by Henry James
CHAPTER XX
Valentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as the cold faint Marchdawn began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gatheredabout his bedside. An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and droveto Geneva; he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival ofMadame de Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, heremained. He was like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit stilland count his bruises. He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintré,relating to her the circumstances of her brother’s death--with certainexceptions--and asking her what was the earliest moment at which hemight hope that she would consent to see him. M. Ledoux had told himthat he had reason to know that Valentin’s will--Bellegarde had a greatdeal of elegant personal property to dispose of--contained a requestthat he should be buried near his father in the churchyard ofFleurières, and Newman intended that the state of his own relations withthe family should not deprive him of the satisfaction of helping to paythe last earthly honors to the best fellow in the world. He reflectedthat Valentin’s friendship was older than Urbain’s enmity, and that ata funeral it was easy to escape notice. Madame de Cintré’s answer to hisletter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurières. This answer wasvery brief; it ran as follows:--
“I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin. It isa most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not. To see you will benothing but a distress to me; there is no need, therefore, to wait forwhat you call brighter days. It is all one now, and I shall have nobrighter days. Come when you please; only notify me first. My brother isto be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain here. C. de C.”
As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and toPoitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraineand across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early springdeepened about him as he went. But he had never made a journey duringwhich he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land. Heobtained lodging at the inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove ina couple of hours to the village of Fleurières. But here, preoccupiedthough he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of theplace. It was what the French call a _petit bourg_; it lay at the baseof a sort of huge mound on the summit of which stood the crumbling ruinsof a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as that ofthe wall which dropped along the hill to enclose the clustered housesdefensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the village.The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon itsgrass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width tohave given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the veryheadstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass;the patient elbow of the rampart held them together on one side, and infront, far beneath their mossy lids, the green plains and blue distancesstretched away. The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable tovehicles. It was lined with peasants, two or three rows deep, who stoodwatching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend it, on the arm of herelder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other. Newman chose to lurkamong the common mourners who murmured “Madame la Comtesse” as a tallfigure veiled in black passed before them. He stood in the dusky littlechurch while the service was going forward, but at the dismal tomb-sidehe turned away and walked down the hill. He went back to Poitiers,and spent two days in which patience and impatience were singularlycommingled. On the third day he sent Madame de Cintré a note, sayingthat he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in accordance withthis he again took his way to Fleurières. He left his vehicle at thetavern in the village street, and obeyed the simple instructions whichwere given him for finding the château.
“It is just beyond there,” said the landlord, and pointed to thetree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed thefirst cross-road to the right--it was bordered with mouldy cottages--andin a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers.Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty andclosed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The châteauwas near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but itsaspect was extremely impressive. Newman learned afterwards, from aguide-book of the province, that it dated from the time of Henry IV. Itpresented to the wide, paved area which preceded it and which was edgedwith shabby farm-buildings an immense façade of dark time-stainedbrick, flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a littleDutch-looking pavilion capped with a fantastic roof. Two towers rosebehind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms and beeches, now justfaintly green.
But the great feature was a wide, green river which washed thefoundations of the château. The building rose from an island in thecircling stream, so that this formed a perfect moat spanned by atwo-arched bridge without a parapet. The dull brick walls, which hereand there made a grand, straight sweep; the ugly little cupolas of thewings, the deep-set windows, the long, steep pinnacles of mossy slate,all mirrored themselves in the tranquil river. Newman rang at the gate,and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty bell abovehis head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house andopened the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass, and he wentin, across the dry, bare court and the little cracked white slabs ofthe causeway on the moat. At the door of the château he waited for somemoments, and this gave him a chance to observe that Fleurières was not“kept up,” and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of residence.“It looks,” said Newman to himself--and I give the comparison for whatit is worth--“like a Chinese penitentiary.” At last the door was openedby a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de l’Université.The man’s dull face brightened as he perceived our hero, for Newman, forindefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the liveried gentry. Thefootman led the way across a great central vestibule, with a pyramid ofplants in tubs in the middle of glass doors all around, to what appearedto be the principal drawing-room of the château. Newman crossed thethreshold of a room of superb proportions, which made him feel at firstlike a tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee. But whenhis guide had left him alone, with the observation that he would callMadame la Comtesse, Newman perceived that the salon contained littlethat was remarkable save a dark ceiling with curiously carved rafters,some curtains of elaborate, antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor,polished like a mirror. He waited some minutes, walking up and down; butat length, as he turned at the end of the room, he saw that Madame deCintré had come in by a distant door. She wore a black dress, and shestood looking at him. As the length of the immense room lay between themhe had time to look at her before they met in the middle of it.
