At this moment the old gentleman who had been talking to the elder Madame de Bellegarde drew near, leading the marquise on his arm. His wife pointed out Newman to him, apparently explaining his remarkable origin. M. de la Rochefidèle, whose old age was rosy and rotund, spoke very neatly and clearly, almost as prettily, Newman thought, as M. Nioche. When he had been enlightened, he turned to Newman with an inimitable elderly grace.
“Monsieur is by no means the first American that I have seen,” he said. “Almost the first person I ever saw—to notice him—was an American.”
“Ah?” said Newman, sympathetically.
“The great Dr. Franklin,” said M. de la Rochefidèle. “Of course I was very young. He was received very well in our monde.”
“Not better than Mr. Newman,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I beg he will offer his arm into the other room. I could have offered no higher privilege to Dr. Franklin.”
Newman, complying with Madame de Bellegarde’s request, perceived that her two sons had returned to the drawing-room. He scanned their faces an instant for traces of the scene that had followed his separation from them, but the marquis seemed neither more nor less frigidly grand than usual, and Valentin was kissing ladies’ hands with at least his habitual air of self-abandonment to the act. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her eldest son, and by the time she had crossed the threshold of her boudoir he was at her side. The room was now empty and offered a sufficient degree of privacy. The old lady disengaged herself from Newman’s arm and rested her hand on the arm of the marquis; and in this position she stood a moment, holding her head high and biting her small under-lip. I am afraid the picture was lost upon Newman, but Madame de Bellegarde was, in fact, at this moment a striking image of the dignity which—even in the case of a little time-shrunken old lady—may reside in the habit of unquestioned authority and the absoluteness of a social theory favorable to yourself.
“My son has spoken to you as I desired,” she said, “and you understand that we shall not interfere. The rest will lie with yourself.”
“M. de Bellegarde told me several things I didn’t understand,” said Newman, “but I made out that. You will leave me open field. I am much obliged.”
“I wish to add a word that my son probably did not feel at liberty to say,” the marquise rejoined. “I must say it for my own peace of mind. We are stretching a point; we are doing you a great favor.”
“Oh, your son said it very well; didn’t you?” said Newman.
“Not so well as my mother,” declared the marquis.
“I can only repeat—I am much obliged.”
“It is proper I should tell you,” Madame de Bellegarde went on, “that I am very proud, and that I hold my head very high. I may be wrong, but I am too old to change. At least I know it, and I don’t pretend to anything else. Don’t flatter yourself that my daughter is not proud. She is proud in her own way—a somewhat different way from mine. You will have to make your terms with that. Even Valentin is proud, if you touch the right spot—or the wrong one. Urbain is proud; that you see for yourself. Sometimes I think he is a little too proud; but I wouldn’t change him. He is the best of my children; he cleaves to his old mother. But I have said enough to show you that we are all proud together. It is well that you should know the sort of people you have come among.”
“Well,” said Newman, “I can only say, in return, that I am not proud; I shan’t mind you! But you speak as if you intended to be very disagreeable.”
“I shall not enjoy having my daughter marry you, and I shall not pretend to enjoy it. If you don’t mind that, so much the better.”
“If you stick to your own side of the contract we shall not quarrel; that is all I ask of you,” said Newman. “Keep your hands off, and give me an open field. I am very much in earnest, and there is not the slightest danger of my getting discouraged or backing out. You will have me constantly before your eyes; if you don’t like it, I am sorry for you. I will do for your daughter, if she will accept me, everything that a man can do for a woman. I am happy to tell you that, as a promise—a pledge. I consider that on your side you make me an equal pledge. You will not back out, eh?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘backing out,’” said the marquise. “It suggests a movement of which I think no Bellegarde has ever been guilty.”
“Our word is our word,” said Urbain. “We have given it.”
“Well, now,” said Newman, “I am very glad you are so proud. It makes me believe that you will keep it.”
The marquise was silent a moment, and then, suddenly, “I shall always be polite to you, Mr. Newman,” she declared, “but, decidedly, I shall never like you.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Newman, laughing.
“I am so sure that I will ask you to take me back to my armchair without the least fear of having my sentiments modified by the service you render me.” And Madame de Bellegarde took his arm, and returned to the salon and to her customary place.
M. de la Rochefidèle and his wife were preparing to take their leave, and Madame de Cintré’s interview with the mumbling old lady was at an end. She stood looking about her, asking herself, apparently to whom she should next speak, when Newman came up to her.
“Your mother has given me leave—very solemnly—to come here often,” he said. “I mean to come often.”
