Newman gave up Damascus and Bagdad and returned to Paris before the
autumn was over. He established himself in some rooms selected for him
by Tom Tristram, in accordance with the latter’s estimate of what he
called his social position. When Newman learned that his social
position was to be taken into account, he professed himself utterly
incompetent, and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care. “I didn’t
know I had a social position,” he said, “and if I have, I haven’t the
smallest idea what it is. Isn’t a social position knowing some two or
three thousand people and inviting them to dinner? I know you and your
wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French lessons last spring.
Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other? If I can, you must come
to-morrow.”
“That is not very grateful to me,” said Mrs. Tristram, “who introduced
you last year to every creature I know.”
“So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought you wanted me to
forget,” said Newman, with that tone of simple deliberateness which
frequently marked his utterance, and which an observer would not have
known whether to pronounce a somewhat mysteriously humorous affection
of ignorance or a modest aspiration to knowledge; “you told me you
disliked them all.”
“Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least very flattering. But
in future,” added Mrs. Tristram, “pray forget all the wicked things and
remember only the good ones. It will be easily done, and it will not
fatigue your memory. But I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to
pick out your rooms, you are in for something hideous.”
“Hideous, darling?” cried Tristram.
“To-day I must say nothing wicked; otherwise I should use stronger
language.”
“What do you think she would say, Newman?” asked Tristram. “If she
really tried, now? She can express displeasure, volubly, in two or
three languages; that’s what it is to be intellectual. It gives her the
start of me completely, for I can’t swear, for the life of me, except
in English. When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother
tongue. There’s nothing like it, after all.”
Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs, and that
he would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything
that Tristram should offer him. This was partly veracity on our hero’s
part, but it was also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and
look at rooms, and make people open windows, and poke into sofas with
his cane, and gossip with landladies, and ask who lived above and who
below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to Tristram’s
heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way as he was
conscious that, as regards his obliging friend, he had suffered the
warmth of ancient good-fellowship somewhat to abate. Besides, he had no
taste for upholstery; he had even no very exquisite sense of comfort or
convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendor, but it was
satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair
from a soft one, and he possessed a talent for stretching his legs
which quite dispensed with adventitious facilities. His idea of comfort
was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of them, and be
conscious of their possessing a number of patented mechanical
devices—half of which he should never have occasion to use. The
apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once said
that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on. For the
rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person
that everything was “handsome.” Tristram accordingly secured for him an
apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied. It was
situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor, and consisted
of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped
in various light shades of satin, and chiefly furnished with mirrors
and clocks. Newman thought them magnificent, thanked Tristram heartily,
immediately took possession, and had one of his trunks standing for
three months in his drawing-room.
One day Mrs. Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de
Cintré, had returned from the country; that she had met her three days
before, coming out of the Church of St. Sulpice; she herself having
journeyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender,
of whose skill she had heard high praise.
“And how were those eyes?” Newman asked.
“Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!” said Mrs. Tristram.
“She had been to confession.”
“It doesn’t tally with your account of her,” said Newman, “that she
should have sins to confess.”
“They were not sins; they were sufferings.”
“How do you know that?”
“She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning.”
“And what does she suffer from?”
“I didn’t ask her. With her, somehow, one is very discreet. But I
guessed, easily enough. She suffers from her wicked old mother and her
Grand Turk of a brother. They persecute her. But I can almost forgive
them, because, as I told you, she is a saint, and a persecution is all
that she needs to bring out her saintliness and make her perfect.”
“That’s a comfortable theory for her. I hope you will never impart it
to the old folks. Why does she let them bully her? Is she not her own
mistress?”
“Legally, yes, I suppose; but morally, no. In France you must never say
nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most
abominable old woman in the world, and make your life a purgatory; but,
after all, she is _ma mère_, and you have no right to judge her. You
have simply to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintré
bows her head and folds her wings.”
“Can’t she at least make her brother leave off?”
“Her brother is the _chef de la famille_, as they say; he is the head
of the clan. With those people the family is everything; you must act,
not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family.”
“I wonder what _my_ family would like me to do!” exclaimed Tristram.
“I wish you had one!” said his wife.
“But what do they want to get out of that poor lady?” Newman asked.
