by Henry James
Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company. He could neither eat nor talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his double sorrow was intolerable. He sat with his eyes fixed upon his plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintre and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for the impatient egotism of the wish. He was very poor company, himself, and even his acute preoccupation and his general lack of the habit of pondering the impression he produced did not prevent him from reflecting that his companions must be puzzled to see how poor Bellegarde came to take such a fancy to this taciturn Yankee that he must needs have him at his death-bed. After breakfast he strolled forth alone into the village and looked at the fountain, the geese, the open barn doors, the brown, bent old women, showing their hugely darned stocking-heels at the ends of their slowly-clicking sabots, and the beautiful view of snowy Alps and purple Jura at either end of the little street. The day was brilliant; early spring was in the air and in the sunshine, and the winter’s damp was trickling out of the cottage eaves. It was birth and brightness for all nature, even for chirping chickens and waddling goslings, and it was to be death and burial for poor, foolish, generous, delightful Bellegarde. Newman walked as far as the village church, and went into the small grave-yard beside it, where he sat down and looked at the awkward tablets which were planted around. They were all sordid and hideous, and Newman could feel nothing but the hardness and coldness of death. He got up and came back to the inn, where he found M. Ledoux having coffee and a cigarette at a little green table which he had caused to be carried into the small garden. Newman, learning that the doctor was still sitting with Valentin, asked M. Ledoux if he might not be allowed to relieve him; he had a great desire to be useful to his poor friend. This was easily arranged; the doctor was very glad to go to bed. He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner, but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the instructions he gave him before retiring, and took mechanically from his hand a small volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of “Faublas.” Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible change in his condition. Newman sat down near him, and for a long time narrowly watched him. Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts upon his own situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps, disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the red-tiled floor. He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but he only half succeeded. What had happened to him seemed to have, in its violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity—the strength and insolence of Destiny herself. It was unnatural and monstrous, and he had no arms against it. At last a sound struck upon the stillness, and he heard Valentin’s voice.
“It can’t be about me you are pulling that long face!” He found, when he turned, that Valentin was lying in the same position; but his eyes were open, and he was even trying to smile. It was with a very slender strength that he returned the pressure of Newman’s hand. “I have been watching you for a quarter of an hour,” Valentin went on; “you have been looking as black as thunder. You are greatly disgusted with me, I see. Well, of course! So am I!”
“Oh, I shall not scold you,” said Newman. “I feel too badly. And how are you getting on?”
“Oh, I’m getting off! They have quite settled that; haven’t they?”
“That’s for you to settle; you can get well if you try,” said Newman, with resolute cheerfulness.
“My dear fellow, how can I try? Trying is violent exercise, and that sort of thing isn’t in order for a man with a hole in his side as big as your hat, that begins to bleed if he moves a hair’s-breadth. I knew you would come,” he continued; “I knew I should wake up and find you here; so I’m not surprised. But last night I was very impatient. I didn’t see how I could keep still until you came. It was a matter of keeping still, just like this; as still as a mummy in his case. You talk about trying; I tried that! Well, here I am yet—these twenty hours. It seems like twenty days.” Bellegarde talked slowly and feebly, but distinctly enough. It was visible, however, that he was in extreme pain, and at last he closed his eyes. Newman begged him to remain silent and spare himself; the doctor had left urgent orders. “Oh,” said Valentin, “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow—to-morrow”—and he paused again. “No, not to-morrow, perhaps, but today. I can’t eat and drink, but I can talk. What’s to be gained, at this pass, by renun—renunciation? I mustn’t use such big words. I was always a chatterer; Lord, how I have talked in my day!”
“That’s a reason for keeping quiet now,” said Newman. “We know how well you talk, you know.”
But Valentin, without heeding him, went on in the same weak, dying drawl. “I wanted to see you because you have seen my sister. Does she know—will she come?”
Newman was embarrassed. “Yes, by this time she must know.”
“Didn’t you tell her?” Valentin asked. And then, in a moment, “Didn’t you bring me any message from her?” His eyes rested upon Newman’s with a certain soft keenness.
“I didn’t see her after I got your telegram,” said Newman. “I wrote to her.”
“And she sent you no answer?”