“I shall be glad to see you,” she answered simply. And then, in a moment: “You probably think it very strange that there should be such a solemnity—as you say—about your coming.”
“Well, yes; I do, rather.”
“Do you remember what my brother Valentin said, the first time you came to see me—that we were a strange, strange family?”
“It was not the first time I came, but the second,” said Newman.
“Very true. Valentin annoyed me at the time, but now I know you better, I may tell you he was right. If you come often, you will see!” and Madame de Cintré turned away.
Newman watched her a while, talking with other people, and then he took his leave. He shook hands last with Valentin de Bellegarde, who came out with him to the top of the staircase. “Well, you have got your permit,” said Valentin. “I hope you liked the process.”
“I like your sister, more than ever. But don’t worry your brother any more for my sake,” Newman added. “I don’t mind him. I am afraid he came down on you in the smoking-room, after I went out.”
“When my brother comes down on me,” said Valentin, “he falls hard. I have a peculiar way of receiving him. I must say,” he continued, “that they came up to the mark much sooner than I expected. I don’t understand it, they must have had to turn the screw pretty tight. It’s a tribute to your millions.”
“Well, it’s the most precious one they have ever received,” said Newman.
He was turning away when Valentin stopped him, looking at him with a brilliant, softly-cynical glance. “I should like to know whether, within a few days, you have seen your venerable friend M. Nioche.”
“He was yesterday at my rooms,” Newman answered.
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing particular.”
“You didn’t see the muzzle of a pistol sticking out of his pocket?”
“What are you driving at?” Newman demanded. “I thought he seemed rather cheerful for him.”
Valentin broke into a laugh. “I am delighted to hear it! I win my bet. Mademoiselle Noémie has thrown her cap over the mill, as we say. She has left the paternal domicile. She is launched! And M. Nioche is rather cheerful—for him! Don’t brandish your tomahawk at that rate; I have not seen her nor communicated with her since that day at the Louvre. Andromeda has found another Perseus than I. My information is exact; on such matters it always is. I suppose that now you will raise your protest.”
“My protest be hanged!” murmured Newman, disgustedly.
But his tone found no echo in that in which Valentin, with his hand on the door, to return to his mother’s apartment, exclaimed, “But I shall see her now! She is very remarkable—she is very remarkable!”
CHAPTER XIII
Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to the Rue de l’Université, and during the next six weeks he saw Madame de Cintré more times than he could have numbered. He flattered himself that he was not in love, but his biographer may be supposed to know better. He claimed, at least, none of the exemptions and emoluments of the romantic passion. Love, he believed, made a fool of a man, and his present emotion was not folly but wisdom; wisdom sound, serene, well-directed. What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness, which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who lived in a large gray house on the left bank of the Seine. This tenderness turned very often into a positive heartache; a sign in which, certainly, Newman ought to have read the appellation which science has conferred upon his sentiment. When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether the weight be of gold or of lead; when, at any rate, happiness passes into that place in which it becomes identical with pain, a man may admit that the reign of wisdom is temporarily suspended. Newman wished Madame de Cintré so well that nothing he could think of doing for her in the future rose to the high standard which his present mood had set itself. She seemed to him so felicitous a product of nature and circumstance that his invention, musing on future combinations, was constantly catching its breath with the fear of stumbling into some brutal compression or mutilation of her beautiful personal harmony. This is what I mean by Newman’s tenderness: Madame de Cintré pleased him so, exactly as she was, that his desire to interpose between her and the troubles of life had the quality of a young mother’s eagerness to protect the sleep of her first-born child. Newman was simply charmed, and he handled his charm as if it were a music-box which would stop if one shook it. There can be no better proof of the hankering epicure that is hidden in every man’s temperament, waiting for a signal from some divine confederate that he may safely peep out. Newman at last was enjoying, purely, freely, deeply. Certain of Madame de Cintré’s personal qualities—the luminous sweetness of her eyes, the delicate mobility of her face, the deep liquidity of her voice—filled all his consciousness. A rose-crowned Greek of old, gazing at a marble goddess with his whole bright intellect resting satisfied in the act, could not have been a more complete embodiment of the wisdom that loses itself in the enjoyment of quiet harmonies.
