He performed this ceremony on the following day, when, by appointment,
Christopher Newman went to dine with him. Mr. and Mrs. Tristram lived
behind one of those chalk-colored façades which decorate with their
pompous sameness the broad avenues manufactured by Baron Haussmann in
the neighborhood of the Arc de Triomphe. Their apartment was rich in
the modern conveniences, and Tristram lost no time in calling his
visitor’s attention to their principal household treasures, the
gas-lamps and the furnace-holes. “Whenever you feel homesick,” he said,
“you must come up here. We’ll stick you down before a register, under a
good big burner, and—”
“And you will soon get over your homesickness,” said Mrs. Tristram.
Her husband stared; his wife often had a tone which he found
inscrutable he could not tell for his life whether she was in jest or
in earnest. The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate
in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points
differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent
concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always
graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day
doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she
meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile,
nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by instalments.
It should be added, without delay, to anticipate misconception, that
her little scheme of independence did not definitely involve the
assistance of another person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving
up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation. For this there were
various reasons. To begin with, she had a very plain face and she was
entirely without illusions as to her appearance. She had taken its
measure to a hair’s breadth, she knew the worst and the best, she had
accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a struggle. As a
young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her
eyes out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the
habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women, in order
that she might—as in common politeness was inevitable—be contradicted
and reassured. It was since she had come to live in Europe that she had
begun to take the matter philosophically. Her observation, acutely
exercised here, had suggested to her that a woman’s first duty is not
to be beautiful, but to be pleasing, and she encountered so many women
who pleased without beauty that she began to feel that she had
discovered her mission. She had once heard an enthusiastic musician,
out of patience with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is
really an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her that it
might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face is an obstacle to
the acquisition of charming manners. Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to
be exquisitely agreeable, and she brought to the task a really touching
devotion. How well she would have succeeded I am unable to say;
unfortunately she broke off in the middle. Her own excuse was the want
of encouragement in her immediate circle. But I am inclined to think
that she had not a real genius for the matter, or she would have
pursued the charming art for itself. The poor lady was very incomplete.
She fell back upon the harmonies of the toilet, which she thoroughly
understood, and contented herself with dressing in perfection. She
lived in Paris, which she pretended to detest, because it was only in
Paris that one could find things to exactly suit one’s complexion.
Besides out of Paris it was always more or less of a trouble to get
ten-button gloves. When she railed at this serviceable city and you
asked her where she would prefer to reside, she returned some very
unexpected answer. She would say in Copenhagen, or in Barcelona;
having, while making the tour of Europe, spent a couple of days at each
of these places. On the whole, with her poetic furbelows and her
misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her, a
decidedly interesting woman. She was naturally shy, and if she had been
born a beauty, she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.
Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved
sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers. She
despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly
at liberty not to marry him. She had been in love with a clever man who
had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the hope that this
thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no
appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing
that she cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without
personal ambitions, but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was,
as I have said before, eminently incomplete. She was full—both for good
and for ill—of beginnings that came to nothing; but she had
nevertheless, morally, a spark of the sacred fire.
Newman was fond, under all circumstances, of the society of women, and
now that he was out of his native element and deprived of his habitual
interests, he turned to it for compensation. He took a great fancy to
Mrs. Tristram; she frankly repaid it, and after their first meeting he
passed a great many hours in her drawing-room. After two or three talks
they were fast friends. Newman’s manner with women was peculiar, and it
required some ingenuity on a lady’s part to discover that he admired
her. He had no gallantry, in the usual sense of the term; no
compliments, no graces, no speeches. Very fond of what is called
chaffing, in his dealings with men, he never found himself on a sofa
beside a member of the softer sex without feeling extremely serious. He
was not shy, and so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with
shyness, he was not awkward; grave, attentive, submissive, often
silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect. This
emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high degree
sentimental; he had thought very little about the “position” of women,
and he was not familiar either sympathetically or otherwise, with the
image of a President in petticoats. His attitude was simply the flower
of his general good-nature, and a part of his instinctive and genuinely
democratic assumption of everyone’s right to lead an easy life. If a
shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and a vote, women,
of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose physical tissue was
in itself an appeal, should be maintained, sentimentally, at the public
expense. Newman was willing to be taxed for this purpose, largely, in
proportion to his means. Moreover, many of the common traditions with
regard to women were with him fresh personal impressions; he had never
read a novel! He had been struck with their acuteness, their subtlety,
their tact, their felicity of judgment. They seemed to him exquisitely
organized. If it is true that one must always have in one’s work here
below a religion, or at least an ideal, of some sort, Newman found his
metaphysical inspiration in a vague acceptance of final responsibility
to some illumined feminine brow.
