Newman returned to Paris the second day after his interview with Mrs.
Bread. The morrow he had spent at Poitiers, reading over and over again
the little document which he had lodged in his pocket-book, and
thinking what he would do in the circumstances and how he would do it.
He would not have said that Poitiers was an amusing place; yet the day
seemed very short. Domiciled once more in the Boulevard Haussmann, he
walked over to the Rue de l’Université and inquired of Madame de
Bellegarde’s portress whether the marquise had come back. The portress
told him that she had arrived, with M. le Marquis, on the preceding
day, and further informed him that if he desired to enter, Madame de
Bellegarde and her son were both at home. As she said these words the
little white-faced old woman who peered out of the dusky gate-house of
the Hôtel de Bellegarde gave a small wicked smile—a smile which seemed
to Newman to mean, “Go in if you dare!” She was evidently versed in the
current domestic history; she was placed where she could feel the pulse
of the house. Newman stood a moment, twisting his moustache and looking
at her; then he abruptly turned away. But this was not because he was
afraid to go in—though he doubted whether, if he did so, he should be
able to make his way, unchallenged, into the presence of Madame de
Cintré’s relatives. Confidence—excessive confidence, perhaps—quite as
much as timidity prompted his retreat. He was nursing his thunderbolt;
he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He seemed to be holding
it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads
of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces.
Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure
as these, lighted in the lurid fashion I have hinted at, and he was
disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely
fashion. It must be added, too, that he was at a loss to see exactly
how he could arrange to witness the operation of his thunder. To send
in his card to Madame de Bellegarde would be a waste of ceremony; she
would certainly decline to receive him. On the other hand he could not
force his way into her presence. It annoyed him keenly to think that he
might be reduced to the blind satisfaction of writing her a letter; but
he consoled himself in a measure with the reflection that a letter
might lead to an interview. He went home, and feeling rather
tired—nursing a vengeance was, it must be confessed, a rather fatiguing
process; it took a good deal out of one—flung himself into one of his
brocaded fauteuils, stretched his legs, thrust his hands into his
pockets, and, while he watched the reflected sunset fading from the
ornate house-tops on the opposite side of the Boulevard, began mentally
to compose a cool epistle to Madame de Bellegarde. While he was so
occupied his servant threw open the door and announced ceremoniously,
“Madame Brett!”
Newman roused himself, expectantly, and in a few moments perceived upon
his threshold the worthy woman with whom he had conversed to such good
purpose on the starlit hill-top of Fleurières. Mrs. Bread had made for
this visit the same toilet as for her former expedition. Newman was
struck with her distinguished appearance. His lamp was not lit, and as
her large, grave face gazed at him through the light dusk from under
the shadow of her ample bonnet, he felt the incongruity of such a
person presenting herself as a servant. He greeted her with high
geniality and bade her come in and sit down and make herself
comfortable. There was something which might have touched the springs
both of mirth and of melancholy in the ancient maidenliness with which
Mrs. Bread endeavored to comply with these directions. She was not
playing at being fluttered, which would have been simply ridiculous;
she was doing her best to carry herself as a person so humble that, for
her, even embarrassment would have been pretentious; but evidently she
had never dreamed of its being in her horoscope to pay a visit, at
night-fall, to a friendly single gentleman who lived in
theatrical-looking rooms on one of the new Boulevards.
“I truly hope I am not forgetting my place, sir,” she murmured.
“Forgetting your place?” cried Newman. “Why, you are remembering it.
This is your place, you know. You are already in my service; your
wages, as housekeeper, began a fortnight ago. I can tell you my house
wants keeping! Why don’t you take off your bonnet and stay?”
“Take off my bonnet?” said Mrs. Bread, with timid literalness. “Oh,
sir, I haven’t my cap. And with your leave, sir, I couldn’t keep house
in my best gown.”
“Never mind your gown,” said Newman, cheerfully. “You shall have a
better gown than that.”
Mrs. Bread stared solemnly and then stretched her hands over her
lustreless satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were
defining itself. “Oh, sir, I am fond of my own clothes,” she murmured.
“I hope you have left those wicked people, at any rate,” said Newman.
“Well, sir, here I am!” said Mrs. Bread. “That’s all I can tell you.
Here I sit, poor Catherine Bread. It’s a strange place for me to be. I
don’t know myself; I never supposed I was so bold. But indeed, sir, I
have gone as far as my own strength will bear me.”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman, almost caressingly, “don’t make
yourself uncomfortable. Now’s the time to feel lively, you know.”
