# The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 18

XVIII
It was the next morning that, by exception, Newman went to see Madame de Cintré, timing his visit so as to arrive after the noonday breakfast. In the court of the hotel, before the portico, stood Madame de Bellegarde's old square heavy carriage. The servant who opened the door answered his enquiry with a slightly embarrassed and hesitating murmur, and at the same moment Mrs. Bread appeared in the background, dim-visaged as usual and wearing a large black bonnet and shawl.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Is Madame la Comtesse at home or not?"
Mrs. Bread advanced, fixing her eyes on him; he observed that she held a sealed letter, very delicately, in her fingers. "The Countess has left a message for you, sir; she has left this." And the good woman held out the missive, which he took.
"Left it? Is she out? Is she gone away?"
"She's going away, sir; she's leaving town," said Mrs. Bread.
"Leaving town!" he exclaimed. "What in the world has happened?"
"It is not for me to say, sir." And Mrs. Bread cast her eyes to the ground. "But I thought it would come."
"What would come, pray?" Newman demanded. He had broken the seal of the letter, but he ​still questioned. "She's in the house? She's visible?"
"I don't think she expected you this morning," his venerable friend replied. "She was to leave immediately."
"Where is she going?"
"To Fleurières."
"Away off there? But surely I can see her?"
Mrs. Bread hesitated, but then, clasping together her black-gloved hands, "I 'll take you!" she rather desperately said. And she led the way upstairs. At the top of the staircase, however, she paused and fixed her dry sad eyes on him. "Be very easy with her. Nobody else is." Then she went on to Madame de Cintré's apartment. Newman, perplexed and alarmed, followed her fast. She threw open the door and he pushed back the curtain at the further side of its deep embrasure. In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintré; her face was flushed and marked and she was dressed for travelling. Behind her, before the fireplace, stood Urbain de Bellegarde and looked at his finger-nails; near the Marquis sat his mother, buried in an armchair and with her eyes immediately fixing themselves on the invader, as he felt them pronounce him. He knew himself, as he entered, in the presence of something evil; he was as startled and pained as he would have been by a threatening cry in the stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de Cintré and seized her by the hand.
"What's the matter?" he asked commandingly; "what's happening?"
​Urbain de Bellegarde stared, then left his place and came and leaned on the back of his mother's chair. Newman's sudden irruption had evidently discomposed them both. Madame de Cintré stood silent and with her eyes resting on her friend's. She had often looked at him with all her soul, as it seemed to him; but in this present gaze there was a bottomless depth. She was in distress, and—monstrously—was somehow to her own sense helpless. It would have been the most touching thing he had ever seen if it had n't been the most absurd. His heart rose into his throat and he was on the point of turning to her companions with an angry challenge; but she checked him, pressing the hand of which she had possessed herself.
"Something very grave has happened," she brought out. "I can't marry you."
Newman dropped her hand—as if, suddenly and unnaturally acting with the others, she had planted a knife in his side: he stood staring, first at her and then at them. "Why not?" he asked as quietly as his quick gasp permitted.
Madame de Cintré almost smiled, but the attempt was strange. "You must ask my mother. You must ask my brother."
"Why can't she marry me?"—and he looked all at them.
Madame de Bellegarde never moved in her seat, but her consciousness had paled her face. The Marquis hovered protectingly. She said nothing for some moments, but she kept her keen clear eyes on their visitor. The Marquis drew himself up and ​considered the ceiling. "It's impossible!" he finely articulated.
"It's improper," said Madame de Bellegarde.
Newman began to laugh. "Oh, you're fooling!" he exclaimed.
"My sister, you've no time; you're losing your train," the Marquis went on.
"Come, is he mad?" Newman asked.
"No; don't think that," said Madame de Cintré. "But I'm going away."
"Where are you going?"
"To the country; to Fleurières; to be alone."
"To leave me alone?" Newman put it.
"I can't see you now," she simply answered.
"'Now'—why not?"
"I'm ashamed," she still more simply confessed.
Newman turned to the Marquis. "What have you done to her—what does it mean?" he asked with the same effort at calmness, the fruit of his constant practice in taking things easily. He was excited, but excitement with him was only an intenser deliberateness; it was the plunger stripped.
"It means that I've given you up," said Madame de Cintré. "It means that."