He made no violent love to her—no sentimental speeches. He never trespassed on what she had made him understand was for the present forbidden ground. But he had, nevertheless, a comfortable sense that she knew better from day to day how much he admired her. Though in general he was no great talker, he talked much, and he succeeded perfectly in making her say many things. He was not afraid of boring her, either by his discourse or by his silence; and whether or no he did occasionally bore her, it is probable that on the whole she liked him only the better for his absence of embarrassed scruples. Her visitors, coming in often while Newman sat there, found a tall, lean, silent man in a half-lounging attitude, who laughed out sometimes when no one had meant to be droll, and remained grave in the presence of calculated witticisms, for appreciation of which he had apparently not the proper culture.
It must be confessed that the number of subjects upon which Newman had no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly without words. He had little of the small change of conversation, and his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest. On the other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his estimate of the importance of a topic did not depend upon the number of clever things he could say about it. He himself was almost never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure. What it was that entertained him during some of his speechless sessions I must, however, confess myself unable to determine. We know in a general way that a great many things which were old stories to a great many people had the charm of novelty to him, but a complete list of his new impressions would probably contain a number of surprises for us. He told Madame de Cintré a hundred long stories; he explained to her, in talking of the United States, the working of various local institutions and mercantile customs. Judging by the sequel she was interested, but one would not have been sure of it beforehand. As regards her own talk, Newman was very sure himself that she herself enjoyed it: this was as a sort of amendment to the portrait that Mrs. Tristram had drawn of her. He discovered that she had naturally an abundance of gaiety. He had been right at first in saying she was shy; her shyness, in a woman whose circumstances and tranquil beauty afforded every facility for well-mannered hardihood, was only a charm the more. For Newman it had lasted some time, and even when it went it left something behind it which for a while performed the same office. Was this the tearful secret of which Mrs. Tristram had had a glimpse, and of which, as of her friend’s reserve, her high-breeding, and her profundity, she had given a sketch of which the outlines were, perhaps, rather too heavy? Newman supposed so, but he found himself wondering less every day what Madame de Cintré’s secrets might be, and more convinced that secrets were, in themselves, hateful things to her. She was a woman for the light, not for the shade; and her natural line was not picturesque reserve and mysterious melancholy, but frank, joyous, brilliant action, with just so much meditation as was necessary, and not a grain more. To this, apparently, he had succeeded in bringing her back. He felt, himself, that he was an antidote to oppressive secrets; what he offered her was, in fact, above all things a vast, sunny immunity from the need of having any.
He often passed his evenings, when Madame de Cintré had so appointed it, at the chilly fireside of Madame de Bellegarde, contenting himself with looking across the room, through narrowed eyelids, at his mistress, who always made a point, before her family, of talking to someone else. Madame de Bellegarde sat by the fire conversing neatly and coldly with whomsoever approached her, and glancing round the room with her slowly-restless eye, the effect of which, when it lighted upon him, was to Newman’s sense identical with that of a sudden spurt of damp air. When he shook hands with her he always asked her with a laugh whether she could “stand him” another evening, and she replied, without a laugh, that thank God she had always been able to do her duty. Newman, talking once of the marquise to Mrs. Tristram, said that after all it was very easy to get on with her; it always was easy to get on with out-and-out rascals.
“And is it by that elegant term,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you designate the Marquise de Bellegarde?”
“Well,” said Newman, “she is wicked, she is an old sinner.”
“What is her crime?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
“I shouldn’t wonder if she had murdered someone—all from a sense of duty, of course.”
“How can you be so dreadful?” sighed Mrs. Tristram.
“I am not dreadful. I am speaking of her favorably.”
“Pray what will you say when you want to be severe?”
“I shall keep my severity for someone else—for the marquis. There’s a man I can’t swallow, mix the drink as I will.”
“And what has he done?”
“I can’t quite make out; it is something dreadfully bad, something mean and underhand, and not redeemed by audacity, as his mother’s misdemeanors may have been. If he has never committed murder, he has at least turned his back and looked the other way while someone else was committing it.”
