The American (30 page)

“Shall you be at home on Friday?” Newman asked.

She looked at him a moment before answering his question. “You don’t like my mother and my brother,” she said.

He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly: “No.”

She laid her hand on the balustrade and prepared to ascend the stairs, fixing her eyes on the first step.

“Yes, I shall be at home on Friday,” and she passed up the wide dusky staircase.

On the Friday, as soon as he came in, she asked him to please to tell her why he disliked her family.

“Dislike your family?” he exclaimed. “That has a horrid sound. I didn’t say so, did I? I didn’t mean it, if I did.”

“I wish you would tell me what you think of them,” said Madame de Cintré.

“I don’t think of any of them but you.”

“That is because you dislike them. Speak the truth; you can’t offend me.”

“Well, I don’t exactly love your brother,” said Newman. “I remember now. But what is the use of my saying so? I had forgotten it.”

“You are too good-natured,” said Madame de Cintré, gravely. Then, as if to avoid the appearance of inviting him to speak ill of the marquis, she turned away, motioning him to sit down.

But he remained standing before her and said presently: “What is of much more importance is that they don’t like me.”

“No—they don’t,” she said.

“And don’t you think they are wrong?” Newman asked. “I don’t believe I am a man to dislike.”

“I suppose that a man who may be liked, may also be disliked. And my brother—my mother,” she added, “have not made you angry?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“You have never shown it.”

“So much the better.”

“Yes, so much the better. They think they have treated you very well.”

“I have no doubt they might have handled me much more roughly,” said Newman. “I am much obliged to them. Honestly.”

“You are generous,” said Madame de Cintré. “It’s a disagreeable position.”

“For them, you mean. Not for me.”

“For me,” said Madame de Cintré.

“Not when their sins are forgiven!” said Newman. “They don’t think I am as good as they are. I do. But we shan’t quarrel about it.”

“I can’t even agree with you without saying something that has a disagreeable sound. The presumption was against you. That you probably don’t understand.”

Newman sat down and looked at her for some time. “I don’t think I really understand it. But when you say it, I believe it.”

“That’s a poor reason,” said Madame de Cintré, smiling.

“No, it’s a very good one. You have a high spirit, a high standard; but with you it’s all natural and unaffected; you don’t seem to have stuck your head into a vice,
⁵
as if you were sitting for the photograph of propriety. You think of me as a fellow who has had no idea in life but to make money and drive sharp bargains. That’s a fair description of me, but it is not the whole story. A man ought to care for something else, though I don’t know exactly what. I cared for money-making,
but I never cared particularly for the money. There was nothing else to do, and it was impossible to be idle. I have been very easy to others, and to myself. I have done most of the things that people asked me—I don’t mean rascals. As regards your mother and your brother,” Newman added, “there is only one point upon which I feel that I might quarrel with them. I don’t ask them to sing my praises to you, but I ask them to let you alone. If I thought they talked ill of me to you, I should come down upon them.”

“They have let me alone, as you say. They have not talked ill of you.”

“In that case,” cried Newman, “I declare they are only too good for this world!”

Madame de Cintré appeared to find something startling in his exclamation. She would, perhaps, have replied, but at this moment the door was thrown open, and Urbain de Bellegarde stepped across the threshold. He appeared surprised at finding Newman, but his surprise was but a momentary shadow across the surface of an unwonted joviality. Newman had never seen the marquis so exhilarated; his pale unlighted countenance had a sort of thin transfiguration. He held open the door for someone else to enter, and presently appeared old Madame de Bellegarde, leaning on the arm of a gentleman whom Newman had not seen before. He had already risen, and Madame de Cintré rose, as she always did before her mother. The marquis, who had greeted Newman almost genially, stood apart, slowly rubbing his hands. His mother came forward with her companion. She gave a majestic little nod at Newman, and then she released the strange gentleman, that he might make his bow to her daughter.

“My daughter,” she said, “I have brought you an unknown relative, Lord Deepmere. Lord Deepmere is our cousin, but he has done only to-day what he ought to have done long ago—come to make our acquaintance.”

Madame de Cintré smiled, and offered Lord Deepmere her hand. “It is very extraordinary,” said this noble laggard, “but this is the first time that I have ever been in Paris for more than three or four weeks.”

“And how long have you been here now?” asked Madame de Cintré.

“Oh, for the last two months,” said Lord Deepmere.