“Another marriage. They are not rich, and they want to bring more money
into the family.”
“There’s your chance, my boy!” said Tristram.
“And Madame de Cintré objects,” Newman continued.
“She has been sold once; she naturally objects to being sold again. It
appears that the first time they made rather a poor bargain; M. de
Cintré left a scanty property.”
“And to whom do they want to marry her now?”
“I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid
old nabob, or to some dissipated little duke.”
“There’s Mrs. Tristram, as large as life!” cried her husband. “Observe
the richness of her imagination. She has not a single question—it’s
vulgar to ask questions—and yet she knows everything. She has the
history of Madame de Cintré’s marriage at her fingers’ ends. She has
seen the lovely Claire on her knees, with loosened tresses and
streaming eyes, and the rest of them standing over her with spikes and
goads and red-hot irons, ready to come down on her if she refuses the
tipsy duke. The simple truth is that they made a fuss about her
milliner’s bill or refused her an opera-box.”
Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust in each
direction. “Do you really mean,” he asked of Mrs. Tristram, “that your
friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?”
“I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that
sort of thing.”
“It is like something in a play,” said Newman; “that dark old house
over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be
done again.”
“They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintré
tells me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been
hatched.”
“_Must_ have been; mind that!” said Tristram.
“After all,” suggested Newman, after a silence, “she may be in trouble
about something else.”
“If it is something else, then it is something worse,” said Mrs.
Tristram, with rich decision.
Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation. “Is it
possible,” he asked at last, “that they do that sort of thing over
here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?”
“Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,” said Mrs.
Tristram. “There is plenty of bullying everywhere.”
“A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,” said
Tristram. “Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three
together, into marrying nasty fellows. There is no end of that always
going on in the Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The
Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue! Someone ought to show them up.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Newman, very gravely. “I don’t believe that,
in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion. I don’t believe
there have been a dozen cases of it since the country began.”
“Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!” cried Tristram.
“The spread eagle ought to use his wings,” said Mrs. Tristram. “Fly to
the rescue of Madame de Cintré!”
“To her rescue?”
“Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off. Marry her
yourself.”
Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, “I should
suppose she had heard enough of marrying,” he said. “The kindest way to
treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it. But
that sort of thing is infamous,” he added; “it makes me feel savage to
hear of it.”
He heard of it, however, more than once afterward. Mrs. Tristram again
saw Madame de Cintré, and again found her looking very sad. But on
these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear
and still. “She is cold, calm, and hopeless,” Mrs. Tristram declared,
and she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was
again in Paris and was faithful in his desire to make Madame de
Cintré’s acquaintance, this lovely woman had found a smile in her
despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed his visit in
the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage. “I told her
something about you,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“That’s a comfort,” said Newman, placidly. “I like people to know about
me.”
A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again to the
Rue de l’Université. The early evening had closed in as he applied for
admittance at the stoutly guarded _Hôtel de Bellegarde_. He was told
that Madame de Cintré was at home; he crossed the court, entered the
farther door, and was conducted through a vestibule, vast, dim, and
cold, up a broad stone staircase with an ancient iron balustrade, to an
apartment on the second floor. Announced and ushered in, he found
himself in a sort of paneled boudoir, at one end of which a lady and
gentleman were seated before the fire. The gentleman was smoking a
cigarette; there was no light in the room save that of a couple of
candles and the glow from the hearth. Both persons rose to welcome
Newman, who, in the firelight, recognized Madame de Cintré. She gave
him her hand with a smile which seemed in itself an illumination, and,
pointing to her companion, said softly, “My brother.” The gentleman
offered Newman a frank, friendly greeting, and our hero then perceived
him to be the young man who had spoken to him in the court of the hotel
on his former visit and who had struck him as a good fellow.
“Mrs. Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,” said Madame de
Cintré gently, as she resumed her former place.
Newman, after he had seated himself, began to consider what, in truth,
was his errand. He had an unusual, unexpected sense of having wandered
into a strange corner of the world. He was not given, as a general
thing, to anticipating danger, or forecasting disaster, and he had had
no social tremors on this particular occasion. He was not timid and he
was not impudent. He felt too kindly toward himself to be the one, and
too good-naturedly toward the rest of the world to be the other. But
his native shrewdness sometimes placed his ease of temper at its mercy;
with every disposition to take things simply, it was obliged to
perceive that some things were not so simple as others. He felt as one
does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it.
