# The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 10

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Newman continued to see his other good friends with scarce-diminished frequency, though if you had listened to Mrs. Tristram's account of the matter you would have supposed they had been cynically repudiated for the sake of grander acquaintance. "We were all very well so long as we had no rivals—we were better than nothing. But now that you've become the fashion and have your pick every day of three invitations to dinner, we're tossed into the corner. I'm sure it is very good of you to come and see us once a month; I wonder you don't send us your cards in an envelope. When you do, pray have them with black edges; it will be for the death of my last illusion." It was in this incisive strain she moralised over Newman's so-called neglect, which was in truth a most excellent constancy. Of course she was joking, but she embroidered with a sharp needle.
"I know no better proof that I've treated you very well," Newman had said, "than the fact that you make so free with my character. I've let you tweak my nose, I've allowed you the run of the animal's cage. If I had a little proper pride I 'd stay away a while and, when you should ask me to dinner, say I'm going to Princess Borealska's. But I have n't any pride where my pleasure's concerned, and to keep you in the humour to see me—if you must see me only to call me bad names—I 'll agree to ​anything you choose; I 'll admit I 'm the biggest kind of a sneak." Newman in fact had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska, an enquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram's; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of the Avenue d'Iéna that he was faithless to his early friendships. She needed the theory to explain one of her fine exasperations. Having launched our hero on the current that was bearing him so rapidly along she felt but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was "quite satisfactory." The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that in essentials the feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed the mild expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from her guest's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. He was only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect on that enthusiasm with which she had overflowed a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintré, and wished to have it understood that she did n't in the least pretend to have gone into a final analysis of her life, or in other words of her honesty. "No woman"—she played with this idea—"can ​be so good as that one seems. Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona: 'a supersubtle Venetian.' Claire de Cintré 's a supersubtle Parisian. She 's a charming creature and has five hundred merits; but you had better keep her supersubtlety in mind." Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding herself jealous of her special favourite on the other side of the Seine, so that in undertaking to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much on the lapse of her own passions and her immunity from wild yearnings? We may be permitted to doubt it. The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d'Iéna had an insuperable need of intellectual movement, of critical, of ironic exercise. She had a lively imagination, and was capable at times of holding views, of entertaining beliefs, directly opposed to her most cherished opinions and convictions. She got tired of thinking right, but there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman mentioned to her that he had made their beautiful friend a formal offer of his hand. He repeated in a few words what he had said, and in a great many what she had answered, and Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.
"But after all," he admitted, "there's nothing to congratulate me upon. It is not much of a triumph."
​"Well, she would n't have got much by that," he made answer.
She looked at him a moment. "No one, I think, gets as much by anything as you. When I told you to go your own way and do what came into your head I had no idea you 'd go over the ground so fast. I never dreamed you 'd propose after five or six morning calls. What had you done as yet to make her like you? You had simply sat—not very straight—and stared at her. But she does like you."
"That remains to be seen."
"No, it only remains to be criticised. What will come of it remains to be seen. That you should make but a mouthful of her marrying you without more ado could never have come into her head. You can form very little idea of what passed through her mind as you spoke; if she ever really takes you the affair will be marked by the usual justice of all human judgements of women. You 'll think you take generous views of her, but you'll never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she'll have passed before accepting you. As she stood there in front of you the other day she plunged into it. She said 'Well, why not?' to something that a few hours earlier had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot and looked where she had never looked till that instant. When I think of it, when I think of Claire de Cintré and all that she represents, there seems to me something very fine in it. When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of course thought well of you, and in spite of your base ​ingratitude I think so still. But I confess I don't see quite what you are and what you've done to make such a woman go these extravagant lengths for you."
"Oh, there's something very fine in it!"—Newman laughed as he repeated her words. He took an extreme satisfaction in hearing that there was something very fine in it. He had not the least doubt of this himself, but he had already begun to value the world's view of his possible prize as adding to the prospective glory of possession.
