The American (43 page)

“They said they couldn’t stand a commercial person.” Valentin put out his hand and laid it upon Newman’s
arm. “And about their promise—their engagement with you?”

“They made a distinction. They said it was to hold good only until Madame de Cintré accepted me.”

Valentin lay staring awhile, and his flush died away. “Don’t tell me any more,” he said at last; “I’m ashamed.”

“You? You are the soul of honour,” said Newman simply.

Valentin groaned and turned away his head. For some time nothing more was said. Then Valentin turned back again and found a certain force to press Newman’s arm. “It’s very bad—very bad. When my people—when my race—come to that, it is time for me to withdraw. I believe in my sister; she will explain. Excuse her. If she can’t—if she can’t, forgive her. She has suffered. But for the others it is very bad—very bad. You take it very hard? No, it’s a shame to make you say so.” He closed his eyes and again there was a silence. Newman felt almost awed; he had evoked a more solemn spirit than he expected. Presently Valentin looked at him again, removing his hand from his arm. “I apologise,” he said. “Do you understand? Here on my death-bed. I apologise for my family. For my mother. For my brother. For the ancient house of Bellegarde.
Voilà!”
¹⁹
he added softly.

Newman for all answer took his hand and pressed it with a world of kindness. Valentin remained quiet, and at the end of half an hour the doctor softly came in. Behind him, through the half-open door, Newman saw the two questioning faces of MM. de Grosjoyaux and Ledoux. The doctor laid his hand on Valentin’s wrist and sat looking at him. He gave no sign and the two gentlemen came in, M. Ledoux having first beckoned to someone outside. This was M. le Curé, who carried in his hand an object unknown to Newman, and covered with a white napkin. M. le Curé was short, round, and red: he advanced, pulling off his little black cap to Newman, and deposited his burden on the table; and then
he sat down in the best armchair, with his hands folded across his person. The other gentlemen had exchanged glances which expressed unanimity as to the timeliness of their presence. But for a long time Valentin neither spoke nor moved. It was Newman’s belief, afterwards, that M. le Curé went to sleep. At last, abruptly, Valentin pronounced Newman’s name. His friend went to him, and he said in French: “You are not alone. I want to speak to you alone.” Newman looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked at the curé, who looked back at him; and then the doctor and the curé, together, gave a shrug. “Alone—for five minutes,” Valentin repeated. “Please leave us.”

The curé took up his burden again and led the way out, followed by his companions. Newman closed the door behind them and came back to Valentin’s bedside. Bellegarde had watched all this intently.

“It’s very bad, it’s very bad,” he said, after Newman had seated himself close to him. “The more I think of it the worse it is.”

“Oh, don’t think of it,” said Newman.

But Valentin went on, without heeding him. “Even if they should come round again, the shame—the baseness—is there.”

“Oh, they won’t come round!” said Newman.

“Well, you can make them.”

“Make them?”

“I can tell you something—a great secret—an immense secret. You can use it against them—frighten them, force them.”

“A secret!” Newman repeated. The idea of letting Valentin, on his death-bed, confide to him an “immense secret” shocked him, for the moment, and made him draw back. It seemed an illicit way of arriving at information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a keyhole. Then, suddenly, the thought of “forcing” Madame de Bellegarde and her son became attractive,
and Newman bent his head closer to Valentin’s lips. For some time however, the dying man said nothing more. He only lay and looked at his friend with his kindled, expanded, troubled eye, and Newman began to believe that he had spoken in delirium. But at last he said:

“There was something done—something done at Fleurières. It was foul play. My father—something happened to him. I don’t know; I have been ashamed—afraid to know. But I know there is something. My mother knows—Urbain knows.”

“Something happened to your father?” said Newman urgently.

Valentin looked at him, still more wide-eyed. “He didn’t get well.”

“Get well of what?”

But the immense effort which Valentin had made, first to decide to utter these words, and then to bring them out, appeared to have taken his last strength. He lapsed again into silence, and Newman sat watching him. “Do you understand?” he began again presently. “At Fleurières. You can find out. Mrs. Bread knows. Tell her I begged you to ask her. Then tell them that, and see. It may help you. If not, tell everyone. It will—it will"—here Valentin’s voice sank to the feeblest murmur—"it will avenge you!”

The words died away in a long soft groan. Newman stood up, deeply impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently. “Thank you,” he said at last. “I am much obliged.” But Valentin seemed not to hear him; he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last Newman went and opened the door. M. le Curé re-entered, bearing his sacred vessel,
²⁰
and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin’s servant. It was almost processional.

V
alentin de Bellegarde died tranquilly, just as the cold faint March dawn began to illumine the faces of the little knot of friends gathered about his bedside. An hour afterwards Newman left the inn and drove to Geneva; he was naturally unwilling to be present at the arrival of Madame de Bellegarde and her first-born. At Geneva, for the moment, he remained. He was like a man who has had a fall and wants to sit still and count his bruises. He instantly wrote to Madame de Cintré, relating to her the circumstances of her brother’s death—with certain exceptions—and asking her what was the earliest moment at which he might hope that she would consent to see him. M. Ledoux had told him that he had reason to know that Valentin’s will—Bellegarde had a great deal of elegant personal property to dispose of—contained a request that he should be buried near his father in the churchyard of Fleurières, and Newman intended that the state of his own relations with the family should not deprive him of the satisfaction of helping to pay the last earthly honours to the best fellow in the world. He reflected that Valentin’s friendship was older than Urbain’s enmity, and that at a funeral it was easy to escape notice. Madame de Cintré’s answer to his letter enabled him to time his arrival at Fleurières. This answer was very brief; it ran as follows:

“I thank you for your letter, and for your being with Valentin. It is a most inexpressible sorrow to me that I was not. To see you will be nothing but a distress to me; there is no need, therefore, to wait for what you call brighter days. It is all one now, and I shall have no brighter days. Come when you please; only notify me first. My brother is to be buried here on Friday, and my family is to remain.—C. DE C.”