This strange, pretty woman, sitting in fire-side talk with her brother,
in the gray depths of her inhospitable-looking house—what had he to say
to her? She seemed enveloped in a sort of fantastic privacy; on what
grounds had he pulled away the curtain? For a moment he felt as if he
had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean, and as if he must
exert himself to keep from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame
de Cintré, and she was settling herself in her chair and drawing in her
long dress and turning her face towards him. Their eyes met; a moment
afterwards she looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on
the fire. But the moment, and the glance which traversed it, had been
sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of personal
embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement which was
so frequent with him, and which was always a sort of symbol of his
taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his legs. The
impression Madame de Cintré had made upon him on their first meeting
came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She was
pleasing, she was interesting; he had opened a book and the first lines
held his attention.
She asked him several questions: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram,
how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there,
how he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with
that distinctively British accent which, on his arrival in Europe, had
struck Newman as an altogether foreign tongue, but which, in women, he
had come to like extremely. Here and there Madame de Cintré’s utterance
had a faint shade of strangeness but at the end of ten minutes Newman
found himself waiting for these soft roughnesses. He enjoyed them, and
he marveled to see that gross thing, error, brought down to so fine a
point.
“You have a beautiful country,” said Madame de Cintré, presently.
“Oh, magnificent!” said Newman. “You ought to see it.”
“I shall never see it,” said Madame de Cintré with a smile.
“Why not?” asked Newman.
“I don’t travel; especially so far.”
“But you go away sometimes; you are not always here?”
“I go away in summer, a little way, to the country.”
Newman wanted to ask her something more, something personal, he hardly
knew what. “Don’t you find it rather—rather quiet here?” he said; “so
far from the street?” Rather “gloomy,” he was going to say, but he
reflected that that would be impolite.
“Yes, it is very quiet,” said Madame de Cintré; “but we like that.”
“Ah, you like that,” repeated Newman, slowly.
“Besides, I have lived here all my life.”
“Lived here all your life,” said Newman, in the same way.
“I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my
grandfather, and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?” and
she appealed to her brother.
“Yes, it’s a family habit to be born here!” the young man said with a
laugh, and rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire,
and then remained leaning against the chimney-piece. An observer would
have perceived that he wished to take a better look at Newman, whom he
covertly examined, while he stood stroking his moustache.
“Your house is tremendously old, then,” said Newman.
“How old is it, brother?” asked Madame de Cintré.
The young man took the two candles from the mantel-shelf, lifted one
high in each hand, and looked up toward the cornice of the room, above
the chimney-piece. This latter feature of the apartment was of white
marble, and in the familiar rococo style of the last century; but above
it was a paneling of an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted white,
and gilded here and there. The white had turned to yellow, and the
gilding was tarnished. On the top, the figures ranged themselves into a
sort of shield, on which an armorial device was cut. Above it, in
relief, was a date—1627. “There you have it,” said the young man. “That
is old or new, according to your point of view.”
“Well, over here,” said Newman, “one’s point of view gets shifted round
considerably.” And he threw back his head and looked about the room.
“Your house is of a very curious style of architecture,” he said.
“Are you interested in architecture?” asked the young man at the
chimney-piece.
“Well, I took the trouble, this summer,” said Newman, “to examine—as
well as I can calculate—some four hundred and seventy churches. Do you
call that interested?”
“Perhaps you are interested in theology,” said the young man.
“Not particularly. Are you a Roman Catholic, madam?” And he turned to
Madame de Cintré.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, gravely.
Newman was struck with the gravity of her tone; he threw back his head
and began to look round the room again. “Had you never noticed that
number up there?” he presently asked.
She hesitated a moment, and then, “In former years,” she said.
Her brother had been watching Newman’s movement. “Perhaps you would
like to examine the house,” he said.