She began to speak again with a trembling voice. “I think it would be
more respectable if I could—if I could”—and her voice trembled to a
pause.
“If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?” said Newman
kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a
wish to retire from service.
“If I could give up everything, sir! All I should ask is a decent
Protestant burial.”
“Burial!” cried Newman, with a burst of laughter. “Why, to bury you now
would be a sad piece of extravagance. It’s only rascals who have to be
buried to get respectable. Honest folks like you and me can live our
time out—and live together. Come! Did you bring your baggage?”
“My box is locked and corded; but I haven’t yet spoken to my lady.”
“Speak to her, then, and have done with it. I should like to have your
chance!” cried Newman.
“I would gladly give it you, sir. I have passed some weary hours in my
lady’s dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest. She will tax
me with ingratitude.”
“Well,” said Newman, “so long as you can tax her with murder—”
“Oh, sir, I can’t; not I,” sighed Mrs. Bread.
“You don’t mean to say anything about it? So much the better. Leave
that to me.”
“If she calls me a thankless old woman,” said Mrs. Bread, “I shall have
nothing to say. But it is better so,” she softly added. “She shall be
my lady to the last. That will be more respectable.”
“And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,” said
Newman; “that will be more respectable still!”
Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment; then, looking
up, she rested her eyes upon Newman’s face. The disordered proprieties
were somehow settling to rest. She looked at Newman so long and so
fixedly, with such a dull, intense devotedness, that he himself might
have had a pretext for embarrassment. At last she said gently, “You are
not looking well, sir.”
“That’s natural enough,” said Newman. “I have nothing to feel well
about. To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very
jovial, very sick and very lively, all at once,—why, it rather mixes
one up.”
Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh. “I can tell you something that will
make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way. About
Madame de Cintré.”
“What can you tell me?” Newman demanded. “Not that you have seen her?”
She shook her head. “No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall. That’s the
dullness of it. Nor my lady. Nor M. de Bellegarde.”
“You mean that she is kept so close.”
“Close, close,” said Mrs. Bread, very softly.
These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman’s
heart. He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman. “They
have tried to see her, and she wouldn’t—she couldn’t?”
“She refused—forever! I had it from my lady’s own maid,” said Mrs.
Bread, “who had it from my lady. To speak of it to such a person my
lady must have felt the shock. Madame de Cintré won’t see them now, and
now is her only chance. A while hence she will have no chance.”
“You mean the other women—the mothers, the daughters, the sisters; what
is it they call them?—won’t let her?”
“It is what they call the rule of the house,—or of the order, I
believe,” said Mrs. Bread. “There is no rule so strict as that of the
Carmelites. The bad women in the reformatories are fine ladies to them.
They wear old brown cloaks—so the _femme de chambre_ told me—that you
wouldn’t use for a horse blanket. And the poor countess was so fond of
soft-feeling dresses; she would never have anything stiff! They sleep
on the ground,” Mrs. Bread went on; “they are no better, no
better,”—and she hesitated for a comparison,—“they are no better than
tinkers’ wives. They give up everything, down to the very name their
poor old nurses called them by. They give up father and mother, brother
and sister,—to say nothing of other persons,” Mrs. Bread delicately
added. “They wear a shroud under their brown cloaks and a rope round
their waists, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold
places to pray to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!”
Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale,
with her hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy groan
and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long
silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the
chimney-piece.
“Where is this place—where is the convent?” Newman asked at last,
looking up.
“There are two houses,” said Mrs. Bread. “I found out; I thought you
would like to know—though it’s poor comfort, I think. One is in the
Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintré is there.
The other is in the Rue d’Enfer. That’s a terrible name; I suppose you
know what it means.”
Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came
back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
“Tell me this,” he said. “Can I get near her—even if I don’t see her?
Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where
she is?”
It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread’s sense of the
pre-established harmony which kept servants in their “place,” even as
planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread had ever consciously
likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal
melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her
new employer. She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years
before, she had held him also in her arms. “That wouldn’t help you,
sir. It would only make her seem farther away.”
“I want to go there, at all events,” said Newman. “Avenue de Messine,
you say? And what is it they call themselves?”
“Carmelites,” said Mrs. Bread.
“I shall remember that.”
Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, “It’s my duty to tell you
this, sir,” she went on. “The convent has a chapel, and some people are
admitted on Sunday to the mass. You don’t see the poor creatures that
are shut up there, but I am told you can hear them sing. It’s a wonder
they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go.
It seems to me I should know _her_ voice in fifty.”
Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
and shook hers. “Thank you,” he said. “If anyone can get in, I will.” A
moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire, but he
checked her and put a lighted candle into her hand. “There are half a
dozen rooms there I don’t use,” he said, pointing through an open door.
“Go and look at them and take your choice. You can live in the one you
like best.” From this bewildering opportunity Mrs. Bread at first
recoiled; but finally, yielding to Newman’s gentle, reassuring push,
she wandered off into the dusk with her tremulous taper. She remained
absent a quarter of an hour, during which Newman paced up and down,
stopped occasionally to look out of the window at the lights on the
Boulevard, and then resumed his walk. Mrs. Bread’s relish for her
investigation apparently increased as she proceeded; but at last she
reappeared and deposited her candlestick on the chimney-piece.
“Well, have you picked one out?” asked Newman.
“A room, sir? They are all too fine for a dingy old body like me. There
isn’t one that hasn’t a bit of gilding.”
“It’s only tinsel, Mrs. Bread,” said Newman. “If you stay there a while
it will all peel off of itself.” And he gave a dismal smile.
“Oh, sir, there are things enough peeling off already!” rejoined Mrs.
Bread, with a head-shake. “Since I was there I thought I would look
about me. I don’t believe you know, sir. The corners are most dreadful.
You do want a housekeeper, that you do; you want a tidy Englishwoman
that isn’t above taking hold of a broom.”
Newman assured her that he suspected, if he had not measured, his
domestic abuses, and that to reform them was a mission worthy of her
powers. She held her candlestick aloft again and looked around the
salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted
the mission, and that its sacred character would sustain her in her
rupture with Madame de Bellegarde. With this she curtsied herself away.
She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and Newman, going
into his drawing-room, found her upon her aged knees before a divan,
sewing up some detached fringe. He questioned her as to her
leave-taking with her late mistress, and she said it had proved easier
than she feared. “I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to
remember that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one.”
“I should think so!” cried Newman. “And does she know you have come to
me?”
“She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name,” said Mrs.
Bread.
“What did she say to that?”
“She looked at me very hard, and she turned very red. Then she bade me
leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who is an
Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab. But when I
went down myself to the gate I found it closed. My lady had sent orders
to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter’s
wife—she is a dreadful sly old body—had gone out in a cab to fetch home
M. de Bellegarde from his club.”
Newman slapped his knee. “She _is_ scared! she _is_ scared!” he cried,
exultantly.
“I was frightened too, sir,” said Mrs. Bread, “but I was also mightily
vexed. I took it very high with the porter and asked him by what right
he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman who had lived in the
house for thirty years before he was heard of. Oh, sir, I was very
grand, and I brought the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out,
and I promised the cabman something handsome if he would drive fast.
But he was terribly slow; it seemed as if we should never reach your
blessed door. I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes,
just now, to thread my needle.”
Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she might have
a little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away
murmuring to himself again that the old woman _was_ scared—she _was_
scared!
He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in his
pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several
times, and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange
way—an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his
disappointment gone to his head? He looked like a man who was going to
be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active. One
day he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly
resolved never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter
that was almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him. If
he was trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really went too
far. She begged him of all things not to be “strange.” Feeling in a
measure responsible as she did for the affair which had turned out so
ill for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness. He might be
melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and
cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle with
his destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make
allowances. Only, for Heaven’s sake, let him not be incoherent. That
would be extremely unpleasant. It was like people talking in their
sleep; they always frightened her. And Mrs. Tristram intimated that,
taking very high ground as regards the moral obligation which events
had laid upon her, she proposed not to rest quiet until she should have
confronted him with the least inadequate substitute for Madame de
Cintré that the two hemispheres contained.
“Oh,” said Newman, “we are even now, and we had better not open a new
account! You may bury me some day, but you shall never marry me. It’s
too rough. I hope, at any rate,” he added, “that there is nothing
incoherent in this—that I want to go next Sunday to the Carmelite
chapel in the Avenue de Messine. You know one of the Catholic
ministers—an abbé, is that it?—I have seen him here, you know; that
motherly old gentleman with the big waistband. Please ask him if I need
a special leave to go in, and if I do, beg him to obtain it for me.”
Mrs. Tristram gave expression to the liveliest joy. “I am so glad you
have asked me to do something!” she cried. “You shall get into the
chapel if the abbé is disfrocked for his share in it.” And two days
afterwards she told him that it was all arranged; the abbé was
enchanted to serve him, and if he would present himself civilly at the
convent gate there would be no difficulty.