The American (51 page)

The carriage halted again beside the pavement, and she sat there and beckoned to Newman—-beckoned with the demonstrative grace of Madame Urbain de Bellegarde. Newman hesitated a moment before he obeyed her summons; during this moment he had time to curse his stupidity for letting the others escape him. He had been wondering how he could get at them; fool that he was for not stopping them then and there! What better place than beneath the very prison-walls to which they had consigned the promise of his joy? He had been too bewildered to stop them, but now he felt ready to wait
for them at the gate. Madame Urbain, with a certain attractive petulance, beckoned to him again, and this time he went over to the carriage. She leaned out and gave him her hand, looking at him kindly, and smiling.

“Ah monsieur,” she said, “you don’t include me in your wrath? I had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose
you
could have prevented it!” Newman answered in a tone which was not that of studied gallantry.

“What you say is too true for me to resent the small account it makes of my influence. I forgive you, at any rate, because you look as if you had seen a ghost.”

“I have!” said Newman.

“I am glad, then, I didn’t go in with Madame de Bellegarde and my husband. You must have seen them, eh? Was the meeting affectionate? Did you hear the chanting? They say it’s like the lamentations of the damned. I wouldn’t go in: one is certain to hear that soon enough. Poor Claire—in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That’s the
toilette
¹
of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long, loose things. But I must not speak of her to you; only I must say that I am very sorry for you, that if I could have helped you I would, and that I think everyone has been very shabby. I was afraid of it, you know; I felt it in the air for a fortnight before it came. When I saw you at my mother-in-law’s ball, taking it all so easily, I felt as if you were dancing on your grave. But what could I do? I wish you all the good I can think of. You will say that isn’t much! Yes; they have been very shabby; I am not a bit afraid to say it; I assure you everyone thinks so. We are not all like that. I am sorry I am not going to see you again; you know I think you very good company. I would prove it by asking you to get into the carriage and drive with me for a quarter of an hour, while I wait for my mother-in-law. Only if we were seen—considering what has passed, and everyone knows you have been turned
away—it might be thought I was going a little too far, even for me. But I shall see you sometimes—somewhere, eh? You know”—this was said in English—“we have a plan for a little amusement.”

Newman stood there with his hand on the carriage-door, listening to this consolatory murmur with an unlighted eye. He hardly knew what Madame de Bellegarde was saying; he was only conscious that she was chattering ineffectively. But suddenly it occurred to him that, with her pretty professions, there was a way of making her effective; she might help him to get at the old woman and the marquis. “They are coming back soon—your companions?” he said. “You are waiting for them?”

“They will hear the mass out; there is nothing to keep them longer. Claire has refused to see them.”

“I want to speak to them,” said Newman; “and you can help me, you can do me a favour. Delay your return for five minutes and give me a chance at them. I will wait for them here.”

Madame de Bellegarde clasped her hands with a tender grimace. “My poor friend, what do you want to do to them? To beg them to come back to you? It will be wasted words. They will never come back!”

“I want to speak to them, all the same. Pray do what I ask you. Stay away and leave them to me for five minutes; you needn’t be afraid; I shall not be violent; I am very quiet.”

“Yes, you look very quiet! If they had
le cœur tendre
²
you would move them. But they haven’t! However, I will do better for you than what you propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I am going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit by the same opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just
within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There’s devotion for you!
Le reste vous regarde
“
³

This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a goose as she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the carriage drove away.

The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she had spoken, while before her, in the alley, her little girl, attended by the footman and the lap-dog, walked up and down as if she were taking a lesson in deportment. Newman sat down beside the mamma, and she talked a great deal, apparently with the design of convincing him that—if he would only see it—poor dear Claire did not belong to the most fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin, too stiff and cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no dimples anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood; she was an Anglaise,
⁴
after all. Newman was very impatient; he was counting the minutes until his victims should reappear. He sat silent, leaning upon his cane, looking absently and insensibly at the little marquise. At length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the gate of the park and meet her companions; but before she went she dropped her eyes, and, after playing a moment with the lace of her sleeve, looked up again at Newman.

“Do you remember,” she asked, “the promise you made me three weeks ago?” And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had
made her, at the time, a very queer answer—an answer at which, viewing it in the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offence. “You promised to take me to Bullier’s after your marriage. After your marriage—you made a great point of that. Three days after that your marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the first thing I said to myself? ‘Oh heaven, now he won’t go with me to Bullier’s!’ And I really began to wonder if you had not been expecting the rupture.”

“Oh, my dear lady,” murmured Newman, looking down the path to see if the others were not coming.

“I shall be good-natured,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “One must not ask too much of a gentleman who is in love with a cloistered nun. Besides, I can’t go to Bullier’s while we are in mourning. But I haven’t given it up for that. The
partie
⁵
is arranged; I have my cavalier. Lord Deepmere, if you please! He has gone back to his dear Dublin; but a few months hence I am to name any evening and he will come over from Ireland on purpose. That’s what I call gallantry!”