Newman slowly brought down his eyes and looked at him; he had a vague
impression that the young man at the chimney-piece was inclined to
irony. He was a handsome fellow, his face wore a smile, his moustaches
were curled up at the ends, and there was a little dancing gleam in his
eye. “Damn his French impudence!” Newman was on the point of saying to
himself. “What the deuce is he grinning at?” He glanced at Madame de
Cintré; she was sitting with her eyes fixed on the floor. She raised
them, they met his, and she looked at her brother. Newman turned again
to this young man and observed that he strikingly resembled his sister.
This was in his favor, and our hero’s first impression of the Count
Valentin, moreover, had been agreeable. His mistrust expired, and he
said he would be very glad to see the house.
The young man gave a frank laugh, and laid his hand on one of the
candlesticks. “Good, good!” he exclaimed. “Come, then.”
But Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm, “Ah, Valentin!”
she said. “What do you mean to do?”
“To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very amusing.”
She kept her hand on his arm, and turned to Newman with a smile. “Don’t
let him take you,” she said; “you will not find it amusing. It is a
musty old house, like any other.”
“It is full of curious things,” said the count, resisting. “Besides, I
want to do it; it is a rare chance.”
“You are very wicked, brother,” Madame de Cintré answered.
“Nothing venture, nothing have!” cried the young man. “Will you come?”
Madame de Cintré stepped toward Newman, gently clasping her hands and
smiling softly. “Would you not prefer my society, here, by my fire, to
stumbling about dark passages after my brother?”
“A hundred times!” said Newman. “We will see the house some other day.”
The young man put down his candlestick with mock solemnity, and,
shaking his head, “Ah, you have defeated a great scheme, sir!” he said.
“A scheme? I don’t understand,” said Newman.
“You would have played your part in it all the better. Perhaps some day
I shall have a chance to explain it.”
“Be quiet, and ring for the tea,” said Madame de Cintré.
The young man obeyed, and presently a servant brought in the tea,
placed the tray on a small table, and departed. Madame de Cintré, from
her place, busied herself with making it. She had but just begun when
the door was thrown open and a lady rushed in, making a loud rustling
sound. She stared at Newman, gave a little nod and a “Monsieur!” and
then quickly approached Madame de Cintré and presented her forehead to
be kissed. Madame de Cintré saluted her, and continued to make tea. The
new-comer was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman; she wore her
bonnet and cloak, and a train of royal proportions. She began to talk
rapidly in French. “Oh, give me some tea, my beautiful one, for the
love of God! I’m exhausted, mangled, massacred.” Newman found himself
quite unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly than M.
Nioche.
“That is my sister-in-law,” said the Count Valentin, leaning towards
him.
“She is very pretty,” said Newman.
“Exquisite,” answered the young man, and this time, again, Newman
suspected him of irony.
His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her cup
of tea in her hand, holding it out at arm’s-length, so that she might
not spill it on her dress, and uttering little cries of alarm. She
placed the cup on the mantel-shelf and begun to unpin her veil and pull
off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman.
“Is there anything I can do for you, my dear lady?” the Count Valentin
asked, in a sort of mock-caressing tone.
“Present monsieur,” said his sister-in-law.
The young man answered, “Mr. Newman!”
“I can’t courtesy to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea,” said the
lady. “So Claire receives strangers, like that?” she added, in a low
voice, in French, to her brother-in-law.
“Apparently!” he answered with a smile. Newman stood a moment, and then
he approached Madame de Cintré. She looked up at him as if she were
thinking of something to say. But she seemed to think of nothing; so
she simply smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him a cup of
tea. For a few moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he looked
at her. He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her
“perfection” and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant
things that he dreamed of finding. This made him observe her not only
without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from
the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor. And yet, if
she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty. She was tall and
moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair, a wide forehead, and
features with a sort of harmonious irregularity. Her clear gray eyes
were strikingly expressive; they were both gentle and intelligent, and
Newman liked them immensely; but they had not those depths of
splendor—those many-colored rays—which illumine the brows of famous
beauties. Madame de Cintré was rather thin, and she looked younger than
probably she was. In her whole person there was something both youthful
and subdued, slender and yet ample, tranquil yet shy; a mixture of
immaturity and repose, of innocence and dignity. What had Tristram
meant, Newman wondered, by calling her proud? She was certainly not
proud now, to him; or if she was, it was of no use, it was lost upon
him; she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was
a beautiful woman, and it was very easy to get on with her. Was she a
countess, a _marquise_, a kind of historical formation? Newman, who had
rarely heard these words used, had never been at pains to attach any
particular image to them; but they occurred to him now and seemed
charged with a sort of melodious meaning. They signified something fair
and softly bright, that had easy motions and spoke very agreeably.
