The American (5 page)

As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and then a responsive glance toward her admirer. The cultivation of the fine arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of by-play, a great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from side to side, stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning and patting of the foot, fumbling in disordered tresses for wandering hair-pins. These performances were accompanied by a restless glance, which lingered longer than elsewhere upon the gentleman we have described. At last he rose abruptly, put on his hat, and approached the young lady. He placed himself before her picture and looked at it for some moments, during which she pretended to be quite unconscious of his inspection. Then, addressing her with the single word which constituted the strength of his French vocabulary, and holding up one finger in a manner which appeared to him to illuminate his meaning,
“Combien?”
he abruptly demanded.

The artist stared a moment, gave a little pout, shrugged her shoulders, put down her palette and brushes, and stood rubbing her hands.

“How much?” said our friend, in English.
“Combien?”

“Monsieur wishes to buy it?” asked the young lady, in French.

“Very pretty,
splendide.
⁷
Combien?”
repeated the American.

“It pleases monsieur, my little picture? It’s a very beautiful subject,” said the young lady.

“The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it.
Combien?
Write it here.” And he took a pencil from his pocket, and showed her the flv-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and scratching her chin with the pencil. “Is it not for sale?” he asked. And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her. She was simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go. “I haven’t made a mistake—
pas insulté
,
⁸
no?” her interlocutor continued. “Don’t you understand a little English?”

The young lady’s aptitude for playing a part at short notice was remarkable. She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye, and asked him if he spoke no French. Then,
“Donnez!”
⁹
she said briefly, and took the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf she traced a number, in a minute and extremely neat hand. Then she handed back the book, and took up her palette again.

Our friend read the number: “2,000 francs.” He said nothing for a time, but stood looking at the picture, while the copyist began actively to dabble with her paint. “For a copy, isn’t that a good deal?” he asked at last.
“Pas beaucoup?”
¹⁰

The young lady raised her eyes from her palette, scanned him from head to foot, and alighted with
admirable sagacity upon exactly the right answer. “Yes, it’s a good deal. But my copy has remarkable qualities; it is worth nothing less.”

The gentleman in whom we are interested understood no French, but I have said he was intelligent, and here is a good chance to prove it. He apprehended, by a natural instinct, the meaning of the young woman’s phrase, and it gratified him to think that she was so honest. Beauty, talent, virtue; she combined everything! “But you must finish it,” he said.
“Finish
, you know,” and he pointed to the unpainted hand of the figure.

“Oh, it shall be finished in perfection—in the perfection of perfections!” cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch in the middle of the Madonna’s cheek.

But the American frowned. “Ah, too red, too red!” he rejoined. “Her complexion,” pointing to the Murillo, “is more delicate.”

“Delicate? Oh, it shall be delicate, monsieur; delicate as Sèvres
biscuit.
¹¹
I am going to tone that down; I know all the secrets of my art. And where will you allow us to send it to you? Your address?”

“My address? Oh yes!” And the gentleman drew a card from his pocket-book and wrote something upon it. Then hesitating a moment he said: “If I don’t like it when it is finished, you know, I shall not be obliged to take it.”

The young lady seemed as good a guesser as himself. “Oh, I am very sure that monsieur is not capricious,” she said with a roguish smile.

“Capricious?” And at this monsieur began to laugh. “Oh no, I’m not capricious. I am very faithful. I am very constant.
Comprenez?
”

“Monsieur is constant; I understand perfectly. It’s a rare virtue. To recompense you, you shall have your picture on the first possible day; next week—as soon as it is dry. I will take the card of monsieur.” And she took
it and read his name: “Christopher Newman.” Then she tried to repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent. “Your English names are so droll!”

“Droll?” said Mr. Newman, laughing too. “Did you ever hear of Christopher Columbus?”

“Bien sûr!
¹²
He invented
¹³
America; a very great man. And is he your patron?”

“My patron?”

“Your patron-saint, in the calendar.”
¹⁴

“Oh, exactly; my parents named me for him.”

“Monsieur is American?”

“Don’t you see it?” monsieur inquired.

“And you mean to carry my little picture away over there?” and she explained her phrase with a gesture.

“Oh, I mean to buy a great many pictures—
beaucoup, beaucoup
,” said Christopher Newman.

“The honour is not less for me,” the young lady answered, “for I am sure monsieur has a great deal of taste.”

“But you must give me your card,” Newman said; “your card, you know.”

The young lady looked severe for an instant, and then said: “My father will wait upon you.”

But this time Mr. Newman’s powers of divination were at fault. “Your card, your address,” he simply repeated.

“My address?” said mademoiselle. Then, with a little shrug: “Happily for you, you are an American! It is the first time I ever gave my card to a gentleman.” And, taking from her pocket a rather greasy portemonnaie,
¹⁵
she extracted from it a small glazed visiting card, and presented the latter to her patron. It was neatly inscribed in pencil, with a great many flourishes: “Mlle. Noémie
¹⁶
Nioche.” But Mr. Newman, unlike his companion, read the name with perfect gravity; all French names to him were equally droll.

“And precisely, here is my father, who has come to
escort me home,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “He speaks English. He will arrange with you.” And she turned to welcome a little old gentleman who came shuffling up, peering over his spectacles at Newman.

