The American (24 page)

“Paris is a very good place for idle people,” he said, “or it is a very good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have got a big house like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister, and everything comfortable. I don’t like that way of living all in rooms next door to each other.
¹¹
But I am not an idler. I try to be, but I can’t manage it; it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I hav’n’t any house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I was a youngster, and I hav’n’t any wife; I wish I had! So, you see, I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. I am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant leisure comes hard.”

This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the part of Newman’s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly, with his hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the room. The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly.

“You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?” said the marquise.

“Hardly more—a small boy.”

“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were interrupted early.”

“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.

“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.

“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”

“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”

“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West.”

“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.

“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.

Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.

“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they go to play in the Tuileries
¹²
in damp weather,” said the young marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them?”

“Very likely,” said Newman; “if he did, you may be very sure that they are well made.”

“Well, you must not be discouraged,” said M. de Bellegarde, with vague urbanity.

“Oh, I don’t mean to be. I have a project which gives
me plenty to think about, and that is an occupation.” And then Newman was silent a moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point, and yet to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him. Nevertheless
¹³
he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de Bellegarde, “I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I want to take a wife.”

“It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,” said the old lady.

Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity: “I should have thought you were,” he declared.

Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.

“I have a message for you,” he said to his sister-in-law. “Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go with you.”

“Claire will go with us!” cried the young marquise.
“En voilà, du nouveau!”
¹⁴

“She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is sticking the last diamond into her hair!” said Valentin.

“What has taken possession of my daughter?” demanded Madame de Bellegarde sternly. “She has not been into the world these three years. Does she take such a step at half-an-hour’s notice and without consulting me?”

“She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,” said Valentin, “and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she is beautiful, you will see—had no right to bury herself alive.”

“You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,” said M. de Bellegarde, in French. “This is very strange.”

“I refer her to the whole company!” said Valentin. “Here she comes!” and he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her tremendously handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the face, for she stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently, what she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her mother, who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintré almost fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintré held her cloak apart to show her dress.

“What do you think of me?” she asked.

“I think you are audacious,” said the marquise. “It was but three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular favour to myself, to go to the Duchess de Lusignan’s, that you told me you were going nowhere, and that one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?”

“I wish to please myself, dear mother,” said Madame de Cintré. And she bent over and kissed the old lady.

“I don’t like surprises, my sister,” said Urbain de Bellegarde; “especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room.”

Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. “Oh, if you are going into a room with Madame de Cintré, you needn’t be afraid of being noticed yourself!”

M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy. “I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your brother’s expense,” he said.
“Come, come, madam.” And offering Madame de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she may have flattered herself she had found it.

Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a few moments in silence. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said, at last.

“She is very strange,” said Madame de Bellegarde.

“I am glad to hear it,” Newman rejoined, smiling. “It makes me hope.”

“Hope what?”

“That she will consent, some day, to marry me.”

The old lady rose slowly to her feet. “That really is your project, then?”

“Yes; will you favour it?”

“Favour it?” Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then shook her head. “No!” she said softly.

“Will you suffer it then? Will you let it pass?”

“You don’t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old woman.”

“Well, I am very rich,” said Newman.

Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favour of resenting the brutality of this remark. But at last looking up, she said simply: “How rich?”

Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are translated into francs.
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He added a few remarks of a financial character, which
completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his resources.

Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence. “You are very frank,” she said finally. “I will be the same. I would rather favour you, on the whole, than suffer you. It will be easier.”

“I am thankful for any terms,” said Newman. “But, for the present, you have suffered me long enough. Good night!” And he took his leave.

N
ewman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses for his time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having learned his whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key. The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once. He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid, and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer of grammatical and statistical information in small instalments. He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before; a few months more or less of brushing could make little difference in the antique lustre of his coat and hat. But the poor old man’s spirit was a trifle more threadbare; it seemed to have received some hard rubs during the summer. Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle Noémie; and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him in lachrymose silence.

“Don’t ask me, sir,” he said at last. “I sit and watch her, but I can do nothing.”

“Do you mean that she misconducts herself?”

“I don’t know, I am sure. I can’t follow her. I don’t understand her. She has something in her head; I don’t
know what she is trying to do. She is too deep for me.”

“Does she continue to go to the Louvre? Has she made any of those copies for me?”

“She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies. She has something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you ordered. Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But she is not in earnest. I can’t say anything to her; I am afraid of her. One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs Élysées, she said some things to me that frightened me.”

“What were they?”

“Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,” said M. Nioche, unfolding his calico pocket-handkerchief.

Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noémie another visit at the Louvre. He was curious about the progress of his copies, but it must be added that he was still more curious about the progress of the young lady herself. He went one afternoon to the great museum, and wandered through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her. He was bending his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters,
¹
when suddenly he found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde. The young Frenchman greeted him with ardour, and assured him that he was a godsend. He himself was in the worst of humours and he wanted someone to contradict.

“In a bad humour among all these beautiful things?” said Newman. “I thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones. There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits.”

“Oh, to-day,” answered Valentin, “I am not in a mood for pictures, and the more beautiful they are the less I like them. Their great staring eyes and fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big dull party, in a room full of people I shouldn’t wish to speak to. What should I care for their beauty? It’s a bore, and,
worse still, it’s a reproach. I have a great many
ennuis
;
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I feel vicious.”

“If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world did you come here?” Newman asked.

“That is one of my
ennuis.
I came to meet my cousin—a dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother’s family—who is in Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the ‘principal beauties.’ Imagine a woman who wears a green crape bonnet in December and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots! My mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I have undertaken to play
valet de place
this afternoon. They were to have met me here at two o’clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty minutes. Why doesn’t she arrive? She has at least a pair of feet to carry her. I don’t know whether to be furious at their playing me false, or delighted to have escaped them.”

“I think in your place I would be furious,” said Newman, “because they may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you. Whereas if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up, you might not know what to do with your delight.”

“You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better. I will be furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself will go with you—unless by chance you too have a rendezvous.”