“Have you many friends in Paris; do you go out?” asked Madame de
Cintré, who had at last thought of something to say.
“Do you mean do I dance, and all that?”
“Do you go _dans le monde_, as we say?”
“I have seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram has taken me about. I do
whatever she tells me.”
“By yourself, you are not fond of amusements?”
“Oh yes, of some sorts. I am not fond of dancing, and that sort of
thing; I am too old and sober. But I want to be amused; I came to
Europe for that.”
“But you can be amused in America, too.”
“I couldn’t; I was always at work. But after all, that was my
amusement.”
At this moment Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea,
accompanied by the Count Valentin. Madame de Cintré, when she had
served her, began to talk again with Newman, and recalling what he had
last said, “In your own country you were very much occupied?” she
asked.
“I was in business. I have been in business since I was fifteen years
old.”
“And what was your business?” asked Madame de Bellegarde, who was
decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintré.
“I have been in everything,” said Newman. “At one time I sold leather;
at one time I manufactured wash-tubs.”
Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace. “Leather? I don’t like
that. Wash-tubs are better. I prefer the smell of soap. I hope at least
they made your fortune.” She rattled this off with the air of a woman
who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head,
and with a strong French accent.
Newman had spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde’s
tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light
grimness of jocularity. “No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out
pretty square on leather.”
“I have made up my mind, after all,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “that
the great point is—how do you call it?—to come out square. I am on my
knees to money; I don’t deny it. If you have it, I ask no questions.
For that I am a real democrat—like you, monsieur. Madame de Cintré is
very proud; but I find that one gets much more pleasure in this sad
life if one doesn’t look too close.”
“Just Heaven, dear madam, how you go at it,” said the Count Valentin,
lowering his voice.
“He’s a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him,”
the lady answered. “Besides, it’s very true; those are my ideas.”
“Ah, you call them ideas,” murmured the young man.
“But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army—in your war,” said
Madame de Cintré.
“Yes, but that is not business!” said Newman.
“Very true!” said M. de Bellegarde. “Otherwise perhaps I should not be
penniless.”
“Is it true,” asked Newman in a moment, “that you are so proud? I had
already heard it.”
Madame de Cintré smiled. “Do you find me so?”
“Oh,” said Newman, “I am no judge. If you are proud with me, you will
have to tell me. Otherwise I shall not know it.”
Madame de Cintré began to laugh. “That would be pride in a sad
position!” she said.
“It would be partly,” Newman went on, “because I shouldn’t want to know
it. I want you to treat me well.”
Madame de Cintré, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head
half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.
“Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth,” he went on; “I want very
much to know you. I didn’t come here simply to call to-day; I came in
the hope that you might ask me to come again.”
“Oh, pray come often,” said Madame de Cintré.
“But will you be at home?” Newman insisted. Even to himself he seemed a
trifle “pushing,” but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.
“I hope so!” said Madame de Cintré.
Newman got up. “Well, we shall see,” he said smoothing his hat with his
coat-cuff.
“Brother,” said Madame de Cintré, “invite Mr. Newman to come again.”
The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his
peculiar smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly
commingled. “Are you a brave man?” he asked, eying him askance.
“Well, I hope so,” said Newman.
“I rather suspect so. In that case, come again.”
“Ah, what an invitation!” murmured Madame de Cintré, with something
painful in her smile.
“Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come—particularly,” said the young man. “It
will give me great pleasure. I shall be desolate if I miss one of his
visits. But I maintain he must be brave. A stout heart, sir!” And he
offered Newman his hand.
“I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de Cintré,”
said Newman.
“You will need all the more courage.”
“Ah, Valentin!” said Madame de Cintré, appealingly.
“Decidedly,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “I am the only person here
capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you will need no
courage,” she said.
Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent, and took his
leave. Madame de Cintré did not take up her sister’s challenge to be
gracious, but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating
guest.