It was immediately after this passage that Valentin de Bellegarde came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l'Université and present him to the other members of his family. "You're already introduced and you've begun to be talked about. My sister has mentioned your successive visits to my mother, and it was an accident that my mother was present at none of them. I 've spoken of you as an American of immense wealth, and the best fellow in the world, who's looking for something quite superior in the way of a wife."
"Do you suppose," asked Newman, "that Madame de Cintré has reported to your mother the last conversation I had with her?"
"I'm very certain she has n't; she'll keep her own counsel. Meanwhile," Valentin said, "you must make your way with the rest of the family. Thus much is known about you—that you've made a great fortune in trade, that you're a frank outsider and an honest eccentric, and that you furiously admire our charming Claire. My sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Claire's sitting-room, took, ​it appears, a marked fancy to you; she has described you as having beaucoup de cachet. My mother is therefore curious to see you."
"She expects to laugh at me, eh?" said Newman.
"She never laughs—or at least never expects to. If she does n't like you don't hope to purchase favour by being funny. I'm funny—take warning by me!"
This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house of the Rue de l'Université into which he had not yet penetrated, the salon of the dowager Marquise. It was a vast high room, with elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a whiteish grey, along the upper portion of the walls and the ceiling; with a great deal of faded and carefully-repaired tapestry in the doorways and chair-backs; with a Turkey carpet, in light colours, still soft and rich despite great antiquity, on the floor; and with portraits of each of Madame de Bellegarde's children at the age of ten suspended against an old screen of red silk. The dimness was diminished, exactly enough for conversation, by half a dozen candles placed in odd corners and at a great distance apart. In a deep armchair near the fire sat an old lady in black; at the other end of the room another person was seated at the piano and playing a very expressive waltz. In this latter person Newman recognised the younger Marquise.
Valentin presented his friend, and Newman came sufficiently near to the old lady by the fire to take in that she would offer him no handshake—so that he knew he had the air of waiting, and a little like ​a customer in a shop, to see what she would offer. He received a rapid impression of a white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the clearness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him and refused what she did refuse with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of Saint Dunstans. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. He sat down and looked about him while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the young Marquise.
"I ought to have seen you before," said Madame de Bellegarde. "You've paid several visits to my daughter."
"Oh yes," Newman liberally smiled; "Madame de Cintré and I are old friends by this time."
"You've gone very fast," she went on.
"Not so fast as I should like."
"Ah, you're very ambitious," the old woman returned.
"Well, if I don't know what I want by this time I suppose I never shall."
Madame de Bellegarde looked at him with her cold fine eyes, and he returned her gaze, reflecting that she was a possible adversary and trying to take her measure. Their eyes remained for some moments engaged; then she looked away and, without smiling, "I'm very ambitious too," she said.
​"There are several in Paris," Newman jocosely said.
"Oh, really? It was in England I saw these, or somewhere else; not in Paris. I think it must have been in the Pyrenees many years ago. I'm told your ladies are very pretty. One of these ladies was very pretty—with such a wonderful complexion. She presented me a note of introduction from some one—I forget whom—and she sent with it a note of her own. I kept her letter a long time afterwards, it was so strangely expressed. I used to know some of the phrases by heart. But I've forgotten them now—it's so many years ago. Since then I've seen no more Americans. I think my daughter-in-law has; she's a great gadabout; she sees every one."
At this the younger lady came rustling forward, pinching in a very slender waist and casting idly preoccupied glances over the front of her dress, which was apparently designed for a ball. She was, in a singular way, at once ugly and pretty; she had protuberant eyes and lips that were strangely red. She reminded Newman of his friend Mademoiselle Nioche; this was what that much-hindered young lady would have liked to be. Valentin de Bellegarde walked behind her at a distance, hopping about to keep off the far-spreading train of her dress. "You ought to show more of the small of your back," he said very gravely. "You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as that."
The young woman turned to the mirror over the chimney-piece the part of her person so designated, and glanced behind her to verify this judgement. ​The mirror descended low and yet reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh-surface. Its possessor put her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress. "Like that, you mean?"