He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs.
Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He
would have been incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of
difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex
Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an
immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor
irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on
good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great
many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristram’s
“advice” was a part of the show, and a more entertaining element, in
her abundant gossip, than the others. He enjoyed her talking about
himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made
an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away
from her. For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most
interesting thing she had had to think about in many a month. She
wished to do something with him—she hardly knew what. There was so much
of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed,
that he kept her fancy constantly on the alert. For the present, the
only thing she could do was to like him. She told him that he was
“horribly Western,” but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with
insincerity. She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty
people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted
every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed
equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram
complained of his wife’s avidity, and declared that he could never have
a clear five minutes with his friend. If he had known how things were
going to turn out, he never would have brought him to the Avenue
d’Iéna. The two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman
remembered his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram,
who had by no means taken him into her confidence, but whose secret he
presently discovered, the justice to admit that her husband was a
rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and
in this respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one expected
something more. People said he was sociable, but this was as much a
matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a
high order of sociability. He was a great gossip and tattler, and to
produce a laugh would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged
mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it
impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light
weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club, to
know the names of all the _cocottes_, to shake hands all round, to ply
his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create
uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of
the American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual,
snobbish. He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their
native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United
States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very
conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little
better than a vulgar smell in his friend’s nostrils, and he finally
broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world,
that they could put all Europe into their breeches’ pockets, and that
an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and
compelled to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very
vindictively.) Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no
malice, and he continued to insist on Newman’s finishing his evening at
the Occidental Club.
Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d’Iéna, and his
host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs.
Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his
ingenuity in trying to displease her.
“Oh no, I never try, my love,” he answered. “I know you loathe me quite
enough when I take my chance.”
Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure
one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram.
Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the
June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say
that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed
plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the
Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer
starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram,
in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His
hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this
subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called
subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made
an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had
done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from
Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a
languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the
tale, by no means always to his advantage; and Newman’s own emotions
were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether
he had ever been in love—seriously, passionately—and, failing to gather
any satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired. He
hesitated a while, and at last he said, “No!” She declared that she was
delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he
was a man of no feeling.
“Really?” he asked, very gravely. “Do you think so? How do you
recognize a man of feeling?”
“I can’t make out,” said Mrs. Tristram, “whether you are very simple or
very deep.”
“I’m very deep. That’s a fact.”
“I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have
no feeling, you would implicitly believe me.”
“A certain air?” said Newman. “Try it and see.”
“You would believe me, but you would not care,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldn’t
believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things. I have
had to _do_ them, to make myself felt.”
“I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes.”
“Yes, there’s no mistake about that.”
“When you are in a fury it can’t be pleasant.”
“I am never in a fury.”
“Angry, then, or displeased.”
“I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that
I have quite forgotten it.”
“I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man
ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad
enough always to keep your temper.”
“I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
“The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have
known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
“Do you mean to put me into one?”
“I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me.
And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable
thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure
beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you
in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman, meditatively.
“You have been odiously successful.”
“Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a
hopeless fizzle in oil.”
“It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money.
Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
“Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of
having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am
not intellectual.”
“One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a
moment, “Besides, you are!”
“Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am
not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history,
or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not
a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by
the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he
added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering,
a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
“Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great
Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a
while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am
very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
“I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket
and feathers. There are different shades.”
