The American (26 page)

“Well,” said Newman, “if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter.”

“For the girl herself, you may be at rest. I don’t know what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can’t hurt her.”

“It seems to me,” said Newman, “that you are very
well matched. You are both hard cases, and M. Nioche and I, I believe, are the only virtuous men to be found in Paris.”
¹²

Soon after this M. de Bellegarde, in punishment for his levity, received a stern poke in the back from a pointed instrument. Turning quickly round he found the weapon to be a parasol wielded by a lady in a green gauze bonnet. Valentin’s English cousins had been drifting about unpiloted, and evidently deemed that they had a grievance. Newman left him to their mercies, but with a boundless faith in his power to plead his cause.

T
hree days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintré, Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table the card of the Marquis de Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde would be grateful for the honour of his company at dinner.

He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement to do it. He was ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received him before, and here he found his venerable hostess, surrounded by her entire family. The room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which illumined the very small pink slippers of a lady who, seated in a low chair, was stretching out her toes before it. This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde. Madame de Cintré was seated at the other end of the room, holding a little girl against her knee, the child of her brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story. Valentin was sitting on a puff close to his sister-in-law, into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense. The marquis was stationed before the fire, with his head erect and his hands behind him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.

Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting, and there was that in the way she did so which seemed to measure narrowly the extent of her
condescension. “We are all alone, you see; we have asked no one else,” she said austerely.

“I am very glad you didn’t; this is much more sociable,” said Newman. “Good evening, sir,” and he offered his hand to the marquis.

M. de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was restless. He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the long windows, he took up books and laid them down again. Young Madame de Bellegarde gave Newman her hand without moving and without looking at him.

“You may think that is coldness,” exclaimed Valentin; “but it is not, it is warmth. It shows she is treating you as an intimate. Now she detests me, and yet she is always looking at me.”

“No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!” cried the lady. “If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it again.”

But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already making his way across the room to Madame de Cintré. She looked at him as she shook hands, but she went on with the story she was telling her little niece. She had only two or three phrases to add, but they were apparently of great moment. She deepened her voice, smiling as she did so, and the little girl gazed at her with round eyes.

“But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,” said Madame de Cintré, “and carried her off to live with him in the Land of the Pink Sky. There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles, and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn by five hundred white mice. Poor Florabella,” she explained to Newman, “had suffered terribly.”

“She had had nothing to eat for six months,” said little Blanche.

“Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as that ottoman,” said Madame de Cintré. “That quite set her up again.”

“What a checkered career!” said Newman. “Are you very fond of children?” He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.

“I like to talk with them,” she answered; “we can talk with them so much more seriously than with grown persons. That is great nonsense that I have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious than most of what we say in society.”

“I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche’s age,” said Newman laughing. “Were you happy at your ball the other night?”

“Ecstatically!”

“Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society,” said Newman. “I don’t believe that.”

“It was my own fault if I was not happy. The ball was very pretty, and everyone very amiable.”

“It was on your conscience,” said Newman, “that you had annoyed your mother and your brother.”

Madame de Cintré looked at him a moment without answering. “That is true,” she replied at last. “I had undertaken more than I could carry out. I have very little courage; I am not a heroine.” She said this with a certain soft emphasis; but then, changing her tone: “I could never have gone through the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella,” she added, “not even for her prospective rewards.”

Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side of old Madame de Bellegarde. The dining-room, at the end of a cold corridor, was vast and sombre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent. Newman wondered whether Madame de Cintré had had something to do with ordering the repast, and greatly hoped she had. Once seated at table, with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde around him, he asked himself the meaning of his position. Was the old lady responding to his advances? Did the fact that he was a solitary guest augment his credit or diminish it? Were
they ashamed to show him to other people, or did they wish to give him a sign of sudden adoption into their last reserve of favour? Newman was on his guard; he was watchful and conjectural; and yet at the same time he was vaguely indifferent. Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was there now, and Madame de Cintré was opposite to him. She had a tall candlestick on each side of her; she would sit there for the next hour, and that was enough. The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he wondered whether this was always the state of things in “old families.” Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes, which looked peculiarly sharp in her little finely-wrinkled white face, very intently upon the table-service. The marquis appeared to have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations. Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good-taste of Sansovino.
¹
His manners seemed to indicate a fine nervous dread that something disagreeable might happen if the atmosphere were not purified by allusions of a thoroughly superior cast. “What under the sun is the man afraid of?” Newman asked himself. “Does he think I am going to offer to swap jack-knives with him?” It was useless to shut his eyes to the fact that the marquis was profoundly disagreeable to him. He had never been a man of strong personal aversions; his nerves had not been at the mercy of the mystical qualities of his neighbours. But here was a man towards whom he was irresistibly in opposition; a man of forms and phrases and postures; a man full of possible impertinences and treacheries. M. de Bellegarde made him feel as if he were standing barefooted on a marble floor; and yet, to gain his desire, Newman felt perfectly able to stand. He wondered what Madame de Cintré thought of his being
accepted, if accepted it was. There was no judging from her face, which expressed simply the desire to be gracious in a manner which should require as little explicit recognition as possible. Young Madame de Bellegarde had always the same manners; she was always preoccupied, distracted, listening to everything and hearing nothing, looking at her dress, her rings, her finger-nails, seeming rather bored, and yet puzzling you to decide what was her ideal of social diversion. Newman was enlightened on this point later. Even Valentin did not quite seem master of his wits; his vivacity was fitful and forced, yet Newman observed that in the lapses of his talk he appeared excited. His eyes had an intenser spark than usual. The effect of all this was that Newman, for the first time in his life, was not himself; that he measured his movements, and counted his words, and resolved that if the occasion demanded that he should appear to have swallowed a ramrod, he would meet the emergency.

