There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon the crest of
the high hill around which the little city clusters, planted with thick
trees and looking down upon the fertile fields in which the old English
princes fought for their right and held it. Newman paced up and down
this quiet promenade for the greater part of the next day and let his
eyes wander over the historic prospect; but he would have been sadly at
a loss to tell you afterwards whether the latter was made up of
coal-fields or of vineyards. He was wholly given up to his grievance,
of which reflection by no means diminished the weight. He feared that
Madame de Cintré was irretrievably lost; and yet, as he would have said
himself, he didn’t see his way clear to giving her up. He found it
impossible to turn his back upon Fleurières and its inhabitants; it
seemed to him that some germ of hope or reparation must lurk there
somewhere, if he could only stretch his arm out far enough to pluck it.
It was as if he had his hand on a door-knob and were closing his
clenched fist upon it: he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed
the door with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength,
and dead, damning silence had answered him. And yet something held him
there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman’s
satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and
mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this
fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed
fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save
the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever
known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept
his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of
good-nature of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him
intently and continually, and what he saw there did not assuage his
resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy,
pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have
eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronized and satirized and
have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain—to
have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to
protest. And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As
if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connection
with the Bellegardes began—as if he had made the least circumstance of
the commercial—as if he would not have consented to confound the
commercial fifty times a day, if it might have increased by a hair’s
breadth the chance of the Bellegardes’ not playing him a trick! Granted
that being commercial was fair ground for having a trick played upon
one, how little they knew about the class so designed and its
enterprising way of not standing upon trifles! It was in the light of
his injury that the weight of Newman’s past endurance seemed so heavy;
his actual irritation had not been so great, merged as it was in his
vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his immediate wooing. But
now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt
that he was a good fellow wronged. As for Madame de Cintré’s conduct,
it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to
understand it or feel the reality of its motives only deepened the
force with which he had attached himself to her. He had never let the
fact of her Catholicism trouble him; Catholicism to him was nothing but
a name, and to express a mistrust of the form in which her religious
feelings had moulded themselves would have seemed to him on his own
part a rather pretentious affectation of Protestant zeal. If such
superb white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil, the soil was
not insalubrious. But it was one thing to be a Catholic, and another to
turn nun—on your hand! There was something lugubriously comical in the
way Newman’s thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with
this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for
motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was
a thing to rub one’s eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But
the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him
only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame
de Cintré. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over
and tried to shake the mystery out of them and to infuse them with an
endurable meaning. What had she meant by her feeling being a kind of
religion? It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion
of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess. Twist the
thing about as her generosity would, the one certain fact was that they
had used force against her. Her generosity had tried to screen them,
but Newman’s heart rose into his throat at the thought that they should
go scot-free.
The twenty-four hours wore themselves away, and the next morning Newman
sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to Fleurières and
demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde and her son. He lost
no time in putting it into practice. As he rolled swiftly over the
excellent road in the little calèche furnished him at the inn at
Poitiers, he drew forth, as it were, from the very safe place in his
mind to which he had consigned it, the last information given him by
poor Valentin. Valentin had told him he could do something with it, and
Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand. This was of course
not the first time, lately, that Newman had given it his attention. It
was information in the rough,—it was dark and puzzling; but Newman was
neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had evidently meant to put him in
possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to
have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had
not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to
it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs.
Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he
apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to
share her knowledge with him. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to
deal with, he felt easy. As to what there was to find out, he had only
one fear—that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the
marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side, the
old woman’s hand in Urbain’s arm, and the same cold, unsociable
fixedness in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear
was groundless. There was blood in the secret at the very least! He
arrived at Fleurières almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied
himself, logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they
would, as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He
remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare—first ascertain
what there was to expose; but after that, why shouldn’t his happiness
be as good as new again? Mother and son would drop their lovely victim
in terror and take to hiding, and Madame de Cintré, left to herself,
would surely come back to him. Give her a chance and she would rise to
the surface, return to the light. How could she fail to perceive that
his house would be much the most comfortable sort of convent?
Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn and
walked the short remaining distance to the château. When he reached the
gate, however, a singular feeling took possession of him—a feeling
which, strange as it may seem, had its source in its unfathomable good
nature. He stood there a while, looking through the bars at the large,
time-stained face of the edifice, and wondering to what crime it was
that the dark old house, with its flowery name, had given convenient
occasion. It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and
sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking place
to live in. Then, suddenly, came the reflection—What a horrible
rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble in! The attitude of inquisitor
turned its ignobler face, and with the same movement Newman declared
that the Bellegardes should have another chance. He would appeal once
more directly to their sense of fairness, and not to their fear, and if
they should be accessible to reason, he need know nothing worse about
them than what he already knew. That was bad enough.
