by Henry James
“It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too slowly,” he said to Mrs. Tristram. “They make me want to joggle their elbows and force them to spill their wine.”
To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and let them do things in their own way. “You must make allowances for them,” she said. “It is natural enough that they should hang fire a little. They thought they accepted you when you made your application; but they are not people of imagination, they could not project themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again. But they are people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary.”
Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation. “I am not hard on them,” he presently said, “and to prove it I will invite them all to a festival.”
“To a festival?”
“You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I will show you that they are good for something. I will give a party. What is the grandest thing one can do here? I will hire all the great singers from the opera, and all the first people from the Theatre Francais, and I will give an entertainment.”
“And whom will you invite?”
“You, first of all. And then the old lady and her son. And then every one among her friends whom I have met at her house or elsewhere, every one who has shown me the minimum of politeness, every duke of them and his wife. And then all my friends, without exception: Miss Kitty Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest. And every one shall know what it is about, that is, to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de Cintre. What do you think of the idea?”
“I think it is odious!” said Mrs. Tristram. And then in a moment: “I think it is delicious!”
The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde’s salon. where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight distant.
The marquise stared a moment. “My dear sir,” she cried, “what do you want to do to me?”
“To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a very easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini’s singing.”
“You mean to give a concert?”
“Something of that sort.”
“And to have a crowd of people?”
“All my friends, and I hope some of yours and your daughter’s. I want to celebrate my engagement.”
It seemed to Newman that Madame de Bellegarde turned pale. She opened her fan, a fine old painted fan of the last century, and looked at the picture, which represented a fete champetre—a lady with a guitar, singing, and a group of dancers round a garlanded Hermes.
“We go out so little,” murmured the marquis, “since my poor father’s death.”
“But MY dear father is still alive, my friend,” said his wife. “I am only waiting for my invitation to accept it,” and she glanced with amiable confidence at Newman. “It will be magnificent; I am very sure of that.”
I am sorry to say, to the discredit of Newman’s gallantry, that this lady’s invitation was not then and there bestowed; he was giving all his attention to the old marquise. She looked up at last, smiling. “I can’t think of letting you offer me a fete,” she said, “until I have offered you one. We want to present you to our friends; we will invite them all. We have it very much at heart. We must do things in order. Come to me about the 25th; I will let you know the exact day immediately. We shall not have any one so fine as Madame Frezzolini, but we shall have some very good people. After that you may talk of your own fete.” The old lady spoke with a certain quick eagerness, smiling more agreeably as she went on.
It seemed to Newman a handsome proposal, and such proposals always touched the sources of his good-nature. He said to Madame de Bellegarde that he should be glad to come on the 25th or any other day, and that it mattered very little whether he met his friends at her house or at his own. I have said that Newman was observant, but it must be admitted that on this occasion he failed to notice a certain delicate glance which passed between Madame de Bellegarde and the marquis, and which we may presume to have been a commentary upon the innocence displayed in that latter clause of his speech.
Valentin de Bellegarde walked away with Newman that evening, and when they had left the Rue de l’Universite some distance behind them he said reflectively, “My mother is very strong—very strong.” Then in answer to an interrogative movement of Newman’s he continued, “She was driven to the wall, but you would never have thought it. Her fete of the 25th was an invention of the moment. She had no idea whatever of giving a fete, but finding it the only issue from your proposal, she looked straight at the dose—excuse the expression—and bolted it, as you saw, without winking. She is very strong.”
“Dear me!” said Newman, divided between relish and compassion. “I don’t care a straw for her fete, I am willing to take the will for the deed.”
“No, no,” said Valentin, with a little inconsequent touch of family pride. “The thing will be done now, and done handsomely.”