“I am a highly civilized man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you
don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. “I should like to make you prove it,”
she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
“Pray do,” said Newman.
“That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
“Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
“I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will.” And Mrs.
Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying
to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded;
but as he was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was
very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost
tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you,
Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
“Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
“Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not
understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a
declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what
you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit
would increase insufferably.”
Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
“Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very
silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are
embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you
are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
“I shall remember everything you have told me,” said Newman. “There are
so many forms and ceremonies over here—”
“Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.”
“Ah, but I want to observe them,” said Newman. “Haven’t I as good a
right as another? They don’t scare me, and you needn’t give me leave to
violate them. I won’t take it.”
“That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle
nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it, as you choose.”
“Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!” said Newman.
The next time that he dined in the Avenue d’Iéna was a Sunday, a day on
which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled, so that there was a trio
in the evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last
Mrs. Tristram suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high
time he should take a wife.
“Listen to her; she has the audacity!” said Tristram, who on Sunday
evenings was always rather acrimonious.
“I don’t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?” Mrs.
Tristram continued.
“Heaven forbid!” cried Newman. “I am sternly resolved on it.”
“It’s very easy,” said Tristram; “fatally easy!”
“Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.”
“On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.”
“One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose
to you?”
“No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.”
“Tell me some of your thoughts.”
“Well,” said Newman, slowly, “I want to marry very well.”
“Marry a woman of sixty, then,” said Tristram.
“‘Well’ in what sense?”
“In every sense. I shall be hard to please.”
“You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful
girl in the world can give but what she has.”
“Since you ask me,” said Newman, “I will say frankly that I want
extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with: before I know it I shall
be forty. And then I’m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry
now, so long as I didn’t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must
do it with my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I do
not only want to make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I
want to take my pick. My wife must be a magnificent woman.”
“_Voilà ce qui s’appelle parler!_” cried Mrs. Tristram.
“Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.”
“Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in love.”
“When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife
shall be very comfortable.”
“You are superb! There’s a chance for the magnificent women.”
“You are not fair.” Newman rejoined. “You draw a fellow out and put him
off guard, and then you laugh at him.”
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious. To prove
it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here,
to marry you?”
“To hunt up a wife for me?”
“She is already found. I will bring you together.”
“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau. He will
think you want your commission.”
“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I
will marry her tomorrow.”
“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you. I
didn’t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.”
Newman was silent a while. “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great
woman. I stick to that. That’s one thing I _can_ treat myself to, and
if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and
struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to
do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a
beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She
must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I
can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal
myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even
object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than
I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to
possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?” Tristram
demanded. “I have been trying so to make you fond of _me!_”
“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram. “I like to see a man
know his own mind.”
“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on. “I made up my mind
tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth
having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When
I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in
person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if
he can. He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose;
he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such
wits as he has, and to try.”
“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”
“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and
admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”
“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”
“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”
“I see you have a taste for splendor.”
Newman hesitated a little; and then, “I honestly believe I have!” he
said.
“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”
“A good deal, according to opportunity.”
“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”
“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that
I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”
“You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and
Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in
this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I
should like to help you.”
“Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?”
Tristram cried. “We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but
magnificent women are not so common.”
“Have you any objections to a foreigner?” his wife continued,
addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on
a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking
at the stars.
“No Irish need apply,” said Tristram.
Newman meditated a while. “As a foreigner, no,” he said at last; “I
have no prejudices.”
“My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!” cried Tristram. “You don’t
know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the
‘magnificent’ ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a
dagger in her belt?”
Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. “I would marry a
Japanese, if she pleased me,” he affirmed.
“We had better confine ourselves to Europe,” said Mrs. Tristram. “The
only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?”
“She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!” Tristram
groaned.
“Assuredly. I won’t deny that, other things being equal, I should
prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language,
and that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner.
Besides, I rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges
the field of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can
bring your choice to a finer point!”
“You talk like Sardanapalus!” exclaimed Tristram.
“You say all this to the right person,” said Newman’s hostess. “I
happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world.
