It's only peace and jsafety. It'sTto be out of-the
world, where such troubles as this come to the inno-
cent^to_,jJie^best. And for life — that's the blessing
of it! They can't begin again."
418
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He dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with
a long inarticulate wail. That this superb woman, in
whom he had seen all human grace, the rarest per¬
sonal resource, should turn from him and all the
brightness 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 con¬
founding combination of the merciless and the impos¬
sible. As the vision spread before him the impossi¬
bility turned to the monstrous; it was a reduction to
the absurd of the trial to which he was subjected.
"You — you a nun; you with your beauty defaced
and your nature wasted — you behind locks and
bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!" And he
sprang to his feet in loud derision.
"You can't prevent it," she returned, "and it ought
— a little—to satisfy you. Do you suppose I'll go
on living in the world, still beside you, and yet not
with you? It's all arranged. Good-bye, good-bye."
This time he took her hand, took it in both his
own. " For ever ?" he said. Her lips made an inaud¬
ible movement and his own sounded a deep impreca¬
tion. She closed her eyes as if with the pain of hearing
it; then he drew her toward him and clasped her
to his breast. He kissed her white face again and
again, as to leave less of it for his loss; for an instant
she resisted and for a minute she submitted; then,
with a force that threw him back panting, she dis¬
engaged herself and hurried away over the long shin¬
ing floor. The next moment the door closed behind
her, and after another he had made his way out as he
could.
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 on the fertile fields in which the old English
princes fought for their right and held it. Newman
paced up and down this retreat for the greater part of
the next day, letting his eyes wander over the historic
prospect; but he would have been sadly at a loss to
tell you afterwards if the latter was made up of coal¬
fields or of vineyards. He was wholly possessed by
his pang, of which reflection by no means diminished
the ache. He feared the creature he had thus learned
to adore was irretrievably lost; and yet in what case
of straight violation of his right of property had he
ever merely sat down and groaned ? In what case
had he not made some attempt at recovery ? Wholly
unused to giving up in difficulties, he found it im¬
possible to turn his back upon Fleurieres and its
inhabitants; it seemed to him 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 on 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
420
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fingers. His 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 accom¬
modation of which he found himself incapable. He
looked behind him intently and continually, and what
he saw there did n't assuage his resentment. He saw
himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy, pock¬
eting frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited
modesty. To have eaten humble pie, to have been
snubbed and patronised and satirised, 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 connexion with the Bellegardes
began — as if he had made the least circumstance of
the commercial — as if he would n't have consented
to confound the commercial fifty times a day if it
might have increased by a hair's breadth the chance
of his not suffering this so much more than commer¬
cial treachery! Granted one's being commercial wa%
fair ground for one's being cleverly "sold," how little
they knew about the class so designated and its enter¬
prising way of not standing on trifles! It was in the
421
THE AMERICAN
light of his injury that the weight of his past endur¬
ance seemed so heavy; his current irritation had not
been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the
cloudless blue that overarched his more intimate rela¬
tion. But now his sense of outrage was deep, rancor¬
ous and ever-present; he felt himself as swindled as
he had been confiding. As for his friend's spiritual
position, it moved him but to dismal mystification; 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 made it a deadlier oppression. He had
never let the fact of her religious faith trouble him;
Catholicism was only a name to him, and to express
a mistrust of her forms of worship would have implied
that he had other and finer ones to offer: which was
as little possible as might be. If such flawless white
flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil they but
attested its richness. But it was one thing to be
a Catholic and another to turn nun — on your hands!
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
extravagance, a hoax. But the hours passed without
disproving anything, passed leaving him only the
aftertaste of the vehemence with which he had held
her to his heart. He remembered her words and her
looks — he lived through again the sense of her short
submission; he turned them over and tried to make
them square with the saving of something from his
422
THE AMERICAN
wreck. How had she meant that the force driving
her was, as a thing apart from the conventual ques¬
tion, a "religion" ? It was the religion simply of the
family laws, the religion of which her implacable
mother was priestess. Twist the thing about as her
generosity would, the one certain fact was that they
had been able to determine her act. 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 spent themselves, and the
next morning he sprang to his feet with the resolution
to return to Fleurieres and demand another interview
with Madam'^3e~BeIIegarde and her son. He lost no
time in putting it into practice. As he rolled swiftly
over the excellent road in the little caleche 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 some¬
thing with it, and Newman thought it would be well
to have it at hand. This was of course not the first
time, lately, that he had given it his attention. It was
information in the rough — it was formless and ob¬
scure; but he was neither helpless nor afraid. Valen¬
tin had clearly meant to put him in possession of
a weapon he could use, though he could n't be said
to have placed the handle very securely in his grasp.
But if he had told him nothing definite he had at
least given him a clue — a clue of which the de¬
cidedly remarkable Mrs. Bread held the other end.
Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she
423
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held clues; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem
he suspected she might be induced to share with him
her knowledge. 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 Mar¬
quise and her son rose before him again, standing
side by side, the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm
and the same cold guarded glare in the eyes of each,
he cried out to himself that the fear was groundless.
There was crime in the air at the very least! He
arrived at Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he
had satisfied himself, logically, that in the presence
of his threat of penetration they would, as he men¬
tally phrased it, rattle down like loosened buckets.
He remembered indeed that he must first catch his
hare — first ascertain what there was to penetrate;
but after that why should n't his happiness be as
good as new ? Mother and son, dropping in terror
the tender victim they had mauled, would take to
hiding, and Madame de Cintre, left to herself, would
surely come back to him. Give her a chance &nd she
would rise to the surface and return to the light.
How could she fail to perceive that his house would
have all the security of a convent and none of the
dampness ?
Newman, as he had done before, left his convey¬
ance at the inn and walked the short remaining dis¬
tance to the chateau. 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 his unfathefli^ble good-nature. He stood
THE AMERICAN
there a while, looking through the bars at the large
tirpe-stained face beyond and wondering to what
special misdeed it was that the dark old dwelling
with the flowery name had given convenient occa¬
sion. It had given occasion, first and last, to tyran¬
nies and sufferings enough, Newman said to himself;
it was an evil-looking place to live in. Then sud¬
denly came the reflexion: what a horrible rubbish-
heap of iniquity to fumble through! The attitude of
inquisitor turned its ignoble face, and with the
same movement he 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
"mean" crevice of aperture — for so he qualified it
— as before, and he passed through the court and
over the rustic bridge of 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 hopelessly blank, like the
tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments hung
'as heavy as if soaked in salt tears. Newman had
already learned how interesting she could make the
expression of nothing at all, and he scarce knew
whether she now struck him as almost dumb or as
almost effusive. "I thought you would try again,
sir. I was looking out for you."
425
THE AMERICAN
"I'm glad to see you," he answered; "I think
you're my friend."
Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. "I wish you
well, sir; but it's vain wishing now."
"You know then how they've treated me ?"
"Oh, sir," she dryly returned, "I know every¬
thing."
He frankly enough wondered. "Everything?"
Her eyes just visibly lighted. "I know at least too
much."
"One can never know too much. I congratulate
you on every scrap of it. I've come to see Madame
de Bellegarde and her son," Newman added. "Are
they at home ? If they're not I'll wait."
"My lady's 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'm here and that I should like to see
them."
Mrs. Bread hesitated. "May I take a great liberty,
sir ?"
"You've never taken a liberty but you've justified
it," said Newman with diplomatic urbanity.
She dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were
curtseying; but the curtsey stopped there: the occa¬
sion was too grave. "You've come to plead with
them again, sir ? Perhaps you don't know this —
that the poor Countess returned this morning to
Paris."
"Ah, she's gone!" And Newman, groaning, smote
the pavement with his stick.
"She's gone straight to the convent — the Carmel-
426
THE AMERICAN
ites, you know, is the miserable name. I see you do
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 ?" he cried. "Well,
that's all right. And they're highly worked up ?"
" They 're certainly not pleased. 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.
They're so unnatural that you may say they're really
not human; they make you give up everything in
the world you have — for ever and for ever. And to
think of her in that destitution! If I was one who sat
down and cried, sir, I could give way at this moment."
Newman looked at her an instant. "We must n't
cry, Mrs. Bread, and still less must we sit down.
We must stand right up and act. Please let them
know." And he took a forward step.
But she gently checked him. "May I take another
liberty ? I'm told you were with poor Count Valen¬
tin, heaven forgive him, in his last hours, and I should
bless you, sir, if you could tell me a word about him.
He was my own dear boy, sir; for the first year of his
life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him the
first words he spoke — and he spoke so beautifully,
did n't he, 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 wrong way! They've a story that he fought with
a wine-merchant. I can't believe that of him, sir!
And was he in great pain?"
"You're a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,"
said Newman. "I hoped I might see you with my
427
THE AMERICAN
own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall yet."
And he put out his hand. She looked for a moment
at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated by the
novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike
member. Newman held it firmly and deliberately,
fixing his eyes on her. "You want to know all about
the Count ?"
"It would be a terrible pleasure, sir."
"I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes
leave this place ?"
"The chateau, sir? I really don't know. I've
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'll wait for you on that
spot; I've something very important to tell you.
A grand old woman like you can do as she pleases."
She wondered with parted lips. "Is it from the
dear Count, sir?"
"From the dear Count — from his damnable
deathbed."
"I'll come, then. I'll be bold, for once, for
him."
She led Newman into the great drawing-room with
which he had already made acquaintance, and retired
to carry his message. He waited a long time; at last
he was on the point of ringing and repeating his re¬
quest. He was looking round him for a bell when the
Marquis came in with his mother on his arm. It will
be seen he had a logical mind when I say that he
declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result
of Valentin's supreme communication, that his ad-
428
THE AMERICAN
versaries looked grossly wicked and capable of the
blackest evil. "There's no mistake about it now,"
he reflected as they advanced. "They're a bad, bad
lot; they've pulled of^he^y^rnishjedmask.,J~Ma'Jame
de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces
the signs of extreme perturbation; they were plainly
people who had passed a sleepless night. Confronted,
moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they
had disposed of, it was not natural they should meet
their visitor with conciliatory looks. He stood before
them, and of the coldest glare they could command
he had the full benefit. He felt as if the door .of
a sepulchre had suddenly been opened and the damp
darkness were exhaTecT
r'You see I've come back," he said, however, with
a tentative freshness. "I've come to try again."
"It would be ridiculous," the Marquis returned,
"to pretend that we're glad to see you or that we
don't question the taste of your visit."
"Oh, don't talk about taste!" — and Newman per¬
mitted himself perhaps the harshest laugh into which
he had ever broken; "that would bring us round to
yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly would n't
come to see you. Besides, I'll make as short work
as you please. Give me a guarantee that you'll raise
the blockade — that you'll set Madame de Cintre at
liberty — and I'll retire on the spot."
"We hesitated as to whether we would see you,"
said Madame de Bellegarde; "and we were on the
point of declining the honour. But it seemed to me
we should act with civility, as we've always done,
and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you
429
THE AMERICAN
that there are certain weaknesses people of our way of
feeling can be guilty of but once."
"You may be weak but once, but you'll be auda¬
cious many times, madam," Newman rang out. "I
did n't come, however, for conversational purposes.
I came to say this simply: that if you'll write imme¬
diately to your daughter that you withdraw your
opposition to our marriage I'll take care of the rest.
You don't want to make of her a cloistered nun —
you know more about the horrors of it than I do.
Marrying a commercial person is better than being
buried alive. Give me a letter to her, signed and
sealed, saying you give way and that she may take
me with your blessing, and I'll take it to her at her
place of retreat and bring that retreat to an instant
end. There's your chance — and I call them easy
terms."
"We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We
call any terms that you can propose impossible,"
Urbain declared. They had all remained standing
stiffly in the middle of the room. "I think my mother
will tell you that she'd rather her daughter should
become Soeur Catherine than Mrs. Christopher New¬
man."
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 he had ever seen or heard gave him such
a sense of polished marble hardness as this move¬
ment and the tone that accompanied it. "Is there
anything that would weigh with you ?" he asked.
43°
THE AMERICAN
"Is there anything that would, as we say, squeeze
you ?" he continued.
"This language, sir," said the Marquis, "ad¬
dressed to people in bereavement and grief, is beyond
all qualification."
"In most cases," Newman answered, "your objec¬
tion would have some force, even admitting that
Madame de Cintre's present intentions make time
precious. But I've thought of what you speak of,
and I've come here to-day without superfluous
scruples simply because I regard your brother and
you as very different parties. I see no connexion
between you. Your brother was mortally ashamed
of you both. Lying there wounded and dying, lying
there confounded and disgusted, he formally apolo¬
gised to me for your conduct. He apologised to me
for that of his mother."
For a moment the effect of these words was as if
he had struck a physical blow. A quick flush leaped
into the charged faces before him — it was like a jolt
of full glasses, making them spill their wine. Urbain
uttered two words which Newman but half heard,
but of which the aftersense came to him in the rever¬
beration of the sound. "Le miserable!"
"You show little respect for the afflicted living,"
said Madame de Bellegarde, "but you might at least
respect the helpless dead. Don't profane — don't
touch with your unholy hands — the memory of my
innocent son."
"I speak the simple sacred truth," Newman now
imperturbably proceeded, "and, speaking it for a
purpose, I desire you shall have no genuine doubt of
431
THE AMERICAN
it. You made Valentin's last hour an hour of anguish,
and my friend's generous spirit repudiates your
abominable act."
Urbain de Bellegarde had, from whatever emotion,
turned so pale that it might have been at the evoked
spectre of his brother; but not for an appreciable
instant did his mother lower her crest. "You have
beau jeu, as we say, before the silence of the grave,
for every calumny and every insult. But I don't
know," she admirably wound up, "that it in the least
matters."
"Ah, I don't know that poor Valentin's apology
particularly does either," Newman reflectively con¬
ceded. "I pitied him certainly more for having to
utter it than I felicitate myself even now for your
having to hear it."
The Marquise wrapt herself for a minute in a high
aloofness so entire, so of her whole being, as he could
feel, that she fairly appeared rather to contract than
to expand with the intensity and dignity of it; and out
of the heart of this withdrawn extravagance her final
estimate of their case sounded clear. "To have
broken with you, sir, almost consoles me; and you
can judge how much that says! 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 a 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 mo¬
ment, than life. The two men stood face to face.
432
THE AMERICAN
Then our friend had a singular sensation; he felt
his sense of wrong almost brim over into gaiety.
"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 spoke in the most delicate, best-bred voice.
"I execrate you personally."
"That's the way I feel to you, but for politeness'
sake I don't say it. 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 Newman paused
a moment. "You've something on your mind and
on your conscience, your mother and you — some¬
thing in your life that you've kept as much as pos¬
sible in the dark because it would n't look well in
the light of day. You've a skeleton, as they say, in
your closet." M. de Bellegarde continued to look at
him hard, but it was a question if his eyes betrayed
anything; the expression of his eyes was always so
strange. Newman paused again and then went on.
"You've done, between you, somehow and at some
time, something still more base — wonderful as that
may seem — than what you've done to me." At this
M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change; they
flickered like blown candles. Newman could feel
him turn cold; but his form was still quite perfect.
"Continue," he encouragingly said.
Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little
in the air. "Need I continue? You know what
I mean."
"Pray, where did you obtain this interesting in¬
formation ?" M. de Bellegarde inordinately fluted.
433
THE AMERICAN
"I shall be strictly accurate," said Newman. "I
won't pretend to know more than I do. At present
that's all I know. You've done something regularly-
nefarious, something that would ruin you if it were
known, something that would disgrace the name
you're so proud of. I don't know what it is, but I've
reason to believe I can find out — though of course
I had much rather not. Persist in your present
course, however, and I will find out. Depart from
that course, let your sister go in pea^e, and, then
fancy how I'll leave you alone. It's albargain
Urbain's face looked to him now life'a plirror,
very smooth fine glass, breathed upon and blurred;
but what he would have liked still better to see was
a spreading, disfiguring crack. There was something
of that, to be sure, in the grimace with which the
Marquis brought out: "My brother regaled you with
this infamy?"
Newman scantly hesitated. "Yes—it was a treat!"
The grimace, if anything, deepened. "He raved
at the last then so horribly ?"
"He raved if I find nothing out. If I find —what
you know I may find — he was beautifully inspired."
M. de Bellegarde's shoulders declined even a shrug.
"Eh, sir, find what you 'damn please'!"
"What I say has no weight with you ?" Newman
was thus reduced to asking.
"That's for you to judge."
"No, it's for you to judge — at your leisure.
Think it over; feel yourself all round; I'll give you
an hour or two. I can't give you more, for how do
we know how tight they may n't be locking your
434
THE AMERICAN
sister up ? Talk it over with your mother; let her
judge what weight she attaches. She's constitution¬
ally less accessible to pressure than you, I think; but
enftn, as you say, you'll see. I'll go and wait in the
village, at the inn, where 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. That will refer to your
attaching or not attaching what we call weight; or
better still, to your consenting or refusing to take
your hands off Madame de Cintre. Only you under¬
stand that if you do engage again I shall expect you
this time to stick to your bargain." And with this
Newman opened the door to let himself out. The
Marquis made no motion, and his guest paused but
for a last emphasis. "I can give you, let me add, no
more than the time." Then Newman turned away
altogether and passed out of the house.
He felt greatly uplifted by what he had been
doing, as it was inevitable some emotion should pro¬
ceed for him from the evocation of the spectre
■of dishonour for 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 Urbain would give
no sign; since an answer to his challenge, in either
case, would be a recognition of his reference. What
he most expected was silence — in other words defi¬
ance. He prayed, however, that, as he imaged 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's handsome English hand.
"I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting
435
THE AMERICAN
you know that I return to Paris to-morrow, with my
mother, in order that we may see my sister and con¬
firm her in the resolution which is the most effectual
reply to a delirium extravagant even as a result of
your injury. — Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde."
Newman put the letter into his pocket and con¬
tinued his walk up and down the inn parlour. 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 forth to keep
his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path leading
up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and he 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. He 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 helped him to distinguish a figure seated by
one of the pillars. Closer inspection led him to re¬
cognise Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she was
dressed with unwonted splendour. She wore a large
black silk bonnet with imposing bows of crape, while
an old black satin gown disposed itself in vaguely lus¬
trous folds about her person. She had invoked for
the occasion the highest dignity of dress. She had
been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but
when he passed before her she looked up at him and
then rose.
"Are you of this awful faith, Mrs. Bread ?"
436
THE AMERICAN
"No, indeed, sir; I'm a good Church of England
woman — very Low. But I thought I should be safer
in here than outside. I was never out in the even¬
ing before, sir," she added.
"We shall be safer," he returned, "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 New¬
man passed, to find himself in a nook peculiarly
favourable 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 Fleurieres. Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her
guide, and Newman, satisfying himself that one of
the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit
on it. She cautiously complied, and he placed him¬
self near her on another.
XXII
"I'm very much obliged to you for coming," he
began with observing. " 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 dry lucidity which added to
his sense of having inspired his friend with con¬
fidence.
"From the first, you know," he rejoined, "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've done to me I'm sure you are with
me all the more."
"They've not done well — I must say it. But you
must n't blame the poor Countess; they pressed her
cruelly hard."
"I'd give a million of dollars," he remarked,
"to know the secret of such successful pressure as
that."
Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed on
the Fleurieres lights. "They worked on her senti-
/ ments, as they call 'em here; they knew that was the
way. She's a delicate creature. They made her feel
wicked. She's 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
4 38
THE AMERICAN
words represented to him for the moment, and quite
as to the pomt of high interest, a wondrous triumph
of infernal art.
"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."
"She was afraicj,"said Mrs. Bread very confidently;
"shehas always been afraid, or at least for a long
time. Her fear was there — it was always like a pit
that yawned for her. That was the real trouble, sir.
She was just, a fair peach. I may say, with but one
little speck. She had one little sad spot. You pushed
her into!:Tfe~surishine, sir, and it almost disappeared.
Then they pulled herback 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 Cintre's
delicacy, for all its singularity, set Newman's wound
aching afresh. "I see. She knew something bad
about her mother."
"No, sir, she knew nothing." And Mrs. Bread
held her head very stiff and kept her watch on the
glimmering windows of the residence.
"She guessed something then, or suspected it."
"She was afraid to know," said Mrs. Bread.
" But you know, at any rate."
She slowly turned her vague eyes on him, squeez¬
ing her hands together in her lap. "You're not quite
faithful, sir. I thought it was to tell me about the
Count you asked me to come."
"Oh, the more we talk of the Count the better,"
he declared. "That's exactly what I want. I was
439
THE AMERICAN
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 charming
and clever."
"Oh, he'd 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!" she murmured.
"He said his mother and his brother had once put
their heads together to some still more odious effect."
"You should n'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've 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 tell me when it suits you. Only
remember that it was the Count's dying 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 did n't he tell you himself?"
"It was too long a story for a dying man; he was
incapable of the effort and the pain. 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 ?" she asked.
440
THE AMERICAN
"That's for me to decide. The Count believed it
would, and that's why he told me. Your name was
almost the last word he spoke."
This statement produced in her a sharp checked
convulsion; she shook her clasped hands slowly up
and down. "Pardon me if I take a great liberty.
Is it the solemn truth you're speaking? I must ask
you that; don't you see that I must, sir?"
"There's no offence. It is the solemn truth; I sol¬
emnly swear it. The Count himself would certainly
have told me more if he had been able."
"Oh, sir, if he had known more!"
"Don't you suppose he did know ?"
"There's no saying what he knew about any¬
thing," she almost wailingly conceded. "He was
clever to that grand extent. He could make you
believe he knew things he did n't, and that he did n't
know others he had better not have known."
"I suspect he knew something about his brother
that made the Marquis mind his eye!" Newman pro¬
pounded. "He made the Marquis feel him pretty
badly. 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 malicious we all are, to be sure!"
"I don't know," said Newman; "some of us are
malicious, certainly. I'm very angry, I'm very sore,
and I'm very bitter, but I don't know that I'm mali¬
cious. I've been cruelly injured. They've hurt me
and I want to hurt them. I don't deny that; on the
contrary, I tell you plainly that that's the use I want
441
THE AMERICAN
to make of any information you're so good as to
give me."
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 on 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 some¬
thing worse of them."
This passionate profession, which Newman uttered
with the greater zeal that it was the first time he had
felt the relief words at once as hard and as careful as
hammer-taps could give his spirit, kindled two small
sparks in Mrs. Bread's fixed eyes. "I suppose you've
a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonour
you'll draw down on the Countess."
"If the Countess is to be buried alive," he cried,
"what's honour or dishonour to her ever again?
The door of the living tomb is at this moment closing
behind her."
"Yes, it's most awful," Mrs. Bread moaned.
"She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to
give me room to work. It's as if it were all done on
purpose."
"Surely," said Mrs. Bread, who seemed impressed
by the ingenuity of this reflection. She was silent
some moments; then she added: "And would you
bring my lady before the courts ?"
442
THE AMERICAN
"The courts care nothing for my lady," Newman
replied. "If she has committed a crime she'll 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 his friend intently.
"It would break up the family most terribly, sir!"
"It's high time such a family should be broken
up!" he outrageously declared.
"And me at my age out of place, sir!" sighed Mrs.
Bread.
"Oh, I'll take care of you! You shall come and
live with me. You shall be my housekeeper or any¬
thing you like. You shall sit and be waited on and
twiddle your thumbs. I'll pension you for life."
"Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything." And
she seemed to fall a-brooding.
He watched her a while; then he said suddenly:
"Ah, Mrs. Bread, you're too foolishly fond of my
lady!"
She looked at him as quickly. "I would n't have
you say that, sir. I don't think it any part of my
duty to be fond of my lady. I've served her faith¬
fully this many a year; but if she were to die to¬
morrow I believe before heaven I should n't shed
a tear for her." Then after a pause, "I've no such
great 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
443
THE AMERICAN
of this preconcerted interview, in an extraordinary
place, 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 occa¬
sion work. So he said nothing; he only bent on her
his large benevolence while she nursed her lean
elbows. "My lady once did me a great wrong," she
went on at last. "She has a terrible tongue when
she's put out. It was many a year ago, but I've
never forgotten it. I've never mentioned it to a
human creature; I've kept my grudge to myself.
I dare say I've been wicked, but my grudge has
grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing
too, I dare say; but it has lived and lived, as I myself
have lived. It will die when I die — not before!"
"And what is your grudge, Mrs. Bread?" New¬
man blandly enquired.
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've picked up too many
foreign ways. What I was telling you belongs to
a time when I was much younger and of a quite
different appearance altogether to what I am now.
I had a very high colour, 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,
bold spirit; he was a very grand gentleman. He was
fond of his pleasure, like most foreigners, and it must
be owned he sometimes went rather below him to
take it. My lady was often jealous, and if you'll
444
THE AMERICAN
believe it, sir, she did me the honour to have an eye
on me. One day I had a red ribbon in my cap, and
she 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 — look in the way he should n't. I don't
know that I was impertinent, but I spoke up like an
honest girl and did n'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, yet she never said a word to show she
believed it. But the Marquis did — he knew the
rights of me," Mrs. Bread presently added; "and
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 touched with old testify¬
ing knuckles her black satin bodice.
Newman listened with interest to this decent yet
vivid narrative, which seemed to have opened up the
deeps of memory to his companion. Then as she
remained silent and seemed rather to lose herself in
retrospective meditation on her perfect respectabil¬
ity, he ventured on a short cut to his goal. "So
Madame de Bellegarde was jealous; I see. And the
Marquis admired pretty women without distinction
of class. I suppose one must n't be hard on him, for
they probably did n't all behave so discreetly as you.
But years afterwards it could hardly have been jeal¬
ousy that turned his wife into a criminal."
Mrs. Bread gave a weary sigh. "We're using
dreadful words, sir, but I don't care now. I see
445
THE AMERICAN
you've your idea, and I've no will of my own. My
will was the will of my children, as I called them; but
I've lost my children now. They're dead and gone
— I may say it of both of them; and what should
I care for the living? What's any one in the house
to me now — what am I to them ? My lady objects to
me—has objected to me these thirty years. I should
have been glad to be something to young Madame
Urbain, though I never was nurse to the present Mar¬
quis. 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'd like to hear it, sir."
"Oh, would n't I ?" Newman almost panted.
"She said that if I'd sit in her children's school¬
room I should do very well for a penwiper! When
things have come to that I don't think I need stand
on ceremony."
"I never heard of anything so vicious!" Newman
rejoicingly declared. "Go on, Mrs. Bread."
Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled
reserve, and all he could do was to fold his arms and
wait. But at last she appeared to have set her memo¬
ries in order. "It was when the late Marquis was an
old man and his eldest son had been two years mar¬
ried. It was when the time came on for marrying
Mademoiselle Claire; that's the way they talk of it
here, you know, sir — as you might talk of sending
a heifer to market. The Marquis's health was bad;
he was sadly broken down. My lady had picked out
M. de Cintre, for no good reason that I could see.
But there are reasons, I very well know, that are
446
THE AMERICAN
bsyond me, and you must be high in the world to
catch all that's under and behind. Old M. de
Cintre was very high, and my lady thought him
almost as good as herself; that's saying as much as
you please. Mr. Urbain took sides with his mother,
as he always did. The trouble, I believe, was that
my lady would give very little money — to go with
the young lady; and all the other gentlemen wanted
^a bigger settlement. It was only M. de Cintre who
^as content. The Lord willed it he should have that
one soft spot; it was the only one he had. He may
have had very grand connexions, and he certainly
made grand bows and speeches and flourishes; but
that, I think, was all the measure of his honour.
I think he was like what I've heard of comedians;
not that I've ever seen one. But I know he painted
his strange face. He might paint it all he would, he
could never make me like it! The Marquis could n't
abide him, and declared that sooner than take such
a husband as that, his daughter, whom he was so
fond of, should stop as she was. 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
did n't often come to words, because after a while
neither had them to waste; they had too much use
for them elsewhere and otherwise. My lady had long
ago got over 'minding' — minding, I mean, the worst;
for she had had plenty of assistance for throwing
things off. In this, I must say, they were very well
matched. The Marquis was one who would but too
easily go as you please — he had the temper of the
447
THE AMERICAN
perfect gentleman. He got angry once a year — he
kept to that; 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 he was paying for the free life he had led;
is n't it true they mostly do, sir, when they get old
and sad ? My lady and Mr. Urbain kept quiet, but
I know my lady wrote letters to M. de Cintre. The
Marquis got worse and the doctors gave him up.'
My lady gave him up too, and if the truth must b>y
told she gave him up as I've seen her clap together
— with a sound to make you jump — the covers of
a book she has read enough of. When once he was
out of the way she could do what she wished wich her
daughter, and it was all arranged that my poor child
and treasure should be handed over to M. de Cintre.
You don't know what Mademoiselle was in those
days, sir; she was the sweetest, gentlest, fairest! —
and guessed as little of what was going on around her
as the lamb can guess the butcher. I used to nurse
my unhappy master and was always in his room. It
was here at Fleurieres, 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 the Marquis could n't come round.
After this they went off, pocketing their fees, but the
other one stopped over and did what he could. M. de
Bellegarde himself kept crying out that he refused to
be given up, that he insisted on getting better, that he
would live and look after his daughter. Mademoiselle
Claire and the Vicomte — that was Mr. Valentin, you
448
THE AMERICAN
know — were both in the house. The doctor was a
clever man — that I could see myself— and I think
he believed the Marquis might recover with just the
right things carefully done. 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 took a better turn and
came up so wonderfully that the doctor said he was
out of danger. What was killing him was the dread¬
ful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they
stopped, and before I knew it he had begun again to
have his joke at me. The doctor found something
that gave him great comfort — some grand light-
coloured mixture, a wonderful drug (I'm sure I for¬
get the name) that we kept in a great bottle on the
chimney-piece. I used to give it to him through a
glass tube; it always made him easier. Presently the
doctor went away, after telling me to keep on with
the medicine whenever he was bad. After that there
was a different sort of person from Poitiers — he came
every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady
and her poor husband and their three children.