Her appearance was too charged with tragic expression not fully to confirm her words. Newman was profoundly shocked, but he felt as yet no resentment against her. He was amazed, bewildered, and the presence of the Marquise and her son seemed to smite his eyes like the glare of a watch man's lantern. "Can't I see you alone? he asked.
​"It would be only more painful. I hoped I should n't see you—that I should escape. I wrote to you, but only three words. Good-bye." And she put out her hand again.
Newman put both his own into his pockets. "I 'll simply go with you."
She laid her two hands on his arm. "Will you grant me a last request?"—and as she looked at him, urging this, her eyes filled with tears. "Let me go alone—let me go in peace. Peace I say—though it's really death. But let me bury myself. So—good-bye."
Newman passed his hand into his hair and stood slowly rubbing his head and looking through his keenly-narrowed eyes from one to the other of the three persons before him. His lips were compressed, and the two strong lines formed beside his mouth and riding hard, as it were, his restive moustache, might have at first suggested a wide grimace. I have said that his excitement was an intenser deliberateness, and now his deliberation was grim. "It seems very much as if you had interfered, Marquis," he said slowly. "I thought you said you would n't interfere. I know you did n't like me; but that does n't make any difference. I thought you promised me you would n't interfere. I thought you swore on your honour that you would n't interfere. Don't you're member, Marquis?"
The Marquis lifted his eyebrows, but he was apparently determined to be even more urbane than usual. He rested his two hands upon the back of his mother's chair and bent forward as if he were ​leaning over the edge of a pulpit or a lecture-desk. He did n't smile, but he looked softly grave. "Pardon me, sir—what I assured you was that I would n't influence my sister's decision. I adhered to the letter to my engagement. Did I not, my sister?"
"Don't appeal, my son," said the Marquise. "Your word's all sufficient."
"Yes—she accepted me," said Newman. "That's very true; I can't deny that. At least," he added in a different tone while he turned to Madame de Cintré, "you did accept me?" The effect of deep irony in it—even if there had been nothing else—appeared to move her strongly, and she turned away, burying her face in her hands. "But you've interfered now, have n't you?" he went on to the Marquis.
"Neither then nor now have I attempted to influence my sister. I used no persuasion then—I 've used no persuasion to-day."
"And what have you used?"
"We've used authority," said Madame de Bellegarde in a rich, bell-like voice.
"Ah, you've used authority! Newman wonderfully echoed. "They've used authority—" He turned to Madame de Cintré. "What in the world is their authority and how do they apply it?"
"My mother addressed me her command," Madame de Cintré said with a sound that was the strangest yet.
"Her command that you should give me up—I see. And you obey—I see. But why do you obey?" Newman pursued.
​Madame de Cintré looked across at the old Marquise, measuring her from head to foot. Then she spoke again with simplicity. "I 'm afraid of my mother."
Madame de Bellegarde rose with a certain quickness. "This is a most indecent scene!"
"I 've no wish to prolong it," said Madame de Cintré; and, turning to the door, she put out her hand again. "If you can pity me a little, let me go alone."
Newman held her quietly and firmly. "I 'll come right down there." The portière dropped behind her, and he sank with a long breath into the nearest chair. He leaned back in it, resting his hands on the knobs of the arms and looking at Madame de Bellegarde and Urbain. There was a long silence. They stood side by side, their heads high and their handsome eyebrows arched. "So you make a distinction?" he went on at last. "You make a distinction between persuading and commanding? It 's very neat. But the distinction's in favour of commanding. That rather spoils it."
"We've not the least objection to defining our position," said M. de Bellegarde. "We quite understand that it should n't at first appear to you altogether clear. We rather expect indeed that you 'll not do us justice."
"Oh, I 'll do you justice," said Newman. "Don't be afraid. Only give me a chance!"
The Marquise laid her hand on her son's arm as if to deprecate the attempt to marshal reasons or to meet their friend again, on any ground, too ​intimately. "It's quite useless," she opined, "to try and arrange this matter so as to make it agreeable to you. It's a disappointment, and disappointments are—I grant it—sometimes odious things. I thought our necessity over—that of letting you know that we don't after all see our way! I considered carefully and tried to arrange it better; but I only gave myself bad headaches and lost my sleep. Say what we will you 'll think yourself ill-treated and will publish your wrong among your friends. But we're not afraid of that. Besides, your friends are not our friends, and it will matter by so much the less. Think of us as you like—you don't really know us. I only beg you not to be violent. I've never in my life been present at any sort of roughness, and I think my age should now protect me."
