The American (35 page)

“A murder by moonlight,” laughed Madame de Bellegarde. “What a delicious idea for a toilet’ To make it complete, there is 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, looking very red in the face, and laughing. “Lord Deepmere can’t decide which he prefers, my sister-in-law or me,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He likes Claire because she is his cousin, and me because I am not. But he has no right to make love to Claire, whereas I am perfectly
disponible.
⁴
It is very wrong to make love to a woman who is engaged, but it is very wrong not to make love to woman who is married.”

“Oh, it’s very jolly making love to married women,” said Lord Deepmere, “because they can’t ask you to marry them.”

“Is that what the others do—the spinsters?” Newman inquired.

“Oh dear yes,” said Lord Deepmere; “in England all the girls ask a fellow to marry them.”

“And a fellow brutally refuses,” said Madame de Bellegarde.

“Why, really, you know, a fellow can’t marry any girl that asks him,” said his lordship.

“Your cousin won’t ask you. She is going to marry Mr. Newman.”

“Oh, that’s a very different thing!” laughed Lord Deepmere.

“You would 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 Englishman. “I take them all.”

“Ah, what a horror! I won’t be taken in that way; I must be kept apart,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “Mr. Newman is much better; he knows how to choose. Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle. He prefers Madame de Cintré to any conceivable creature or thing.”

“Well, you can’t help my being her cousin,” said Lord Deepmere to Newman, with candid hilarity.

“Oh no, I can’t help that,” said Newman, laughing 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,” said Newman. “But unfortunately I don’t know how to dance.”

“Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?” said Madame de Bellegarde. But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought to know how to dance if he didn’t want to make an ass of himself; and at this same moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping and with his hands behind him.

“This is a very splendid entertainment,” said Newman cheerfully. “The old house looks very bright.”

“If
you
are pleased, we are content,” said the marquis, lifting his shoulders and bending them forward.

“Oh, I suspect everyone is 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?”

“Yes, she is very beautiful,” rejoined the marquis solemnly. “But that is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as to you.”

“Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied,” said Newman, with his protracted enunciation. “And now tell me,” he added, looking round, “who some of your friends 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 spectacle had become brilliant. It borrowed its splendour chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses. There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde’s door was
inexorably closed against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the fortunes of France,
⁵
and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious beauty. It is a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a physiognomist, for a great many of the faces were irregularly agreeable, expressive, and suggestive. If the occasion had been different they would hardly have pleased him; he would have thought the women not pretty enough and the men too smirking; but he was now in a humour to receive none but agreeable impressions, and he looked no more narrowly than to perceive that everyone was brilliant, and to feel that the sum of their brilliancy was a part of his credit. “I will present you to some people,” said M. de Bellegarde after awhile. “I will make a point of it, in fact. You will allow me?”

“Oh, I will shake hands with anyone you want,” said Newman. “Your mother just introduced me to half-a-dozen old gentlemen. Take care you don’t pick up the same parties again.”

“Who are the gentlemen to whom my mother presented you?”

“Upon my word, I forget them,” said Newman, laughing. “The people here look very much alike.”

“I suspect they have 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 along, in silence. At last, reaching the farther end of the suite of reception-rooms, Newman found himself in the presence of a lady of monstrous proportions, seated in a very capacious armchair, with several persons standing in a semicircle round her. This little group had divided as the marquis came up, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward and stood for an instant silent and obsequious, with his hat
⁶
raised to his lips, as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches as soon as they entered their
pews. The lady, indeed, bore a very fair likeness to a reverend 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 small piercing eye, a vast expanse of uncovered bosom, a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes and gems, and 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 eyes at the new-comers.

“Dear duchess,” said the marquis, “let me present you our good friend Mr. Newman, of whom you have heard us speak. Wishing to make Mr. Newman known to those who are dear to us, I could not 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 executed his obeisance. “I came on purpose to see monsieur. I hope he appreciates the compliment. You have 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 that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman, the gentlemen who surrounded her turned a little and looked at him with sympathetic curiosity. The marquis with supernatural gravity mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who bore it bowed; they were all what are called in France
beaux noms.
⁷
“I wanted extremely to see you,” the duchess went on.
“C’est positif.
⁸
In the first place, I am very fond of the person you are going to marry; she is the most charming creature in France. Mind you treat her well, or you shall hear some news of me. But you look as if you were good. I am told you are very remarkable. I have heard all sorts of
extraordinary things about you.
Voyons
,
⁹
are they true?”