The gate-keeper let him in through the same stiff crevice as before,
and he passed through the court and over the little rustic bridge on
the moat. The door was opened before he had reached it, and, as if to
put his clemency to rout with the suggestion of a richer opportunity,
Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him. Her face, as usual, looked as
hopelessly blank as the tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments
seemed of an intenser sable. Newman had already learned that her
strange inexpressiveness could be a vehicle for emotion, and he was not
surprised at the muffled vivacity with which she whispered, “I thought
you would try again, sir. I was looking out for you.”
“I am glad to see you,” said Newman; “I think you are my friend.”
Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. “I wish you well sir; but it’s vain
wishing now.”
“You know, then, how they have treated me?”
“Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, dryly, “I know everything.”
Newman hesitated a moment. “Everything?”
Mrs. Bread gave him a glance somewhat more lucent. “I know at least too
much, sir.”
“One can never know too much. I congratulate you. I have come to see
Madame de Bellegarde and her son,” Newman added. “Are they at home? If
they are not, I will wait.”
“My lady is always at home,” Mrs. Bread replied, “and the marquis is
mostly with her.”
“Please then tell them—one or the other, or both—that I am here and
that I desire to see them.”
Mrs. Bread hesitated. “May I take a great liberty, sir?”
“You have never taken a liberty but you have justified it,” said
Newman, with diplomatic urbanity.
Mrs. Bread dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying; but
the curtsey stopped there; the occasion was too grave. “You have come
to plead with them again, sir? Perhaps you don’t know this—that Madame
de Cintré returned this morning to Paris.”
“Ah, she’s gone!” And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement with his
stick.
“She has gone straight to the convent—the Carmelites they call it. I
see you know, sir. My lady and the marquis take it very ill. It was
only last night she told them.”
“Ah, she had kept it back, then?” cried Newman. “Good, good! And they
are very fierce?”
“They are not pleased,” said Mrs. Bread. “But they may well dislike it.
They tell me it’s most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom
the Carmelites are the worst. You may say they are really not human,
sir; they make you give up everything—forever. And to think of _her_
there! If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry.”
Newman looked at her an instant. “We mustn’t cry, Mrs. Bread; we must
act. Go and call them!” And he made a movement to enter farther.
But Mrs. Bread gently checked him. “May I take another liberty? I am
told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin, in his last hours. If you
would tell me a word about him! The poor count was my own boy, sir; for
the first year of his life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him
to speak. And the count spoke so well, sir! He always spoke well to his
poor old Bread. When he grew up and took his pleasure he always had a
kind word for me. And to die in that wild way! They have a story that
he fought with a wine-merchant. I can’t believe that, sir! And was he
in great pain?”
“You are a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “I hoped I
might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall, yet.”
And he put out his hand. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open
palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture,
extended her own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and
deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her. “You want to know all about Mr.
Valentin?” he said.
“It would be a sad pleasure, sir.”
“I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?”
“The château, sir? I really don’t know. I never tried.”
“Try, then; try hard. Try this evening, at dusk. Come to me in the old
ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I will wait for
you there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman
like you can do as she pleases.”
Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. “Is it from the count,
sir?” she asked.
“From the count—from his death-bed,” said Newman.
“I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for _him_.”
She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already
made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman waited a
long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his
request. He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in
with his mother on his arm. It will be seen that Newman had a logical
mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as
a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly
wicked. “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they
advanced. “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” Madame de
Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of
extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a
sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they
hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have
any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before them,
and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman
feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the
damp darkness were being exhaled.
“You see I have come back,” he said. “I have come to try again.”
“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we
are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”
“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman, with a laugh, “or that will
bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t
come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
Promise me to raise the blockade—to set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and
I will retire instantly.”
“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de
Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honor. But it
seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done,
and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are
certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of
but once.”
“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times,
madam,” Newman answered. “I didn’t come however, for conversational
purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write
immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her
marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don’t want her to turn
nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a
commercial person is better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed
and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your
blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
There’s your chance—I call those easy terms.”
“We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard
terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing
rigidly in the middle of the room. “I think my mother will tell you
that she would rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than
Mrs. Newman.”
But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make
her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head
and repeating, “But once, Mr. Newman; but once!”
Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of
marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
“Could anything compel you?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that
would force you?”
“This language, sir,” said the marquis, “addressed to people in
bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.”
“In most cases,” Newman answered, “your objection would have some
weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré’s present intentions make
time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and
you two very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your
brother was ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor
fellow apologized to me for your conduct. He apologized to me for that
of his mother.”
