The American (46 page)

“You are a wise kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “I hoped I might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall yet.” And he put out his hand. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her. “You want to know all about Mr. Valentin?” he said.

“It would be a sad pleasure, sir.”

“I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?”

“The château, sir? I really don’t know. I never tried.”

“Try, then; try hard. Try this evening, at dusk. Come to me in the old ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I will wait for you there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman like you can do as she pleases.”

Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. “Is it from the count, sir?” she asked.

“From the count—from his death-bed,” said Newman.

“I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for
him.
”

She led Newman into the great drawing-room with
which he had already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman waited a long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his request. He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his arm. It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked. “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they advanced. “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” Madame de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before them, and such eye-beams as they found available they levelled at him; Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.

“You see I have come back,” he said. “I have come to try again.”

“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”

“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman with a laugh, “or that will bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work as you please. Promise me to raise the blockade—to set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and I will retire instantly.”

“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honour. But it seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are
certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once.”

“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,” Newman answered. “I didn’t come, however, for conversational purposes. I came to say this simply: That if you will write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don’t want her to turn nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a commercial person is better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you retract, and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out. There’s your chance—I call those easy terms.”

“We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room. “I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine
⁵
than Mrs. Newman.”

But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating: “But once, Mr. Newman; but once!”

Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it. “Could anything compel you?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that would force you?”

“This language, sir,” said the marquis, “addressed to people in bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.”

“In most cases,” Newman answered, “your objection would have some weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré’s present intentions make time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and you two very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your brother was ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologised to me for your conduct. He apologised to me for that of his mother.”

For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of steel. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the sound,
“Le misérable!”
⁶

“You show little respect for the living,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “but at least respect the dead. Don’t profane—don’t insult—the memory of my innocent son.”

“I speak the simple truth,” Newman declared, “and I speak it for a purpose. I repeat it—distinctly. Your son was utterly disgusted—your son apologised.”

Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was frowning at poor Valentin’s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonour. But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag. “You are immensely mistaken, sir,” she said. “My son was sometimes light, but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his name.”

“You simply misunderstood him,” said the marquis, beginning to rally. “You affirm the impossible.”

“Oh, I don’t care for poor Valentin’s apology,” said Newman. “It was far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious thing was not his fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of honour. But it shows how he took it.”

“If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was out of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy circumstances nothing was more possible. But confine yourself to that.”

“He was quite in his right mind,” said Newman, with gentle but dangerous doggedness; “I have never seen him so bright and clever. It was terrible to see that witty capable fellow dying such a death. You know I was very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his sanity,” Newman concluded.

The marquise gathered herself together majestically. “This is too gross!” she cried. “We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate it. Urbain, open the door.” She turned away, with an imperious motion to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.

He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost brimming over into jocularity. “Come,” he said, “you don’t treat me well; at least admit that.”

M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most delicate best-bred voice: “I detest you personally,” he said.

“That’s the way I feel to you, but for politeness’ sake I don’t say it,” said Newman. “It’s singular I should want so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can’t give it up. Let me try once more.” And he paused a moment. “You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet.” M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. “You and your mother have committed a crime.” At this M. de Bellegarde’s eyes certainly did change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in his self-control.

“Continue,” said M. de Bellegarde.

Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. “Need I continue? You are trembling.”

“Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?” M. de Bellegarde asked very softly.

“I shall be strictly accurate,” said Newman. “I won’t pretend to know more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known, something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don’t know what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and I
will
find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will leave you alone. It’s a bargain?”

The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual. But Newman’s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He stood some moments, reflecting.

“My brother told you this,” he said, looking up.

Newman hesitated a moment. “Yes, your brother told me.”

The marquis smiled, handsomely. “Didn’t I say that he was out of his mind?”

“He was out of his mind if I don’t find out. He was very much in it if I do.”

M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. “Eh, sir, find out or not, as you please.”

“I don’t frighten you?” demanded Newman.

“That’s for you to judge.”

“No, it’s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can’t give you more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a nun? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is frightened. I don’t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as you; but you will see. I will go and wait
in the village, at the inn, and I beg you to let me know as soon as possible. Say by three o’clock. A simple
yes
or
no
on paper will do. Only, you know, in case of a
yes
I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.” And with this Newman opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him another look. “At the inn, in the village,” he repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed out of the house.

He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the spectre of dishonour before a family a thousand years old. But he went back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next two hours. He thought it more than probable that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense, would be a confession of guilt What he most expected was silence—in other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he imaged it, his shot might bring them down. It did bring, by three o’clock, a note, delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde’s handsome English hand. It ran as follows:

Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and down the inn-parlour. He had spent most of his time, for the past week, in walking up and down. He continued to measure the length of the little
salle
⁷
of the Armes de France
⁸
until the day began to wane, when he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led up the hill to the ruin
was easy to find, and Newman in a short time had followed it to the top. He passed beneath the rugged arch of the castle-wall, and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in black. The castle-yard was empty, but the door of the church was open. Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer inspection helped him to recognise Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendour. She wore a large black silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had judged it proper to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel. She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then she rose.

“Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?” he asked.

“No, sir; I’m a good Church of England woman, very Low,”
⁹
she answered. “But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out in the evening before, sir.”

“We shall be safer,” said Newman, “where no one can hear us.” And he led the way back into the castle-court and then followed a path beside the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the ruin. He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which had once been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed and found himself in a nook peculiarly favourable to quiet conversation, as probably many an earnest couple, otherwise assorted than our friends, had assured themselves. The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the remnant of its crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone. Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which, in the near
distance, gleamed two or three lights from the château. Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon it. She cautiously complied, and he placed himself upon another, near her.