The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 16
XVI
The next ten days were to be the happiest Newman had ever known. He saw Madame de Cintré 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 of an unattainable ideal of diversion. 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 sometimes looked at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent, since vicious advances, he conceived, were usually much less direct. She apparently wanted to ask him something; he wondered what it might be. But he was shy of giving her an opportunity, because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her matrimonial lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after looking 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-mâche!" Possessing, at any rate, in default of a competent knowledge of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the "meanness" of certain actions, it seemed to him to belong to his 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 sometimes suggested.
"Malheureux!" the little Marquise would then piercingly cry. "I hope you're not going to pretend to dress your wife. Claire's an angel, yes, but her bows, already, are—well, quite of another world!"
Madame de Cintré 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. 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," Newman 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 brilliantly happy—with the rest of the brilliancy. I consider really that I've done it for you, but it's almost more than I can myself bear." Newman thanked her for her pleasant encouraging way of saying things; no woman could encourage or discourage better. Tristram's way was different; he had been taken by his wife to call on Madame de Cintré 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 woman 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 chère belle, and Madame de Cintré sent me every third word a magnificent 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 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. Newman. 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 Cintré 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 Marquise, 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'Université shone strangely in his eyes. In the circle of light projected from the outer gate a detachment of the populace stood watching the carriages roll in; the court was illumined with flaring torches and the portico 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, cordons 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 measured alertness while the Marquise presented them the good friend of the family who was to marry her daughter. The good friend heard a confused enumeration 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, accompanied in each case by a "Very happy to meet you, sir." He looked at Madame de Cintré, but her attention was absent. If his personal self-consciousness 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 circumstance 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 features 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 see, stuck into my hair. But here comes Lord Deepmere," she added in a moment; "I must find out what he thinks of it." Lord Deepmere came up very red in the face and very light, apparently, at heart; at once very much amused and very little committed. "My Lord Deepmere 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 disponible. 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 women," 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 Deepmere 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."
"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 Marquis lifted his shoulders and bent them forward.
"Oh, I suspect every one's pleased," said Newman. "How can they help being pleased when the first thing they see as they come in is your sister standing there as beautiful as an angel of light and of charity?"
"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 Bellegarde's door was inexorably closed against the mere myrmidons of the upstart power which then flourished 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 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 'll 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 himself in the presence of a lady of monstrous proportions 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 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 present you our good friend Mr. Newman, of whom you've heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr. Newman 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 performed 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. Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed that to a duchess who joked about her corpulence one might say almost anything. On hearing 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 consideration. The Marquis, with supernatural gravity, mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who bore it bowed; and these pronouncements again affected Newman as some enumeration of the titles of books, of the performers on playbills, of the items of indexes. "I wanted extremely 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 l'air bien honnête, and I'm told you're very remarkable. I've heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you. Voyons, are they true?"
"I don't know what you can have heard," Newman promptly pleaded.
"Oh, you've had your légende. 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 fabulously rich, and you 'd be richer still if you didn't grant lands and houses free of rent to all newcomers who'll 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 interpreted by a veteran comic actress. Before she had 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 success 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 Cintré," Newman 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 persuade me he has n't something wonder-working. Au revoir, monsieur."
As Newman passed on with his host he asked who the Duchess might be. "The greatest lady in France!" the Marquis hereupon reservedly replied. He then presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons of both sexes, selected apparently 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 denudation that even their wealth of precious stones scarce availed to overtake. Every one gave Newman extreme attention, every one lighted up for him regardless, 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 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 pushed over by a banker's clerk; it was handsome of 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 Cintré 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 perceived 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 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 comments, she reminded him of the pausing wayfarer who studies the contents of the confectioner's window, 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 momentary 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 operation 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 considered 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 his energy and prosperity and deepened that view of his effective "handling" of life 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 leaning 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 Cintré'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?'"
"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 Newman 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 café glacé."
I promised you we should do things grandly," Valentin observed. "I don't allude to the cafés glacés. 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 kinsman 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 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 physiognomy 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 disturb 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 successfully 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 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 companion 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 therefore 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 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 retired. He moved through the rooms for some time longer, circulating freely, overtopping most people by his great height, renewing acquaintance with some of the groups to which the Marquis had presented him, and expending generally the surplus of his equanimity. He continued to find it all a regular celebration, but even the Fourth of July of his childhood used to have an end, and the revelry on this occasion 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 members of her own sex who insisted upon her not rising. He himself had set out in quest of Madame de Cintré, whom he had seen move past him many times in the rapid circles of a waltz, but with whom, also, conforming to her explicit instructions, he had exchanged no word since the beginning of the evening. The whole house having been thrown open the apartments of the rez-de-chaussée were also accessible, though a smaller number of persons had gathered there. Newman wandered through them, observing a few scattered couples to whom this comparative seclusion appeared grateful, and reached a small conservatory which opened into the garden. The end of the conservatory was formed by a clear sheet of glass, unmasked by plants and admitting the winter starlight so directly that a person standing there would seem to have passed into the open air. Two persons stood there now, a lady and a 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 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 Cintré. The two had been talking with extreme animation. "What I should tell you is only to milord's credit," said Madame de Cintré, 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 demanded. "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 nobleman, still almost unnaturally exhilarated.
"It's to Lord Deepmere's credit, but it's not to every one's," Madame de Cintré imperfectly explained. "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."
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 'll 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 Cintré; "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 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!"