The American, Henry James [top novels of all time .TXT] 📗

The next time Newman came to the Rue de l’Université he had the good fortune to find Madame de Cintré alone. He had come with a definite intention, and he lost no time in executing it. She wore, moreover, a look which he eagerly interpreted as expectancy.

“I have been coming to see you for six months, now,” he said, “and I have never spoken to you a second time of marriage. That was what you asked me; I obeyed. Could any man have done better?”

“You have acted with great delicacy,” said Madame de Cintré.

“Well, I’m going to change now,” said Newman. “I don’t mean that I am going to be indelicate; but I’m going to go back to where I began. I am back there. I have been all round the circle. Or rather, I have never been away from here. I have never ceased to want what I wanted then. Only now I am more sure of it, if possible; I am more sure of myself, and more sure of you. I know you better, though I don’t know anything I didn’t believe three months ago. You are everything—you are beyond everything—I can imagine or desire. You know me now; you must know me. I won’t say that you have seen the best—but you have seen the worst. I hope you have been thinking all this while. You must have seen that I was only waiting; you can’t suppose that I was changing. What will you say to me, now? Say that everything is clear and reasonable, and that I have been very patient and considerate, and deserve my reward. And then give me your hand. Madame de Cintré do that. Do it.”

“I knew you were only waiting,” she said; “and I was very sure this day would come. I have thought about it a great deal. At first I was half afraid of it. But I am not afraid of it now.” She paused a moment, and then she added, “It’s a relief.”

She was sitting on a low chair, and Newman was on an ottoman, near her. He leaned a little and took her hand, which for an instant she let him keep. “That means that I have not waited for nothing,” he said. She looked at him for a moment, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. “With me,” he went on, “you will be as safe—as safe”—and even in his ardor he hesitated a moment for a comparison—“as safe,” he said, with a kind of simple solemnity, “as in your father’s arms.”

Still she looked at him and her tears increased. Then, abruptly, she buried her face on the cushioned arm of the sofa beside her chair, and broke into noiseless sobs. “I am weak—I am weak,” he heard her say.

“All the more reason why you should give yourself up to me,” he answered. “Why are you troubled? There is nothing but happiness. Is that so hard to believe?”

“To you everything seems so simple,” she said, raising her head. “But things are not so. I like you extremely. I liked you six months ago, and now I am sure of it, as you say you are sure. But it is not easy, simply for that, to decide to marry you. There are a great many things to think about.”

“There ought to be only one thing to think about—that we love each other,” said Newman. And as she remained silent he quickly added, “Very good, if you can’t accept that, don’t tell me so.”

“I should be very glad to think of nothing,” she said at last; “not to think at all; only to shut both my eyes and give myself up. But I can’t. I’m cold, I’m old, I’m a coward; I never supposed I should marry again, and it seems to me very strange I should ever have listened to you. When I used to think, as a girl, of what I should do if I were to marry freely, by my own choice, I thought of a very different man from you.”

“That’s nothing against me,” said Newman with an immense smile; “your taste was not formed.”

His smile made Madame de Cintré smile. “Have you formed it?” she asked. And then she said, in a different tone, “Where do you wish to live?”

“Anywhere in the wide world you like. We can easily settle that.”

“I don’t know why I ask you,” she presently continued. “I care very little. I think if I were to marry you I could live almost anywhere. You have some false ideas about me; you think that I need a great many things—that I must have a brilliant, worldly life. I am sure you are prepared to take a great deal of trouble to give me such things. But that is very arbitrary; I have done nothing to prove that.” She paused again, looking at him, and her mingled sound and silence were so sweet to him that he had no wish to hurry her, any more than he would have had a wish to hurry a golden sunrise. “Your being so different, which at first seemed a difficulty, a trouble, began one day to seem to me a pleasure, a great pleasure. I was glad you were different. And yet if I had said so, no one would have understood me; I don’t mean simply to my family.”

“They would have said I was a queer monster, eh?” said Newman.

“They would have said I could never be happy with you—you were too different; and I would have said it was just because you were so different that I might be happy. But they would have given better reasons than I. My only reason”—and she paused again.

But this time, in the midst of his golden sunrise, Newman felt the impulse to grasp at a rosy cloud. “Your only reason is that you love me!” he murmured with an eloquent gesture, and for want of a better reason Madame de Cintré reconciled herself to this one.