"Is that all you have to say?" asked Newman, slowly rising from his chair. "That's a poor show for a clever lady like you, Marquise. Come, try again."
"My mother goes to the point with her usual honesty and intrepidity," said the Marquis, toying with his watchguard. "But it's perhaps right I should add another word. We of course quite repudiate the charge of having broken faith with you. We left you entirely at liberty to make yourself agreeable to my sister. We left her quite at liberty to entertain your proposal. When she accepted you we said nothing. We therefore wholly observed our promise. It was only at a later stage of the affair, and on quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak. It would have been better ​perhaps if we had spoken before. But really, you see, nothing has yet been done."
"Nothing has yet been done?"—Newman repeated the words as if unconscious of their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the Marquis was saying; M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears. All he understood, in his deep and simple wrath, was that the matter was not a violent joke and that the people before him were perfectly serious. "Do you suppose I can take this from you?" he wonderingly asked. "Do you suppose it can matter to me what you say? Do you suppose I'm an idiot that you can so put off?"
Madame de Bellegarde gave a rattle of her fan in the hollow of her hand. "If you don't take it you can leave it, sir. It matters very little what you do. The simple fact is that my daughter has given you up."
"She does n't mean it," Newman declared after a moment.
"I think I can assure you that she does," the Marquis fluted.
"Poor stricken woman, poor bleeding heart, what damnable thing have you done to her?" Newman demanded.
"Gently, gently!" murmured M. de Bellegarde as he rocked on his neat foundations.
"She told you," his mother said. "I expressed my final wish."
Newman shook his head heavily. "This sort of thing can't be, you know. A man can't be used in this fashion. You not only have no right that is n't ​a preposterous pretence, but you have n't a penny worth of power."
"My power," Madame de Bellegarde observed, "is in my children's obedience."
"In their fear, your daughter said. There's something very strange in it. Why should anyone be afraid of you?" added Newman after looking at her a moment. "There has been something at play I don't know and can't guess."
She met his gaze without flinching and as if neither hearing nor heeding. "I did my best," she said quietly. "I could bear it no longer."
"It was a bold experiment!" the Marquis pursued.
Newman felt disposed to walk to him and clutch his neck with irresistible firm fingers and a prolongation of thumb-pressure on the windpipe. "I need n't tell you how you strike me," he said, however, instead of this; "of course you know that. But I should think you 'd be afraid of your friends—all those people you introduced me to the other night. There were some decent people apparently among them; you may depend upon it there were some good, honest men and women."
"Our friends approve us," said M. de Bellegarde; there's not a responsible chef de famille among them who would have acted otherwise. And however that may be we take the cue from no one. We've been much more used—since one really has to tell you—to setting the example than to waiting for it."
"You 'd have waited long before any one would have set you such an example as this, I guess!" Newman cried. "Have I done anything wrong or ​mean or base?" he rang out. "Have I given you any reason to change your opinion? Have you found out anything against me? Hanged if I can imagine!"
"Our opinion," said Madame de Bellegarde, "is quite the same as at first—exactly. We've no ill-will towards yourself; we're very far from accusing you of misconduct. Since your relations with us began you've been, I frankly confess, less eccentric than I expected. It's not your personal character that we object to, it's your professional—it's your antecedents. We really can't reconcile ourselves to a commercial person. We tried to believe in an evil hour it was possible, and that effort was our great misfortune. We determined to persevere to the end and to give you every advantage. I was resolved you should have no reason to accuse me of a want of loyalty. We let the thing certainly go very far—we introduced you to our friends. To tell the truth it was that, I think, that broke me down. I succumbed to the scene that took place the other night in these rooms. You must pardon me if what I say is disagreeable to you, but you've insisted, with violence, on an explanation."
"There's no better proof of our good faith," the Marquis superadded, "than our committing ourselves to you in the eyes of the world three evenings since. We endeavoured to bind ourselves—to tie our hands and cut off our retreat. Could we have done more?"
"But it was that," his mother subjoined, "that opened our eyes and broke our bonds. We should have been deeply uncomfortable with any such ​continuance. You know," she wound up in a moment, that you were forewarned as to our high, stiff way of carrying ourselves. Oh, I grant you that we're as proud and odious as you please! But we didn't seek your acquaintance. You sought ours."