Madame Urbain had gone away, with her first small
child, but a baby then, to her mother's. You know
she's very lively, and her maid told me she did n't
like to be where people were dying." Mrs. Bread
had again a drop, but she went on soon and with the
same quiet consistency: "I think you've guessed, sir,
that when the Marquis began to give hopes again my
lady was disappointed." And once more she paused,
bending on Newman a face that seemed to growwhiter
as the darkness settled down on them.
449
THE AMERICAN
He had listened eagerly—with an eagerness greater
even than that with which he had bent his ear to
poor Valentin's weak lips. Every now and then, as
his companion looked up at him, she reminded him
v of some old black cat, mild and sleek, protracting the
1 enjoyment of a dish of rich milk. Even her triumph
was measured and decorous; even her justice forbore
to rattle the scales. "Late one night," she soon con¬
tinued, "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 had given him a spoonful
of the remedy that so seldom failed to ease him. My
lady had been there in the early part of the evening;
she sat for more than an hour by his bed. Then she
went away and left me alone. After midnight she
came back and Mr. Urbain 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 a word, 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 did n't think he was very
bad, and she told me to go to bed — she would sit
a while with him. When he saw me going he gave
a sound like a scared child 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've noticed, sir — has a very high way
of giving orders, and I was there to take orders.
I went to my room, but I was n't easy; I could n't
tell you why. I did n't undress; I sat there waiting
and listening. For what would you have said, sir ?
45°
THE AMERICAN
I could n't have told you, since surely a poor gentle¬
man, however helpless, might be in safety at such
a crisis with his wife and his son. It was as if I ex¬
pected to hear his voice moan after me again. I lis¬
tened, but I heard nothing. It was a very still night;
I never knew a night so still. At last the very still¬
ness itself seemed to frighten me, and I came out of
my room and went very softly downstairs. In the
anteroom, outside of where his father was, I found
the Count, as he then was, walking up and down.
He asked me what I wanted, and I said I had re¬
turned 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 la'dy herself came out. I noticed she
was very pale; she was altogether extraordinary. She
looked a moment at the Count and at me, and then
held out her arms to the Count. He went to her and
she fell upon him and hid her face. I brushed quickly
past her into the room and came to the Marquis's bed.
He was lying there very white and with his eyes shut;
you could have taken him for a corpse. I took hold of
his hand and spoke to him, but it was as if I had been
dealing with the dead. 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 pere,mon pere.'
I thought it most prodigious, and asked my lady
what in the world had happened and why she had n't
called me. She said nothing had happened; that she
had only been sitting there with him in perfect still¬
ness. She had closed her eyes, thinking she might
451
THE AMERICAN
sleep, and she had slept she did n't know how long.
When she woke up all was over. 'It's surely death,
my son, it's unmistakeably 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 — oh! —
and then he kissed his mother and went away. My
lady and I stood there at the bedside. As I looked at
my poor master it came to me ever so sharply that he
was n't dead, that he was only in a stupor of weak¬
ness. And then my lady repeated 'My poor Bread,
it's death, it's just death'; and I said 'Yes, my lady,
it's certainly death.' I said just the opposite to what
I believed; it was my particular notion. Then my
lady said we must wait for the cToctor, and we sat
there and waited. It was a long time; the poor Mar¬
quis neither stirred nor changed. 'I've seen death
before,' said my lady, 'and it's terribly like this.'
'Yes, please, my lady,' said I; and I thought things
I did n't say. The night wore away without the
Count's coming back, and the Marquise began to be
frightened. She was afraid he had had an accident
in the dark or met with some prowling people. At
last she got so restless that she went below to watch
in the court for his return. I sat there alone and the
Marquis never stirred."
Here Mrs. Bread paused again, and, for her lis¬
tener, the most expert story-teller could n't have been
more thrilling. Newman made almost the motion of
turning the page of a "detective story." "So he was
dead!" he exclaimed.
"Three days later he was in his grave," said Mrs.
452
THE AMERICAN
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 stopped below and I returned to the
other room. I went to the bed and held up the light
to him, but I don't know why I did n't let the candle¬
stick 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 holy name of wonder, if he was truly alive or what
or where he was. Still he looked at me a long time,
and then made me a sign to put my ear close to him.
'I'm dead, my dear,' he said, 'I'm dreadfully dead.
The Marquise has killed me. Yes.' I was all in a
tremble. I did n't understand him. I did n't know
what had become of him: it was so as if the dead had
been speaking. 'But you'll get well now, sir,' I said.
And then he whimpered again, ever so weak: 'I
would n't get well for a kingdom. I would n'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 and I remember his very words:
'She has cruelly taken my life, as true as I lie here
finished. And she'll do the same to my daughter,'
he said; 'my poor unhappy child.' And he begged
me to prevent that, and then he said he was dying,
he was 'knowingly' dead. I was afraid to move or to
leave him; I was almost as dead as himself. All of
a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for
him; and then I had to tell him I could n't manage
that sort of thing. He asked me to hold him up in
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bed while he wrote himself, and I said he could never,
never trace a line. 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
I moved the candle near him. You'll think all this
monstrous strange, sir — and I shall understand if
you scarce believe me. But I must tell things as they
happened to me — the rest is with Them that know
all! Strangest of all was it, no doubt, that I believed
it had somehow been done to him as he said 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 when it came to that; 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, but
at last 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 to give it to those who'd act
on it according to right. 'Who do you mean ?' I said.
' Who are those who '11 act on it ?' But he made some
sound for all answer; he could n't speak — he was
spent. 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 remedy we were never without and that
we felt to be regularly precious. I went and looked at
it, but it was empty of every drop, as if it had been
turned upside down. When I came back his eyes
were open — oh so pitifully! — and he was staring at
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me; but soon he closed them and he said no more.
I hid the paper in my dress; I did n't look at what was
written on it, though I can read very well, sir, if I
have n't a hand for the pen. 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 lost as when
they had left him, and I never said a word of his
having revived. Mr. Urbain said the doctor had been
called to a person in childbirth, but had promised to
set out for Fleurieres immediately. In another half-
hour he arrived, and as soon as he had examined
his patient he said we had had a false alarm. The
poor gentleman was very low, but was still living.
I watched -my lady and her son, on that, to see if they
looked at each other, and I'm obliged to admit they
did n'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 taken such
a turn; he had left him so quiet and natural. 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
chateau, and hardly left the Marquis. I was always
there, and I think I may assure you at least that I lost
nothing. Mademoiselle and the Vicomte 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 and hard, as I had seen her
look when her orders or her wishes had been dis¬
obeyed. It was as if the poor Marquis had gone
against her intention; and the way she took it from
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him made me afraid of her. The local apothecary
kept him along through the day, and we waited for
the gentleman from Paris, who, as I tell you, had
already stayed here. They had telegraphed for him
early in the morning, and in the evening he arrived.
He talked a bit outside with the other one, and then
they came in to see their malade together. I was with
him, and so was Mr. Urbain. My lady had been to
receive the great man, and she did n't come back
with him into the room. He sat down by the Mar¬
quis — I can see him there now with his hand on the
Marquis's wrist and Mr. Urbain watching them with
a little looking-glass in his hand. 'I'm sure he's
better,' said our country doctor; 'I'm sure he'll come
back.' A few moments after he had spoken the Mar¬
quis opened his eyes, as if he were waking up, and
looked from one of us to the other. I saw him look at
me from very, very far off, and yet very hard indeed,
as you might 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 sound like the wail of a lost soul. He
said something we could n't understand and then
a convulsion seemed to take him. He shook all over
and closed his eyes, and the doctor jumped up and
took hold of my lady. He held her for a moment
harder than I've ever seen a gentleman hold a lady.
The Marquis was stone dead — the sight of her had
done for him. This time there were those there who
knew."
Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight
the report of highly important evidence in a great
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murder case. "And the paper — the paper!" he said
from a dry throat. "What was written on it ?"
"I can't tell you, sir," Mrs. Bread replied. "I
could n't read it. It was French."
"But could no one else read it ?"
"I never asked a human creature."
"No one has ever seen it ?"
"If you do you'll be the first."
Newman seized his companion's hand in both his
own and pressed it almost with passion. "I thank
you as I've never thanked any one for anything. I
want to be the first; I want it to be mine as this
closed fist is mine. You're the wisest old woman in
Europe. And what did you do with the blest thing ?"
Her information had made him feel extraordinarily
strong. "For God's sake, let me have it!"
Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. "It's
not so easy as that, sir. When you want great things
you must wait for great things."
"But waiting's horrible, you know," he candidly
smiled.
"I'm sure I've waited; I've waited these many
years," she quavered.
"That's very true. You have waited for me. I
won't forget it. And yet how comes it you did n't do
as M. de Bellegarde said — show the right people
what you had got?"
"To whom should I show it and who were the
right people?" she asked with high lucidity. "It
was n't easy to know, and many's the night I have
lain awake thinking of it. Six months afterwards,
when they married Mademoiselle to the last person
457
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they ought to, I was very near bringing it out. I
thought it my duty to do something with such a proof
of what had happened, and yet I was terribly afraid.
I did n't know what the Marquis had put there, nor
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 the person in the world I cared most for,
letting her know her father had written her mother
down so shamefully; for that's what he did, I sup¬
pose. I thought she would rather suffer from her
husband than suffer from them. It was for her and
for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call
it, yet it was a queer enough quietness. It worried me
and changed me altogether. But for others I held
my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what had
passed there between my poor prostrate master and
his wife."
" But evidently there were suspicions," Newman
urged. "Where did Count Valentin get his ideas?"
"From our little local man — who has yet never
been in the house, as you may imagine, since. He
was very ill-satisfied and he did n't care who knew
it. He had a very good opinion of his own sharpness,
as Frenchmen mostly have, and coming to the house,
as he did, day after day, he had more ideas — as
a consequence — than he had had, before, any call
to put about. And indeed the way the poor Mar¬
quis went off as soon as his eyes fell on my lady was
a most shocking sight for any kind person. The great
man from Paris may have known, after he had taken
things in, what to think, but he also knew what not
to say, and he hushed it up. But for all he could do
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the Vicomte and Mademoiselle heard something;
they knew their father's death was somehow against
nature. Of course they could n'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 some ques¬
tion he could ask me. I was dreadfully afraid he
would speak, and always looked away and went about
my business. If I were to tell him I was sure he
would hate me afterwards, which was what 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 ought n't to look so sad,
sir,' I said; 'believe your poor decent old Bread.
Such a gallant, handsome young man can have
nothing to be sad about.' And I think he under¬
stood me; he understood 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 dis¬
grace on a great house. And it was the same with my
dear young lady. She did n't know what had hap¬
pened; she wouldn't hear of knowing. The Mar¬
quise and Mr. Urbain asked me no questions, because
they had no reason. I was as still as a stopped clock.
When I was younger her ladyship thought me false,
and now she thought me bete, as they say. How
should I have any ideas ?"
Newman turned it all gravely over. "But you say
that doctor made a talk. Did no one take it up ?"
"I don't know how far they went. They're always
talking scandal in these foreign countries — you may
459
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have noticed — and they must have had their stories
about my lady. 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 any one. The doctor
could n't say he had n't come honestly by what he
suffered. The next year he left the place and bought
a practice at Bordeaux, and if there had been ugly
tales the worst of them were among ugly people.
There could n't have b.een any very bad ones that
those who were respectable believed. My lady her¬
self is so very respectable."
Newman, at this last affirmation, broke into a re¬
sounding 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, my lady's respectabil¬
ity's a treasure; I shall have a great deal of use for
my lady's respectability." They reached the empty
space in front of the church, where they stopped
a moment, looking at each other with something of
closer fellowship, like a pair of sociable conspirators.
"But what was it," Newman insisted, "what was it
she did to the miserable man ? She did n't stab him
or throttle him or poison him."
"I don't know, sir. No one saw it."
"Unless it was Mr. Urbain," he thoughtfully
suggested. "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'd
take it on trust."
"You may be sure I've often thought of it," Mrs.
Bread almost cheerfully returned. "I'm sure she
j
460
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did n'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 medi¬
cine. Instead of giving it to him she went and poured
it away, before his eyes, not speaking, only looking at
him, so that he might have the scare and the shock
and the horror of it. Then he saw what she meant
and, weak and helpless, took fright, was terrified.
'You want to kill me,' he must have said — do you
see? 'Yes, M. le Marquis, I want to kill you,' says
my lady, and sits down and keeps her dreadful eyes
on him. You know my lady's eyes, I think, sir; it
was with that look of hers she killed him; it was with
the terrible strong will and all the cruelty she put into
it. It was as if she had pushed him out of her boat,
fevered and sick, into the cold sea, and remained
there to push him again should he try to scram¬
ble back; making him feel he was lost, by her
intention, and watching him awfully sink and
drown. It was enough indeed to take the heart
out of him, and that, in his state, was enough for
a death-stroke."
Newman rendered this vivid image, which in truth
did great honour to the old woman's haunted sensi¬
bility, the tribute of a comprehensive gasp. "Well,
you've got right hold of it — you make me see it and
hate it and want to go for it. But I've got to keep
tight hold of you too, you know."
They had begun to descend the hill, and she said
nothing till they reached the foot. He moved beside
her as on air, his hands in his pockets, his head
thrown back while he gazed at the stars: he seemed
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to himself to be riding his vengeance along the Milky
Way. "So you're serious about that?" she sighed.
"About your living with me? Why, you don't
suppose I've turned you inside out this way not to
want to get you into shape again. You're in no kind
of shape for these people now — even if they were in
any for you; after your seeing what they've done to
me — and to her. You just give me the thing I'm
after and then you move out."
" I never thought I should have lived to take a new
place — unless," Mrs. Bread made moan, "I should
have gone some day to Mr. Valentin or, in her own
establishment, to my young lady."
"Come to me and you'll come to her establishment
yet, I guess — you'll come at least to where both those
names will be cherished and sacred."
She considered a little and then replied: "Oh, I
shall like to pronounce them to you, sir! And if
you're going to pull the house down," she added,
"I had surely better be clear of it."
"Ah," said Newman almost with the gaiety of
a dazzle of alternatives, "it won't be quite my idea
to appeal — if that's what you mean — to the police.
The meanest and the damnedest things are always
beyond their ken and out of their hands. Which has
the merit in this case, however, that it leaves the
whole story in mine. And to mine," he declared,
"you've given power!"
"Ah, you're bolder than I ever was!" she re¬
signedly sighed; and he felt himself now, to what¬
ever end, possessed of her. He walked back with her
to the chateau; the curfew — it could n't have been
462
THE AMERICAN
anything but the curfew, he was sure — had tolled
for the weary serfs and villains (as he could also quite
have believed) and the small street of Fleurieres was
unlighted and empty. She promised he should have
what he was after, as he had called it, 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 re-enter the house from
behind. Newman arranged with her that he should
await outside the wall her return with his prize.
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 and
dearer to his sight than any love-token ever brought
of old by bribed duenna to lurking cavalier. 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're to settle your future, you know; and
I'll 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 eyes had followed the disappearance
of her treasure, and she gave a heavy sigh. "Well,
you've done what you would with me, sir, and I sup¬
pose you'll do it again. You must take care of me
now. You're a terribly positive gentleman."