For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a
physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de
Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of
steel. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of
which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the
sound, “_Le misérable!_”
“You show little respect for the living,” said Madame de Bellegarde,
“but at least respect the dead. Don’t profane—don’t insult—the memory
of my innocent son.”
“I speak the simple truth,” Newman declared, “and I speak it for a
purpose. I repeat it—distinctly. Your son was utterly disgusted—your
son apologized.”
Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he
was frowning at poor Valentin’s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his
scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to
dishonor. But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her
flag. “You are immensely mistaken, sir,” she said. “My son was
sometimes light, but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his
name.”
“You simply misunderstood him,” said the marquis, beginning to rally.
“You affirm the impossible!”
“Oh, I don’t care for poor Valentin’s apology,” said Newman. “It was
far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious thing was not his
fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of honor. But
it shows how he took it.”
“If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was
out of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy
circumstances nothing was more possible. But confine yourself to that.”
“He was quite in his right mind,” said Newman, with gentle but
dangerous doggedness; “I have never seen him so bright and clever. It
was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death. You
know I was very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his
sanity,” Newman concluded.
The marquise gathered herself together majestically. “This is too
gross!” she cried. “We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate
it. Urbain, open the door.” She turned away, with an imperious motion
to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis
went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.
He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the
door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more
silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then
Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost
brimming over into jocularity. “Come,” he said, “you don’t treat me
well; at least admit that.”
M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most
delicate, best-bred voice, “I detest you personally,” he said.
“That’s the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don’t say it,”
said Newman. “It’s singular I should want so much to be your
brother-in-law, but I can’t give it up. Let me try once more.” And he
paused a moment. “You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet.”
M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not
see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always
so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. “You and your mother
have committed a crime.” At this M. de Bellegarde’s eyes certainly did
change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see
that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in
his self-control.
“Continue,” said M. de Bellegarde.
Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. “Need I
continue? You are trembling.”
“Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?” M. de
Bellegarde asked, very softly.
“I shall be strictly accurate,” said Newman. “I won’t pretend to know
more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something
that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known,
something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don’t
know what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and
I _will_ find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will
leave you alone. It’s a bargain?”
The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of
the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was
necessarily gradual. But Newman’s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed
to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He stood some
moments, reflecting.
“My brother told you this,” he said, looking up.
Newman hesitated a moment. “Yes, your brother told me.”
The marquis smiled, handsomely. “Didn’t I say that he was out of his
mind?”
“He was out of his mind if I don’t find out. He was very much in it if
I do.”
M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. “Eh, sir, find out or not, as you
please.”
“I don’t frighten you?” demanded Newman.
“That’s for you to judge.”
“No, it’s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel
yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can’t give you
more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a
nun? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is
frightened. I don’t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as
you; but you will see. I will go and wait in the village, at the inn,
and I beg you to let me know as soon as possible. Say by three o’clock.
A simple _yes_ or _no_ on paper will do. Only, you know, in case of a
_yes_ I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.” And
with this Newman opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did
not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him another look. “At the inn, in
the village,” he repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed
out of the house.
He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was
inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the
spectre of dishonor before a family a thousand years old. But he went
back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next
two hours. He thought it more than probable that Urbain de Bellegarde
would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense,
would be a confession of guilt. What he most expected was silence—in
other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he imagined it, his shot
might bring them down. It did bring, by three o’clock, a note,
delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain de Bellegarde’s
handsome English hand. It ran as follows:—
“I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I
return to Paris, to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my
sister and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual
reply to your audacious pertinacity.
“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE.”
Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and
down the inn-parlor. He had spent most of his time, for the past week,
in walking up and down. He continued to measure the length of the
little _salle_ of the Armes de France until the day began to wane, when
he went out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led
up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and Newman in a short time
had followed it to the top. He passed beneath the rugged arch of the
castle wall, and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in
black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open.
Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than
without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just
enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer
inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact
that she was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black
silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress
disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had
judged it proper to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel.
She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when
Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then she rose.
“Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?” he asked.
“No, sir; I’m a good Church-of-England woman, very Low,” she answered.
“But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out
in the evening before, sir.”
“We shall be safer,” said Newman, “where no one can hear us.” And he
led the way back into the castle court and then followed a path beside
the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the ruin.
He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and
terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which
had once been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed and found
himself in a nook peculiarly favorable to quiet conversation, as
probably many an earnest couple, otherwise assorted than our friends,
had assured themselves. The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the
remnant of its crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone.
Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which, in
the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the château. Mrs.
Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself
that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon
it. She cautiously complied, and he placed himself upon another, near
her.