Newman took up his hat and began mechanically to smooth it; the very fierceness of his scorn kept him from speaking. "You're certainly odious enough," he cried at last, "but it strikes me your pride falls short altogether."
"In the whole matter," said the Marquis, still as with a fine note of cool reason, "I really see nothing but our humility."
"Let us have no more painful discussion than is necessary," his mother resumed. "My daughter told you everything when she said she gives you up."
"I'm not in the least satisfied about your daughter," Newman insisted: "I want to know what you did to her. It's all very easy talking about authority and saying she likes your orders. She did n't accept me blindly and she would n't give me up blindly. Not that I believe yet she has really done it after what has passed between us; she'll talk it over with me. But you've frightened her, you've bullied her, you 've hurt her. What was it you did to her?"
"I had very little to do," said Madame de Bellegarde in a tone which gave him a chill when he afterwards remembered it.
"Let me remind you that we offered you this amount of consideration," the Marquis observed, "with the express understanding that you should abstain from intemperance."
​"I'm not intemperate," Newman answered; "it's you who are intemperate. You stab me in the back and I turn on you; is it I who am offensive? But I don't know that I've much more to say to you. What you expect of me, apparently, is to go on my way—in the manner most convenient to you—thanking you for favours received and promising never to trouble you again."
"We expect of you to act like an homme d' esprit," said Madame de Bellegarde. "You 've shown yourself remarkably that, already, and what we 've done is altogether based upon your being so. When one must recognise a situation—well, one must. That's all that we've done. Since my daughter absolutely withdraws, what do you gain by making a noise under our windows? You proclaim, at the best, your discomfiture."
"It remains to be seen if your daughter absolutely withdraws. Your daughter and I are still very good friends; nothing's changed in that. As I say, there has been that between us that must make her recognise at least my claim to some light of mercy from her."
"I recommend you in your own interest not to expect more than you 'll get," the Marquis returned with firmness. "I know her well enough to know that a meaning signified as she just now signified hers to you is final. Besides, she has given me her word."
"I've no doubt her word's worth a great deal more than your own," said Newman. "Nevertheless I don't give her up."
​"There's nothing of course to prevent your saying so! But if she won't even see you—and she won't—your constancy must remain very much on your hands."
Newman feigned in truth a greater confidence than he felt. Madame de Cintré's strange intensity had really struck a chill to his heart; her face, still impressed on his vision, had been a terrible image of deep renunciation. He felt sick and suddenly helpless. He turned away and stood a moment with his hand on the door; then he faced about and, after the briefest hesitation, broke out with another accent. "Come, think of what this must be to me, and leave her to herself and to the man whom, before God I believe, she loves! Why should you object to me—what's the matter with me? I can't hurt you, I would n't if I could. I'm the most unobjectionable man in the world. What if I am a commercial person? What under the sun do you mean? A commercial person? I 'll be any sort of person you want. I never talked to you about business—where on earth does it come in? Let her go and I 'll ask no questions. I 'll take her away and you shall never see me or hear of me again. I 'll stay in America if you like. I 'll sign a paper promising never to come back to Europe. All I want is not to lose her!"
His companions exchanged a glance of mutual re-enforcement, and Urbain said: "My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement. We've not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable foreigner, and we 've every reason for not wishing to be eternally separated from my sister. We object ​to her marriage; and in that way"—M. de Bellegarde gave a small, thin laugh—she 'd be more married than ever."
"Well then," Newman presently broke out again, "where's this interesting place of yours—Fleurières? I know it's near some old city on a hill."
"Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill," the Marquise admitted. "I don't know exactly how old it is. We're not afraid to tell you."
"It's Poitiers, is it? Very good," said Newman. "I shall immediately follow Madame de Cintré."
"The trains after this hour won't serve you," Urbain appeared to judge it his duty to mention.
"I shall then hire a special train."
"That will be a very foolish waste of money," said Madame de Bellegarde.