"That's a little better," said Valentin in the same tone, "but it leaves a good deal to be desired."
"Oh, I never go to extremes." And then turning to Madame de Bellegarde, "What were you calling me just now, madame?" her daughter-in-law enquired.
"I called you a gadabout. But I might call you something else too."
"A gadabout? What an ugly word! What does it mean?"
"A very beautiful lady," Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was in French.
"That's a pretty compliment but a bad translation," the young Marquise returned. After which, looking at him a moment: "Do you dance?"
"Not a step."
"You lose a great deal," she said simply. And with another look at her back in the mirror she turned away.
"Do you like Paris?" asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering what was the proper way to talk to an American.
"I think that must be the matter with me," he smiled. And then he added with a friendly intonation: " Don't you like it?"
"I can't say I know it. I know my house—I know my friends—I don't know Paris."
​Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had been condoled with on her losses. "I'm content, I think, with what I have," she said with dignity. Her visitor's eyes were at this moment wandering round the room, which struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements, with their small thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them. He ought obviously to have answered that the contentment of his hostess was quite natural—she had so much; but the idea did n't occur to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
"Well, my dear mother," said Valentin while he came and leaned against the chimney-piece, "what do you think of my good friend? Is n't he the remarkably fine man I told you of?"
"My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far," Madame de Bellegarde replied. "I can as yet only appreciate his great politeness."
"My mother's a great judge of these matters," Valentin went on to Newman. "If you've satisfied her it's a triumph."
"I hope I shall satisfy you some day," said Newman to the old lady. "I've done nothing yet."
"You mustn't listen to my son; he'll bring you into trouble. He's a sad scatterbrain," she declared.
Newman took it genially. "Oh, I've got to like him so that I can't do without him."
"He amuses you, eh?"
​"Do you hear that, Valentin?" said his mother. "You exist for the amusement of Mr. Newman."
"Perhaps we shall all come to that!" Valentin exclaimed.
"You must see my other son," she pursued. "He's much better than this one. But he 'll not amuse you."
"I don't know—I don't know!" Valentin thoughtfully objected. "But we shall very soon see. Here comes monsieur mon frère." The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward and whose face Newman remembered as that of the author of his discomfiture the first time of his calling. Valentin went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to their guest. "This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly. "You must know him if you can."
"I'm delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the Marquis with an unaccompanied salutation.
"He's the old woman at second-hand," Newman reflected with the sense of having his health drunk from an empty glass. And this was the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late head of this noble family had been a very amiable foreigner with an inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so. But if he had found small comfort in his wife he had found much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
​My brother has spoken to me of you," said M. de Bellegarde, "and as you are also acquainted with my sister it was time we should meet." He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with his lips; after which he assumed a position before the chimney-piece. With his long lean face, his high-bridged nose and small opaque eyes he favoured, in the old phrase, the English strain in his blood. His whiskers were fair and glossy and he had a large dimple, of unmistakeable British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin. He was "distinguished" to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the maintained attitude; he felt himself in presence of some thinghigh and unusual.
"Urbain," said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, "I call your attention to the fact that I'm dressed."
"That's a good idea—to show what you claim for it," Valentin commented.
"I'm at your orders, dear friend," said M. de Bellegarde. "Only you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with Mr. Newman."
"Oh, if you're going to a party don't let me keep you; I'm so sure we shall meet again. Indeed if you 'd like to meet me I'll gladly name an hour." He was eager to make it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all exactions.
M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position ​before the fire, caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands and looking at our friend, half-askance, with eyes from which a particular ray of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile. "It's very kind of you to make such an offer. If I'm not mistaken your occupations are such as to make your time precious. You're in a—as we say—a—dans les affaires?"
"In business, you mean? Oh no, I 've thrown business overboard for the present. I'm regularly loafing, as we say. My time's quite my own."
"Ah, you're taking a holiday," rejoined M. de Bellegarde. "'Loafing.' Yes, I've heard that expression."
"Mr. Newman's a distinguished American," Madame de Bellegarde observed.