Neither more nor less. I don’t say a very charming person or a very
estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest
woman in the world.”
“The deuce!” cried Tristram, “you have kept very quiet about her. Were
you afraid of me?”
“You have seen her,” said his wife, “but you have no perception of such
merit as Claire’s.”
“Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up.”
“Does your friend wish to marry?” asked Newman.
“Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will
not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of
the species.”
“Oh, she is a widow, then?” said Newman.
“Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents,
in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good
taste to die a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five.”
“So she is French?”
“French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more
English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I—or
rather much better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they
say here. Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her
mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead,
and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married
brother. There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild. They
have an old hotel in the Rue de l’Université, but their fortune is
small, and they make a common household, for economy’s sake. When I was
a girl I was put into a convent here for my education, while my father
made the tour of Europe. It was a silly thing to do with me, but it had
the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire de Bellegarde. She
was younger than I but we became fast friends. I took a tremendous
fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far as she could. They
kept such a tight rein on her that she could do very little, and when I
left the convent she had to give me up. I was not of her _monde_; I am
not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her
_monde_; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long
in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old _noblesse_. Do you
know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane? Go into Madame de
Cintré’s drawing-room some afternoon, at five o’clock, and you will see
the best preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who
can’t show his fifty quarterings.”
“And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?” asked Newman. “A
lady I can’t even approach?”
“But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles.”
Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his moustache. “Is she
a beauty?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Oh, then it’s no use—”
“She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
have faults that only deepen its charm.”
“I remember Madame de Cintré, now,” said Tristram. “She is as plain as
a pike-staff. A man wouldn’t look at her twice.”
“In saying that _he_ would not look at her twice, my husband
sufficiently describes her,” Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
“Is she good; is she clever?” Newman asked.
“She is perfect! I won’t say more than that. When you are praising a
person to another who is to know her, it is bad policy to go into
details. I won’t exaggerate. I simply recommend her. Among all women I
have known she stands alone; she is of a different clay.”
“I should like to see her,” said Newman, simply.
“I will try to manage it. The only way will be to invite her to dinner.
I have never invited her before, and I don’t know that she will come.
Her old feudal countess of a mother rules the family with an iron hand,
and allows her to have no friends but of her own choosing, and to visit
only in a certain sacred circle. But I can at least ask her.”
At this moment Mrs. Tristram was interrupted; a servant stepped out
upon the balcony and announced that there were visitors in the
drawing-room. When Newman’s hostess had gone in to receive her friends,
Tom Tristram approached his guest.
“Don’t put your foot into _this_, my boy,” he said, puffing the last
whiffs of his cigar. “There’s nothing in it!”
Newman looked askance at him, inquisitive. “You tell another story,
eh?”
“I say simply that Madame de Cintré is a great white doll of a woman,
who cultivates quiet haughtiness.”
“Ah, she’s haughty, eh?”
“She looks at you as if you were so much thin air, and cares for you
about as much.”
“She is very proud, eh?”
“Proud? As proud as I’m humble.”
“And not good-looking?”
Tristram shrugged his shoulders: “It’s a kind of beauty you must be
_intellectual_ to understand. But I must go in and amuse the company.”
Some time elapsed before Newman followed his friends into the
drawing-room. When he at last made his appearance there he remained but
a short time, and during this period sat perfectly silent, listening to
a lady to whom Mrs. Tristram had straightway introduced him and who
chattered, without a pause, with the full force of an extraordinarily
high-pitched voice. Newman gazed and attended. Presently he came to bid
good-night to Mrs. Tristram.
“Who is that lady?” he asked.
“Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her?”
“She’s too noisy.”
“She is thought so bright! Certainly, you are fastidious,” said Mrs.
Tristram.
Newman stood a moment, hesitating. Then at last, “Don’t forget about
your friend,” he said, “Madame What’s-her-name? the proud beauty. Ask
her to dinner, and give me a good notice.” And with this he departed.
Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon. He found Mrs.
Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor, a woman young and
pretty, dressed in white. The two ladies had risen and the visitor was
apparently taking her leave. As Newman approached, he received from
Mrs. Tristram a glance of the most vivid significance, which he was not
immediately able to interpret.