After dinner M. de Bellegarde proposed to his guest that they should go into the smoking-room, and he led the way toward a small somewhat musty apartment, the walls of which were ornamented with old hangings of stamped leather and trophies of rusty arms. Newman refused a cigar, but he established himself upon one of the divans, while the marquis puffed his own weed before the fireplace, and Valentin sat looking through the light fumes of a cigarette from one to the other.

“I can’t keep quiet any longer,” said Valentin, at last. “I must tell you the news and congratulate you. My brother seems unable to come to the point; he revolves around his announcement like the priest around the altar. You are accepted as a candidate for the hand of our sister.”

“Valentin, be a little proper!” murmured the marquis, with a look of the most delicate irritation contracting the bridge of his high nose.

“There has been a family council,” the young man
continued; “my mother and Urbain have put their heads together, and even my testimony has not been altogether excluded. My mother and the marquis sat at a table covered with green cloth; my sister-in-law and I were on a bench against the wall. It was like a committee at the Corps Législatif.
²
We were called up, one after the other, to testify. We spoke of you very handsomely. Madame de Bellegarde said that if she had not been told who you were, she would have taken you for a duke—an American duke, the Duke of California. I said that I could warrant you grateful for the smallest favours—modest, humble, unassuming. I was sure that you would know your own place always, and never give us occasion to remind you of certain differences. After all, you couldn’t help it if you were not a duke. There were none in your country; but if there had been, it was certain that, smart and active as you are, you would have got the pick of the titles. At this point I was ordered to sit down, but I think I made an impression in your favour.”

M. de Bellegarde looked at his brother with dangerous coldness, and gave a smile as thin as the edge of a knife. Then he removed a spark of cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes for a while on the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted one of his white hands into the breast of his waistcoat. “I must apologise to you for the deplorable levity of my brother,” he said, “and I must notify you that this is probably not the last time that his want of tact will cause you serious embarrassment.”

“No, I confess I have no tact,” said Valentin. “Is your embarrassment really painful, Newman? The marquis will put you right again; his own touch is deliciously delicate.”

“Valentin, I am sorry to say,” the marquis continued, “has never possessed the tone, the manner, that belong to a young man in his position. It has been a great affliction to his mother, who is very fond of the old
traditions. But you must remember that he speaks for no one but himself.”

“Oh, I don’t mind him, sir,” said Newman good-humouredly. “I know what he amounts to.”

“In the good old times,” said Valentin, “marquises and counts used to have their appointed fools and jesters, to crack jokes for them. Nowadays we see a great strapping democrat keeping a count about him to play the fool. It’s a good situation, but I certainly am very degenerate.”

M. de Bellegarde fixed his eyes for some time on the floor. “My mother informed me,” he said presently, “of the announcement that you made to her the other evening.”

“That I desired to marry your sister?” said Newman.

“That you wished to arrange a marriage,” said the marquis slowly, “with my sister, the Comtesse de Cintré. The proposal was serious, and required, on my mother’s part, a great deal of reflection. She naturally took me into her counsels, and I gave my most zealous attention to the subject. There was a great deal to be considered; more than you appear to imagine. We have viewed the question on all its faces, we have weighed one thing against another. Our conclusion has been that we favour your suit. My mother has desired me to inform you of our decision. She will have the honour of saying a few words to you on the subject herself. Meanwhile, by us, the heads of the family, you are accepted.”

Newman got up and came nearer to the marquis. “You will do nothing to hinder me, and all you can to help me, eh?”

“I will recommend my sister to accept you.”

Newman passed his hand over his face, and pressed it for a moment upon his eyes. This promise had a great sound, and yet the pleasure he took in it was embittered by his having to stand there so and receive his passport from M. de Bellegarde. The idea of having this
gentleman mixed up with his wooing and wedding was more and more disagreeable to him. But Newman had resolved to go through the mill, as he imaged it, and he would not cry out at the first turn of the wheel. He was silent a while, and then he said, with a certain dryness which Valentin told him afterwards had a very grand air: “I am much obliged to you.”