"My brother's a great ethnologist," said Valentin.
"An ethnologist?—and Newman groped for gaiety. "You collect negroes' skulls and that sort of thing?"
The Marquis looked hard at his brother and began to caress his other whisker. Then turning to their new acquaintance with sustained urbanity: "You're travelling for pure recreation?"
"Well, I'm visiting your country, sir," Newman replied with a certain conscious patience—a patience he felt he on his side too could push, should need be, to stiffness; "and I confess I'm having a good time in it. Of course I get a good deal of pleasure out of it."
​"Well," our friend continued, "the life of the people, for one thing, interests me. Your people are very taking. But economically, technically, as it were, manufactures are what I care most about."
"Those—a—products have been your speciality?"
"I can't say I have had any speciality. My speciality has been to accumulate the largest convenient competency in the shortest possible time." Newman made this last remark very designedly and deliberately; he wished to open the way, should it be necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. "I hope you enjoy the sense of that success."
"Oh, one has still, at my age, the sense also of what's left to do. I'm not so very old," our hero candidly explained.
"Well, Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you all the advantages of yours." And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his fair, fat hands into the pearly kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde's good wishes seemed to flutter down on him from the cold upper air with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snowflakes. Yet he was not irritated; he did n't feel that he was being patronised; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces with which his so valued backer had told him that he ​would have to contend, and he became sensible of their intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of his scale. It must be added that if this impulse was neither vicious nor malicious, it was yet by no means unattended by the play in him of his occasional disposition to ironic adventure. He hated the idea of shocking people, he respected the liability to be shocked. But there were impressions that threw him back, after all, on his own measures of proportion. "Paris," he presently remarked, "is a very good place for people who take a great deal of stock, as we say, in their location, and want to be very much aware of it all the time; or it's a very good place if your family has been settled here for a long time and you've made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you've got a big house like this and a wife and children and mother and sister—everything right there. I don't like that way that prevails in many of your districts of people's living all in rooms door to door with each other. But I'm not, as I may put it, a natural, a real inspired loafer. I'm a poor imitation and it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated. Then I have n't any house to call my own or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I was pretty small, and I have n't what a man has when he has taken the regular way to get it—if I express myself clearly; and I often miss that pleasantness very much. So you see I'm sometimes rather conscious ​of a void. I'm not proficient in literature, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago I've never had my hand off the plough. I miss the regular call on my attention."
This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments on the part of Newman's entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly, hands in pockets, and then slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the room. The Marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly. "You began to earn your living in the cradle?" said the old Marquise, who appeared to wish to encourage, a little grimly, yet not wholly without an effect of pleasantry, her guest's autobiographic strain.
"Well, madam, I'm not absolutely convinced I had a cradle!"
"You say you're not proficient in literature," M. de Bellegarde resumed; "but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were interrupted early."
"That's very true; on my tenth birthday my schooling stopped short. I thought that a grand way to keep it. Still, I have picked up knowledge," Newman smiled.
"You have some sisters?" Madame de Bellegarde enquired.
"Yes, two splendid sisters. I wish you knew them!"
​I hope that for ces dames the hardships of life commenced less early."
"They married very early indeed, if you call that a hardship—as girls do in our Western country. The husband of one of them is the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West."
"Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?" the Marquise asked.
"You can stretch them as your family increases," said her daughter-in-law, now enveloped in a soft shining cape. Newman indulged at this in a burst of hilarity and explained that the house in which his relatives lived was a large wooden structure, but that they manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale. My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather," the young Marquise accordingly pursued. "I wonder if your brother-in-law made them."
"I guess he did,—and if he did you may be very sure you've got a good article."
"Well, you mustn't be too much discouraged," said M. de Bellegarde with vague benevolence.
"Oh, I don't mean to be. I've a project—really a grand one—which gives me plenty to think about, and that's an occupation." And then Newman waited, hesitating yet debating rapidly; he wished again to get near his point, though to do so forced him to depart still further from the form of not asking favours. He had to ask that of their attention. "Nevertheless," he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de Bellegarde, "I 'll tell you my great ​idea; perhaps you can help me. I want not only to marry, but to marry remarkably well."