"Just now," said Newman, "I'm a terribly impa¬
tient one!" And he bade her good-night and walked
rapidly back to the inn. He ordered his vehicle to be
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THE AMERICAN
prepared for the 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 his fierce curiosity forced
a meaning from the tremulous signs, the free English
of which might have been, without the hopelessly
obscure date:
"My wife has tried to kill me and has done it; I'm
horribly, helplessly dying. It's in order to marry my
beloved daughter to M. de Cintre and then go on
herself all the same. With all my soul I protest —
I forbid it. I'm 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's murder if
murder ever was. Ask the doctors, tell every one,
show every one this.
"Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde."
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
signed warrant he had lodged in his pocket-book,
persuading himself more and more that it had, as he
put it to himself, a social value, and thinking what he
would now do and how he would do it. He would not
have said that Poitiers had much to hold him, yet the
day seemed very short. Domiciled once more in the
Boulevard Haussmann he walked over to the Rue de
l'Universite and enquired of Madame de Bellegarde's
portress whether the Marquise had come back. The
portress answered that she had arrived with M. le
Marquis on the preceding day, and further informed
him that should he wish to see them they 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 Hotel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked
smile — a smile that 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. He stood a
moment twisting his moustache and looking at her;
then he abruptly turned away. But this was not
becausehe was afraid to go~tn — though he doubted
whether, for all his courage, he should be able to
make his way unchallenged into the presence of his
465
THE AMERICAN
adversaries. Confidence, excessive confidence per¬
haps, quite as much as timidity, prompted his retreat.
He wasnursing his thunderbolt; he loved it; he was
unwilling to part with it?" He FeTtliimself hold 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 pleas¬
ure as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted
at, and he took his ease while he harboured the vin¬
dictive vision. 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 cere¬
mony; she would certainly decline to receive him.
On the other hand he could n't force his way into her
presence. He hated to see himself reduced to the
blind satisfaction of writing her a letter; but he con¬
soled himself in a measure with the thought that
a letter might lead to an interview. He went home
and, feeling rather tired — nursing a vengeance was,
he had to confess, a fatiguing process; it took a good
deal out of one — flung himself into one of his bro¬
caded 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
frame, as work for his pen, a few effective remarks.
While he was so occupied his servant threw open
the door and announced ceremoniously "Madame
Brett!"
He roused himself expectantly and in a few
466
THE AMERICAN
moments recognised on his threshold the worthy
woman with whom he had conversed to such good
purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurieres. Mrs.
Bread had assumed for this visit the same dress as
for her other effort, and he was struck with her fine
antique appearance. His room was still lampless,
and as her large grave face gazed at him through the
clear dusk from under the shadow of her ample
bonnet he felt the incongruity of her pretending to
any servile stamp. He greeted her with high genial¬
ity, and bade her come in and sit down and make her¬
self comfortable. There was something that might
have touched the springs both of mirth and of melan¬
choly in the spirit of formal accommodation with
which she endeavoured to meet this new conception
of her duty. 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 nightfall
to a friendly single gentleman who lived in theatrical-
looking rooms on one of the new boulevards.
"I truly hope I'm not forgetting my place, sir,"she
anxiously pleaded.
"Forgetting your place? Why, you're remember¬
ing it as a good woman remembers her promise.
This is your place, you know. You're 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 right now ?"
"Take off my bonnet ?" — she gave it her gravest
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THE AMERICAN
consideration. "Oh sir, I have n't my cap. And with
your leave, sir, I could n't keep house in my best
gown."
"Never mind your best gown," said Newman
cheerfully. "You shall have a better gown than
that."
She stared solemnly and then stretched her hands
over her lustreless satin skirt as if the perilous side of
her situation might be flushing into view. "Oh sir,
I'm fond of my own clothes."
"I hope you've left those wicked people, at any
rate," Newman went on.
"Well, sir, here I am! 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've gone
as far as my own strength will bear me."
"Oh, come, Mrs. Bread!" he returned almost
caressingly; "don't make yourself uncomfortable.
Why, you're going to have now the time of your life."
She began to speak again with a trembling voice.
"I think it would be more respectable if I could — if
I could —!" But she quavered to a pause.
" If you could give up this sort of thing altogether ?"
said Newman kindly, trying to anticipate her mean¬
ing, 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!" he cried with a burst of laughter.
"Why, to bury you now would be a sad piece of ex¬
travagance. It's only rascals who have to be buried
468
THE AMERICAN
to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can
live our time out — and live it together. Come! did
you bring your baggage ?"
"My two boxes are locked and corded; but I
have n'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've passed some
weary hours in my lady's dressing-room; but this
will be one of the longest. She'll tax me with base
ingratitude."
"Well,"said Newman,"so long as you can tax her
with murder—!"
"Oh sir, I can't; not I!" she pleaded.
"You don't mean to say anything about it? So
much the better. Leave it all to me."
"If she calls me a thankless old woman," Mrs.
Bread went on, "I shall have nothing to say. But
it's better so," she added with supreme mildness.
" She shall be my lady to the last. That will be more
respectable."
"And then you'll come to me and I shall be your
gentleman," said Newman. "That will be more re¬
spectable still!"
She rose with lowered eyes and stood a moment;
then, looking up, she rested her gaze upon New¬
man's face. The disordered proprieties were some¬
how settling to rest. She looked at her friend so long
and so fixedly, with such a dull intense devotedness,
that he himself might have had a pretext for embar¬
rassment. At last she said gently: "You've not your
natural appearance, sir."
469
THE AMERICAN
"Why, Mrs. Bread," he answered, "I've not my
natural balance. If you mean I don't look sunny
I guess I look as I feel. To be very indifferent and
very fierce, very dull and very violent, very sick and
very fine, all at once — well, it rather mixes one up."
Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. "I can tell you
something that will make you feel queerer still, if you
want to feel all one way. About the poor Countess."
"What can you tell me ?" Newman quickly asked.
"Not that you've seen her ?"
She shook her head. "No indeed, sir, nor ever
shall. That's the dead weight of it. Nor my lady.
Nor M. de Bellegarde."
"You mean she's kept so close ?"
"The closest they keep any."
These words for an instant seemed to check the
beating of his heart. Leaning back in his chair he
felt sick. "They've tried to see her and she wouldn't
— she could n't ?"
"She refused — for ever! 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. The Countess declines to receive
them now, and now's her only chance. A short while
hence she'll have no choice."
"You mean the other women — the mothers, the
daughters, the sisters; what is it they call them? —
won't let her?"
"It's what they call the rule of the house — or
I believe of the order. There's no rule so strict as
that of the Carmelites. The bad women in the re¬
formatories are fine ladies to them. They wear old
47°
THE AMERICAN
brown cloaks — so the femme de chambre told me —■
that you would n'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're no better,
no better" — and she hesitated for a comparison —
"they're 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.
I hope it does her at least good!"
Newman's visitor, dwelling on these terrible facts,
sat dry-eyed and pale, her hands convulsive but con¬
fined to her satin lap. He gave a melancholy groan
and fell forward, burying his face and his pain. There
was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the
great gilded clock on the chimney-piece. "Where is
the accursed place—where is the convent ?" he asked
at last, looking up.
"There are two houses," said Mrs. Bread. "I
found out; I thought you'd like to know — though
it's cold comfort, I think. One's in the Avenue de
Messine; they've learned the Countess is there. The
other's in the Rue d'Enfer. That's a terrible name;
I suppose you know what it means."
He got up and walked away to the end of his long
room. When he came back Mrs. Bread had risen
and stood by the fire with folded hands. "Tell me
471
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this. 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 she had ever consciously likened her¬
self to a planet), barely availed to temper the mater¬
nal melancholy with which she leaned her head on
one side and gazed at her new employer. She prob¬
ably felt for the moment as if, forty years before, she
had held him also in her arms. "That would n't help
you, sir. It would only make her seem further away."
"I want to go there, at all events," he returned.
"The Avenue de Messine, you say ? And what is it
they call themselves ?"
"Carmelites — whatever it means!" said Mrs.
Bread.
"I shall remember that."
She hesitated a moment and then: "It's my duty
to tell you this — that the convent has a chapel and
that respectable persons are admitted on Sunday to
the mass. You don't see the poor creatures in their
prison or their tomb, but I'm 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 thanked her, while he held her hand, with
a stare through which he, for a good reason, failed to
see her. "If any one can get in I will." A moment
later she proposed deferentially to retire, but he
checked her, pressing on her grasp a lighted candle.
472
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"There are half a dozen rooms there I don't use;"
and he pointed 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 privilege
she at first recoiled; but finally, yielding to her friend's
almost fraternal pat of reassurance, 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 interest in her oppor¬
tunity apparently deepened as she proceeded; but at
last she reappeared and deposited her candlestick on
the chimney-piece.
"Well, have you picked one out ?"
"A room, sir ? They're all too fine for a dingy old
body like me. There is n't one that has n't a bit of
gilding."
"It's only some shocking sham, Mrs. Bread," he
answered. "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!" she said with a responsible head-shake.
"Since I was there I thought I'd 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 is n'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 round the
473
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salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated
that she accepted the mission and that its sacred
character would sustain her in her rupture with her
old dread mistress. On this she curtsied herself away.
She came back the next day with her worldly goods,
and her friend, going into his drawing-room, found
her on her aged knees before a divan, sewing up a
piece of 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."
"You must have been too lovely," Newman frankly
observed. " But does she knowyou've come to me ?"
"She asked me where I was going, and I men¬
tioned your name," Mrs. Bread returned.
"What did she say to that ?"
"She looked at me very hard, she turned very red.
Then she bade me leave her. I was all ready to go,
and I had got the coachman, who's an Englishman,
thank goodness, to bring down my poor boxes and
to fetch me a cab. But when I went down myself to
those terrible great gates I found them closed. My
lady had sent orders to the porter not to let me pass,
and by the same orders the porter's wife, a dreadful
sly old body, had gone out in a cab to fetch home
M. de Bellegarde from his club."
Newman's face lighted almost with the candour of
childhood. "She is scared! she is scared!"
"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but
I thank the powers I felt my temper rise. I took it
474
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very high with the porter, and asked him by what
right he used violence to an honourable Anglaise who
had lived in the house for thirty years before he was
heard of. Oh sir, I was very grand — 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 blest door.
I'm all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes, just
now, to thread my needle."
Newman told her, in munificent mirth, that if she
chose she might have a little maid on purpose to
thread her needles; and he went away nursing this
sketch of the scene in the Rue de l'Universite and
rejoicing in the belief that he had produced there
what he might call the impression of his life.
He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the document he
carried in his pocket-book, but since his return to
Paris he had seen her several times, and she had not
disguised from him that he struck her as 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 spoiling for
some sickness, yet she had never seen him more rest¬
less and active. Some days he would hang his head
and fold his brow and set his teeth, appear to wish to
give out that he should never smile again; on others
he would indulge in laughter that was almost rude
and make jokes that were bad even for him. If he
was trying to carry off" his humiliation he went at such
times really too far. She begged him of all things not
to be "strange." Feeling in a measure answerable
475
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for the adventure that had turned out so ill for him,
she could put up with anything but his strangeness.
He might be tragic if he would, or he might be ter¬
ribly touching and pierce her to the heart with silent
sorrow; he might be violent and summon her to say
why she had ever dared to meddle with his destiny:
to this she would submit — for this she would make
allowances. Only, if he loved her, let him not be
incoherent. That would quite break down her nerves.
It was like people talking in their sleep; they always
awfully frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram inti¬
mated that, taking very high ground as regards the
moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she
proposed not to rest quiet till she should have con¬
fronted him with the least inadequate substitute for
his loss that the two hemispheres contained.
"Ah," he replied to this, "I think we're square
now and we had better not open a new account! You
may bury me some day, but you shall of a certainty
never marry me. It's too rough, you see — it's
worse than a free fight in Arkansaw. I hope, at any
rate," he added, "that there's 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 clergymen — an abbe, is that it ? —
whom I've seen here with you, I think, on some
errand for his poor; 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'm so glad you've asked me to do something! You
476
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shall get into the chapel if the abbe is disfrocked for
his share in it."
And two days afterwards she told him it was all
arranged; the abbe was enchanted to serve him,
and if he would present himself civilly at the con¬
vent gate there would be no obstacle.
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
Cintre's present abode. The street in question, as
some travellers will remember, adjoins the Pare Mon-
ceau, which is one of the finest quarters of recon¬
structed Paris. It has an air of modern opulence
and convenience that sounds a false note for any
temple of sacrifice, and the impression made on his
gloomily-irritated gaze by the fresh-looking, window-
less 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 im¬
provements — an asylum in which privacy, though
unBroken, might be not quite identical with privation,
and meditation, though monotonous, might be suffi¬
ciently placid. And yet he knew the case was other;
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 some superannuated unreadable book,
with no context in his own experience.
On Sunday morning, at the hour 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, beyond which a dull, plain edifice
478
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met his view in the manner of some blank stiff party
to a formal introduction. 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 a high
flight of steps. Newman ascended the steps and
immediately entered the open door. Service had not
yet begun; the interior was dimly lighted and it was
some moments before he could distinguish features.
Then he saw the scene divided by a large close iron
screen into two unequal parts. 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 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. Mixed with this impression
was a twinkle of tapers and here and there a glow of
coloured glass. He seated himself; the praying
women kept still, kept 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 the person in
whom he was interested. 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 gentlemen important
and mature. Every one was very quiet, with a per¬
verse effect of studied submission. He fastened his
479
THE AMERICAN
eyes on 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. Behind it was
darkness, with no sign even of despair. 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 genuflexions and gyrations
with a grim, still enmity; they seemed prompters and
abettors of the wrong he had suffered; 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 — as if it had been meant
for his very own swindled self. Suddenly there arose
from the depths of the chapel, from behind the inex¬
orable grating, a sound that 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 he was bewildered,
almost stunned, by the monstrous manifestation;
then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened
intently and his heart began to throb. He listened for
Madame de Cintre'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, since
she had obviously not yet had time to become a mem-
480
THE AMERICAN
ber of the invisible sisterhood; the chant, at any rate,
kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal
repetitions and despairing cadences. It was hideous,
it was horrible; as it continued he felt he needed all
his self-control. He was growing more agitated, the
tears were hot in his eyes. At last, as in its full forced
the thought came over him that this confused, imper¬
sonal wail was all that he or the world she had de¬
serted were ever again to hear of the breath of those
lips of which his own held still the pressure, he knew
he could bear it no longer. He rose abruptly and
made his way out. On the threshold he paused, lis¬
tened again to the dreary strain, and then hastily
descended into the court. As he did so he saw that
the good sister with the high-coloured cheeks and the
fan-like frill to her head-dress, who had admitted
him, was in conference at the gate with two persons
who had just come in. A second glance showed him
that these visitors were Madame de Bellegarde and
her son, and that they were about to avail themselves
of that method of approach to their lost victim which
he had found but a mockery of consolation. As he
crossed the court the Marquis recognised him; he
was on the way to the steps and was supporting his
mother. From Madame de Bellegarde he also re¬
ceived a look, and it resembled that of Urbain. Both
faces expressed a less guarded perturbation, something
more akin to immediate dismay, than Newman had
yet seen in them. Evidently he was disconcerting,
and neither mother nor son had quite due presence
of mind. Newman hurried past them, guided only
by the desire to get out of the convent walls and into
481
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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 pavement. He
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 got into motion before he recognised
her; it was an ancient landau with one half the cover
lowered. The lady's bow was very expressive 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 drew up again and she sat there and
beckoned to Newman — beckoned with the demon¬
strative grace of the Marquise Urbain. Newman
hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons;
during this moment he had time to curse his stupid¬
ity 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 publicly to fall on them,
but now he felt ready to await them at the gate.