“This is a good friend of ours,” she said, turning to her companion,
“Mr. Christopher Newman. I have spoken of you to him and he has an
extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come
and dine, I should have offered him an opportunity.”
The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile. He was not
embarrassed, for his unconscious _sang-froid_ was boundless; but as he
became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintré,
the loveliest woman in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed
ideal, he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together.
Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had a sense of a
long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both brilliant and mild.
“I should have been most happy,” said Madame de Cintré. “Unfortunately,
as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go on Monday to the country.”
Newman had made a solemn bow. “I am very sorry,” he said.
“Paris is getting too warm,” Madame de Cintré added, taking her
friend’s hand again in farewell.
Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome
resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women do when they take
such resolution. “I want Mr. Newman to know you,” she said, dropping
her head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintré’s bonnet ribbons.
Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native penetration
admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to
address him a word of encouragement which should be more than one of
the common formulas of politeness; and if she was prompted by charity,
it was by the charity that begins at home. Madame de Cintré was her
dearest Claire, and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintré had
found it impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintré should for
once be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.
“It would give me great pleasure,” she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.
“That’s a great deal,” cried the latter, “for Madame de Cintré to say!”
“I am very much obliged to you,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram can speak
better for me than I can speak for myself.”
Madame de Cintré looked at him again, with the same soft brightness.
“Are you to be long in Paris?” she asked.
“We shall keep him,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“But you are keeping _me!_” and Madame de Cintré shook her friend’s
hand.
“A moment longer,” said Mrs. Tristram.
Madame de Cintré looked at Newman again; this time without her smile.
Her eyes lingered a moment. “Will you come and see me?” she asked.
Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her
leave. Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a
moment. Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. “It was a fortunate
chance,” she said. “She had come to decline my invitation. You
triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes,
to her house.”
“It was you who triumphed,” said Newman. “You must not be too hard upon
her.”
Mrs. Tristram stared. “What do you mean?”
“She did not strike me as so proud. I should say she was shy.”
“You are very discriminating. And what do you think of her face?”
“It’s handsome!” said Newman.
“I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.”
“To-morrow!” cried Newman.
“No, not to-morrow; the next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris
on Monday. If you don’t see her; it will at least be a beginning.” And
she gave him Madame de Cintré’s address.
He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his
way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain
whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as
suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of
Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to
live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid façade diffusing its
brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he
had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open
in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, gravelled court,
surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway
facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin
canopy. The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman’s
conception of a convent. The portress could not tell him whether Madame
de Cintré was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door. He
crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of
the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer. He rose as Newman
approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell, said with a smile,
in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting; the
servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn’t know
what the deuce was in them. He was a young man, his English was
excellent, and his smile very frank. Newman pronounced the name of
Madame de Cintré.
“I think,” said the young man, “that my sister is visible. Come in, and
if you will give me your card I will carry it to her myself.”
Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight
sentiment, I will not say of defiance—a readiness for aggression or
defence, as they might prove needful—but of reflection, good-humored
suspicion. He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a
card upon which, under his name, he had written the words “San
Francisco,” and while he presented it he looked warily at his
interlocutor. His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young
man’s face; it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintré. He was
evidently her brother. The young man, on his side, had made a rapid
inspection of Newman’s person. He had taken the card and was about to
enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the
threshold—an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress. He
looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him. “Madame de Cintré,”
the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor. The other
took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at
Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely
but urbanely, “Madame de Cintré is not at home.”
The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, “I am very
sorry, sir,” he said.
Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and
retraced his steps. At the porter’s lodge he stopped; the two men were
still standing on the portico.
“Who is the gentleman with the dog?” he asked of the old woman who
reappeared. He had begun to learn French.
“That is Monsieur le Comte.”
“And the other?”
“That is Monsieur le Marquis.”
“A marquis?” said Christopher in English, which the old woman
fortunately did not understand. “Oh, then he’s not the butler!”