As soon as he received this letter Newman went straight to Paris and to Poitiers. The journey took him far southward, through green Touraine and across the far-shining Loire, into a country where the early spring deepened about him as he went; but he had never made a journey during which he heeded less what he would have called the lay of the land. He obtained lodging at an inn at Poitiers, and the next morning drove in a couple of hours to the village of Fleurières. But here, preoccupied though he was, he could not fail to notice the picturesqueness of the place. It was what the French call a
petit bourg
;
¹
it lay at the base of a sort of huge mound, on the summit of which stood the crumbling ruins of a feudal castle, much of whose sturdy material, as well as that of the wall which dropped along the hill, to enclose the clustered houses defensively, had been absorbed into the very substance of the village. The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass; the patient elbow of the rampart held them together on one side, and in front, far beneath their mossy lids, the green plains and blue distances stretched away. The way to church, up the hill, was impracticable to vehicles. It was lined with peasants two or three rows deep, who stood watching old Madame de Bellegarde slowly ascend
it, on the arm of her elder son, behind the pall-bearers of the other. Newman chose to lurk among the common mourners, who murmured “Madame la Comtesse” as a tall figure veiled in black passed before them. He stood in the dusky little church while the service was going forward, but at the dismal tomb-side, he turned away and walked down the hill. He went back to Poitiers, and spent two days in which patience and impatience were singularly commingled. On the third day he sent Madame de Cintré a note, saying that he would call upon her in the afternoon, and in accordance with this he again took his way to Fleurières. He left his vehicle at the tavern in the village street, and obeyed the simple instructions which were given him for finding the château.

“It is just beyond there” said the landlord, and pointed to the tree-tops of the park above the opposite houses. Newman followed the first cross-road to the right—it was bordered with mouldy cottages—and in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers. Advancing farther he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The château was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but its aspect was extremely impressive. Newman learned afterwards, from a guide-book of the province, that it dated from the time of Henry IV.
²
It presented to the wide paved area which preceded it, and which was edged with shabby farm-buildings, an immense façade of dark time-stained brick, flanked by two low wings, each of which terminated in a little Dutch-looking pavilion, capped with a fantastic roof. Two towers rose behind, and behind the towers was a mass of elms and beeches, now just faintly green.

But the great feature was a wide green river, which washed the foundations of the château. The building rose from an island in the circling stream, so that this formed
a perfect moat, spanned by a two-arched bridge without a parapet. The dull brick walls, which here and there made a grand straight sweep, the ugly little cupolas of the wings, the deep-set windows, the long steep pinnacles of mossy slate, all mirrored themselves in the quiet water. Newman rang at the gate, and was almost frightened at the tone with which a big rusty bell above his head replied to him. An old woman came out from the gate-house and opened the creaking portal just wide enough for him to pass, and he went in, across the dry bare court and the little cracked white slabs of the causeway on the moat. At the door of the château he waited for some moments, and this gave him a chance to observe that Fleurières was not “kept up,” and to reflect that it was a melancholy place of residence. “It looks,” said Newman to himself—and I give the comparison for what it is worth—“like a Chinese penitentiary.” At last the door was opened by a servant whom he remembered to have seen in the Rue de l’Université. The man’s dull face brightened as he perceived our hero, for Newman, for indefinable reasons, enjoyed the confidence of the liveried gentry.
³
The footman led the way across a great central vestibule, with a pyramid of plants in tubs in the middle, and glass doors all around, to what appeared to be the principal drawing-room of the château. Newman crossed the threshold of a room of superb proportions, which made him feel at first like a tourist with a guide-book and a cicerone awaiting a fee.
⁴
But when his guide had left him alone, with the observation that he would call Madame la Comtesse, Newman perceived that the salon contained little that was remarkable, save a dark ceiling with curiously-carved rafters, some curtains of elaborate antiquated tapestry, and a dark oaken floor, polished like a mirror. He waited some minutes, walking up and down; but at length, as he turned at the end of the room, he saw that Madame de Cintré had come in by a distant door. She wore a black dress, and she
stood looking at him. As the length of the immense room lay between them he had time to look at her before they met in the middle of it.

He was dismayed at the change in her appearance. Pale, heavy-browed, almost haggard, with a sort of monastic rigidity in her dress, she had little but her pure features in common with the woman whose radiant good grace he had hitherto admired. She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch was portentously lifeless.

“I was at your brother’s funeral,” Newman said. “Then I waited three days. But I could wait no longer.”

“Nothing can be lost or gained by waiting,” said Madame de Cintré. “But it was very considerate of you to wait, wronged as you have been.”

“I’m glad you think I have been wronged,” said Newman, with that oddly humorous accent with which he often uttered words of the gravest meaning.