In spite of this invidious hypothesis, which must be taken for nothing more than an example of the capricious play of “American humor,” Newman did his best to maintain an easy and friendly style of communication with M. de Bellegarde. So long as he was in personal contact with people he disliked extremely to have anything to forgive them, and he was capable of a good deal of unsuspected imaginative effort (for the sake of his own personal comfort) to assume for the time that they were good fellows. He did his best to treat the marquis as one; he believed honestly, moreover, that he could not, in reason, be such a confounded fool as he seemed. Newman’s familiarity was never importunate; his sense of human equality was not an aggressive taste or an æsthetic theory, but something as natural and organic as a physical appetite which had never been put on a scanty allowance and consequently was innocent of ungraceful eagerness. His tranquil unsuspectingness of the relativity of his own place in the social scale was probably irritating to M. de Bellegarde, who saw himself reflected in the mind of his potential brother-in-law in a crude and colorless form, unpleasantly dissimilar to the impressive image projected upon his own intellectual mirror. He never forgot himself for an instant, and replied to what he must have considered Newman’s “advances” with mechanical politeness. Newman, who was constantly forgetting himself, and indulging in an unlimited amount of irresponsible inquiry and conjecture, now and then found himself confronted by the conscious, ironical smile of his host. What the deuce M. de Bellegarde was smiling at he was at a loss to divine. M. de Bellegarde’s smile may be supposed to have been, for himself, a compromise between a great many emotions. So long as he smiled he was polite, and it was proper he should be polite. A smile, moreover, committed him to nothing more than politeness, and left the degree of politeness agreeably vague. A smile, too, was neither dissent—which was too serious—nor agreement, which might have brought on terrible complications. And then a smile covered his own personal dignity, which in this critical situation he was resolved to keep immaculate; it was quite enough that the glory of his house should pass into eclipse. Between him and Newman, his whole manner seemed to declare there could be no interchange of opinion; he was holding his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy. Newman was far from being versed in European politics, but he liked to have a general idea of what was going on about him, and he accordingly asked M. de Bellegarde several times what he thought of public affairs. M. de Bellegarde answered with suave concision that he thought as ill of them as possible, that they were going from bad to worse, and that the age was rotten to its core. This gave Newman, for the moment, an almost kindly feeling for the marquis; he pitied a man for whom the world was so cheerless a place, and the next time he saw M. de Bellegarde he attempted to call his attention to some of the brilliant features of the time. The marquis presently replied that he had but a single political conviction, which was enough for him: he believed in the divine right of Henry of Bourbon, Fifth of his name, to the throne of France. Newman stared, and after this he ceased to talk politics with M. de Bellegarde. He was not horrified nor scandalized, he was not even amused; he felt as he should have felt if he had discovered in M. de Bellegarde a taste for certain oddities of diet; an appetite, for instance, for fishbones or nutshells. Under these circumstances, of course, he would never have broached dietary questions with him.
One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintré, Newman was requested by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess was not at liberty. He walked about the room a while, taking up her books, smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints and photographs (which he thought prodigiously pretty), and at last he heard the opening of a door to which his back was turned. On the threshold stood an old woman whom he remembered to have met several times in entering and leaving the house. She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries, would have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman; a cap of pure British composition. She had a pale, decent, depressed-looking face, and a clear, dull, English eye. She looked at Newman a moment, both intently and timidly, and then she dropped a short, straight English curtsey.
“Madame de Cintré begs you will kindly wait,” she said. “She has just come in; she will soon have finished dressing.”
“Oh, I will wait as long as she wants,” said Newman. “Pray tell her not to hurry.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring with her message, she advanced into the room. She looked about her for a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain books and knick-knacks. Newman was struck with the high respectability of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant. She busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order and pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro. He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was passing that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him intently. She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving it, helped her to begin.
“You are English?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, please,” she answered, quickly and softly; “I was born in Wiltshire.”
“And what do you think of Paris?”
“Oh, I don’t think of Paris, sir,” she said in the same tone. “It is so long since I have been here.”
“Ah, you have been here very long?”
“It is more than forty years, sir. I came over with Lady Emmeline.”
“You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?”
“Yes, sir. I came with her when she was married. I was my lady’s own woman.”
“And you have been with her ever since?”
“I have been in the house ever since. My lady has taken a younger person. You see I am very old. I do nothing regular now. But I keep about.”
“You look very strong and well,” said Newman, observing the erectness of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
“Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you.”
“Oh, speak out,” said Newman, curiously. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
“Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before.”
“On the stairs, you mean?”
“Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken the liberty of noticing that you come often.”
“Oh yes; I come very often,” said Newman, laughing. “You need not have been wide-awake to notice that.”
“I have noticed it with pleasure, sir,” said the ancient tirewoman, gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent self-effacement and knowledge of her “own place.” But there mingled with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a sense, probably, of Newman’s unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady’s own woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person, she had a slight reversionary property in herself.
“You take a great interest in the family?” said Newman.
“A deep interest, sir. Especially in the countess.”
“I am glad of that,” said Newman. And in a moment he added, smiling, “So do I!”
“So I suppose, sir. We can’t help noticing these things and having our ideas; can we, sir?”
“You mean as a servant?” said Newman.