M. Nioche wore a glossy wig, of an unnatural colour, which overhung his little meek, white, vacant face, and left it hardly more expressive than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in the barber’s window. He was an exquisite image of shabby gentility. His little ill-made coat, desperately brushed, his darned gloves, his highly-polished boots, his rusty, shapely hat, told the story of a person who had “had losses,” and who clung to the spirit of nice
¹⁷
habits, though the letter had been hopelessly effaced. Among other things M. Nioche had lost courage. Adversity had not only ruined him, it had frightened him, and he was evidently going through his remnant of life on tiptoe, for fear of waking up the hostile fates. If this strange gentleman was saying anything improper to his daughter, M. Nioche would entreat him huskily, as a particular favour, to forbear; but he would admit at the same time that he was very presumptuous to ask for particular favours.

“Monsieur has bought my picture,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “When it is finished you will carry it to him in a cab.”

“In a cab!” cried M. Nioche; and he stared, in a bewildered way, as if he had seen the sun rising at midnight.

“Are you the young lady’s father?” said Newman. “I think she said you speak English.”

“Speak English—yes,” said the old man, slowly rubbing his hands. “I will bring it in a cab.”

“Say something, then,” cried his daughter. “Thank him a little—not too much.”

“A little, my daughter, a little,” said M. Nioche, perplexed. “How much?”

“Two thousand!” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “Don’t make a fuss, or he will take back his word.”

“Two thousand!” cried the old man; and he began to fumble for his snuff-box. He looked at Newman, from head to foot, at his daughter, and then at the picture. “Take care you don’t spoil it!” he cried, almost sublimely.

“We must go home,” said Mademoiselle Noémie. “This is a good day’s work. Take care how you carry it!” And she began to put up her utensils.

“How can I thank you?” said M. Nioche. “My English does not suffice.”

“I wish I spoke French as well,” said Newman, good-naturedly. “Your daughter is very clever.”

“Oh sir!” and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness. “She has had an education—
très-supérieure!”
¹⁸
Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn’t look at the francs then. She’s an
artiste
, eh?”

“Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?” asked Newman.

“Reverses? Oh sir, misfortunes—terrible!”

“Unsuccessful in business, eh?”

“Very unsuccessful, sir.”

“Oh, never fear, you’ll get on your legs again,” said Newman cheerily.

The old man drooped his head on one side and looked at him with an expression of pain, as if this were an unfeeling jest.

“What does he say?” demanded Mademoiselle Noémie.

M. Nioche took a pinch of snuff. “He says I will make my fortune again.”

“Perhaps he will help you. And what else?”

“He says thou art
¹⁹
very clever.”

“It is very possible. You believe it yourself, my father?”

“Believe it, my daughter? With this evidence!” and the old man turned afresh, with a staring, wondering homage, to the audacious daub on the easel.

“Ask him, then, if he would not like to learn French.”

“To learn French?”

“To take lessons.”

“To take lessons, my daughter? From thee?”

“From you!”

“From me, my child? How should I give lessons?”

“Pas de raisons!
²⁰
Ask him immediately!” said Mademoiselle Noémie, with soft brevity.

M. Nioche stood aghast, but under his daughter’s eye he collected his wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her commands. “Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?” he inquired, with an appealing quaver.

“To study French?” asked Newman, staring.

M. Nioche pressed his finger-tips together and slowly raised his shoulders. “A little conversation!”

“Conversation—that’s it!” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie, who had caught the word. “The conversation of the best society.”

“Our French conversation is famous, you know,” M. Nioche ventured to continue. “It’s a great talent.”

“But isn’t it awfully difficult?” asked Newman, very simply.

“Not to a man of
esprit
,
²¹
like monsieur, an admirer of beauty in every form!” and M. Nioche cast a significant glance at his daughter’s Madonna.

“I can’t fancy myself chattering French!” said Newman with a laugh. “And yet, I suppose that the more a man knows the better.”

“Monsieur expresses that very happily.
Hélas, oui!”
²²

“I suppose it would help me a great deal, knocking about Paris, to know the language.”

“Ah, there are so many things monsieur must want to say: difficult things!”

“Everything I want to say is difficult. But you give lessons?”

Poor M. Nioche was embarrassed; he smiled more appealingly. “I am not a regular professor,” he admitted.

“I can’t nevertheless tell him that I’m a professor,”
²³
he said to his daughter.

“Tell him it’s a very exceptional chance,” answered Mademoiselle Noémie; “an
homme du monde
²⁴
—one gentleman conversing with another! Remember what you are—what you have been!”

“A teacher of languages in neither case! Much more formerly and much less to-day! And if he asks the price of the lessons?”

“He won’t ask it,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.

“What he pleases, I may say?”

“Never! That’s bad style.”

“If he asks, then?”

Mademoiselle Noémie had put on her bonnet and was tying the ribbons. She smoothed them out, with her soft little chin thrust forward. “Ten francs,” she said quickly.

“Oh, my daughter! I shall never dare.”

“Don’t dare, then! He won’t ask till the end of the lessons, and then I will make out the bill.”

M. Nioche turned to the confiding foreigner again, and stood rubbing his hands, with an air of seeming to plead guilty which was not intenser only because it was habitually so striking. It never occurred to Newman to ask him for a guarantee of his skill in imparting instruction; he supposed of course M. Nioche knew his own language, and his appealing forlornness was quite the perfection of what the American, for vague reasons, had always associated with all elderly foreigners of the lesson-giving class. Newman had never reflected upon philological processes. His chief impression with regard to ascertaining those mysterious correlatives of his familiar English vocables which were current in this extraordinary city of Paris was, that it was simply a matter of a good deal of unwonted and rather ridiculous muscular effort on his own part. “How did you learn English?” he asked of the old man.

“When I was young, before my miseries. Oh, I was
wide awake, then. My father was a great
commerçant
;
²⁵
he placed me for a year in a counting-house
²⁶
in England. Some of it stuck to me; but I have forgotten!”