CHAPTER XV
Valentin de Bellegarde’s announcement of the secession of Mademoiselle Nioche from her father’s domicile and his irreverent reflections upon the attitude of this anxious parent in so grave a catastrophe, received a practical commentary in the fact that M. Nioche was slow to seek another interview with his late pupil. It had cost Newman some disgust to be forced to assent to Valentin’s somewhat cynical interpretation of the old man’s philosophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indicate that he had not given himself up to a noble despair, Newman thought it very possible he might be suffering more keenly than was apparent. M. Nioche had been in the habit of paying him a respectful little visit every two or three weeks and his absence might be a proof quite as much of extreme depression as of a desire to conceal the success with which he had patched up his sorrow. Newman presently learned from Valentin several details touching this new phase of Mademoiselle Noemie’s career.
“I told you she was remarkable,” this unshrinking observer declared, “and the way she has managed this performance proves it. She has had other chances, but she was resolved to take none but the best. She did you the honor to think for a while that you might be such a chance. You were not; so she gathered up her patience and waited a while longer. At last her occasion came along, and she made her move with her eyes wide open. I am very sure she had no innocence to lose, but she had all her respectability. Dubious little damsel as you thought her, she had kept a firm hold of that; nothing could be proved against her, and she was determined not to let her reputation go till she had got her equivalent. About her equivalent she had high ideas. Apparently her ideal has been satisfied. It is fifty years old, bald-headed, and deaf, but it is very easy about money.”
“And where in the world,” asked Newman, “did you pick up this valuable information?”
“In conversation. Remember my frivolous habits. In conversation with a young woman engaged in the humble trade of glove-cleaner, who keeps a small shop in the Rue St. Roch. M. Nioche lives in the same house, up six pair of stairs, across the court, in and out of whose ill-swept doorway Miss Noemie has been flitting for the last five years. The little glove-cleaner was an old acquaintance; she used to be the friend of a friend of mine, who has married and dropped such friends. I often saw her in his society. As soon as I espied her behind her clear little window-pane, I recollected her. I had on a spotlessly fresh pair of gloves, but I went in and held up my hands, and said to her, ‘Dear mademoiselle, what will you ask me for cleaning these?’ ‘Dear count,’ she answered immediately, ‘I will clean them for you for nothing.’ She had instantly recognized me, and I had to hear her history for the last six years. But after that, I put her upon that of her neighbors. She knows and admires Noemie, and she told me what I have just repeated.”
A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every morning read two or three suicides in the “Figaro,
” began to suspect that, mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his wounded pride in the waters of the Seine. He had a note of M. Nioche’s address in his pocket-book, and finding himself one day in the quartier, he determined in so far as he might to clear up his doubts. He repaired to the house in the Rue St. Roch which bore the recorded number, and observed in a neighboring basement, behind a dangling row of neatly inflated gloves, the attentive physiognomy of Bellegarde’s informant—a sallow person in a dressing-gown—peering into the street as if she were expecting that amiable nobleman to pass again. But it was not to her that Newman applied; he simply asked of the portress if M. Nioche were at home. The portress replied, as the portress invariably replies, that her lodger had gone out barely three minutes before; but then, through the little square hole of her lodge-window taking the measure of Newman’s fortunes, and seeing them, by an unspecified process, refresh the dry places of servitude to occupants of fifth floors on courts, she added that M. Nioche would have had just time to reach the Cafe de la Patrie, round the second corner to the left, at which establishment he regularly spent his afternoons. Newman thanked her for the information, took the second turning to the left, and arrived at the Cafe de la Patrie. He felt a momentary hesitation to go in; was it not rather mean to “follow up” poor old Nioche at that rate? But there passed across his vision an image of a haggard little septuagenarian taking measured sips of a glass of sugar and water and finding them quite impotent to sweeten his desolation. He opened the door and entered, perceiving nothing at first but a dense cloud of tobacco smoke. Across this, however, in a corner, he presently descried the figure of M. Nioche, stirring the contents of a deep glass, with a lady seated in front of him. The lady’s back was turned to Newman, but M. Nioche very soon perceived and recognized his visitor. Newman had gone toward him, and the old man rose slowly, gazing at him with a more blighted expression even than usual.
“If you are drinking hot punch,” said Newman, “I suppose you are not dead. That’s all right. Don’t move.”
M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his hand. The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and glanced upward with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable features of his daughter. She looked at Newman sharply, to see how he was looking at her, then—I don’t know what she discovered—she said graciously, “How d’ ye do, monsieur? won’t you come into our little corner?”
