The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 23
XXIII
Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs. Bread. The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again the signed warrant he had lodged in his pocket-book, persuading himself more and more that it had, as he put it to himself, a social value, and thinking what he would now do and how he would do it. He would not have said that Poitiers had much to hold him, yet the day seemed very short. Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann he walked over to the Rue de l'Université and enquired of Madame de Bellegarde's portress whether the Marquise had come back. The portress answered that she had arrived with M. le Marquis on the preceding day, and further informed him that should he wish to see them they were both at home. As she said these words the little white-faced old woman who peered out of the dusky gate house of the Hôtel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked smile—a smile that seemed to Newman to mean "Go in if you dare!" She was evidently versed in the current domestic history; she was placed where she could feel the pulse of the house. He stood a moment twisting his moustache and looking at her; then he abruptly turned away. But this was not because he was afraid to go in—though he doubted whether, for all his courage, he should be able to make his way unchallenged into the presence of his adversaries. Confidence, excessive confidence perhaps, quite as much as timidity, prompted his retreat. He was nursing his thunderbolt; he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He felt himself hold it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale upturned faces. Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he took his ease while he harboured the vindictive vision. It must be added too that he was at a loss to see exactly how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder. To send in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste of ceremony; she would certainly decline to receive him. On the other hand he could n't force his way into her presence. He hated to see himself reduced to the blind satisfaction of writing her a letter; but he consoled himself in a measure with the thought that a letter might lead to an interview. He went home and, feeling rather tired—nursing a vengeance was, he had to confess, a fatiguing process; it took a good deal out of one—flung himself into one of his brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs, thrust his hands into his pockets and, while he watched the reflected sunset fading from the ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the boulevard, began mentally to frame, as work for his pen, a few effective remarks. While he was so occupied his servant threw open the door and announced ceremoniously Madame Brett!"
He roused himself expectantly and in a few moments recognised on his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed to such good purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurières. Mrs. Bread had assumed for this visit the same dress as for her other effort, and he was struck with her fine antique appearance. His room was still lampless, and as her large grave face gazed at him through the clear dusk from under the shadow of her ample bonnet he felt the incongruity of her pretending to any servile stamp. He greeted her with high geniality, and bade her come in and sit down and make herself comfortable. There was something that might have touched the springs both of mirth and of melancholy in the spirit of formal accommodation with which she endeavoured to meet this new conception of her duty. She was not playing at being fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous; she was doing her best to carry herself as a person so humble that, for her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious; but evidently she had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope to pay a visit at nightfall to a friendly single gentleman who lived in theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new boulevards.
"I truly hope I'm not forgetting my place, sir," she anxiously pleaded.
"Forgetting your place? Why, you're remembering it as a good woman remembers her promise. This is your place, you know. You're already in my service; your wages as housekeeper began a fortnight ago. I can tell you my house wants keeping! Why don't you take off your bonnet and stay right now?"
"Take off my bonnet?"—she gave it her gravest consideration. "Oh sir, I have n't my cap. And with your leave, sir, I could n't keep house in my best gown."
"Never mind your best gown," said Newman cheerfully. "You shall have a better gown than that."
She stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her lustreless satin skirt as if the perilous side of her situation might be flushing into view. "Oh sir, I'm fond of my own clothes."
"I hope you've left those wicked people, at any rate," Newman went on.
"Well, sir, here I am! That's all I can tell you. Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread. It's a strange place for me to be. I don't know myself; I never supposed I was so bold. But indeed, sir, I've gone as far as my own strength will bear me."
"Oh, come, Mrs. Bread!" he returned almost caressingly; "don't make yourself uncomfortable. Why, you're going to have now the time of your life."
She began to speak again with a trembling voice. "I think it would be more respectable if I could—if I could—!" But she quavered to a pause.
"If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?" said Newman kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a wish to retire from service.
"If I could give up everything, sir! All I should ask is a decent Protestant burial."
"Burial!" he cried with a burst of laughter. "Why, to bury you now would be a sad piece of extravagance. It's only rascals who have to be buried to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can live our time out—and live it together. Come! did you bring your baggage?"
"My two boxes are locked and corded; but I have n't yet spoken to my lady."
