# The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 6

VI
He gave up Bagdad and Bokhara and, returning to Paris before the autumn was over, established himself in rooms selected by Tom Tristram in accordance with the latter's estimate of his "social standing." When Newman learned that this occult attribute was to be taken into account he professed himself utterly incompetent and begged Tristram to relieve him of the care of it. "I did n't know I 'stood,' socially, at all—I thought I only sat round informally, rather sprawling than anything else. Is n't a social standing to know some two or three thousand people and invite them to dinner? I know you and your wife and little old Mr. Nioche, who gave me French lessons last spring. Can I invite you to dinner to meet each other? If I can you must come to-morrow."
"That's not very grateful to me," said Mrs. Tristram, "who introduced you last year to every creature of my acquaintance."
"So you did; I had quite forgotten. But I thought you wanted me to forget," said Newman in that tone of surpassing candour which frequently marked his utterance and which an observer would not have known whether to pronounce a whimsical affectation of ignorance or a modest aspiration to knowledge. "You told me you yourself disliked them all."
"Ah, the way you remember what I say is at least ​very flattering. But in future," added Mrs. Tristram, "pray forget all the 'mean' things and remember only the good. It will be easily done and won't fatigue your memory. Only I forewarn you that if you trust my husband to pick out your rooms you're in for something hideous."
"Hideous, darling?" her husband cried.
"To-day I utter nothing base; otherwise I should use stronger language."
"What do you think she would say, Newman?" Tristram asked. "If she really tried now? She can polish one off for a wretch volubly—in two or three languages; that's what it is to have high culture. It gives her the start of me completely, since I can't swear, for the life of me, except in pure Anglo-Saxon. When I get mad I have to fall back on our dear old mother tongue. There's nothing like it after all."
Newman declared that he knew nothing about tables and chairs and would accept, in the way of a lodging, with his eyes shut, anything that Tristram should offer him. This was partly pure veracity on our hero's part, but it was also partly charity. He knew that to pry about and count casseroles and make people open windows, to poke into beds and sofas with his cane, to gossip with landladies and ask who lived above and who below—he knew that this was of all pastimes the dearest to his friend's heart, and he felt the more disposed to put it in his way as he was conscious he had suffered the warmth of their ancient fellowship somewhat to abate. He had besides no taste for upholstery; he had even ​no very exquisite sense of comfort or convenience. He had a relish for luxury and splendour, but it was satisfied by rather gross contrivances. He scarcely knew a hard chair from a soft, and used an art in stretching his legs which quite dispensed with adventitious aids. His idea of material ease was to inhabit very large rooms, have a great many of them, and be conscious in them of a number of patented mechanical devices, half of which he should never have occasion to use. The apartments should be clear and high and what he called open, and he had once said that he liked rooms best in which you should want to keep on your hat. For the rest he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person that everything was of the latest model. Tristram accordingly secured for him an habitation over the price of which the Prince of Morocco had been haggling. It was situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, was a first floor, and consisted of a series of rooms gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped in various light shades of satin and chiefly furnished with mirrors and clocks. Newman thought them magnificent, did n't haggle, thanked Tristram heartily, immediately took possession, and had one of his trunks standing for three months in the drawing-room.
One day Mrs. Tristram told him that their tall handsome lady had returned from the country and that she had met her three days before coming out of the church of Saint Sulpice; she herself having journeyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender of whose skill she had heard high praise.
​"And how were those intense mild eyes?" Newman asked.
They were red with weeping—neither more nor less. She had been to confession."
"It does n't tally with your account of her," he said, "that she should have sins to cry about."
"They were not sins—they were sufferings."
"How do you know that?"
"She asked me to come and see her. I went this morning."
"And what does she suffer from?"
"I did n't press her to tell me. With her, somehow, one is very discreet. But I guessed easily enough. She suffers from her grim old mother and from the manner in which her elder brother, the technical head of the family, abets and hounds on the Marquise. They keep at her hard, they keep at her all the while. But I can almost forgive them, because, as I told you, she's simply a saint, and a persecution is all that she needs to bring out what I call her quality."
That's a comfortable theory for her. I hope you'll never mention it to the old folks. But why does she let them persecute her? Is n't she, as a married woman, her own mistress?"
"Legally yes, I suppose; but morally no. In France you may never say Nay to your mother, whatever she requires of you. She may be the most abominable old woman in the world and make your life a purgatory; but after all she's ma mére, and you've no right to judge her. You've simply to obey. The thing has a fine side to it. Madame de Cintré bows her head and folds her wings."