Madame Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance,
made a more emphatic sign, 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, you don't include me in your wrath ? I had
nothing to do with it."
"Oh, I don't suppose you could have prevented
482
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it!" he 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 seen a ghost," Newman darkly returned.
"I'm glad then I did n't go in with my belle-mere
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 would n't go in: one's certain to hear
that soon enough. Poor Claire — in a white shroud
and a big brown cloak! That's the full dress of the
Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of
long, loose things. But I must n't speak of her to
you; I must only say I'm very sorry for you, that if
I could have helped you I would, and that I think
every one has behaved infernally. 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, take it all in such good faith 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'll say that is n't
much! Yes; they've been abominable; I'm not a bit
afraid to say it; I assure you every one thinks so.
We're not all like that. I'm sorry I'm not going to
see you again; you know I think you very good com¬
pany. I'd prove it by asking you to get into the car¬
riage and drive with me for the quarter of an hour
that I shall wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we
were seen — considering what has passed, and every
483
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one knows you've been jone — 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've a plan for a little
amusement."
Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage
door, listening to this consolatory murmur with an un-
lighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame Urbain
was saying; he was only conscious she was chatter¬
ing 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're coming back
soon — your companions ? You 're hanging about for
them ?"
"They'll hear the office out; there's nothing to keep
them longer. Claire has refused to see them."
"I want to speak to them," Newman said; "and
you can help me, you can do me a favour. Delay
your return for five minutes and give me a chance at
them. I'll wait for them here."
The young woman clasped her hands in sharp
deprecation. "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'll 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 need n't be afraid; I shall not be
violent; I'm very quiet."
"Yes, you look very quiet! If they had le cceur
tendre you'd move them. But don't count on them
— you've had enough of that. However, I '11 do
484
THE AMERICAN
better for you than what you propose. The under¬
standing is not that I shall come back for them. I'm
going into the Pare Monceau to give my little girl
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're to wait for her in the park,
where my husband is to join us with her. Follow me
now; just within the gates I shall get out of my car¬
riage. Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and
I'll bring them near you. There's devotion for you!
Le reste vous regarded
This proposal Newman eagerly caught at; it
revived his drooping spirit and he reflected that
Madame Urbain was not quite the featherhead she
seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her,
and the carriage drove away.
The Pare Monceau is a very pretty piece of land-
scape-gardening, but Newman, passing into it;—kad
little care for Its elegant vegetation, which was full of
the freshness of spring. He found the young Mar¬
quise 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 to take a lesson in
deportment. Newman seated himself by his friend,
who began to chatter afresh, apparently with the
design of convincing him that — if he would only see
it — poor dear Claire did n't belong to the most
pleasing type of woman. She was too long, too lean,
too flat, too stiff, too cold; her mouth was too wide
and her nose too narrow. She had n't such a thing
as a dimple, or even as a pretty curve — or call it
485
THE AMERICAN
really an obtuse angle — anywhere. And then she
was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood; she was a furi¬
ous Anglaise after all. Newman was very impatient;
he was counting the minutes until his victims should
reappear. He sat silent, leaning upon his cane, look¬
ing absently and insensibly at Madame Urbain. At
last she 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 her
visitor.
"Do you remember the promise you made me
three weeks ago?" And then as Newman, vainly
consulting his memory, was obliged to confess that
this vow had escaped it, she mentioned 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 offence. "You pro¬
mised 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? 'Ah, par exemple,
now he won't go with me to Bullier's!' And I really
began to wonder if you had n't been expecting the
rupture."
"Oh, my dear lady—!" he merely murmured,
while he looked down the path to see if the others
were n't coming.
"I shall be good-natured," said his friend. "One
must n't ask too much of a gentleman who's in love
with a cloistered nun. Besides, I can't go to Bul-
486
THE AMERICAN
lier's while we're in mourning. But I have n'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'm to name any evening, and he'll come over
from Ireland on purpose. That's what I call really
feeling for a woman."
Shortly after this Madame Urbain 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 chapel had raked over the
glowing coals of his resentment. His accessory kept
him waiting, but she proved as good as her word.
Finally 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 New¬
man sat unmoved. Aching as he fairly did now with
his passion — the passion of his wrath at the impu¬
dence, on the part of such a pair, of an objection to
him in the name of clean hands — it was extremely
characteristic of him that he was able to moderate
his expression of it very much as he would have
turned down a flaring gas-jet. His native shrewd¬
ness, coolness, clearness, his lifelong submission to
the sense that words were acts and acts were steps
in life, and that in this matter of taking steps curvet¬
ing and prancing were exclusively reserved for quad¬
rupeds and foreigners — all this admonished him
that rightful wrath had no connexion with being
a fool and indulging in spectacular violence. So as
he rose, when the elder lady and her son were close
487
THE AMERICAN
to him, he only felt very tall and unencumbered and
alert. He had been sitting beside some shrubbery in
such a way as not to be noticeable at a distance; but
the Marquis, at hand, had quickly enough perceived
him. The couple were then for holding their course;
at sight of which Newman stepped so straight in
front of them that they were obliged to pause. He
lifted his hat slightly and looked at them hard; they
were pale with amazement and disgust.
"Pardon my stopping you," he dryly said; "but
I must profit by the occasion. I've ten words to say
to you. Will you listen to them ?"
The Marquis blinked, then turned to his mother.
"Can Mr. Newman possibly have anything to say
that is worth our listening to ?"
"I assure you I've something," Newman went on;
"besides, it's my duty to say it. It concerns you ever
so closely."
"Your duty?" said the Marquise, her small fine
mouth contracting in its odd way as for a whistle.
"That's 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 on his own words, with its plausible ex¬
travagance. "If Mr. Newman's going to make a
scene in public," she exclaimed, " I shall take my
poor child out of the melee. She's too young to
see such naughtiness!"—and she instantly resumed
her walk.
"You had much better listen to me," he persisted
with his difficult ease. "Whether you do or not your
488
THE AMERICAN
gain will be small; but at least perhaps you'll be pre¬
pared."
"If you mean prepared for your preposterous
threats," the Marquis replied, "there's nothing
grotesque from you, certainly, for which we're not
prepared, and of the idea of which you don't per¬
fectly know what we think."
"You think a great deal more than you yet admit.
A moment," Newman added in reply to a sharp
exclamation from Madame de Bellegarde. "I don't
at all forget that we're in a public place, and you see
I'm very quiet. I'm not going to tell your secret to
the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for cer¬
tain picked listeners. Any one who observes us will
think we're having a friendly chat and that I'm com¬
plimenting you, madam, on your venerable virtues."
The Marquis gave a hiss that fairly evoked for our
friend some" vision of a hunched back, Tn erect tail
ancTa pair of shining evil eyes. "I demand of you to
step out of our path!"
Newman instantly complied and his interlocutors
proceeded. But he was still beside them and was still
distinct. "Half an hour hence Madame de Belle-
garde will regret that she did n't learn exactly what
I mean."
The Marquise had taken a few steps, but at these
words she pulled up again, as if not to have the
appearance of not facing even monstrous possibil¬
ities — as monstrous, that is, as a monster of rude¬
ness might make them. "You're like a pedlar with
something trumpery to sell," she said; and she accom¬
panied it with a strange, small, cold laugh — a de-
489
THE AMERICAN
monstration so inconsequent that it meant nothing,
Newman quickly felt, if it did n't mean a "lovely"
nervousness.
"Oh no, not to sell; I give it to you for nothing."
And he had never in his life, no matter under what
occasion for it, spoken so completely and so grate¬
fully to the point as now. "You cruelly killed your
helpless husband, you know; and I'm in possession
of all the facts. That is you did your best, first, and
failed; and then succeeded — by which I mean fin¬
ished him — at a stroke and almost without trying."
The Marquise closed her eyes and gave a small
dry cough which, as a piece of dissimulation and of
self-possession, seemed to her adversary consummate.
"Dear mother," said Urbain as if she had been
moved to hilarity, "does this stuff amuse you so
much ?"
"The rest is more amusing," Newman went on.
"You had better not lose it."
The eyes she fixed on him might well have been,
he recognised, those with which, according to Mrs.
Bread, she had done her husband to death; and they
had somehow no connexion with the stifled shrillness
of her spoken retort. "Amusing? Have I killed some
one else ?"
"I don't count your daughter," said Newman,
"though of course I might. Your husband knew
what you were doing. I've a proof of it the existence
of which you've never suspected." And he turned to
the Marquis, whose face was beyond any he had ever
seen discomposed, decomposed — what did they call
it ? "A paper written by the hand, and signed with
49°
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the name of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written
and dated after you, madam, had left him for dead,
and while you, sir, had gone — not very fast — for
the doctor."
The Marquis turned to his mother; she moved
a little at random, averting herself and looking
vaguely round her. But her answer to his appeal
fell, after an instant, rather short. " I must sit down,"
she simply said, and went back to the bench on which
Newman had been posted.
"Couldn't you have spoken to me alone?" her
companion then asked, all remarkably, of their pur¬
suer, who wondered if it meant that there was sud¬
denly, quite amazingly, a basis for discussion.
"Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking
to your mother alone too," Newman answered.
"But I 've had to take you as I could get you, don't
you see ?"
Madame de Bellegarde, in a manner very eloquent
of what he would have called her "grit," her steel-
cold pluck and her instinctive appeal to her own
personal resources, seated herself on the bench with
her head erect and her hands folded in her lap. The
expression of her face was such that he fancied her at
first inconceivably smiling, but on his drawing nearer
felt this display to be strange and convulsive. He
saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agi¬
tation with all the rigour of her inflexible will, and
there was nothing like either fear or submission in the
fine front she presented. She had been upset, but
she could intensely think. He felt the pang of a con¬
viction that she would get the better of him still, and
491
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he would n't have been himself if he could wholly fail
to be touched by the sight of a woman (criminal or
other) in so tight a place. She gave a glance at her
son which seemed tantamount to an injunction to be
silent and leave her to her own devices. He stood
beside her with his hands behind him, quite making
up in attitude, as our observer noted, for what he
failed of in utterance. It was to remain really a
burden on Newman's mind to Th^end^Ttri^irritat-
ingTThis perpTexing 111 u^rat1on" Fe ^ of the
posrnve ^irrue' arid the incalculable force, even in the
unholy, of attuuHe""!^ such.'T "What paper is this
you speak oF?" the Marquise asked as if confessing
to an interest in any possible contribution to the
family archives.
"Exactly what I've told you. A paper written by
your husband after you had left him that evening,
for dead — written during the couple of hours before
you returned. You see he had the time; you
should n't have stayed away so long. It declares in
the most convincing way his wife's murderous in-
tent.
" I should like to see it," she observed as with the
most natural concern for a manifesto so compro¬
mising to the — already in his day, alas, so painfully
compromised — author of it.
"I thought you might," said Newman, "and I've
taken a copy." He drew from his waistcoat pocket
a small folded sheet.
"Give it to my son," she returned with decision;
on which Newman handed it to the Marquis while
she simply added "Look at the thing." M. de Belle-
492
THE AMERICAN
garde's eyes had a pale irrepressible eagerness; he
took the paper in his light-gloved fingers and opened
it. There was a silence during which he took it in.
He had more than time to read it, but still he said
nothing; he stood looking at it hard. "Where's the
original ?" his mother meantime asked in a voice of
the most disinterested curiosity.
"In a very safe place. Of course I can't show you
that" Newman went on — "a treasure the value
of which makes it sacred to me. You might want
to grab it," he added with conscious quaintness,
"and I've too much other use for it. But this
is a very correct copy — except of course the hand¬
writing: I'll get it properly certified for you if you
wish, That ought to suit you — its being properly
certified."
The Marquis at last raised a countenance deeply
and undisguisedly flushed. "It will require," he
nevertheless lightly remarked, "a vast deal of certi¬
fication!"
"Well," Newman returned, "we can always fall
back on the original."
"I'm speaking," said the Marquis, "of the orig¬
inal/'
"Ah, that, I think, will speak for itself. Still, we
can easily get as many persons as possible — as
many of those who knew the writer's hand — to
speak for it. Think of the number it will interest
— if I begin, myself, say, with the Duchess, that
amiable, very stout lady whose name I forget, but
who was pleasant to me at your party. She asked
me to come to see her, and I've been thinking that in
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that case I should n't have much to say to her. But
such a matter as this gives me plenty!"
"You had better, at this rate, keep what you have
there, my son," the old woman quavered with a
strained irony.
"By all means," Newman said — "keep it and
show it to your mother when you get home."
"And after enlisting the Duchess?" asked the
Marquis, who folded the paper and put it away.
"Well, there are all the other people you had the
cruelty to introduce me to in a character of which
you were capable, at the next turn, of rudely divest¬
ing me. Many of them immediately afterwards left
cards on me, so that I have their names correctly and
shall know how to find them."
For a moment, on this, neither of Newman's
friends spoke; the Marquise sat looking down very
hard, while her son's blanched pupils were fixed on
her face. "Is that all you have to say ?" she finally
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 vindication, you know, of my claim that
I've been cruelly wronged. You've treated me be¬
fore 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're not
quite the people to say it."
Madame de Bellegarde was silent again, and then,
with a return of her power to face him, she dealt with
his point. Her coolness continued to affect him as
consummate; he wondered of what alarms, what
494
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effronteries, what suspicions and what precautions
she had not had, from far back, to make her life.
" I need n't ask you who has been your accomplice
in this clumsy fraud. Catherine Bread told me you
had purchased her services."
"Don't accuse Mrs. Bread of venality," Newman
returned. "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. You've had the benefit of her merci¬
ful delay."
The Marquise appeared for an instant to hesitate,
and then, "My husband, for years, did what he —
most remarkably! — liked with her," she declared
dryly enough. "She was perhaps the meanest of his
many mistresses." This was the only concession to
self-defence that she condescended to make.
"I very much doubt that," said Newman. "I be¬
lieve in her decency."
Madame de Bellegarde got up from her bench.
"It was n't to your beliefs — however interesting in
themselves — I undertook to listen; so that, if you've
nothing left but them to tell me, this charming inter¬
view may terminate." And turning to the Marquis
she took his arm again. "My son," she then oddly
resumed, "say something!"
He looked down at her, passing his hand over his
forehead to the positive displacement of his hat; with
which, tenderly, caressingly, "What shall I say?" he
too uncertainly enquired.
"There's only one thing to say — that it was really
495
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not worth while, on such a showing, to have pulled
us up in the street like a pair of pickpockets."
But the Marquis thought he could surpass this.
"Your paper's of course the crudest of forgeries," he
said to Newman.