Shortly after this Madame de Bellegarde walked away with her little girl. Newman sat in his place; the time seemed terribly long. He felt how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked over the glowing coals of his resentment. Madame de Bellegarde kept him waiting, but she proved as good as her word. At last she reappeared at the end of the path, with her little girl and her footman; beside her slowly walked her husband, with his mother on his arm. They were a long time advancing, during which Newman sat unmoved. Tingling as he was with passion, it was extremely characteristic of him that he was able to moderate his expression of it, as he would have turned down a flaring gas-burner. His native coolness, shrewdness, and deliberateness, his life-long submissiveness to the sentiment that words were acts and acts were steps in life, and that
in this matter of taking steps curveting and prancing were exclusively reserved for quadrupeds and foreigners—ad this admonished him that rightful wrath had no connection with being a fool and indulging in spectacular violence. So as he rose, when old Madame de Bellegarde and her son were close to him, he only felt very tall and light. He had been sitting beside some shrubbery, in such a way as not to be noticeable at a distance; but M. de Bellegarde had evidently already perceived him. His mother and he were holding their course, but Newman stepped in front of them, and they were obliged to pause. He lifted his hat slightly, and looked at them for a moment; they were pale with amazement and disgust.

“Excuse me for stopping you,” he said in a low tone, “but I must profit by the occasion. I have ten words to say to you. Will you listen to them?”

The marquis glared at him and then turned to his mother. “Can Mr. Newman possibly have anything to say that is worth our listening to?”

“I assure you I have something,” said Newman; “besides, it is my duty to say it. It’s a notification—a warning.”

“Your duty?” said old Madame de Bellegarde, her thin lips curving like scorched paper. “That is your affair, not ours.”

Madame Urbain meanwhile had seized her little girl by the hand, with a gesture of surprise and impatience which struck Newman, intent as he was upon his own words, with its dramatic effectiveness. “If Mr. Newman is going to make a scene in public,” she exclaimed, “I will take my poor child out of the
mělée.
⁶
She is too young to see such naughtiness!” and she instantly resumed her walk.

“You had much better listen to me,” Newman went on. “Whether you do or not, things will be disagreeable for you; but at any rate you will be prepared.”

“We have already heard something of your threats,”
said the marquis, “and you know what we think of them.”

“You think a good deal more than you admit. A moment,”
⁷
Newman added in reply to an exclamation of the old lady. “I remember perfectly that we are in a public place, and you see I am very quiet. I am no. going to tell your secret to the passers-by; I shall keep it, to begin with, for certain picked listeners. Anyone who observes us will think that we are having a friendly chat, and that I am complimenting you, madam, on your venerable virtues.”

The marquis gave three short sharp raps on the ground with his stick. “I demand of you to step out of our path!” he hissed.

Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with his mother. Then Newman said: “Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde will regret that she didn’t learn exactly what I mean.”

The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused, looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice. “You are like a peddler with something to sell,” she said, with a little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor in her voice

“Oh no, not to sell,” Newman rejoined; “I give it to you for nothing.” And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes. “You killed your husband,” he said, almost in a whisper. “That is, you tried once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded.”

Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic. “Dear mother,” said the marquis, “does this stuff amuse you so much?”

“The rest is more amusing,” said Newman. “You had better not lose it.”

Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of them; they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her narrow little lips, and
repeated Newman’s word. “Amusing? Have I killed someone else?”

“I don’t count your daughter,” said Newman, “though I might! Your husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it, whose existence you have never suspected.” And he turned to the marquis, who was terribly white—whiter than Newman had ever seen anyone out of a picture. “A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madam, had left him for dead, and while you, sir, had gone—not very fast—for the doctor.”

The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her. “I must sit down,” she said in a low tone, going toward the bench on which Newman had been sitting.

“Couldn’t you have spoken to me alone?” said the marquis to Newman, with a strange look.

“Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone, too,” Newman answered. “But I have had to take you as I could get you.”

Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would have called her “grit,” her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son’s arm and went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he went and stood in front of her, and saw that her elegant features were distorted by agitation. He saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agitation with all the rigour of her inflexible will, and there was nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare. She had been startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had an exasperating feeling that she would get the better of him still; he would not have believed it possible that he could so utterly fail to be touched by the sight of a woman
(criminal or other) in so tight a place. Madame de Bellegarde gave a glance at her son which seemed tantamount to an injunction to be silent and leave her to her own devices. The marquis stood beside her, with his hands behind him, looking at Newman.

“What paper is this you speak of?” asked the old lady, with an imitation of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran actress.

“Exactly what I have told you,” said Newman. “A paper written by your husband after you had left him for dead, and during the couple of hours before you returned. You see he had the time; you shouldn’t have stayed away so long. It declares distinctly his wife’s murderous intent.”