​"Can't she at least make her brother quit?"
"Her brother's the chef de la famille, the head of the clan. With those people the family's everything; you must act not for your own pleasure but for the advantage of your race and name."
"But what do they want to get out of our lovely friend?" Newman asked.
"Her submission to another marriage. They're not rich, and they want to bring more money into the house."
"There's where you come in, my boy!" Tristram interposed.
"And Madame de Cintré doesn't see it?" Newman continued.
"She has been sold for a price once; she naturally objects to being sold a second time. It appears that the first time they greatly bungled their bargain. M. de Cintré, before he died, managed to get through almost everything."
"And to whom do they want then to marry her now?"
"I thought it best not to ask; but you may be sure it is to some horrid old nabob or to some dissipated little duke."
"There's Mrs. Tristram as large as life!" her husband cried. "Observe the wealth of her imagination. She has not asked a single question—it's vulgar to ask questions—and yet she knows it all inside out. She has the history of Madame de Cintré's marriage at her fingers' ends. She has seen the lovely Claire on her knees with loosened tresses and streaming eyes and the rest of them standing over her with ​spikes and goads and red-hot irons, ready to come down if she refuses Bluebeard. The simple truth is that they've made a fuss about her milliner's bill or refused her an opera-box."
Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain reserve in each direction. "Do you really mean," he asked of the latter, that your friend is being really hustled into a marriage she really shrinks from?"
"I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that sort of thing."
"It's like something in a regular old play," said Newman. "That dark old house over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it and might be done again."
"They have a still darker old house in the country, she tells me, and there, during the summer, this scheme must have been hatched."
"Must have been; mind that!" Tristram echoed.
"After all," their visitor suggested after a pause, "she may be in trouble about something else."
"If it's something else then it's something worse." Mrs. Tristram spoke as with high competence.
Newman, silent a while, seemed lost in meditation. "Is it possible," he asked at last, "that they can do that sort of thing over here? that helpless women are thumb-screwed—sentimentally, socially, I mean—into marrying men they object to."
"Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it," said Mrs. Tristram. "There's plenty of the thumb-screw for them everywhere."
"A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in in ​New York," said Tristram. Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three together, into marrying, for money, horrible cads. There's no end of that always going on in Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The Morals of Murray Hill! Some one ought to show them up."
"I don't believe it!"—Newman took it very gravely. "I don't see how, in America, such cases can ever have occurred; for the simple reason that the men themselves would be the first to make them impossible. The American man sometimes takes advantage—I've known him to. But he doesn't take advantage of women."
"Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!" cried Tristram.
"The spread eagle should use his wings," said his wife. "He should fly to the rescue of the woman of whom advantage is being taken!"
"To her rescue—?" Newman seemed to wonder.
"Pounce down, seize her in your talons and carry her off. Marry her yourself."
Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, "I guess she has heard enough of marrying," he said. "The kindest way to treat her would be to care for her and yet never speak of it. But that sort of thing's infamous," he added. "It's none of my business, but it makes me feel kind of swindled to hear of it."
He heard of it, however, more than once afterwards. Mrs. Tristram again saw Madame de Cintré and again found her looking very very sad. But on these occasions there had been no tears; the intense ​mild eyes were clear and still. "She's cold, calm and hopeless," Mrs. Tristram declared, and she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was again in Paris and was faithful in his desire to make Madame de Cintré's acquaintance, this lovely woman had found a smile in her despair and expressed her regret at having missed his visit in the spring and her hope that he had not lost courage. "I told her something about you," Newman's hostess wound up.
"That's a comfort," he patiently answered. "I seem to want people to know about me."
A few days after this, one dusky autumn afternoon, he went again to the Rue de l'Université. The early evening had closed in as he applied for admittance at the stoutly-guarded Hôtel de Bellegarde. He was told that Madame la Comtesse was at home, on which he crossed the court, entered the further door and was conducted through a vestibule, vast, dim and cold, up a broad stone staircase with an ancient iron balustrade, to an apartment on the first floor. Announced and ushered in, he found himself in a large panelled boudoir, at one end of which a lady and a gentleman were seated by the fire. The gentleman was smoking a cigarette; there was no light in the room save that of a couple of candles and the glow from the hearth. Both persons rose to welcome Newman, who in the firelight recognised Madame la Comtesse. She gave him her hand with a smile which seemed in itself an illumination, and, pointing to her companion, murmured an allusion, "One of my ​brothers." The gentleman struck Newman as taking him, with great good-nature, for a friend already made, and our hero then perceived him to be the young man he had met in the court of the hotel on his former visit, the one who had appeared of an easy commerce. "Mrs. Tristram has often mentioned you to us." It had an effect of prodigious benignity as Madame de Cintré resumed her former place.