“Did you come—did you come after ME?” asked M. Nioche very softly.
“I went to your house to see what had become of you. I thought you might be sick,” said Newman.
“It is very good of you, as always,” said the old man. “No, I am not well. Yes, I am SEEK.”
“Ask monsieur to sit down,” said Mademoiselle Nioche. “Garcon, bring a chair.”
“Will you do us the honor to SEAT?” said M. Nioche, timorously, and with a double foreignness of accent.
Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left and her father on the other side. “You will take something, of course,” said Miss Noemie, who was sipping a glass of madeira. Newman said that he believed not, and then she turned to her papa with a smile. “What an honor, eh? he has come only for us.” M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught, and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence. “But you didn’t come for me, eh?” Mademoiselle Noemie went on. “You didn’t expect to find me here?”
Newman observed the change in her appearance. She was very elegant and prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability. She looked “lady-like.” She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from years of practice. Her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde that the young lady was very remarkable. “No, to tell the truth, I didn’t come for you,” he said, “and I didn’t expect to find you. I was told,” he added in a moment “that you had left your father.”
“Quelle horreur!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile. “Does one leave one’s father? You have the proof of the contrary.”
“Yes, convincing proof,” said Newman glancing at M. Nioche. The old man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then, lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.
“Who told you that?” Noemie demanded. “I know very well. It was M. de Bellegarde. Why don’t you say yes? You are not polite.”
“I am embarrassed,” said Newman.
“I set you a better example. I know M. de Bellegarde told you. He knows a great deal about me—or he thinks he does. He has taken a great deal of trouble to find out, but half of it isn’t true. In the first place, I haven’t left my father; I am much too fond of him. Isn’t it so, little father? M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man; it is impossible to be cleverer. I know a good deal about him too; you can tell him that when you next see him.”
“No,” said Newman, with a sturdy grin; “I won’t carry any messages for you.”
“Just as you please,” said Mademoiselle Nioche, “I don’t depend upon you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either. He is very much interested in me; he can be left to his own devices. He is a contrast to you.”
“Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt” said Newman. “But I don’t exactly know how you mean it.”
“I mean it in this way. First of all, he never offered to help me to a dot and a husband.” And Mademoiselle Nioche paused, smiling. “I won’t say that is in his favor, for I do you justice. What led you, by the way, to make me such a queer offer? You didn’t care for me.”
“Oh yes, I did,” said Newman.
“How so?”
“It would have given me real pleasure to see you married to a respectable young fellow.”
“With six thousand francs of income!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche. “Do you call that caring for me? I’m afraid you know little about women. You were not galant; you were not what you might have been.”
Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. “Come!” he exclaimed “that’s rather strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby.”
Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. “It is something, at any rate, to have made you angry.”
Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table, and his head, bent forward, was supported in his hands, the thin white fingers of which were pressed over his ears. In his position he was staring fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing. Mademoiselle Noemie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman.
“You had better have remained an honest girl,” Newman said, quietly.
M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling. “You mean that I look so much like one? That’s more than most women do nowadays. Don’t judge me yet a while,” she added. “I mean to succeed; that’s what I mean to do. I leave you; I don’t mean to be seen in cafes, for one thing. I can’t think what you want of my poor father; he’s very comfortable now. It isn’t his fault, either. Au revoir, little father.” And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute, looking at Newman. “Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to come and get it from ME!” And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. “So you determined not to shoot her, after all,” Newman said, presently.
M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand
, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche’s gaze was a profession of moral flatness. “You despise me terribly,” he said, in the weakest possible voice.
“Oh no,” said Newman, “it is none of my business. It’s a good plan to take things easily.”
“I made you too many fine speeches,” M. Nioche added. “I meant them at the time.”
“I am sure I am very glad you didn’t shoot her,” said Newman. “I was afraid you might have shot yourself. That is why I came to look you up.” And he began to button his coat.
“Neither,” said M. Nioche. “You despise me, and I can’t explain to you. I hoped I shouldn’t see you again.”