Newman shook his head all amusedly. "M. de
Bellegarde, 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 con¬
tinued. "It's a great pity you've made me your
enemy. I should have been one of your greatest
admirers."
" Mon pauvre ami" she proceeded to her son, 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, wander out of a by-path to meet
them. The Marquise stooped and kissed her grand¬
child. "Damn it, she is plucky!" he sighed; and he
walked home with a sense of having been almost
worsted. She was so quite heroically impenetrable.
But on reflexion he decided that what he had wit¬
nessed was no real sense of security, still less a real
innocence. It was only a very superior style of brazen
assurance, of what M. Nioche called Vusage du monde
and Mrs. Tristram called the grand manner. "Wait
till'she lias seen how Fe puts it!" 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 Belle-
496
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garde's card was brought him. "She has seen how
he puts it and she has passed a bad night," he
promptly inferred. 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 mo¬
ment to be abominably annoying. The ambassador,
at any rate, had also passed a bad night, and his
faultlessly careful array only threw into relief the sick
rancour of his eyes and those mottled spots on his fine
skin that resembled, to his host's imagination, the
hard finger-prints of fear. He stood there a moment,
breathing quickly and painfully and shaking his fore¬
finger curtly as Newman pointed to a chair.
"What I've come to say is soon said and can only
be said without ceremony."
"I'm good for as much or for as little as you
desire."
The Marquis looked round the room and then:
"On what terms will you part with what you call
your original ?"
"Ah, on none!" And while, with his head on one
side and his hands behind him, he sounded his
visitor's depth of detestation, Newman added: "Cer¬
tainly that's not worth sitting down about."
M. de Bellegarde went on, however, as without
having heard him. "My mother and I, last evening,
talked over your story. You'll be surprised to learn
that we think your little document is — a" — and he
held back his word a moment — "characteristic."
Newman laughed out as it came. " Of your mother
and you, you mean ?"
497
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"Of my deplorable father.
"You forget that with you I'm used to surprises!"
Newman gaily pursued.
"The very scantest consideration we owe his
memory," the Marquis continued, "makes us desire
he should n't be held up to the world as the author
of an elaborately malignant attack on the reputation
of a wife whose only fault was that she had been
submissive to repeated outrage."
"Oh, I see! It's for your father's sake!" And
Newman laughed the laugh in which he indulged
when he was, if not most amused, at any rate most
pleased — an intimate noiseless laugh with closed
lips.
But M. de Bellegarde's gravity held good. "There
are a few of his particular friends for whom the
knowledge of so unfortunate an inspiration would be
a real grief. Even say we firmly established by med¬
ical 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've not written to
either of the gentlemen present at the event."
He flattered himself he saw signs in his visitor's
discoloured mask that this information was extremely
pertinent. The Marquis remained, however, irreduc-
ibly argumentative. "For instance Madame d'Outre-
ville, of whom you spoke yesterday. I can imagine
nothing that would shock her more."
"Oh, I'm quite prepared to shock Madame d'Ou-
498
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treville. That's just what's the matter with me.
I regularly want to shock people."
M. de Bellegarde examined for a moment the fine
white stitching on one of his black gloves. Then
without looking up, "We don't offer you money," he
said. "That we suppose 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 flanks and
held his head a little higher. "What we offer you is
a chance — a chance 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," Newman
returned. "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-wonV work both ways. The second is that —
well, Tn a word, you're talking sad nonsense."
In the midst of his bitterness he had kept well
before his eyes, as I have noted, a certain ideal of
saying nothing rude, and he felt a quick scruple for
the too easy impatience of these words. But the Mar¬
quis took them more quietly than might have been
expected. Sublime ambassador that he was, he con¬
tinued the policy of ignoring what was disagreeable
in his adversary's replies. He gazed at the gilded
arabesques on the opposite wall and then trans¬
ferred his glance to his host as if he too had been
499
THE AMERICAN
a large grotesque in a vulgar system of chamber-
decoration. "I suppose you know that, as regards
yourself, a course so confessedly vindictive -— vindic¬
tive in respect to your discomfiture — won't do at all."
"How do you mean it won't do ?"
"Why, of course you utterly damn yourself. But
I suppose that's in your programme. You propose
to throw at us this horrible ordure that you've raked j
together, and you believe, you hope, that some of it
may stick. We know naturally 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're clean.
I've taken the awful thing up with my finger-tips."
M. de Ballegarde looked a moment into his hat.
"All our friends are quite with us. They would have
done exactly as we've 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. "My poor
perverse sister was extremely fond of her father. If
she knew of the existence of the few base words —
at once mad and base — of which you propose to
make this scandalous use, she would require of you,
proudly, for his sake, to give them up to her, and she
would destroy them on the spot."
"Very possibly," Newman rejoined. "But it's ex¬
actly what she won't know. I was in that hideous place
yesterday, and I know what she's doing. Lord of
500
THE AMERICAN
mercy! You can guess whether it made me feel for¬
giving!"
M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more
to suggest; but he continued to stand there, rigid and
elegant, as a man who had believed his mere per¬
sonal presence would have 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 idea, you see — though ingenious in its way
— does n't work. You offer too little."
" Propose something yourself," the Marquis at last
brought out.
"Give me back Madame de Cintre relieved of the
blight and free of the poison that are all of your
producing."
M. de Bellegarde threw up his head and his flush
darkly spread. "Never!"
"You can't!"
"We would n't if we could! In the sentiment
which led us to deprecate her marriage to you nothing
is changed."
"'Deprecate' is lovely!" cried Newman. "It was
hardly worth while to come here only to tell me that
you're not ashamed of yourselves. I should have come
to think of you perhaps as in your guilt-burdened
hearts almost pitifully miserable."
The Marquis slowly walked toward the door, and
Newman, following, opened it for him. "Your hawk¬
ing that tatter about will be, on your part, the vulgar-
est proceeding conceivable, and, as having admitted
you to our intimite, we shall proportionately wince
501
THE AMERICAN
for it. That we quite feel. But it won't otherwise
incommode us."
"Well," said Newman after reflexion, "I don't
know that I want to do anything worse than make
you regret your connexion with me. Only don't be
sure you know yet," he added, "how very much you
may regret it."
M. de Bellegarde stood a moment looking on the
ground, as if ransacking his brain to see what else he
could do to save his father's reputation. Then, with
a small cold sigh, he seemed to signify that he regret¬
fully surrendered the late Marquis to the penalty of
his turpitude. He gave a scant 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 for some
minutes he moved to and fro with his hands in his
pockets and a sound like the low hum of a jig pro¬
ceeding from the back of his mouth.
XXV
He called on the immense, the comical Duchess and
found her at home. An old gentleman with a high
nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking leave;
he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he re¬
tired, and our hero supposed him one of the high
personages with whom he had shaken hands at
Madame de Bellegarde's party. The Duchess, in her
armchair, from which she did n't 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 of flowers and books, getting launched with mar¬
vellous 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
had a large free flow on the part of the Duchess, who,
like many of her countrywomen, was a person of an
affirmative rather than an interrogative cast, who
uttered "good things" 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
5°3
THE AMERICAN
to her with a grievance, but he found himself in an
atmosphere in which apparently no cognisance was
taken of such matters; an atmosphere into which the
chill of discomfort had never penetrated and which
seemed exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale in¬
tellectual 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 some particu¬
larly "high" comedy, thoroughly well up in her part.
He noticed before long that she asked him no ques¬
tion about their common friends; she made no allu¬
sion 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 dis¬
coursed and compared the tender-tinted wools of her
tapestry as if the Bellegardes and their wickedness
were not of this world. "She's fighting shy!" he
said to himself; and, having drawn the inference, was
curious to see, further, how, if this were a policy, she
would carry it off. She did so in a masterly manner.
There was not a gleam of disguised consciousness in
the small, clear, demonstrative eyes which constituted
her nearest claim to personal loveliness; there was not
a symptom of apprehension he would trench on any
ground she proposed to avoid. "Upon my word, she
does it very well," he tacitly commented. "They all
hold together bravely, and, whether any one else can
trust them or not, they can certainly trust each other."
He fell at this juncture to admiring the Duchess for
her fine manners. He felt, most accurately, that she
5°4
THE AMERICAN
was not a grain less urbane than she would have been
if his marriage were still in prospect; but he was
aware also that she led him on no single inch further.
He had come, so reasoned this eminent lady —
heaven knew why he had come after what had hap¬
pened; 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,
he pondered these things more dispassionately than
might have been expected; he stretched his legs as
usual and even chuckled a little quite appreciatively
and noiselessly. And then as his hostess went on
relating a mot with which her mother had, in extreme
youth, snubbed the great Napoleon, it occurred to
him 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 rather than diplomacy. He
was on the point of saying something himself, to
make the chance 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 him rapidly: "I beg you to remain; I de¬
sire this visit to be short." He wondered, at this, if
they might n't then after all get round to the Belle-
gardes.
The Prince was a short stout man, with a head
disproportionately large. He had a dusky complexion
and bushy eyebrows, beneath which glowed a fixed
and somewhat defiant stare; he seemed to be chal¬
lenging you to hint that he might be hydrocephalic.
5°5
THE AMERICAN
The Duchess, judging from her charge to our own
friend, regarded him as a bore; but this was not
apparent from the unchecked abundance of her
speech. She caused it to frisk hither and yon as to
some old rococo music and then pull up on a mot
after the fashion in which a stage-dancer whirls, for
breath and with arms arranged, into ecstatic equi¬
librium; she characterised 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 mild sway
of the Holy Father) and, finally, took up the heart-
history of their friend cette pauvre Princesse, a lady
unknown to Newman, who had notoriously so much
heart. This record exposed itself to a considerable
control from the Prince, who was evidently not re¬
lated to the heroine in question otherwise than by
an intimate familiarity with her annals; and having
satisfied himself that Newman was in no laughing
mood, either with regard to the size of his head or the
authenticity of his facts, he entered into the contro¬
versy with an animation for which the Duchess, when
she set him down as a bore, could not have been pre¬
pared. The often so oddly-directed passions of their
friend led Newman's companions to a discussion of
the cote passionel of the Florentine nobility in general;
the Duchess had lately spent several weeks in the very
bosom of that body and gathered much information
on the subject. This was merged, in turn, in an ex¬
amination of the Italian heart per se. The Duchess,
who had arrived at highly original conclusions,
5°6
THE AMERICAN
thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that
she had ever encountered, related examples of its
Machiavellian power to calculate its perils and pro¬
fits, and at last declared that for her the race were
half arithmetic and half ice. The Prince became
flame and rhetoric to refute her, and his visit really
proved charming.
Newman was naturally out of the fray; he sat with
his head a little on one side, watching the interlocu¬
tors. 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 sud¬
den sense of the folly of his errand. What under the
sun had he after all to say to the Duchess ? Wherein
would it profit him to denounce the Bellegardes to
her for traitors and the Marquise into the bargain
for a murderess ? He seemed morally to have turned
a high somersault and to find things looking differently
in consequence. He felt, as by the effect of some
colder current of tlie air, Ki^ wilL stiEenJji_anqther
direction and~~tKeTmantle of his reserve draw closer.
Wh^flfTtne world had he been thinking of when
he fancfelJ Madame d'Outreville could help him and
that "it would conduce to his comfort to make her
think ill of the Bellegardes ? What did her opinion
of tKe Bellegardes matter to him ? It was only a shade
more important than the opinion the Bellegardes
entertained of herself. The Duchess help him, that
cold, stout, soft, artificial woman help him ? — she
5°7
THE AMERICAN
who in the last twenty minutes had built up between
them a wall of polite conversation in which she evi¬
dently flattered herself he would never find a gate ?
Had it come to this — that he was asking favours of
false gods 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 — was he to have brayed
like that animal whose ears are longest ? Whether or
no the Duchess would hear his story he would n't tell
it. Was he to sit there another half-hour for the sake
of exposing the Bellegardes ? The Bellegardes be
deeply damned! He got up abruptly and advanced
to shake hands with his hostess.
"You can't stay longer ?" she graciously asked.
"If you'll pardon me, no."
She hesitated, and then, "I had an idea you had
something particular to say to me," she returned.
Newman met her eyes; he felt a little dizzy; for the
moment he was conscious of the high — or at least
the higher — air in which he performed gymnastic
revolutions. The little Italian prince came to his help.
"Ah, madame, who has not that ?" he richly sighed.
"Don't teach Mr. Newman to say fadaises," said
the Duchess. "It's his merit that he doesn't know
how."
"Yes, I don't know how to say fadaises" Newman
admitted, "and I don't want to say anything un¬
pleasant."
"I'm sure you're very considerate," Madame
d'Outreville smiled; and she gave him a little nod for
all good-bye, with which he took his departure.
5°8
THE AMERICAN
Once in the street he stood for some time on the
pavement, wondering if after all he had not been most
an ass not to offer to the great lady's inhalation his
nosegay of strange flowers. And then he decided, he
quite had the sense of discovering, that he should
simply hate to talk of the Bellegardes with any one.
The thing he most wanted to do, it suddenly ap¬
peared, was to banish them from his mind and never
think of them again. Indecision had, however, not
hitherto been one of his weaknesses, and in this case
it was not of long duration. For three days he applied
all his thought to not thinking — thinking, that is,
of the Marquise and her son. He dined with Mrs.
Tristram and, on her mentioning their name, re¬
quested her almost austerely to desist. This gave
Tom Tristram a much-coveted opportunity to offer
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 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 flick of
the whip from me in her life, and I do think she wants
to be a bit touched up. Why did n't you listen to me?
You know I did n't believe in the thing. I thought it
at the best a high jump in which you might bruise
a shin. I don't profess to have been a tremendous
homme a femmes, as they say here, but I've instincts
about the sex that, hang it, I've honestly come by.
I've never mistrusted a woman in my life that she
5°9
THE AMERICAN
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 situa¬
tion 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 your grand cold Countess. You
may depend upon it she'd 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 was n't a man you could go and talk
things over with in an easy and natural 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'd have got much
out of him. And as for that daughter of a hundred
earls his mother, she struck one as an uncommonly
strong dose. They have a great expression here, you
know; they call any damned thing 'sympathetic' —
that is when it is n't it ought to be. Now Madame de
Bellegarde's about as sympathetic as that mustard-
pot. They're a d—d stony-faced, cold-blooded lot
anyway; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs. I felt
as if I were walking up and down the Armoury in the
Tower of London — every one cased in ancestral
steel, every one perched up in a panoply. My dear
boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting 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 be-
510
THE AMERICAN
cause they could get some one else's without working
so hard for it. It is n't worth finding out. It may be
it was not with your Countess, Lizzie's and yours,
that the idea of chucking you originated; very likely
the old woman put her up to it. I suspect she and
her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh ? You're
well out of it, at any rate, old man; make up your
mind to that. If I express myself strongly it's all
because I love you so much; and from that point of
view I may say I should as soon have thought of mak¬
ing up to that piece of pale peculiarity as I should
have thought of wooing the Obelisk in the Place de
la Concorde."
Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this
harangue with a lack-lustre eye; never yet hacL-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 he repairs the indiscretions of
a too zealous wife."