Newman, noticing in especial her "us," began, after he had seated himself, to consider what in truth might be his errand. He had an unusual, unexpected sense of having wandered into a strange corner of the world. He was not given, as a general thing, to borrowing trouble or to suspecting danger, and he had had no social tremors on this particular occasion. He was not without presence of mind, though he had no formed habit of prompt chatter. But his exercised acuteness sometimes precluded detachment; with every disposition to take things simply he could n't but feel that some of them were less simple than others. He felt as one feels in missing a step, in an ascent, where one has expected to find it. This strange pretty woman seated at fireside talk with her brother in the grey depths of her inhospitable-looking house—what had he to say to her? She seemed enveloped in triple defences of privacy; by what encouragement had he presumed on his having effected a breach? It was for a moment as if he had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean and must exert himself to keep from sinking. Meanwhile he was looking at Madame la Comtesse and she was settling herself in her chair ​and drawing in her long dress and vaguely, rather indirectly, turning her face to him. Their eyes met; a moment later she looked away and motioned to her brother to put a log on the fire. But the moment, and the glance that lived in it, had been sufficient to relieve Newman of the first and the last fit of sharp personal embarrassment he was ever to know. He performed the movement frequent with him and which was always a symbol of his taking mental possession of a scene—he extended his long legs. The impression his hostess had made on him at their first meeting came back in an instant; it had been deeper than he knew. She took on a light and a grace, or, more definitely, an interest; he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention.
She asked him questions as if unable to do less: how lately he had seen Mrs. Tristram, how long he had been in Paris, how long he expected to remain there, how he liked it. She spoke English without an accent, or rather with that absence of any one of those long familiar to him which on his arrival in Europe had struck him as constituting by itself a complete foreignness—a foreignness that in women he had come to like extremely. Here and there her utterance slightly exceeded this measure, but at the end of ten minutes he found himself waiting for these delicate discords. He enjoyed them, marvelling to hear the possible slip become the charming glide. "You have a beautiful country of your own," she safely enough risked.
"Oh, very fine, very fine. You ought to come over and see it."
​"I shall never go over and see it," she answered with a smile.
"Well, why should n't you?"
"We don't travel; especially so far."
"But you go away sometimes; you don't always stay right here?"
"I go away in summer—a little way, to the country."
"He wanted to ask her something more, something personal and going rather far—he hardly knew what. "Don't you find it rather lifeless here," he said; "so far from the street?" Rather "lonesome" he was going to say, but he deflected nervously, for discretion, and then felt his term an aggravation.
"Yes, it's very lifeless, if you mean very quiet; but that's exactly what we like."
"Ah, that's exactly what you like," he repeated. He was touched by her taking it so.
"Besides, I've lived here all my life."
"Lived here all your life," Newman found he could but echo.
"I was born here, and my father was born here before me, and my grandfather and my great-grandfathers. Were they not, Valentin?—and she appealed to her brother.
"Yes, it seems a condition of our being born at all," the young man smiled as he rose and threw the remnant of his cigarette into the fire. He remained leaning against the chimney-piece, and an observer would have guessed that he wished to take a better look at their guest, whom he covertly examined while he stroked his moustache.
​"Your house is tremendously old then?" Newman pursued.
"How old is it, brother?" asked Madame de Cintré.
The young man took the two candles from the mantel, lifted one high in each hand and looked up, above the objects on the shelf, toward the cornice of the room. The chimney-piece was in white marble of the Louis-Quinze period, but much aloft was a panelling of an earlier date, quaintly carved, painted white and here and there gilded. The white had turned to yellow and the gilding was tarnished. On the top the figures ranged themselves into a shield, on which an armorial device was cut. Above it, in relief, was a number—1627. "There you have a year," said the young man. "That's old or new, according to your point of view."
"Well, over here," Newman replied, "one's point of view gets shifted round considerably." And he threw back his head and looked about. "Your house is of a very fine style of architecture."
"Are you interested in questions of architecture?" asked the gentleman at the chimney-piece.
"Well, I took the trouble this summer to examine—as well as I can calculate—some four hundred and seventy churches. Do you call that interested?"
"Perhaps you're interested in religion," said his amiable host.
Newman thought. "Not actively." He found himself speaking as if it were a railroad or a mine; so that the next moment, to correct this, "Are you a ​Roman Catholic, madam?" he inquired of Madame de Cintré.
