by Henry James
“That is a little better,” said Bellegarde in the same tone, “but it leaves a good deal to be desired.”
“Oh, I never go to extremes,” said his sister-in-law. And then, turning to Madame de Bellegarde, “What were you calling me just now, madame?”
“I called you a gad-about,” said the old lady. “But I might call you something else, too.”
“A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?”
“A very beautiful person,” Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was in French.
“That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,” said the young marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, “Do you dance?”
“Not a step.”
“You are very wrong,” she said, simply. And with another look at her back in the mirror she turned away.
“Do you like Paris?” asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering what was the proper way to talk to an American.
“Yes, rather,” said Newman. And then he added with a friendly intonation, “Don’t you?”
“I can’t say I know it. I know my house—I know my friends—I don’t know Paris.”
“Oh, you lose a great deal,” said Newman, sympathetically.
Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had been condoled with on her losses.
“I am content with what I have,” she said with dignity.
Newman’s eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room, which struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements, with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them. He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his hostess was quite natural—she had a great deal; but the idea did not occur to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
“Well, my dear mother,” said Valentin, coming and leaning against the chimney-piece, “what do you think of my dear friend Newman? Is he not the excellent fellow I told you?”
“My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I can as yet only appreciate his great politeness.”
“My mother is a great judge of these matters,” said Valentin to Newman. “If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph.”
“I hope I shall satisfy you, some day,” said Newman, looking at the old lady. “I have done nothing yet.”
“You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble. He is a sad scatterbrain.”
“Oh, I like him—I like him,” said Newman, genially.
“He amuses you, eh?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Do you hear that, Valentin?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You amuse Mr. Newman.”
“Perhaps we shall all come to that!” Valentin exclaimed.
“You must see my other son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He is much better than this one. But he will not amuse you.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know!” murmured Valentin, reflectively. “But we shall very soon see. Here comes Monsieur mon frere.”
The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward and whose face Newman remembered. He had been the author of our hero’s discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to Madame de Cintre. Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment, and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to Newman.
“This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman,” he said very blandly. “You must know him.”
“I am delighted to know Mr. Newman,” said the marquis with a low bow, but without offering his hand.
“He is the old woman at second-hand,” Newman said to himself, as he returned M. de Bellegarde’s greeting. And this was the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late marquis had been a very amiable foreigner, with an inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so. But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
“My brother has spoken to me of you,” said M. de Bellegarde; “and as you are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet.” He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin. He was “distinguished” to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking one’s self seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view of a great facade.
“Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, “I call your attention to the fact that I am dressed.”
“That is a good idea,” murmured Valentin.
“I am at your orders, my dear friend,” said M. de Bellegarde. “Only, you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with Mr. Newman.”
“Oh, if you are going to a party, don’t let me keep you,” objected Newman. “I am very sure we shall meet again. Indeed, if you would like to converse with me I will gladly name an hour.” He was eager to make it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all exactions.
M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire, caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands, and looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular ray of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile. “It is very kind of you to make such an offer,” he said. “If I am not mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious. You are in—a—as we say, dans les affaires.”
“In business, you mean? Oh no, I have thrown business overboard for the present. I am ‘loafing,’ as WE say. My time is quite my own.”
“Ah, you are taking a holiday,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “‘Loafing.’ Yes, I have heard that expression.”
“Mr. Newman is American,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“My brother is a great ethnologist,” said Valentin.
“An ethnologist?” said Newman. “Ah, you collect negroes’ skulls, and that sort of thing.”
The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his other whisker. Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity, “You are traveling for your pleasure?” he asked.’
“Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I get a good deal of pleasure out of it.”
“What especially interests you?” inquired the marquis.
“Well, everything interests me,” said Newman. “I am not particular. Manufactures are what I care most about.”
“That has been your specialty?”
“I can’t say I have any specialty. My specialty has been to make the largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time.” Newman made this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it were necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. “I hope you have succeeded,” he said.
“Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you see.”
“Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great enjoyment of yours.” And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde’s good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he di
d not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces with which his friend Valentin had told him that he would have to contend, and he became sensible of their intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of HIS scale. It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or malicious, it was by no means void of humorous expectancy. Newman was quite as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his, if his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from deliberately planning to shock them.
“Paris is a very good place for idle people,” he said, “or it is a very good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister, and everything comfortable. I don’t like that way of living all in rooms next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to be, but I can’t manage it; it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven’t any house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I was a youngster, and I haven’t any wife; I wish I had! So, you see, I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. I am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant leisure comes hard.”
This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the part of Newman’s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly, with his hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the door. The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly.
“You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?” said the marquise.
“Hardly more—a small boy.”
“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were interrupted early.”
“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.
“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”
“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”
“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West.”
“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.
“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,” said the young marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.”
“Very likely,” said Newman; “if he did, you may be very sure they are well made.”
“Well, you must not be discouraged,” said M. de Bellegarde, with vague urbanity.
“Oh, I don’t mean to be. I have a project which gives me plenty to think about, and that is an occupation.” And then Newman was silent a moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point, and yet to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him. Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de Bellegarde, “I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I want to take a wife.”
“It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,” said the old lady.
Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity, “I should have thought you were,” he declared.
Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.
“I have a message for you,” he said to his sister-in-law. “Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go with you.”
“Claire will go with us!” cried the young marquise. “En voila, du nouveau!”
“She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is sticking the last diamond into her hair,” said Valentin.
“What has taken possession of my daughter?” demanded Madame de Bellegarde, sternly. “She has not been into the world these three years. Does she take such a step at half an hour’s notice, and without consulting me?”
“She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,” said Valentin, “and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she is beautiful, you will see—had no right to bury herself alive.”
“You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,” said M. de Bellegarde, in French. “This is very strange.”
“I refer her to the whole company!” said Valentin. “Here she comes!” And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintre on the threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense, fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her tremendously handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the face, for she stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently, what she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her mother, who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintre almost fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintre held her cloak apart to show her dress.
“What do you think of me?” she asked.
“I think you are audacious,” said the marquise. “It was but three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular favor to myself, to go to the Duchess de Lusignan’s, that you told me you were going nowhere and that one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?”
“I wish to please myself, dear mother,” said Madame de Cintre. And she bent over and kissed the old lady.
“I don’t like surprises, my sister,” said Urbain de Bellegarde; “especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room.”
Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. “Oh, if you are going into a room with Madame de Cintre, you needn’t be afraid of being noticed yourself!”
M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy. “I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your brother’s expense,” he said. “Come, come, madame.” And offering Madame de Cintre his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she may have flattered herself she had found it.
Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a few moments in silence. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said at last.
“She is very strange,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“I am glad to hear it
,” Newman rejoined, smiling. “It makes me hope.”
“Hope what?”
“That she will consent, some day, to marry me.”
The old lady slowly rose to her feet. “That really is your project, then?”
“Yes; will you favor it?”
“Favor it?” Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then shook her head. “No!” she said, softly.
“Will you suffer it, then? Will you let it pass?”
“You don’t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old woman.”
“Well, I am very rich,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favor of resenting the brutality of this remark. But at last, looking up, she said simply, “How rich?”