He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed,almost haggard with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she hadlittle but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant goodgrace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own, and shelet him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons,and her touch was portentously lifeless.
“I was at your brother’s funeral,” Newman said. “Then I waited threedays. But I could wait no longer.”
“Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,” said Madame de Cintré. “Butit was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been.”
“I’m glad you think I have been wronged,” said Newman, with thatoddly humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravestmeaning.
“Do I need to say so?” she asked. “I don’t think I have wronged,seriously, many persons; certainly not consciously. To you, to whom Ihave done this hard and cruel thing, the only reparation I can make isto say, ‘I know it, I feel it!’ The reparation is pitifully small!”
“Oh, it’s a great step forward!” said Newman, with a gracious smile ofencouragement. He pushed a chair towards her and held it, looking at herurgently. She sat down, mechanically, and he seated himself nearher; but in a moment he got up, restlessly, and stood before her. Sheremained seated, like a troubled creature who ha
d passed through thestage of restlessness.
“I say nothing is to be gained by my seeing you,” she went on, “and yetI am very glad you came. Now I can tell you what I feel. It is a selfishpleasure, but it is one of the last I shall have.” And she paused, withher great misty eyes fixed upon him. “I know how I have deceived andinjured you; I know how cruel and cowardly I have been. I see itas vividly as you do--I feel it to the ends of my fingers.” And sheunclasped her hands, which were locked together in her lap, lifted them,and dropped them at her side. “Anything that you may have said of me inyour angriest passion is nothing to what I have said to myself.”
“In my angriest passion,” said Newman, “I have said nothing hard ofyou. The very worst thing I have said of you yet is that you are theloveliest of women.” And he seated himself before her again abruptly.
She flushed a little, but even her flush was pale. “That is because youthink I will come back. But I will not come back. It is in that hopeyou have come here, I know; I am very sorry for you. I would do almostanything for you. To say that, after what I have done, seems simplyimpudent; but what can I say that will not seem impudent? To wrong youand apologize--that is easy enough. I should not have wronged you.” Shestopped a moment, looking at him, and motioned him to let her go on.“I ought never to have listened to you at first; that was the wrong.No good could come of it. I felt it, and yet I listened; that was yourfault. I liked you too much; I believed in you.”
“And don’t you believe in me now?”
“More than ever. But now it doesn’t matter. I have given you up.”
Newman gave a powerful thump with his clenched fist upon his knee. “Why,why, why?” he cried. “Give me a reason--a decent reason. You are not achild--you are not a minor, nor an idiot. You are not obliged to drop mebecause your mother told you to. Such a reason isn’t worthy of you.”
“I know that; it’s not worthy of me. But it’s the only one I have togive. After all,” said Madame de Cintré, throwing out her hands, “thinkme an idiot and forget me! That will be the simplest way.”
Newman got up and walked away with a crushing sense that his cause waslost, and yet with an equal inability to give up fighting. He went toone of the great windows, and looked out at the stiffly embanked riverand the formal gardens which lay beyond it. When he turned round, Madamede Cintré had risen; she stood there silent and passive. “You are notfrank,” said Newman; “you are not honest. Instead of saying that you areimbecile, you should say that other people are wicked. Your mother andyour brother have been false and cruel; they have been so to me, and Iam sure they have been so to you. Why do you try to shield them? Why doyou sacrifice me to them? I’m not false; I’m not cruel. You don’t knowwhat you give up; I can tell you that--you don’t. They bully you andplot about you; and I--I”--And he paused, holding out his hands. Sheturned away and began to leave him. “You told me the other day thatyou were afraid of your mother,” he said, following her. “What did youmean?”
Madame de Cintré shook her head. “I remember; I was sorry afterwards.”
“You were sorry when she came down and put on the thumbscrews. In God’sname what _is_ it she does to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing that you can understand. And now that I have given youup, I must not complain of her to you.”
“That’s no reasoning!” cried Newman. “Complain of her, on the contrary.Tell me all about it, frankly and trustfully, as you ought, and we willtalk it over so satisfactorily that you won’t give me up.”
Madame de Cintré looked down some moments, fixedly; and then, raisingher eyes, she said, “One good at least has come of this: I have madeyou judge me more fairly. You thought of me in a way that did me greathonor; I don’t know why you had taken it into your head. But it left meno loophole for escape--no chance to be the common, weak creature I am.It was not my fault; I warned you from the first. But I ought to havewarned you more. I ought to have convinced you that I was doomed todisappoint you. But I _was_, in a way, too proud. You see what mysuperiority amounts to, I hope!” she went on, raising her voice witha tremor which even then and there Newman thought beautiful. “I am tooproud to be honest, I am not too proud to be faithless. I am timid andcold and selfish. I am afraid of being uncomfortable.”