“Ah, there it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the countess; if she were my own child I couldn’t love her more. That is how I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want to marry her.”
Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not a gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet. “It is quite true,” he said. “I want to marry Madame de Cintré.”
“And to take her away to America?”
“I will take her wherever she wants to go.”
“The farther away the better, sir!” exclaimed the old woman, with sudden intensity. But she checked herself, and, taking up a paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron. “I don’t mean anything against the house or the family, sir. But I think a great change would do the poor countess good. It is very sad here.”
“Yes, it’s not very lively,” said Newman. “But Madame de Cintré is gay herself.”
“She is everything that is good. You will not be vexed to hear that she has been gayer for a couple of months past than she had been in many a day before.”
Newman was delighted to gather this testimony to the prosperity of his suit, but he repressed all violent marks of elation. “Has Madame de Cintré been in bad spirits before this?” he asked.
“Poor lady, she had good reason. M. de Cintré was no husband for a sweet young lady like that. And then, as I say, it has been a sad house. It is better, in my humble opinion, that she were out of it. So, if you will excuse me for saying so, I hope she will marry you.”
“I hope she will!” said Newman.
“But you must not lose courage, sir, if she doesn’t make up her mind at once. That is what I wanted to beg of you, sir. Don’t give it up, sir. You will not take it ill if I say it’s a great risk for any lady at any time; all the more when she has got rid of one bad bargain. But if she can marry a good, kind, respectable gentleman, I think she had better make up her mind to it. They speak very well of you, sir, in the house, and, if you will allow me to say so, I like your face. You have a very different appearance from the late count, he wasn’t five feet high. And they say your fortune is beyond everything. There’s no harm in that. So I beseech you to be patient, sir, and bide your time. If I don’t say this to you, sir, perhaps no one will. Of course it is not for me to make any promises. I can answer for nothing. But I think your chance is not so bad, sir. I am nothing but a weary old woman in my quiet corner, but one woman understands another, and I think I make out the countess. I received her in my arms when she came into the world and her first wedding day was the saddest of my life. She owes it to me to show me another and a brighter one. If you will hold firm, sir—and you look as if you would—I think we may see it.”
“I am much obliged to you for your encouragement,” said Newman, heartily. “One can’t have too much. I mean to hold firm. And if Madame de Cintré marries me you must come and live with her.”
The old woman looked at him strangely, with her soft, lifeless eyes. “It may seem a heartless thing to say, sir, when one has been forty years in a house, but I may tell you that I should like to leave this place.”
“Why, it’s just the time to say it,” said Newman, fervently. “After forty years one wants a change.”
“You are very kind, sir;” and this faithful servant dropped another curtsey and seemed disposed to retire. But she lingered a moment and gave a timid, joyless smile. Newman was disappointed, and his fingers stole half shyly half irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His informant noticed the movement. “Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman,” she said. “If I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am, that if you please, monsieur, my information is worth something. Let me tell you so in my own decent English way. It is worth something.”
“How much, please?” said Newman.
“Simply this: a promise not to hint to the countess that I have said these things.”
“If that is all, you have it,” said Newman.
“That is all, sir. Thank you, sir. Good day, sir.” And having once more slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman departed. At the same moment Madame de Cintré came in by an opposite door. She noticed the movement of the other portière and asked Newman who had been entertaining him.
“The British female!” said Newman. “An old lady in a black dress and a cap, who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well.”
“An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?… Ah, you mean poor Mrs. Bread. I happen to know that you have made a conquest of her.”
“Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called,” said Newman. “She is very sweet. She is a delicious old woman.”
Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment. “What can she have said to you? She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal.”
“I suppose,” Newman answered presently, “that I like her because she has lived near you so long. Since your birth, she told me.”
“Yes,” said Madame de Cintré, simply; “she is very faithful; I can trust her.”
Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother and her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression they made upon him. But, as if she had guessed his thoughts, she seemed careful to avoid all occasion for making him speak of them. She never alluded to her mother’s domestic decrees; she never quoted the opinions of the marquis. They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made no secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother. Newman listened sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy; he would have liked to divert some of her tender allusions to his own credit. Once Madame de Cintré told him with a little air of triumph about something that Valentin had done which she thought very much to his honor. It was a service he had rendered to an old friend of the family; something more “serious” than Valentin was usually supposed capable of being. Newman said he was glad to hear of it, and then began to talk about something which lay upon his own heart. Madame de Cintré listened, but after a while she said, “I don’t like the way you speak of my brother Valentin.” Hereupon Newman, surprised, said that he had never spoken of him but kindly.