"Speak to her then and have done with it. I should like to have your chance!" cried Newman.
"I would gladly give it you, sir. I've passed some weary hours in my lady's dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest. She'll tax me with base ingratitude."
"Well," said Newman, "so long as you can tax her with murder—!"
"Oh sir, I can't; not I!" she pleaded.
"You don't mean to say anything about it? So much the better. Leave it all to me."
"If she calls me a thankless old woman," Mrs. Bread went on, "I shall have nothing to say. But it's better so," she added with supreme mildness. "She shall be my lady to the last. That will be more respectable."
"And then you'll come to me and I shall be your gentleman," said Newman. "That will be more respectable still!"
She rose with lowered eyes and stood a moment; then, looking up, she rested her gaze upon Newman's face. The disordered proprieties were somehow settling to rest. She looked at her friend so long and so fixedly, with such a dull intense devotedness, that he himself might have had a pretext for embarrassment. At last she said gently: "You 've not your natural appearance, sir.""Why, Mrs. Bread," he answered, "I've not my natural balance. If you mean I don't look sunny I guess I look as I feel. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very violent, very sick and very fine, all at once—well, it rather mixes one up."
Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. "I can tell you something that will make you feel queerer still, if you want to feel all one way. About the poor Countess."
"What can you tell me?" Newman quickly asked. "Not that you've seen her?"
She shook her head. "No indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That's the dead weight of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde."
"You mean she's kept so close?"
"The closest they keep any."
These words for an instant seemed to check the beating of his heart. Leaning back in his chair he felt sick. "They've tried to see her and she wouldn't—she could n't?"
"She refused—for ever! I had it from my lady's own maid," said Mrs. Bread, "who had it from my lady. To speak of it to such a person my lady must have felt the shock. The Countess declines to receive them now, and now's her only chance. A short while hence she'll have no choice."
"You mean the other women—the mothers, the daughters, the sisters; what is it they call them?—won't let her?"
"It's what they call the rule of the house—or I believe of the order. There's no rule so strict as that of the Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them. They wear old brown cloaks—so the femme de chambre told me—that you would n't use for a horse-blanket. And the poor Countess was so fond of soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff! They sleep on the ground," Mrs. Bread went on; "they're no better, no better"—and she hesitated for a comparison—"they're no better than tinkers wives. They give up everything, down to the very name their poor old nurses called them by. They give up father and mother, brother and sister—to say nothing of other persons," Mrs. Bread delicately added. "They wear a shroud under their brown cloaks and a rope round their waists, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold places to pray to the Virgin Mary. I hope it does her at least good!"
Newman's visitor, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale, her hands convulsive but confined to her satin lap. He gave a melancholy groan and fell forward, burying his face and his pain. There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the chimney-piece. "Where is the accursed place—where is the convent?" he asked at last, looking up.
"There are two houses," said Mrs. Bread. "I found out; I thought you 'd like to know—though it's cold comfort, I think. One's in the Avenue de Messine; they've learned the Countess is there. The other's in the Rue d'Enfer. That's a terrible name; I suppose you know what it means."
He got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came back Mrs. Bread had risen and stood by the fire with folded hands. Tell me this. Can I get near her—even if I don't see her? Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where she is?"
It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread's sense of the pre-established harmony which kept servants in their "place," even as planets in their orbits (not that she had ever consciously likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her new employer. She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years before, she had held him also in her arms. "That would n't help you, sir. It would only make her seem further away."
"I want to go there, at all events," he returned. "The Avenue de Messine, you say? And what is it they call themselves?"
"Carmelites—whatever it means!" said Mrs. Bread.
"I shall remember that."
She hesitated a moment and then: "It's my duty to tell you this—that the convent has a chapel and that respectable persons are admitted on Sunday to the mass. You don't see the poor creatures in their prison or their tomb, but I'm told you can hear them sing. It's a wonder they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go. It seems to me I should know her voice in fifty."
