The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 14
XIV
The next time Newman came to the Rue de l'Université he had the good fortune to find Madame de Cintré 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 believe three months ago. You're everything, you're beyond 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 give me your hand. Madame de Cintré, 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 yourself 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."
"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 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 idleness 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 'll have the honour of conducting monsieur." In spite of this clean consciousness, however, it appeared to Newman that her voice had a queer quaver, as if the tone of uncontested authority were not habitual to it. The man gave her an impertinent stare, but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman upstairs. At half its course the staircase put forth two arms with an ample rest between. In a niche of this landing stood an indifferent statue of an eighteenth-century nymph, simpering 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 need n'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."
"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 clasping 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 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 Cintré, as she gave him her hand, gave him also a look by which she appeared to mean that he should understand something. Was it a warning or a request? Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence? He was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde's pretty grin gave him no information.
"I've not told my mother," said Madame de Cintré 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 mère," said Madame de Cintré.
"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 Cintré stood silent and with her eyes on the ground. "It's over at all events now.""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 Cintré 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 Cintré turned away and, taking up a piece of tapestry, began to ply the needle. Some minutes of silence elapsed, which were interrupted by the arrival of M. de Bellegarde. He came in with 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 donc, 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 Cintré had been looking at her tapestry, 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 Bellegarde replied with superior benignity.
"So am I, my dear man," said Valentin to Newman. "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 éprouver a certain emotion." And he gave the oddest smile his visitor had ever beheld.
"I feel no emotion that I was not perfectly prepared 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 Marquis. "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 Bellegarde as she got up and laid her hand on her daughter's arm. "You can't expect an honest old woman to thank you for taking away her beautiful only daughter."
"You forget me, dear madame," the young Marquise 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 'll 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 Cintré 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 Cintré had got up; she seemed inscrutably to 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 tremendously 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 have n't yet announced 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 Louis and to San Francisco; those are the principal cities you know. Tomorrow I shall tell my friends here."
"Have you so many?" asked Madame de Bellegarde 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 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 Cintré 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 invidious; the marrying people are often very gentils."
Valentin holds that women should marry and that men shouldn't," said Madame de Cintré. "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 can't marry!" And he dropped the portière and departed.
"They don't really like it, you know," Newman said as he stood there before his mistress.
"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 Cintré. "It shall not, I promise, worry you." And they then talked of their marriage-day, and she assented unreservedly 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 pocketbook 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 Cintré, on the other hand, quite artlessly, quite touchingly admired them, and, most of them being of a wit quainter than 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 humiliation. 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 imagination, 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 necessary."
Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation. I'm not hard on them," he presently said, "and to prove it I 'll invite them all to a festival."
"A festival—?"
"You've been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I 'll show you they're good for something. I 'll give a party. What's the grandest thing one can do here? I 'll hire all the great singers from the opera and all the first people from the Theatre Francais, and I 'll 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 exception—Miss Kitty Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General 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 Cintré, who shall sit, through it all, on a golden chair above their heads and look as beautiful—and perhaps, poor dear, as bored—as a saint in paradise. What do you think of the idea?"
"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 fête champêtre—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 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 fête until I've offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we 'll 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 he failed to catch a thin sharp eyebeam, as cold as a flash of steel, which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and the Marquis and which we may presume to have been a commentary on the innocence displayed in that latter clause of his speech.
Count Valentin walked away with him that evening 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 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, between 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 inconsequent touch of family pride. "The thing will be done now, and I dare say it will be quite folichon!"