“I don’t know what you can have heard,” said Newman.

“Oh, you have your
légende.
¹⁰
We have heard that you have had a career the most chequered, the most
bizarre.
¹¹
What is 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? Isn’t it half a million, messieurs? You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement, and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer still if you didn’t grant lands and houses free of rent to all new-comers who will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars. At this game, in three years, we are told, you are going to be made president of America.”

The duchess recited this amusing “legend” with a smooth self-possession which gave the speech, to Newman’s mind, the air of being a bit of amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress. Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter. “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 duchess, was certain of being listened to, and, as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors. “But I know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have endeared yourself to this good marquis and to his admirable mother. They don’t bestow their esteem on all the world. They are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale. Your success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don’t ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen, but come
and see me some day and give me a specimen of your talents.”

“The secret is with Madame de Cintré,” said Newman. “You must ask her for it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity.”

“Very pretty!” said the duchess. “That’s a very nice specimen, to begin with. What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?”

“I have a duty to perform, dear friend,” said the marquis, pointing to the other groups.

“Ah, for you I know what that means. Well, I have seen monsieur; that is what I wanted. He can’t persuade me that he isn’t very clever. Farewell.”

As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was. “The greatest lady in France,” said the marquis. M. de Bellegarde then presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons of both sexes, selected apparently for their typically august character. In some cases this character was written in a good round hand upon the countenance of the wearer; in others Newman was thankful for such help as his companion’s impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it. There were large, majestic men, and small, demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and everything else were absent. Everyone gave Newman extreme attention, everyone smiled, everyone was charmed to make his acquaintance, everyone looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the marquis was going about as a bear-leader,
¹²
if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast
¹³
was supposed to have found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity. Newman found his reception among the marquis’s friends very “pleasant;” he could not have said more for it. It was pleasant to be
treated with so much explicit politeness; it was pleasant to hear neatly-turned civilities, with a flavour of wit, uttered from beneath carefully-shaped moustaches; it was pleasant to see clever Frenchwomen—they all seemed clever—turn their backs to their partners to get a good look at the strange American whom Claire de Cintré was to marry, and reward the object of the exhibition with a charming smile. At last, as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other amenities, Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily; and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself. “Am I behaving like a d—d fool?” he asked himself. “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 he waved his hand in farewell to M. de Bellegarde and made his way toward her.

“Am I holding my head too high?” he asked. “Do I look as if I had the lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?”

“You look like all happy men, very ridiculous,” said Mrs. Tristram. “It’s the usual thing, neither better nor worse. I have been watching you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de Bellegarde. He doesn’t like it.”

“The more credit to him for putting it through,” replied Newman. “But I shall be generous. I shan’t trouble him any more. But I am very happy. I can’t stand still here. Please to take my arm and we will go for a walk.”

He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms. There were a great many of them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a stately crowd, their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre. Mrs. Tristram, looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive comments upon her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers; he hardly heard her; his thoughts were elsewhere. They were lost in a cheerful sense of success,
of attainment and victory. His momentary care as to whether he looked like a fool passed away, leaving him simply with a rich contentment. He had got what he wanted. The savour of success had always been highly agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it often. But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with so much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining. The lights, the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women, the jewels, the strangeness even of the universal murmur of a clever foreign tongue, were all a vivid symbol and assurance of his having grasped his purpose and forced along his groove.
¹⁴
If Newman’s smile was larger than usual, it was not tickled vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be shown with the finger
¹⁵
or to achieve a personal success. If he could have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof, he would have enjoyed it quite as much. It would have spoken to him about his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life to which, sooner or later, he made all experience contribute. Just now the cup seemed full.