“And you call marrying me uncomfortable!” said Newman staring.
Madame de Cintré blushed a little and seemed to say that if begging hispardon in words was impudent, she might at least thus mutely expressher perfect comprehension of his finding her conduct odious. “It is notmarrying you; it is doing all that would go with it. It’s the rupture,the defiance, the insisting upon being happy in my own way. What righthave I to be happy when--when”--And she paused.
“When what?” said Newman.
“When others have been most unhappy!”
“What others?” Newman asked. “What have you to do with any others butme? Besides you said just now that you wanted happiness, and that youshould find it by obeying your mother. You contradict yourself.”
“Yes, I contradict myself; that shows you that I am not evenintelligent.”
“You are laughing at me!” cried Newman. “You are mocking me!”
She looked at him intently, and an observer might have said that she wasasking herself whether she might not most quickly end their common painby confessing that she was mocking him. “No; I am not,” she presentlysaid.
“Granting that you are not intelligent,” he went on, “that you areweak, that you are common, that you are nothing that I have believedyou were--what I ask of you is not heroic effort, it is a very commoneffort. There is a great deal on my side to make it easy. The simpletruth is that you don’t care enough about me to make it.”
“I am cold,” said Madame de Cintré, “I am as cold as that flowingriver.”
Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grimlaugh. “Good, good!” he cried. “You go altogether too far--you overshootthe mark. There isn’t a woman in the world as bad as you would makeyourself out. I see your game; it’s what I said. You are blackeningyourself to whiten others. You don’t want to give me up, at all; youlike me--you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have feltit. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you,I say; they have tortured you. It’s an outrage, and I insist upon savingyou from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop offyour hand if your mother requested it?”
Madame de Cintré looked a little frightened. “I spoke of my mothertoo blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by herapproval. She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has neveralluded to those hard words I used about her.”
“She has made you feel them, I’ll promise you!” said Newman.
“It’s my conscience that makes me feel them.”
“Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!” exclaimed Newman,passionately.
“It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,” said Madamede Cintré. “I don’t give you up for any worldly advantage or for anyworldly happiness.”
“Oh, you don’t give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know,” said Newman. “Iwon’t pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that. But that’s whatyour mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that villainousball of hers--I liked it at the time, but the very thought of it nowmakes me rabid--tried to push him on to make up to you.”
“Who told you this?” said Madame de Cintré softly.
“Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I didn’t know at the timethat I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, yourecollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You saidthen that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.”
“That was before--before _this_,” said Madame de Cintré.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Newman; “and, besides, I think I know. He’s anhonest little Englishman. He came and told you what your mother was upto--that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a c
ommercial person.If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you over andgive me the slip. Lord Deepmere isn’t very intellectual, so she had tospell it out to him. He said he admired you ‘no end,’ and that he wantedyou to know it; but he didn’t like being mixed up with that sort ofunderhand work, and he came to you and told tales. That was about theamount of it, wasn’t it? And then you said you were perfectly happy.”
“I don’t see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere,” said Madame deCintré. “It was not for that you came here. And about my mother, itdoesn’t matter what you suspect and what you know. When once my mindhas been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.Discussing anything, now, is very idle. We must try and live each as wecan. I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you thinkof me. When you do so, think this--that it was not easy, and that I didthe best I could. I have things to reckon with that you don’t know. Imean I have feelings. I must do as they force me--I must, I must. Theywould haunt me otherwise,” she cried, with vehemence; “they would killme!”
“I know what your feelings are: they are superstitions! They are thefeeling that, after all, though I _am_ a good fellow, I have beenin business; the feeling that your mother’s looks are law and yourbrother’s words are gospel; that you all hang together, and that it’sa part of the everlasting proprieties that they should have a handin everything you do. It makes my blood boil. That _is_ cold; you areright. And what I feel here,” and Newman struck his heart and becamemore poetical than he knew, “is a glowing fire!”