Newman was obliged to reply that Madame de Cintre had left Paris. “She went yesterday to Fleurieres.”
“Yesterday—to Fleurieres? Why did she go to Fleurieres? What day is this? What day was yesterday? Ah, then I shan’t see her,” said Valentin, sadly. “Fleurieres is too far!” And then he closed his eyes again. Newman sat silent, summoning pious invention to his aid, but he was relieved at finding that Valentin was apparently too weak to reason or to be curious. Bellegarde, however, presently went on. “And my mother—and my brother—will they come? Are they at Fleurieres?”
“They were in Paris, but I didn’t see them, either,” Newman answered. “If they received your telegram in time, they will have started this morning. Otherwise they will be obliged to wait for the night-express, and they will arrive at the same hour as I did.”
“They won’t thank me—they won’t thank me,” Valentin murmured. “They will pass an atrocious night, and Urbain doesn’t like the early morning air. I don’t remember ever in my life to have seen him before noon—before breakfast. No one ever saw him. We don’t know how he is then. Perhaps he’s different. Who knows? Posterity, perhaps, will know. That’s the time he works, in his cabinet, at the history of the Princesses. But I had to send for them—hadn’t I? And then I want to see my mother sit there where you sit, and say good-by to her. Perhaps, after all, I don’t know her, and she will have some surprise for me. Don’t think you know her yet, yourself; perhaps she may surprise YOU. But if I can’t see Claire, I don’t care for anything. I have been thinking of it—and in my dreams, too. Why did she go to Fleurieres to-day? She never told me. What has happened? Ah, she ought to have guessed I was here—this way. It is the first time in her life she ever disappointed me. Poor Claire!”
“You know we are not man and wife quite yet,—your sister and I,” said Newman. “She doesn’t yet account to me for all her actions.” And, after a fashion, he smiled.
Valentin looked at him a moment. “Have you quarreled?”
“Never, never, never!” Newman exclaimed.
“How happily you say that!” said Valentin. “You are going to be happy—VA!” In answer to this stroke of irony, none the less powerful for being so unconscious, all poor Newman could do was to give a helpless and transparent stare. Valentin continued to fix him with his own rather over-bright gaze, and presently he said, “But something is the matter with you. I watched you just now; you haven’t a bridegroom’s face.”
“My dear fellow,” said Newman, “how can I show YOU a bridegroom’s face? If you think I enjoy seeing you lie there and not being able to h
elp you”—
“Why, you are just the man to be cheerful; don’t forfeit your rights! I’m a proof of your wisdom. When was a man ever gloomy when he could say, ‘I told you so?’ You told me so, you know. You did what you could about it. You said some very good things; I have thought them over. But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same. This is the regular way.”
“I didn’t do what I ought,” said Newman. “I ought to have done something else.”
“For instance?”
“Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small boy.”
“Well, I’m a very small boy, now,” said Valentin. “I’m rather less than an infant. An infant is helpless, but it’s generally voted promising. I’m not promising, eh? Society can’t lose a less valuable member.”
Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his friend and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but only vaguely seeing. “No, I don’t like the look of your back,” Valentin continued. “I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out of sorts.”
Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. “Be quiet and get well,” he said. “That’s what you must do. Get well and help me.”
“I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?” Valentin asked.
“I’ll let you know when you are better. You were always curious; there is something to get well for!” Newman answered, with resolute animation.
Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He seemed even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he began to talk again. “I am rather sorry about that place in the bank. Who knows but what I might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn’t meant for a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don’t you think I have been very easy to kill? It’s not like a serious man. It’s really very mortifying. It’s like telling your hostess you must go, when you count upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such thing. ‘Really—so soon? You’ve only just come!’ Life doesn’t make me any such polite little speech.”
Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. “It’s a bad case—it’s a bad case—it’s the worst case I ever met. I don’t want to say anything unpleasant, but I can’t help it. I’ve seen men dying before—and I’ve seen men shot. But it always seemed more natural; they were not so clever as you. Damnation—damnation! You might have done something better than this. It’s about the meanest winding-up of a man’s affairs that I can imagine!”
Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. “Don’t insist—don’t insist! It is mean—decidedly mean. For you see at the bottom—down at the bottom, in a little place as small as the end of a wine-funnel—I agree with you!”
A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and felt his pulse. He shook his head and declared that he had talked too much—ten times too much. “Nonsense!” said Valentin; “a man sentenced to death can never talk too much. Have you never read an account of an execution in a newspaper? Don’t they always set a lot of people at the prisoner—lawyers, reporters, priests—to make him talk? But it’s not Mr. Newman’s fault; he sits there as mum as a death’s-head.”
The doctor observed that it was time his patient’s wound should be dressed again; MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux, who had already witnessed this delicate operation, taking Newman’s place as assistants. Newman withdrew and learned from his fellow-watchers that they had received a telegram from Urbain de Bellegarde to the effect that their message had been delivered in the Rue de l’Universite too late to allow him to take the morning train, but that he would start with his mother in the evening. Newman wandered away into the village again, and walked about restlessly for two or three hours. The day seemed terribly long. At dusk he came back and dined with the doctor and M. Ledoux. The dressing of Valentin’s wound had been a very critical operation; the doctor didn’t really see how he was to endure a repetition of it. He then declared that he must beg of Mr. Newman to deny himself for the present the satisfaction of sitting with M. de Bellegarde; more than any one else, apparently, he had the flattering but inconvenient privilege of exciting him. M. Ledoux, at this, swallowed a glass of wine in silence; he must have been wondering what the deuce Bellegarde found so exciting in the American.
Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time staring at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying down-stairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap at his door. The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug.
“He must amuse himself, still!” said Valentin’s medical adviser. “He insists upon seeing you, and I am afraid you must come. I think at this rate, that he will hardly outlast the night.”
Newman went back to Valentin’s room, which he found lighted by a taper on the hearth. Valentin begged him to light a candle. “I want to see your face,” he said. “They say you excite me,” he went on, as Newman complied with this request, “and I confess I do feel excited. But it isn’t you—it’s my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down there, and let me look at you again.” Newman seated himself, folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for some time. “Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I’m a dying man and it’s indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It was not for nothing that my sister started off at this season of the year for Fleurieres. Why was it? It sticks in my crop. I have been thinking it over, and if you don’t tell me I shall guess.”
“I had better not tell you,” said Newman. “It won’t do you any good.”
“If you think it will do me any good not to tell me, you are very much mistaken. There is trouble about your marriage.”
“Yes,” said Newman. “There is trouble about my marriage.”
“Good!” And Valentin was silent again. “They have stopped it.”
“They have stopped it,” said Newman. Now that he had spoken out, he found a satisfaction in it which deepened as he went on. “Your mother and brother have broken faith. They have decided that it can’t take place. They have decided that I am not good enough, after all. They have taken back their word. Since you insist, there it is!”
Valentin gave a sort of groan, lifted his hands a moment, and then let them drop.
“I am sorry not to have anything better to tell you about them,” Newman pursued. “But it’s not my fault. I was, indeed, very unhappy when your telegram reached me; I was quite upside down. You may imagine whether I feel any better now.”
Valentin moaned gaspingly, as if his wound were throbbing. “Broken faith, broken faith!” he murmured. “And my sister—my sister?”
“Your sister is very unhappy; she has consented to give me up. I don’t know why. I don’t know what they have done to her; it must be something pretty bad. In justice to her you ought to know it. They have made her suffer. I haven’t seen her alone, but only before them! We had an interview yesterday morning. They came out, flat, in so many words. They told me to go about my business. It seems to me a very bad case. I’m angry, I’m sore, I’m sick.”
Valentin lay there staring, with his eyes more brilliantly lighted, his lips soundlessly parted, and a flush of color in his pale face. Newman had never before uttered so many words in the plaintive key, but now, in speaking to Valentin in the poor fellow’s extremity, he had a feeling that he was making his complaint somewhere within the presence of the power that men pray to in trouble; he felt his outgush of resentment as a sort of spiritual privilege.
“And Claire,”—said Bellegarde,—”Claire? She has given you up?”
“I don’t really believe it,” said Newman.
“No. Don’t believe it, don’t believe it. She is gaining time; excuse her.”
“I pit
y her!” said Newman.