"I'm of the faith of my fathers," she gravely replied.
He was struck with a sort of richness in the effect of it—he threw back his head again for contemplation. "Had you never noticed that number up there?" he presently asked.
She hesitated a moment and then, "In former years," she returned.
Her brother had been watching Newman's movement. "Perhaps you would like to examine the house."
Our friend slowly brought down his eyes for recognition of this; he received the impression that the young man at the chimney-piece had his forms, and sought his own opportunities, of amusement. He was a handsome figure of a young man; his face wore a smile, his moustachios were curled up at the ends and there was something—more than the firelight—that played in his eyes. "Damn his French impudence!" Newman was on the point of inwardly growling. "What the deuce is he grinning at?" He glanced at Madame de Cintré, who was only looking at the floor. But she raised her eyes, which again met his, till she carried them to her brother. He turned again to this companion and observed that he strikingly resembled his sister. This was in his favour, and our hero's first impression of Count Valentin had moreover much engaged him. His suspicion expired and he said he should rejoice to see the house.
​The young man surrendered to gaiety, laying his hand again on a light. "It will repay your curiosity. Come then."
But Madame de Cintré rose quickly and grasped his arm. "Ah Valentin, what do you mean to do?"
"To show Mr. Newman the house. It will be very amusing to show Mr. Newman the house."
She kept her hand on his arm and turned to their visitor with a smile. "Don't let him take you; you won't find it remarkable. It is a musty old house like any other."
"Ah, not like any other," the Count still gaily protested. "It's full of curious things. Besides a visit like Mr. Newman's is just what it wants and has never had. It's a rare chance all round."
"You're very wicked, brother," Madame de Cintré insisted.
"Nothing venture, nothing have!" cried the young man. "Will you come?"
She stepped toward Newman, clasping her hands and speaking, to his sense, with an exquisite grave appeal. "Would n't you prefer my society here by my fire to stumbling about dark passages after—well, after nothing at all?"
"A hundred times! We'll see the house some other day."
The young man put down his light with mock solemnity, and, shaking his head, " Ah, you've defeated a great scheme, sir!" he sighed.
"A scheme? I don't understand," said Newman.
"You 'd have played your part in it all the better. Perhaps some day I shall have a chance to explain it."
​"Be quiet and ring for tea," Madame de Cintré gently concluded.
Count Valentin obeyed, and presently a servant brought in a tray, which he placed on a small table. Madame de Cintré, when he had gone, busied herself, from her place, with making tea. She had but just begun when the door was thrown open and a lady rushed in with a loud rustling sound. She stared at Newman, gave a little nod and a "Monsieur!" and then quickly approached Madame de Cintré and presented her forehead to be kissed. Madame de Cintré saluted her, but continued to watch the kettle. The rustling lady was young and pretty, it seemed to Newman; she wore her bonnet and cloak and a train of royal proportions. She began to talk rapidly in French. "Oh, give me some tea, my beautiful one, for the love of God! I'm anéantie, annihilated." Newman found himself quite unable to follow her; she spoke much less distinctly than M. Nioche.
"That's my wonderful sister-in-law," the young man mentioned to him.
"She's very attractive," Newman promptly responded.
"Fascinating," the Count said; and this time again his guest suspected him of latent malice. His sister-in-law came round to the other side of the fire with her tea in her hand, holding it out at arm's length so that she might n't spill it on her dress and uttering little cries of alarm. She placed the cup on the chimney and began to unpin her veil and pull off her gloves, looking meanwhile at Newman. "Is there ​anything I can do for you, my dear lady?" the young man asked with quite extravagant solicitude.
"Present me to monsieur," said his sister-in-law. And then when he had pronounced their visitor's name: "I can't curtsey to you, monsieur, or I shall spill my tea. So Claire receives strangers like this?" she covertly added, in French to her brother-in-law.
"Apparently! Is n't it fun?" he returned with enthusiasm.