Newman thanked her, while he held her hand, with a stare through which he, for a good reason, failed to see her. "If any one can get in I will." A moment later she proposed deferentially to retire, but he checked her, pressing on her grasp a lighted candle. "There are half a dozen rooms there I don't use;" and he pointed through an open door. "Go and look at them and take your choice. You can live in the one you like best." From this bewildering privilege she at first recoiled; but finally, yielding to her friend's almost fraternal pat of reassurance, she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper. She remained absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman paced up and down, stopped occasionally to look out of the window at the lights on the boulevard, and then resumed his walk. Mrs. Bread's interest in her opportunity apparently deepened as she proceeded; but at last she reappeared and deposited her candlestick on the chimney-piece.
"Well, have you picked one out?"
"A room, sir? They're all too fine for a dingy old body like me. There is n't one that has n't a bit of gilding."
"It's only some shocking sham, Mrs. Bread," he answered. "If you stay there a while it will all peel off of itself." And he gave a dismal smile.
"Oh sir, there are things enough peeling off already!" she said with a responsible head-shake. "Since I was there I thought I 'd look about me. I don't believe you know, sir. The corners are most dreadful. You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman that is n't above taking hold of a broom."
Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured, his domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her powers. She held her candlestick aloft again and looked round the salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted the mission and that its sacred character would sustain her in her rupture with her old dread mistress. On this she curtsied herself away.
She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and her friend, going into his drawing-room, found her on her aged knees before a divan, sewing up a piece of detached fringe. He questioned her as to her leave-taking with her late mistress, and she said it had proved easier than she feared. "I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to remember that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one."
"You must have been too lovely," Newman frankly observed. "But does she know you've come to me?"
"She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name," Mrs. Bread returned.
"What did she say to that?"
"She looked at me very hard, she turned very red. Then she bade me leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who's an Englishman, thank goodness, to bring down my poor boxes and to fetch me a cab. But when I went down myself to those terrible great gates I found them closed. My lady had sent orders to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter's wife, a dreadful sly old body, had gone out in a cab to fetch home M. de Bellegarde from his club."
Newman's face lighted almost with the candour of childhood. "She is scared! she is scared!"
"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but I thank the powers I felt my temper rise. I took it very high with the porter, and asked him by what right he used violence to an honourable Anglaise who had lived in the house for thirty years before he was heard of. Oh sir, I was very grand—I brought the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out, and I promised the cabman something handsome if he would drive fast. But he was terribly slow; it seemed as if we should never reach your blest door. I'm all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes, just now, to thread my needle."
Newman told her, in munificent mirth, that if she chose she might have a little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away nursing this sketch of the scene in the Rue de l'Université and rejoicing in the belief that he had produced there what he might call the impression of his life.
He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the document he carried in his pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several times, and she had not disguised from him that he struck her as in a strange way—an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his disappointment gone to his head? He looked like a man who was spoiling for some sickness, yet she had never seen him more restless and active. Some days he would hang his head and fold his brow and set his teeth, appear to wish to give out that he should never smile again; on others he would indulge in laughter that was almost rude and make jokes that were bad even for him. If he was trying to carry off his humiliation he went at such times really too far. She begged him of all things not to be strange. Feeling in a measure answerable for the adventure that had turned out so ill for him, she could put up with anything but his strangeness. He might be tragic if he would, or he might be terribly touching and pierce her to the heart with silent sorrow; he might be violent and summon her to say why she had ever dared to meddle with his destiny: to this she would submit—for this she would make allowances. Only, if he loved her, let him not be incoherent. That would quite break down her nerves. It was like people talking in their sleep; they always awfully frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that, taking very high ground as regards the moral obligation which events had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet till she should have confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for his loss that the two hemispheres contained.
"Ah," he replied to this, "I think we're square now and we had better not open a new account! You may bury me some day, but you shall of a certainty never marry me. It's too rough, you see—it's worse than a free fight in Arkansaw. I hope, at any rate," he added, "that there's nothing incoherent in this—that I want to go next Sunday to the Carmelite chapel in the Avenue de Messine. You know one of the Catholic clergymen—an abbé, is that it?—whom I've seen here with you, I think, on some errand for his poor; that motherly old gentleman with the big waistband. Please ask him if I need a special leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me."
Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy. "I'm so glad you've asked me to do something! You shall get into the chapel if the abbé is disfrocked for his share in it."
And two days afterwards she told him it was all arranged; the abbé was enchanted to serve him, and if he would present himself civilly at the convent gate there would be no obstacle.