These two remarks might have constituted an impertinence; but a glance at Lord Deepmere’s face would have satisfied you, as it apparently satisfied Madame de Cintré, that they constituted only a
naïveté.
When his companions were seated, Newman, who was out of the conversation, occupied himself with observing the new-comer. Observation, however, as regards Lord Deepmere’s person, had no great range. He was a small meagre man, of some three-and-thirty years of age, with a bald head, a short nose, and no front teeth in the upper jaw; he had round, candid, blue eyes, and several pimples on his chin. He was evidently very shy, and he laughed a great deal, catching his breath with an odd startling sound, as the most convenient imitation of repose. His physiognomy denoted great simplicity, a certain amount of brutality,
⁶
and a probable failure in the past to profit by rare educational advantages. He remarked that Paris was awfully jolly, but that for real, thorough-paced entertainment it was nothing to Dublin. He even preferred Dublin to London. Had Madame de Cintré ever been to Dublin? They must all come over there some day, and he would show them some Irish sport. He always went to Ireland for the fishing, and he came to Paris for the new Offenbach
⁷
things. They always brought them out in Dublin, but he couldn’t wait. He had been nine times to hear La Pomme de Paris.
⁸
Madame de Cintré, leaning back, with her arms folded, looked at Lord Deepmere with a more visibly puzzled face than she usually showed to society. Madame de Bellegarde, on the other hand, wore a fixed smile.
The marquis said that among light operas his favourite was the “Gazza Ladra.”
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The marquise then began a series of inquiries about the duke and the cardinal, the old countess and Lady Barbara, after listening to which, and to Lord Deepmere’s somewhat irreverent responses, for a quarter of an hour, Newman rose to take his leave. The marquis went with him three steps into the hall.

“Is he Irish?” asked Newman, nodding in the direction of the visitor.

“His mother was the daughter of Lord Finucane,” said the marquis; “he has great Irish estates. Lady Bridget, in the complete absence of male heirs, either direct or collateral—a most extraordinary circumstance—came in for everything. But Lord Deepmere’s title is English, and his English property is immense. He is a charming young man.”

Newman answered nothing, but he detained the marquis as the latter was beginning gracefully to recede. “It is a good time for me to thank you,” he said, “for sticking so punctiliously to our bargain, for doing so much to help me on with your sister.”

The marquis stared. “Really, I have done nothing that I can boast of,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be modest,” Newman answered, laughing. “I can’t flatter myself that I am doing so well simply by my own merit. And thank your mother for me, too!” And he turned away, leaving M. de Bellegarde looking after him.

T
he next time Newman came to the Rue de l’Université he had the good fortune to find Madame de Cintré alone. He had come with a definite intention, and he lost no time in executing it. She wore, moreover, a look which he eagerly interpreted as expectancy.

“I have been coming to see you for six months, now,” he said, “and I have never spoken to you a second time of marriage. That was what you asked me; I obeyed. Could any man have done better?”

“You have acted with great delicacy,” said Madame de Cintré.

“Well, I am going to change now,” said Newman. “I don’t mean that I am going to be indelicate; but I am going to go back to where I began. I
am
back there. I have been all round the circle. Or rather, I have never been away from there. I have never ceased to want what I wanted then. Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more sure of myself, and more sure of you. I know you better, though I don’t know anything I didn’t believe three months ago. You are everything—you are beyond everything—I can imagine or desire. You know me now; you
must
know me. I won’t say that you have seen the best—but you have seen the worst. I hope you have been thinking all this while. You must have seen that I was only waiting; you can’t suppose that I was changing.
What will you say to me, now? Say that everything is clear and reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my reward. And then, give me your hand. Madame de Cintré, do that. Do it.”

“I knew you were only waiting,” she said; “and I was very sure this day would come. I have thought about it a great deal. At first I was half afraid of it. But I am not afraid of it now.” She paused a moment, and then she added: “It’s a relief.”

She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her. He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him keep. “That means that I have not waited for nothing,” he said. She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. “With me,” he went on, “you will be as safe—as safe”—and even in his ardour he hesitated a moment for a comparison—“as safe,” he said, with a kind of simple solemnity, “as in your father’s arms.”

Still she looked at him and her tears increased. Then, abruptly, she buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into noiseless sobs. “I am weak—I am weak,” he heard her say.

“All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,” he answered. “Why are you troubled? There is nothing here that should trouble you. I offer you nothing but happiness. Is that so hard to believe?”

“To you everything seems so simple,” she said, raising her head. “But things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago, and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy, simply for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things to think about.”

“There ought to be only one thing to think about—that we love each other,” said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added; “Very good; if you can’t accept that, don’t tell me so.”

“I should be very glad to think of nothing,” she said
at last; “not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I can’t. I’m cold, I’m old, I’m a coward; I never supposed I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to you. When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to marry freely by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from you.”

“That’s nothing against me,” said Newman, with an immense smile; “your taste was not formed.”

His smile made Madame de Cintré smile. “Have you formed it?” she asked. And then she said, in a different tone: “Where do you wish to live?”

“Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that.”

“I don’t know why I ask you,” she presently continued. “I care very little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost anywhere. You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great many things—that I must have a brilliant worldly life. I am sure you are prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that.” She paused again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet to him that he had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise. “Your being so different, which at first seemed a difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a pleasure, a great pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet, if I had said so, no one would have understood me; I don’t mean simply to my family.”

“They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?” said Newman.

“They would have said I could never be happy with you—you were too different; and I would have said it was just
because
you were so different that I might be happy. But they would have given better reasons than I. My only reason—–” and she paused again.

But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the impulse to grasp at a rosy cloud. “Your only reason is that you love me!” he murmured, with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better reason Madame de Cintré reconciled herself to this one.