Newman stood a moment and then approached Madame de Cintré, who looked up at him as if she were thinking of something to say. She seemed to think of nothing, however—she simply smiled. He sat down near her and she handed him his cup. For a few moments they talked about that, and meanwhile he kept taking her in. He remembered what Mrs. Tristram had told him of her "perfection" and of her having, in combination, all the brilliant things that he dreamed of finding. This made him consider her not only without mistrust, but without uneasy conjectures; the presumption, from the first moment he looked at her, had been so in her favour. And yet if she was beautiful it was not from directly dazzling him. She was tall and moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair and features uneven and harmonious. Her wide grey eyes were like a brace of deputed and garlanded maidens waiting with a compliment at the gate of a city, but they failed of that lamp-like quality and those many-coloured fires that light up, as in a constant celebration of anniversaries, the fair front of the conquering type. Madame de Cintré was of attenuated substance ​and might pass for younger than she probably was. In her whole person was something still young and still passive, still uncertain and that seemed still to expect to depend, and which yet made, in its dignity, a presence withal, and almost represented, in its serenity, an assurance. What had Tristram meant, Newman wondered, by calling her proud? She was certainly not proud, now, to him; or if she was it was of no use and lost on him: she must pile it up higher if she expected him to mind it. She was a clear, noble person—it was very easy to get on with her. And was she then subject to that application of the idea of rank which made her a kind of historical formation? Newman had known rank but in the old days of the army—where it had not always amounted to very much either; and he had never seen it attributed to women, unless perhaps to two or three rather predominant wives of generals. But the designations representing it in France struck him as ever so pretty and becoming, with a property in the bearer, this particular one, that might match them and make a sense—something fair and softly bright, that had motions of extraordinary lightness and indeed a whole new and unfamiliar play of emphasis and pressure, a new way, that is, of not insisting and not even, as one might think, wanting or knowing, yet all to the effect of attracting and pleasing. She had at last thought of something to say. "Have you many friends in Paris—so that you go out a great deal?"
He considered—about going out. "Do you mean if I go to parties—?"
​Do you go dans le monde, as we say?"
"I've seen a good many people. Mrs. Tristram at least tells me I have. She has taken me about. I do whatever she bids me."
"By yourself then you're not fond of amusements?"
"Oh yes, of some sorts. I'm not fond of very fast rushing about, or of sitting up half the night; I'm too old and too heavy. But I want to be amused; I came to Europe for that."
She appeared to think a moment, and then with a smile: "But I thought one can be so much amused in America."
"I could n't; perhaps I was too much part of the show. That's never such fun, you know, for the animals themselves."
At this, moment young Madame de Bellegarde came back for another cup of tea, accompanied by Count Valentin. Madame de Cintré, when she had served her, began to talk again with Newman and recalled what he had last said. "In your own country you were very much occupied?"
"I was in active business. I've been in active business since I was fifteen years old."
"And what was your active business?" asked Madame de Bellegarde, who was decidedly not so pretty as Madame de Cintré.
"I've been in everything," said Newman. "At one time I sold leather; at one time I manufactured wash-tubs."
Madame de Bellegarde made a little grimace. "Leather? I don't like that. Wash-tubs are better. I prefer the smell of soap. I hope at least they made ​your fortune." She rattled this off with the air of a woman who had the reputation of saying everything that came into her head, and with a strong French accent.
Newman had spoken with conscientious clearness, but Madame de Bellegarde's tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light grimness of pleasantry. "No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out pretty square on leather."
"I've made up my mind, after all," said the Marquise, "that the great point is—how do you call it?-to come out square. I'm on my knees to money and my worship is as public as you like. If you have it I ask no questions. For that I'm a real radical—like you, monsieur; at least as I suppose you. My belle-sœur is very proud; but I find that one gets much more pleasure in this sad life if one does n't make too many difficulties."
"Goodness gracious, chère madame, how you rush in!" Count Valentin gaily groaned.
"He's a man one can speak to, I suppose, since my sister receives him," the lady more covertly answered. "Besides, it's very true; those are my ideas."
"Ah, you call them ideas?" the young man returned in a tone that Newman thought lovely.
"But Mrs. Tristram told me you had been in the army—in your great war," his beautiful sister pursued.
"Yes, but that was not business in the paying sense, I could n't afford it often."
"Very true!" said Count Valentin, who looked at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar ​facial play, in which irony and urbanity seemed perplexingly commingled. "Are you a brave man?"
"Well, try me."
"Ah then, there you are! In that case come again."
"Dear me, what an invitation!" Madame de Cintré murmured with a smile that betrayed embarrassment.
"Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come—particularly," her brother returned. "It will give me great pleasure. I shall feel the loss if I miss one of his visits. But I maintain he must be of high courage. A stout heart, sir, and a firm front." And he offered Newman his hand.
"I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de Cintré," said Newman, bent on distinctness.
"You 'll need, exactly for that, all your arms."
"Ah de grâce!" she appealed.
"Decidedly," cried Madame de Bellegarde, "I 'm the only person here capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you 'll need no courage at all, monsieur."
Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an assent; then, shaking hands all round, marched away. Madame de Cintré failed to take up her sister's challenge to be gracious, but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.