A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintré’s distracted wooerwould have felt sure from the first that her appealing calm of mannerwas the result of violent effort, in spite of which the tide ofagitation was rapidly rising. On these last words of Newman’s itoverflowed, though at first she spoke low, for fear of her voicebetraying her. “No. I was not right--I am not cold! I believe that if Iam doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness. Mr.Newman, it’s like a religion. I can’t tell you--I can’t! It’s cruel ofyou to insist. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask you to believe me--andpity me. It’s like a religion. There’s a curse upon the house; I don’tknow what--I don’t know why--don’t ask me. We must all bear it. I havebeen too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a greatchance--besides my liking you. It seemed good to change completely, tobreak, to go away. And then I admired you. But I can’t--it has overtakenand come back to me.” Her self-control had now completely abandoned her,and her words were broken with long sobs. “Why do such dreadful thingshappen to us--why is my brother Valentin killed, like a beast in themidst of his youth and his gaiety and his brightness and all that weloved him for? Why are there things I can’t ask about--that I am afraidto know? Why are there places I can’t look at, sounds I can’t hear?Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard and soterrible as this? I am not meant for that--I am not made for boldnessand defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet, natural way.” At thisNewman gave a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintré went on. “Iwas made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me. My motherhas always been very good to me; that’s all I can say. I must not judgeher; I must not criticize her. If I did, it would come back to me. Ican’t change!”
“No,” said Newman, bitterly; “_I_ must change--if I break in two in theeffort!”
“You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have allkinds of consolation. You were born--you were trained, to changes.Besides--besides, I shall always think of you.”
“I don’t care for that!” cried Newman. “You are cruel--you are terriblycruel. God forgive you! You may have the best reasons and the finestfeelings in the world; that makes no difference. You are a mystery tome; I don’t see how such hardness can go with such loveliness.”
Madame de Cintré fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes. “You believeI am hard, then?”
Newman answered her look, and then broke out, “You are a perfect,faultless creature! Stay by me!”
“Of course I am hard,” she went on. “Whenever we give pain we are hard.And we _must_ give pain; that’s the world,--the hateful, miserableworld! Ah!” and she gave a long, deep sigh, “I can’t even say I am gladto have known you--though I am. That too is to wrong you. I can saynothing that is not cruel. Therefore let us part, without more of this.Good-bye!” And she put out her hand.
Newman stood and looked at it without taking it, and raised his eyes toher face. He felt, himself, like shedding tears of rage. “What are yougoing to do?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
“Where I shall give no more pain and suspect no more evil. I am goingout of the world.”
“Out of the world?”
“I am going into a convent.”
“Into a convent!” Newman repeated the words with the deepest dismay;it was as if she had said she was going into an hospital. “Into aconvent--_you!_”
“I told you that it was not for my worldly advantage or pleasure I wasleaving you.”
But still Newman hardly understood. “You are going to be a nun,” he wenton, “in a cell--for life--with a gown and white veil?”
“A nun--a Carmelite nun,” said Madame de Cintré. “For life, with God’sleave.”
The idea struck Newman as too dark and horrible for belief, and madehim feel as he would have done if she had told him that she was goingto mutilate her beautiful face, or drink some potion that would make hermad. He clasped his hands and began to tremble, visibly.
“Madame de Cintré, don’t, don’t!” he said. “I beseech you! On my knees,if you like, I’ll beseech you.”
She laid her hand upon his arm, with a tender, pitying, almostreassuring gesture. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You have wrongideas. It’s nothing horrible. It is only peace and safety. It is to beout of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent,to the best. And for life--that’s the blessing of it! They can’t beginagain.”
Newman dropped into a chair and sat looking at her with a long,inarticulate murmur. That this superb woman, in whom he had seen allhuman grace and household force, should turn from him and all thebrightness that he offered her--him and his future and his fortune andhis fidelity--to muffle herself in ascetic rags and entomb herself in acell was a confounding combination of the inexorable and the grotesque.As the image deepened before him the grotesque seemed to expand andoverspread it; it was a reduction to the absurd of the trial to whichhe was subjected. “You--you a nun!” he exclaimed; “you with your beautydefaced--you behind locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!” And he sprang to his feet with a violent laugh.
“You can’t prevent it,” said Madame de Cintré, “and it ought--alittle--to satisfy you. Do you suppose I will go on living in the world,still beside you, and yet not with you? It is all arranged. Good-bye,good-bye.”
This time he took her hand, took it in both his own. “Forever?” hesaid. Her lips made an inaudible movement and his own uttered a deepimprecation. She closed her eyes, as if with the pain of hearing it;then he drew her towards him and clasped her to his breast. He kissedher white face; for an instant she resisted and for a moment shesubmitted; then, with force, she disengaged herself and hurried awayover the long shining floor. The next moment the door closed behind her.
Newman made his way out as he could.