"It's a very good project, but I never made a match in all my life," said his hostess with her odd mincing plainness.
Newman looked at her an instant and then all sincerely, "I should have thought you a great hand," he declared.
Madame de Bellegarde might well have thought him too sincere. She murmured something sharply in French and fixed her eyes on her son. At this moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared. "I've a message for you," he said to his sister-in-law. "Claire bids me ask you not to start for your ball. If you 'll wait a minute she 'll go with you."
"Claire will go with us?" cried the young Marquise. En voilà du nouveau!
"She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago and is sticking the last diamond into her hair!" said Valentin.
"What on earth has taken possession of my daughter?" Madame de Bellegarde asked with a coldness of amazement. "She has not been this age where any candle was lighted. Does she take such a step at half an hour's notice and without consulting me?"
"She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since," said Valentin, "and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she's more beautiful than ever, you 'll see—has no right to bury herself alive."
"You should have referred Claire to her mother, ​my brother," said M. de Bellegarde in French. "This is not the way—!"
"I refer her to the whole company!" Valentin broke in. "Here she comes!"—and he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the threshold, took her by the hand and led her into the room. She was dressed in white, but a cloak of dark blue, which hung almost to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her at this moment far and away the handsomest woman he had ever seen. He had a chance to look her full in the face, for she stood a little in the centre of the room, where she seemed to consider what she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her mother, who sat in the deep chair by the fire with an air of immeasurable detachment. Her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintré held her cloak apart to show her dress.
"What do you think of me?"
"I think you seem to have lost your head. It was but three days ago, when I asked you as a particular favour to myself to go to the Duchesse de Lusignan's, that you told me you were going nowhere and that one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?"
"I wish to please myself, dear mother," said ​Madame de Cintré. And she bent over and kissed the old lady.
"I don't like violent surprises, my sister," said Urbain de Bellegarde; "especially when one's on the point of entering a drawing-room."
Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. "Oh, if you're going anywhere with this lady you need n't be afraid of being noticed yourself!"
M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with an intense little glare. "I hope you appreciate a compliment that's paid at your brother's expense. Venez donc, madame." And offering Madame de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflexion. With a leave-taking smile she sought the complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and, perceiving in them an almost unnatural glitter, not improbably may have flattered herself she had found it.
Newman, left alone with his hostess, if she might so be called, stood before her a few moments in silence. "Your daughter's very beautiful," he said at last.
"She's very perverse," the old woman returned.
"I'm glad to hear it," he smiled. "It makes me hope."
"Hope what?"
"That she'll consent some day to marry me."
​She slowly got up. "That really is your 'great idea'?"
"Yes. Will you give it any countenance?"
Madame de Bellegarde looked at him hard and shook her head. Then her so peculiarly little mouth rounded itself to a "No!" which she seemed to blow at him as for a mortal chill.
"Will you then just let me alone with my chance?"
"You don't know what you ask. I'm a very proud and meddlesome old person."
"Well, I'm very rich," he returned with a world of desperate intention.
She fixed her eyes on the floor, and he thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favour of resenting his so calculated directness. But at last looking up, "How rich?" she simply articulated.
He gave her, at this, the figure of his income—gave it in a round number which had the magnificent sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when translated into francs. He added to the enunciation of mere brute quantity certain financial particulars which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his resources.
Madame de Bellegarde had let him enjoy her undisguised attention. "You're very frank," she finally said, "and I 'll be the same. I would rather, on the whole, get all the good of you there is—rather, I mean, than, as you call it, let you alone. I would rather," she coldly smiled, "take you in our way than in your way. I think it will be easier."
"I'm thankful for any terms," Newman quite radiantly answered. "It's enough for me to feel ​I'm taken. But it need n't be, for you," he at the same time rather grimly laughed, "in too big doses to begin with. Good-night!"—and he rapidly quitted her.