But even without the lash of his friend's loud
tongue Newman would have waked again into his
bitterest consciousness. He could keep it at bay only
when he could cease to miss what he had lost, and
each day, for the present, but added a ton of weight
to that quantity. In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him
to se faire, as she put it, une raison; she assured him
the sight of his countenance made her wretched.
"How can I help it ?" he demanded with a tremb¬
ling voice — "how can I help it when the sight of
511
THE AMERICAN
everything makes me so ? I feel exactly like a stunned
widower — and a widower who has not even the con¬
solation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife,
one 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'd have been happy ?"
He stared, then shook his head. "That's weak;
that won't do."
"Well," she persisted as with an idea, "I don't
believe it would have really done."
He gave a sound of irritation. "Say then it would
have damnably failed. Failure for failure I should
have preferred that one to this."
She took it in her musing way. "I should have
been curious to see; it would have been very strange."
"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to put
myself forward ?"
"A little," she still more boldly answered. New¬
man gave her the one angry look he had been des¬
tined ever to give her, turned away and took up his
hat. She watched him a moment and then said:
"That sounds very cruel, but it's less so than it
sounds. Curiosity has a share in almost everything
I do. I wanted very much to see, first, if such a union
could actually come through; second, what would
happen to it afterwards."
512
THE AMERICAN
"So you had n't faith," he said resentfully.
"Yes, I had faith —faith that it would take place,
and that you'd be happy. Otherwise I should have
been, among my speculations, a very heartless crea¬
ture. But," she continued, laying her hand on his
arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest
flight ever taken by a tolerably rich 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 misfor¬
tune sooner in absence from the objects that had
witnessed it. "I really feel," he concurred, "as if to
leave you, at least, would do me good — and cost me
very little effort. You're growing cynical; you shock
me and pain me."
"Very well," she said, good-naturedly or cynically,
as may appear most credible. "I shall certainly see
you again."
He was ready enough to get quite away; the bril¬
liant streets he had walked through in his happier
hours and which then seemed to wear a higher
brilliancy in honour of his happiness, were now in the
secret of his defeat and looked down on it in shining
mockery. Fie 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 Calais and deposit him there
for despatch to the shores of Britain. As he rolled
along he asked himself what had become of his re¬
venge, and he was able to think of it as provisionally
pigeonholed in a very safe place. It would keep till
called for.
5r3
THE AMERICAN
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 vaster and duskier
Babylon roused him somewhat from his apathy.
Anything that was enormous usually found favour
with him, and the multitudinous English energies
and industries stirred in his spirit a dull vivacity of
contemplation. It is on record that the weather, at
that moment, was of the finest insular 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 estab¬
lished confidential relations. He watched the deer in
Windsor Forest and admired the Thames from Rich¬
mond Hill; he ate whitebait and brown bread-and-
butter at Greenwich; he strolled in the grassy shadow
of the cathedral of Canterbury. He also visited the
Tower of London and Madame Tussaud's exhibi¬
tion. One day he thought he would go to Sheffield,
and then, thinking again, gave it up. Why the devil
should he go to Sheffield ? He had a feeling that the
514
THE AMERICAN
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 n't have given the smallest
sum for the privilege of talking over the details of the
most splendid business with the most original of
managers.
One afternoon he had walked into the Park and
was slowly threading his way through the human
maze which fringes the Drive. This stream was no
less dense, and Newman, as usual, marvelled at the
strange dowdy figures he saw taking the air in some
of the most shining conveyances. They reminded
him of what he had read of Eastern and Southern
countries, in which grotesque idols and fetiches were
sometimes drawn out of their temples and carried
abroad in golden chariots to be seen of the people.
He noted 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 dull, massive 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 the woman wrenched
from him: 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
toward him by the summer breeze, he heard a few
words uttered in the bright Parisian idiom his ears
had begun to forget. The voice in which the words
were spoken was a peculiar recall, and as he bent his
515
THE AMERICAN
eyes it lent an identity to the commonplace elegance
of the back view of a young lady walking in the same
direction as himself. Mademoiselle Nioche, seeking
her fortune, had apparently thought she might find
it faster in London, and another glance led him to
wonder if she might now have lighted on it. A gentle¬
man strolled beside her, lending an attentive ear to
her conversation and too beguiled to open his lips.
Newman caught no sound of him, but had the im¬
pression of English shoulders, an English "fit," an
English silence. Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting
attention: the ladies who passed her turned round as
with a sense of the Parisian finish. 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 on them. He stepped aside indeed with a
decision of movement that the occasion scarcely
demanded; for even this imperfect glimpse of Miss
Noemie had sharpened again his constant soreness.
She seemed an odious blot on 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 giving way to this flourishing
impudence. The fragrance of the girl's bravery quite
sickened him; he turned his head and tried to keep
his distance; but the pressure of the crowd held him
near her a minute longer, so that he heard what she
was saying.
"Ah, I'm sure he'll miss me," she murmured. "It
was very cruel of me to leave him; I'm afraid you'll
think I've very little heart. He might perfectly have
remained with us. I don't think he's very well,"
516
THE AMERICAN
she added; "it seemed to me to-day he was rather
down."
Newman wondered whom she was talking about,
but just then an opening among his neighbours
enabled him to turn away, and he said to himself that
she was probably paying a tribute to British propri¬
ety and feigning a tender solicitude about her parent.
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 further and then began to retrace his
steps, taking care not to accompany again those 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 our friend to take it without
looking at his neighbours. Newman sat there for
some time without heeding them; his attention was
lost in the rage of his renewed vision of the little
fatal fact of Noemie. But at the end of a quarter of
an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-
dog squatted on the path near his feet — a diminu¬
tive 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 Newman. To this person our hero trans¬
ferred his attention, and immediately found himself
Sl7
THE AMERICAN
the object of all that of his neighbour, who was star¬
ing up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes.
These eyes he instantly recognised; he had been sit¬
ting for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche.
He had vaguely felt himself in range of some feeble
fire. M. Nioche continued to stare; he appeared
afraid to move even to the extent of saving by flight
what might have been left of his honour.
"Good Lord!" said Newman; "are you here too ?"
And he looked at his neighbour'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 an eld less hoary than of yore. Over his arm was
suspended a lady's mantilla — a light and brilliant
tissue, fringed with white lace — which had appar¬
ently been committed to his keeping; and the little
dog's blue ribbon was wound tightly round his hand.
There was no hint of recognition in his face — nor of
anything save a feeble fascinated dread. Newman
looked at the pug and the lace mantilla and then 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 his ex-
patron that his eyes began faintly to water. " I did n't
expect," the latter wTent on, "to meet you so far from
— from the Cafe de la Patrie." He remained silent,
but decidedly Newman had touched the source of
tears. His neighbour sat staring and he added:
"What's the matter, M. Nioche? You used to talk,
talk very — what did you call it ? — very gentiment.
Don't you remember you even gave lessons in con¬
versation ?"
5i8
THE AMERICAN
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 would n't
notice me. I should have moved away, but I was
afraid that if I moved it would strike you. So I sat
very still."
"I suspect you've a bad conscience, sir," Newman
pronounced.
The old man put down the little dog and held it
carefully in his lap. Then he shook his head, his
eyes still watering and pleading. "No, Mr. Newman,
I've a good conscience," he weakly wailed.
"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!" his companion quavered. "Do you
call this improvement?" And he ruefully embraced
the treasures in his arms.
"Why, you're on your travels," Newman rejoined.
"A visit to London in the Season is certainly a sign
of prosperity."
M. Nioche, in answer to this superior dig, lifted
the puppy up to his face again, peering at his critic
from his small blank eye-holes. There was something
inane in the movement, and Newman hardly knew if
he were taking refuge in an affected failure of reason
or whether he had in fact paid for his base accommo-
519
THE AMERICAN
dation 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 pestilent daughter.
Newman was going to leave him abruptly when his
face gave out a peculiar convulsion. " Are you going
away?" he appealed.
"Do you want me to stay ?"
"I should have left you—from consideration. But
my dignity suffers at your leaving me—that way."
"Have you anything particular to say to me ?"
M. Nioche looked round to see no one was listen¬
ing, and then returned with mild portentousness: "Je
ne lui at pas trouve d'exci^ses."
Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man
seemed for the moment not to heed; he was gazing
away, absently, at some metaphysical image of his
implacability. " It does n't much matter whether you
have or not," said Newman. "There are other people
who never will, I assure you."
"What has she done?" M. Nioche vaguely en¬
quired, turning round again. "I don't know what
she does, you know."
"She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn't
matter what. She's a public nuisance; she ought to
be stopped."
M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it
on Newman's arm. "Stopped, yes," he concurred.
"That's it. Stopped short. She's running away —
she must be stopped." Then he paused and again
looked round him. "I mean to stop her," he went
on. "I'm only waiting for my chance."
520
THE AMERICAN
"I see," Newman dryly enough laughed. "She's
running away and you're running after her. You've
run a long distance."
But M. Nioche had a competent upward nod,
"Oh, I know what to do!"
He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of
them separated as if bj the impulse to make way for
an important personage. Presently, through the open¬
ing, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche, attended by
the gentleman Newman had lately observed. His
face being now presented to our hero, the latter re¬
cognised the irregular features and the hardly more
composed expression of Lord Deepmere. Noemie, 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¬
out agitation, "Tiens, how we keep meeting!" she
sweetly shrilled. 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 mur¬
mur over it: "To think of leaving him all alone, mon
h 'ichon—what a horrid false friend he must believe
me! He has been very unwell," she added, turning
and affecting to explain to Newman, a spark of infer¬
nal impudence, fine as a needle-point, lighted in each
charming eye. "I don't think the English climate
does for him."
"It seems to do wonderfully well for his mistress,"
Newman said.
521 .
THE AMERICAN
"Do you mean me ? I've never been better, thank
you," Miss Noemie declared. " But with milord,"
and she gave a shining shot 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 his fellow-candidate in that
recent remarkable competition by which each had so
signally failed to profit with an awkward nod and
a rapid ejaculation — an ejaculation to which New¬
man, who often found it hard to understand the
speech of English people, was able to attach no mean¬
ing. Then he stood there with his hand on his hip
and with a conscious grin, staring askance at the mis¬
tress of the invalid pug. Suddenly an idea seemed to
strike him and he caught at the light. "Oh, you
know her ?"
"Yes," said Newman, "I know her. I don't be¬
lieve you do."
"Oh dear, yes, I do!" — Lord Deepmere was sure
of that. "I knew her in Paris — by my late cousin
Bellegarde, you know. He knew her, poor fellow,
did n't he ? It was she, you know, who was at the
bottom of his affair. Awfully sad, wasn't it?" the
young man continued, talking off his embarrassment
as his simple nature permitted. "They got up some
story of its being for the Pope; of the other fellow
having said something against the Pope's morals.
They always do that, you know. They put it on the
522
THE AMERICAN
Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves.
But it was about her morals — she was the Pope!"
his lordship pursued, directing an eye illumined by
this pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who,
bending gracefully over her lap-dog, was apparently
absorbed in conversation with it. "I dare say you
think it rather odd that I should — a — keep up the
acquaintance," he resumed; "but she could n't help
it, you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth
cousin. I dare say you think it rather cheeky my
showing with her in this place; but you see she is n't
known yet and she's so remarkably, thoroughly
nice— !" With which his attesting glance returned
to the young lady.
Newman turned away; he was having too much of
her niceness. 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 decidedly never yet, as between him
and his late protector, been so apposite to place on
record that, for his vindication, he was only waiting
to strike. As Newman turned off he felt himself held,
and, seeing the old man, who had drawn so near,
had something particular to say, bent his head an
instant.
"You'll see it some day dans les feuilles."
Our hero broke away, for impatience of the whole
connexion, 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.
XXVI
In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle
of EnglishUfe on which I have touched, it might be
supposed that he passed a great many dull days.
But the dulness was as grateful as a warm, fra¬
grant bath, and his melancholy, which was settling to
a secondary stage, like a healing wound, had in it a
certain acrid, palatable sweetness. He had the com¬
pany of his thoughts and for the present wanted none
other. He had no desire to make acquaintances and
left untouched a couple of notes of introduction sent
him by Tom Tristram. He mused a great deal on
Madame de Cintre — sometimes with a dull despair
that might have seemed a near neighbour to detach¬
ment. He lived over again the happiest hours he had
known — that silver chain of numbered days in
which his afternoon visits, strained so sensibly to the
ideal end, had come to figure for him a flight of firm
marble steps where the ascent from one to the other
was a momentous and distinct occasion, giving a
nearer view of the chamber of confidence at the top,
a white tower that flushed more and more as with a
light of dawn. He had yet held in his cheated arms,
he felt, the full experience, and when he closed them
together round the void that Was all they now pos¬
sessed, he might have been some solitary spare ath¬
lete practising restlessly in the corridor of the circus.
He came back to reality indeed, after such reveries,
524
THE AMERICAN
with a shock somewhat muffled; he had begun to
know the need of accepting the absolute. At other
times, however, the truth was again an infamy and
the actual a lie, and he could only pace and rage
and remember till he was weary. Passion, in him, by
habit, nevertheless, burned clear rather than thick,
and in the clearness he saw things, even things not
gross and close — having never the excuse that any¬
thing could make him blind. Without quite knowing
it at first, he began to read a moral into his strange
adventure. He asked himself in his quieter hours
whether he perhaps\ had been more commercial than
was decent. We know that it was in reaction against
questions of the^ud^im(^ty"that lie lTad come out
to pick up for a while an intellectual, or otherwise
a critical, living in Europe; it may therefore be under-
sto63~that he was able to conceive of a votary of the
mere~greasy market smelling too strong for true good
company." He was willing to grant in a given case
that unpleasant effect, but he could n't bring it home
to himself that he had reeked. He believed there had
been as few reflexions of his smugness caught during
all those weeks in the high polish of surrounding
surfaces as there were monuments of his meanness
scattered about the world. No one had ever unpro-
vokedly suffered by him — ah, provokedly was an¬
other matter: he liked to remember that, and to
repeat it, and to defy himself to bring up a case.
' IfTnoreover there was any reason in the nature of
things why his connexion with business should have
cast a shadow on a connexion — even a connexion
broken — with a woman justly proud, he was willing
525
THE AMERICAN
to sponge it out of his life for ever. The thing seemed
a possibility; he could n't feel it doubtless as keenly
as some people, and it scarce struck him as 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 he stopped short before
a blank wall over which there sometimes played
strange shadows and confused signs. Was it a think¬
able plan, that of carrying nut his life as hewoiilTTi^vp^
directed~Kad Madame de Cintre been left to him ? —
t h at~o fTn a king it a religion to do nothing she would
have disliked ? In this certainly was no sacrifice; but
there was a pale, oblique ray of inspiration. It would be
lonely entertainment — a good deal like a man's talk¬
ing to himself in the mirror for want of better com¬
pany. Yet the idea yielded him several half-hours'
dumb exaltation as he sat, his hands in his pockets and
his legs outstretched, over the relics of an expensively
bad dinner, in the undying English twilight. If,
however, his financial imagination was dead he f*elt"
no~contempt for the surviving actualities begottfm
by it. He was glad he had been prosperous and had
been"a great operator rather than a small; 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
have inhaled too fondly the reek of the market, it
was yet a gain still to have time for experiments in
other air. Come then, what air should it now be ?