Newman came back the next day, and in the vestibule, as he entered the house, he encountered his friend Mrs. Bread. She was wandering about in honorable idleness, and when his eyes fell upon her she delivered him one of her curtsies. Then turning to the servant who had admitted him, she said, with the combined majesty of her native superiority and of a rugged English accent, “You may retire; I will have the honor of conducting monsieur.” In spite of this combination, however, it appeared to Newman that her voice had a slight quaver, as if the tone of command were not habitual to it. The man gave her an impertinent stare, but he walked slowly away, and she led Newman upstairs. At half its course the staircase gave a bend, forming a little platform. In the angle of the wall stood an indifferent statue of an eighteenth-century nymph, simpering, sallow, and cracked. Here Mrs. Bread stopped and looked with shy kindness at her companion.

“I know the good news, sir,” she murmured.

“You have a good right to be first to know it,” said Newman. “You have taken such a friendly interest.”

Mrs. Bread turned away and began to blow the dust off the statue, as if this might be mockery.

“I suppose you want to congratulate me,” said Newman. “I am greatly obliged.” And then he added, “You gave me much pleasure the other day.”

She turned around, apparently reassured. “You are not to think that I have been told anything,” she said; “I have only guessed. But when I looked at you, as you came in, I was sure I had guessed aright.”

“You are very sharp,” said Newman. “I am sure that in your quiet way you see everything.”

“I am not a fool, sir, thank God. I have guessed something else beside,” said Mrs. Bread.

“What’s that?”

“I needn’t tell you that, sir; I don’t think you would believe it. At any rate it wouldn’t please you.”

“Oh, tell me nothing but what will please me,” laughed Newman. “That is the way you began.”

“Well, sir, I suppose you won’t be vexed to hear that the sooner everything is over the better.”

“The sooner we are married, you mean? The better for me, certainly.”

“The better for everyone.”

“The better for you, perhaps. You know you are coming to live with us,” said Newman.

“I’m extremely obliged to you, sir, but it is not of myself I was thinking. I only wanted, if I might take the liberty, to recommend you to lose no time.”

“Whom are you afraid of?”

Mrs. Bread looked up the staircase and then down and then she looked at the undusted nymph, as if she possibly had sentient ears. “I am afraid of everyone,” she said.

“What an uncomfortable state of mind!” said Newman. “Does ‘everyone’ wish to prevent my marriage?”

“I am afraid of already having said too much,” Mrs. Bread replied. “I won’t take it back, but I won’t say any more.” And she took her way up the staircase again and led him into Madame de Cintré’s salon.

Newman indulged in a brief and silent imprecation when he found that Madame de Cintré was not alone. With her sat her mother, and in the middle of the room stood young Madame de Bellegarde, in her bonnet and mantle. The old marquise, who was leaning back in her chair with a hand clasping the knob of each arm, looked at him fixedly without moving. She seemed barely conscious of his greeting; she appeared to be musing intently. Newman said to himself that her daughter had been announcing her engagement and that the old lady found the morsel hard to swallow. But Madame de Cintré, as she gave him her hand gave him also a look by which she appeared to mean that he should understand something. Was it a warning or a request? Did she wish to enjoin speech or silence? He was puzzled, and young Madame de Bellegarde’s pretty grin gave him no information.

“I have not told my mother,” said Madame de Cintré abruptly, looking at him.

“Told me what?” demanded the marquise. “You tell me too little; you should tell me everything.”

“That is what I do,” said Madame Urbain, with a little laugh.

“Let me tell your mother,” said Newman.

The old lady stared at him again, and then turned to her daughter. “You are going to marry him?” she cried, softly.

“Oui, ma mère,” said Madame de Cintré.

“Your daughter has consented, to my great happiness,” said Newman.

“And when was this arrangement made?” asked Madame de Bellegarde. “I seem to be picking up the news by chance!”

“My suspense came to an end yesterday,” said Newman.

“And how long was mine to have lasted?” said the marquise to her daughter. She spoke without irritation; with a sort of cold, noble displeasure.

Madame de Cintré stood silent, with her eyes on the ground. “It is over now,” she said.

“Where is my son—where is Urbain?” asked the marquise. “Send for your brother and inform him.”

Young Madame de Bellegarde laid her hand on the bell-rope. “He was to make some visits with me, and I was to go and knock—very softly, very softly—at the door of his study. But he can come to me!” She pulled the bell, and in a few moments Mrs. Bread appeared, with a face of calm inquiry.

“Send for your brother,” said the old lady.

But Newman felt an irresistible impulse to speak, and to speak in a certain way. “Tell the marquis we want him,” he said to Mrs. Bread, who quietly retired.

Young Madame de Bellegarde went to her sister-in-law and embraced her. Then she turned to Newman, with an intense smile. “She is charming. I congratulate you.”

“I congratulate you, sir,” said Madame de Bellegarde, with extreme solemnity. “My daughter is an extraordinarily good woman. She may have faults, but I don’t know them.”

“My mother does not often make jokes,” said Madame de