"It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence," Newman answered; with which, clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
He didn't immediately start for Fleurières; he was too stunned and wounded for consecutive action. He simply walked; he walked straight before him, following the river till he got out of the stony circle of Paris. He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage. He had never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never been pulled up, or, as he would have said, "let down," so short, and he found the sensation intolerable as he strode along tapping the trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging. To lose such a woman after taking such jubilant and triumphant possession of her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury ​to his happiness. And to lose her by the interference and the dictation of others, by an impudent old hag's and a pretentious coxcomb's stepping in with their "authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful. Upon what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes he wasted little thought; he consigned it once for all to eternal perdition. But the treachery of Madame de Cintré herself amazed and confounded him; there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in vain. Only three days had elapsed since she stood beside him in the starlight, beautiful and tranquil as the trust with which he had inspired her, and told him she was happy in the prospect of their marriage. What was the meaning of the change? of what infernal potion had she tasted? He had, however, a terrible apprehension that she had really changed. His very admiration for her attached the idea of force and weight to her rupture. But he did n't rail at her as false, for he was sure she was unhappy. In his walk he had crossed one of the bridges of the Seine, and he still followed unheedingly the long and unbroken quay. He had left Paris behind and was almost in the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil. He stopped at last, looked about at it without seeing or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned round and at a slower pace retraced his steps. When he came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero he reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs. Tristram's dwelling and that Mrs. Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of a woman's kindness in her chords. He felt ​he needed to pour out his ire, and he took the road to her house. She was at home and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the room, she told him she knew what he had come for. He sat down heavily, in silence, with his eyes on her.
"They've backed out!" she said without his even needing to tell her. "Well, you may think it strange, but I felt something the other night in the air." Presently he gave her his account; she listened while her whole face took it in. When he had finished she said quietly: "They want her to marry Lord Deepmere." Newman stared—he did n't know she knew anything about Lord Deepmere. "But I don't think she will," Mrs. Tristram added.
"She marry that poor little cub!" cried Newman. "Oh Lord save us! And yet why else can she have so horribly treated me?"
"But that is n't the only thing," said Mrs. Tristram. ""They really could n't live with you any longer. They had overrated their courage. I must say, to give the devil his due, that there's something rather fine in that. It was your commercial quality in the abstract, and the mere historic facts of your washtubs and other lucrative wares, that they could n't swallow. That's really consistent—the inconsistency had been the other way. They wanted your money, but they've given you up for an idea."
Newman frowned most ruefully and took up his hat again. "I thought you 'd encourage me!" he brought out with almost juvenile sadness.
"Pardon my trying to understand—of course it does n't concern you to understand," she answered ​very gently. "I feel none the less sorry for you, especially as I'm at the bottom of your troubles. I've not forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don't believe Claire has any intention of consenting to marry Lord Deepmere. It's true he's not younger than she, as he might pass for being. He's thirty-three years old; I looked in the Peerage. But no—I can't believe her so hideously, cruelly false."
"Please say nothing against her!" Newman strangely cried.
"Poor woman," she none the less continued, "she is cruel. But of course you 'll go after her and you 'll plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now," Mrs. Tristram added with characteristic audacity of comment, "you're extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must have a very fixed idea or a very bad conscience. I wish I had done you a wrong—that you might come to me and make me so feel it; and feel you, dear man, just you." She looked at him an instant, then had one of her odd little outbreaks. "You're lamentable—you're splendid! Go to Madame de Cintré, at any rate, and tell her that she's a puzzle even to one of the intelligent, like me, who so greatly admires her. I'm very curious to see how far family discipline in a fine case like this does go."
Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with reason and compassion with criticism. At last she inquired: "And what does Count Valentin say to it?" ​Newman started; he had not thought of Valentin and his errand on the Swiss frontier since the morning. The reflexion made him restless again, and he broke away on a promise that his hostess should have with out delay his next news. He went straight to his apartment, where, on the table in the vestibule, he found a waiting telegram. "I'm seriously ill and should be glad to see you as soon as possible.—Valentin." He had a savage groan for this miserable news and for the interruption of his journey to Fleurières. But he addressed to Madame de Cintré a brief, the briefest, statement of these things; it formed a response as well to the ten words of the note that had come to him by Mrs. Bread, and was now all the time allowed him.
"I don't give you up and don't really believe you speak your own intention. I don't understand it, but am sure we shall clear it up together. I can't follow you to-day, as I'm called to see a friend at a distance who's very ill, perhaps dying. Why should n't I tell you he's your brother?—C. N."