Ah, again and again, he could taste but one sweet-
526
THE AMERICAN
ness; that came back to him and back; and as this
happened, with a force which seemed physically to
express itself in a sudden upward choking, he would
lean forward, when the waiter had left the room, and,
resting his arms on the table, bury his troubled face.
He remained in England till midsummer and spent
a month in the country, wandering among cathedrals,
hanging about castles and ruins. Several times, tak¬
ing a walk from his inn across sweet field-paths and
through ample parks, he stopped by a well-worn stile,
looked across through the early evening at a grey
church tower, with its dusky nimbus of thick-circling
rooks, and remembered that such things might
have been part of the intimacy of his honeymoon.
He had never been so much alone nor indulged so
little in chance talk. The period of recreation ap¬
pointed by Mrs. Tristram had at last expired and he
asked himself what he should next do. She had
written to propose he should join her in the Pyre¬
nees, but he was not in the humour to return to
France. The simplest thing was to repair to Liver¬
pool and embark on the first American steamer. He
proceeded accordingly to that seaport and secured
his berth; and the night before sailing he sat in his
room at the hotel and stared down vacantly and
wearily at an open portmanteau. A number of papers
lay upon it, which he had been meaning to look over;
some of them might conveniently be destroyed. But
he at last shuffled them roughly together and pushed
them into a corner of the bag; they were business
papers and he was in no humour for sorting them.
Then he drew forth his pocket-book and took out
52 7
THE AMERICAN
a leaf of smaller size than those he had dismissed.
He did n't unfold it; he simply sat looking at the back
of it. If he had momentarily entertained the idea of
destroying it this possibility at least quickly dropped.
What the thing 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 hope, as intense as a pang, that the Belle-
gardes 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 safe scrap 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 while he sailed the summer
seas. He landed in New York and journeyed across
the continent to San Francisco, and nothing he ob¬
served 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 asked if he had changed his own inscrutably
answered," Suppose we change the subject." He told
his friends he had bjroughtHr?5mg^ite--Ilji£w ideas"
from Europe, and his conduct probably struck them
as an eloquent proof of failing invention. He took no
interest in discussing business and showed no desire
to go into anything whatever. He asked half a dozen
528
THE AMERICAN
questions which, like those of an eminent physician
enquiring for particular symptoms, proved he was
master of his subject; but he made no comments and
gave no directions. He not only puzzled all the promi¬
nent men, but 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 take hold and to
recover, as they said, his spring. But the ground was
inelastic an3 the issues deadj""do~wTTat he would He
somehow could n't believe in them. Sometimes he
began to fear there was something the matter with
him, that he had suffered, unwitting, some small
horrid cerebral lesion or nervous accident, and that
the end of his strong activities had come. This idea
for a while hung about him and haunted him. A
hopeless, helpless loafer, useful to no one and detest¬
able to himself — this was what the treachery of the
Bellegardes had made of him. In his anxious idle¬
ness he came back from San Francisco to New York,
where he sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel
and looked out through a huge wall of plate glass at
the unceasing stream of pretty girls who wore their
clothes as with the American accent and undulated
past with little parcels nursed against their neat
figures. At the end of three days he returned to San
Francisco and, having arrived there, wished he had
stayed away. He had nothing to do, his occupation
had gone, had simply strayed and lost itself in the
great desert of life. He had nothing to do here, he
sometimes said to himself; but there was something
beyond the ocean he was still to do; something he
had left undone experimentally and speculatively, to
529
THE AMERICAN
see if it could content itself to remain undone. Well,
clearly, it could n't content itself; it kept pulling at
his heartstrings and thumping at his reason; it mur¬
mured in his ears and hovered perpetually before
his eyes. It interposed between all new resolutions
and their fulfilment; it was a stubborn ghost dumbly
entreating to be laid. On the doing of that all other
doing depended.
One day toward the end of the winter, after a long
interval, he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who
appeared to have been moved 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 theatres and enclosed a note from her hus¬
band, 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
Abbe Aubert that Claire de Cintre last week re¬
ceived the veil at the Carmelites. It was on her
twenty-ninth birthday, and she took the name of
her patroness, Saint Veronica. Soeur Veronique has
a lifetime before her!"
This letter reached him 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 he had no company but the thought of the
new Sister's "lifetime" — every one's sister but his!
— passed within walls on whose outer side only he
might stand. Well, for that station he would live, if
it was to be spoken of as life; he would fix himself in
53°
THE AMERICAN
Paris; he would wring a hard happiness from the
knowledge that if she was not there at least the stony
sepulchre that held her was. He descended, unan¬
nounced, on Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping
lonely watch in his great empty saloons on the Boule¬
vard Haussmann. They were as neat as a Dutch
village; Mrs. Bread's only occupation had been re¬
moving individual dust-particles. She made no com¬
plaint, however, of her solitude, for in her philosophy
a servant was but a machine constructed for the bene¬
fit of some supreme patentee, and it would be as fan¬
tastic for a housekeeper to comment on a gentleman's
absences as for a clock to remark on not being wound
up. No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, kept
all the time, and no particular servant could enjoy all
the sunshine diffused by the career of a universal
master. She ventured nevertheless to express a
modest hope that Newman meant to remain a while
in Paris. He laid his hand on hers and shook it
gently. "I mean to remain for ever."
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've come back too soon."
He sat down and asked about her husband and her
children, enquired even for news of Miss Dora Finch.
In the midst of this, "Do you know where she is ?"
he abruptly demanded.
Mrs. Tristram hesitated; of course he could n't
mean Miss Dora Finch. Then she answered pro¬
perly: "She has gone to the other house—in the Rue
d'Enfer." But after he had gloomed a little longer
531
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she went on: " You 're not so good a man as I thought.
You're more — you're more —"
"More what ?"
"More unreconciled."
"Good God!" he cried; "do you expect~me tqfor-
give t
can't. But you might magnificently forget. You've
a worse temper about it than I should have expected.
You look wicked — you look dangerous."
"I may be dangerous," he said; "but I'm not
wicked. No, I'm not wicked." And he got up to go.
She asked him to come back to dinner, but he an¬
swered that he could n't face a convivial occasion,
even as a solitary guest. Later in the evening, if he
should be able, he would look in.
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 grey and humid. He found himself in
a part of Paris that he little knew — a region of con¬
vents and prisons, of streets bordered by long dead
walls and traversed by few frequenters. At the inter¬
section of two of these streets stood the house of the
Carmelites — a dull, plain edifice with a blank, high-
shouldered defence all round. From without he 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, discoloured wall stretched beneath it far down
the empty side-street — a vista without a human
figure. He stood there a long time; there were no
532
THE AMERICAN
passers; he was free to gaze his fill. This seemed the
goal of his journey; it was all he had come for. It was
a strange satisfaction too, and yet it was a satisfac¬
tion; the barren stillness of the place represented
somehow his own release from ineffectual desire. It
told him the woman within was lost beyond recall,
and that the days ancl years of the future would pile
themselves above her like the huge immoveable slab
of a tomb. These days and years, on this spot,
would always be just so grey 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 a sacrifice as sterile aslier~own.
He "turned away with a heavy heart, yet more dis¬
burdened than he had come.
Everything was over and he too at last could rest.
He walked back through narrow, winding streets to
the edge of the Seine and there he saw, close above
him, high and mild and grey, the twin towers of
Notre Dame. He crossed one of the bridges and
paused in the voided space that makes the great
front clear; 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 into
space, at long intervals, the big bronze syllables of
the Word. He was very tired, but such a place was
a kingdom of rest. 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 church
offers a very various hospitality, and he kept his
533
THE AMERICAN
place because while he was there he was out of the
world. The most unpleasant thing that had ever
happened to Tiim"h"a3"reached"tFs fonrrat'Tonchrsion;
h<r~ftad learnt his lesson that he-the
leasTunBcrstood it — and could put away the book.
He leaned his head for a long time on the chair in
front of him; when he took it up he felt he was him¬
self again. Somewhere in his soul a tight constric¬
tion had 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..and yet partly inrred-
ulous, at his having meant to do it: the bottom sud¬
denly had fallen outof his revenue. WKethjer it w'as
Christian"charity or mere human weakness of will —
what it was, in the background of his spirit — 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 he did n't want
to hurt them. He was ashamed of having wanted to
hurt them. He quite failed, of a sudden, to recognise
the fact of his having cultivated any such link with
them. It was a link for themselves perhaps, their
having so hurt him; but that side of it was now not
his affair. At last he got up and came out of the
darkening church; not with the elastic step of a man
who has won a victory or taken a resolve — rather to
the quiet measure of a discreet escape, of a retreat
with appearances preserved.
Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must
trouble her to put back his things into the port-
534
THE AMERICAN
manteau she had unpacked the evening before. It
was therefore as if she. had looked at him on tiiis,
through bedimmed eyes, with the consciousness of
a value, so far as she could see, quite extravagantly
wasted. "Dear me, sir, I thought you said you were
going to stay for ever."
"Well, I guess I omitted a word. I meant I'm
going to stay away for ever," he was obliged a little
awkwardly to explain. And since his departure from
Paris on the following day he has certainly not re¬
turned. The gilded apartments I have so often
spoken of stand ready to receive him, but they serve
only as a spacious setting for Mrs. Bread's solitary
straightness, which wanders eternally from room to
room, adjusting the tassels of the curtains, and keeps
its wages, which are regularly brought in by a
banker's clerk, in a great pink Sevres vase on the
drawing-room mantel-shelf.
Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tris¬
tram's and found the more jovial member of the pair
by the domestic fireside. "I'm glad to see you back
in Paris," this gentleman declared, "for, 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 repaired in five minutes, with
a free tongue, the too visible and too innocent de¬
ficiencies in Newman's acquaintance with current
history. Then, having caused him to gape with
strange information — all as to what had been going
on in " notre monde a nous, you know" — Tristram
got up to go and renew his budget at the club.
To this Newman replied that Mrs. Tristram was
535
THE AMERICAN
his club and that he had never wanted a better: a
statement he felt the truth of when he was presently
alone with her and even -— or perhaps all the more
— when she asked him what he had done on leaving
her in the afternoon. "Well," he then replied, "I
worked it off."
"Worked off the afternoon ?"
"Yes, and a lot of other troublesome stuff."
"You struck me," she confessed, "as a man filled
with some rather uncanny idea. I wondered if I were
right to leave you so the prey of it, and whether I
ought n't to have had you followed and watched."
This appeared to strike him with surprise. " Surely
I did n't look as if I wanted to take life."
"I might have feared, if I had let myself go a little,
that you were thinking of taking your own."
He breathed a long sigh of such apparent indiffer¬
ence to his own as would have ruled that out.
"Well," he none the less after a moment went on,
"I have got rid of about nine tenths of something
that had become the biggest part of me. But I did
that only by walking over to the Rue d'Enfer."
"You've been then," she stared, "at the Carmel¬
ites ?" And as he only met her eyes: "Trying to
scale the wall?"
"Well, I thought of that — I measured the wall.
I looked at it a long time. But it's too high — it's
beyond me."
"That's right," she said. "Give it up."
"I have given it up. But on the spot there I took
it all in."
She rested now her kindest eyes on him. "On the
536
THE AMERICAN
spot then you did n't happen to meet M. de Belle-
garde— also taking it all in? I'm told his sister's
course does n't suit him the least little bit."
Newman had a moment's gravity of silence. "No,
luckily — I did n't meet either of them. In that case
I might have fired."
"Ah, it is n't that they've not been keeping quiet,"
she said; "I mean in the country, at — what's the
name of the place ? — Fleurieres. They returned
there at the time you left Paris, and have been spend¬
ing the year far from human eye. The little Marquise
must enjoy it; I expect to hear she has eloped with her
daughter's music-master!"
Newman had gazed at the light wood-fire, and he
listened to this with an apparent admission of its
relevance; but he spoke in another sense. "I mean
never to mention the name of those people again and
I don't want to hear anything more about them."
Then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth
a scrap of paper. He looked at it an instant, after
which he got up and stood by the fire. "I'm going
to burn them up. I'm 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 sus¬
pended. "What in the world is that ?"
Leaning against the chimney-piece he seemed to
grasp its ledge with force and to draw his breath
awhile in pain. But presently he said: "I can tell
you now. It was a proof of a great infamy on the part
of the Bellegardes — something that would damn
them if ever known."
537
THE AMERICAN
She dropped her work with a reproachful moan.
"Ah, why did n't you show it to me ?"
" I thought of showing it to you — I thought of
showing it to every one. I thought of paying my debt
to them that way. So I told them, and I guess I made
them squirm. If they've been lying low it's because
they have n't known what may happen. But, as I say,
I've given up my idea."
Mrs. Tristram began to take slow stitches again.
"Wholly renounced it?"
"Wholly renounced it."
"But your 'proof,'" she went on after a moment,
"what was it a proof of?"
"Oh, of an abomination not otherwise known."
"An abomination ?"
"An abomination."
She hesitated but briefly. "Something too bad to
tell me?"
He considered. "Yes, not good enough now."
"Well," she said, "I'm sorry to have lost it. Your
document," she smiled, "did n't look like much, but
I should have liked immensely to see it. They've
wronged me too, you know, as your sponsor and
guarantee, and it would have served my revenge as
well! How did you come," she then asked, "into
possession of your knowledge ?"
"It's a long story. But honestly at any rate."
"And they knew you were master of it ?"
"Oh, but rather!"
"Dear me, how interesting!" cried Mrs. Tristram.
"And you humbled them at your feet ?"
Newman was silent a little. "No, not at all. They
538
THE AMERICAN
pretended not to care — not to be afraid. But I know
they did care — they were afraid."
"Are you very sure ?"
He looked at her hard. "Why, they fairly turned
blue."
She resumed her slow stitches. "They defied you,
eh?"
"They took the only tone they could. But I did n't
think they took it very well."
"You tried by the threat of exposure to make them
come round ?" Mrs. Tristram pursued.
"Yes, but they would n't. I gave them their choice,
and they chose to take their chance of bluffing off the
charge and convicting me of fraud, that is of having
procured and paid for a forgery. Forgery was of
course their easy word — but words did n't, and
don't, matter. They're as sick as a pair of poisoned
cats — and I don't want any more 'revenge.'"
"It's most provoking," she returned, "to hear you
talk of the 'charge' when the charge is burned up.
Is it quite consumed ?" she asked, glancing at the
fire. He assured her there was nothing left of it, and
at this, dropping her embroidery, she got up and
came near him. "I need n't tell you at this hour how
I've felt for you. But I like you as you are," she
said.
"As I am — ?"
"As you are." She stood before him and put out
her hand as for his own, which he a little blankly let
her take. "Just exactly as you are," she repeated.
With which, bending her head, she raised his hand
and very tenderly and beautifully kissed it. Then,
539
THE AMERICAN
"Ah, poor Claire!" she sighed as she went back to
her place. It drew from him, while his flushed f;.ce
followed her, a strange inarticulate sound, and this
made her but say again: "Yes, a thousand times —
poor, poor Claire!"
THE END
-""YALE
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