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

and are consequently fabulously rich, and you would be richer still if you didn’t grant lands and houses free of rent to all new-comers who will pledge themselves never to smoke cigars. At this game, in three years, we are told, you are going to be made president of America.”

The duchess recited this amazing “legend” with a smooth self-possession which gave the speech to Newman’s mind, the air of being a bit of amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress. Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter. “Dear duchess, dear duchess,” the marquis began to murmur, soothingly. Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see who was laughing at the duchess. But the lady continued with the soft, serene assurance of a person who, as a duchess, was certain of being listened to, and, as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors. “But I know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have endeared yourself to this good marquis and to his admirable world. They are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale. Your success is a miracle. What is your secret? I don’t ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen, but come and see me some day and give me a specimen of your talents.”

“The secret is with Madame de Cintré,” said Newman. “You must ask her for it. It consists in her having a great deal of charity.”

“Very pretty!” said the duchess. “That’s a very nice specimen, to begin with. What, Bellegarde, are you already taking monsieur away?”

“I have a duty to perform, dear friend,” said the marquis, pointing to the other groups.

“Ah, for you I know what that means. Well, I have seen monsieur; that is what I wanted. He can’t persuade me that he isn’t very clever. Farewell.”

As Newman passed on with his host, he asked who the duchess was. “The greatest lady in France,” said the marquis. M. de Bellegarde then presented his prospective brother-in-law to some twenty other persons of both sexes, selected apparently for their typically august character. In some cases this character was written in good round hand upon the countenance of the wearer; in others Newman was thankful for such help as his companion’s impressively brief intimation contributed to the discovery of it. There were large, majestic men, and small demonstrative men; there were ugly ladies in yellow lace and quaint jewels, and pretty ladies with white shoulders from which jewels and everything else were absent. Everyone gave Newman extreme attention, everyone smiled, everyone was charmed to make his acquaintance, everyone looked at him with that soft hardness of good society which puts out its hand but keeps its fingers closed over the coin. If the marquis was going about as a bear-leader, if the fiction of Beauty and the Beast was supposed to have found its companion-piece, the general impression appeared to be that the bear was a very fair imitation of humanity. Newman found his reception among the marquis’s friends very “pleasant;” he could not have said more for it. It was pleasant to be treated with so much explicit politeness; it was pleasant to hear neatly turned civilities, with a flavor of wit, uttered from beneath carefully-shaped moustaches; it was pleasant to see clever Frenchwomen—they all seemed clever—turn their backs to their partners to get a good look at the strange American whom Claire de Cintré was to marry, and reward the object of the exhibition with a charming smile. At last, as he turned away from a battery of smiles and other amenities, Newman caught the eye of the marquis looking at him heavily; and thereupon, for a single instant, he checked himself. “Am I behaving like a d—d fool?” he asked himself. “Am I stepping about like a terrier on his hind legs?” At this moment he perceived Mrs. Tristram at the other side of the room, and he waved his hand in farewell to M. de Bellegarde and made his way toward her.

“Am I holding my head too high?” he asked. “Do I look as if I had the lower end of a pulley fastened to my chin?”

“You look like all happy men, very ridiculous,” said Mrs. Tristram. “It’s the usual thing, neither better nor worse. I have been watching you for the last ten minutes, and I have been watching M. de Bellegarde. He doesn’t like it.”

“The more credit to him for putting it through,” replied Newman. “But I shall be generous. I shan’t trouble him any more. But I am very happy. I can’t stand still here. Please to take my arm and we will go for a walk.”

He led Mrs. Tristram through all the rooms. There were a great many of them, and, decorated for the occasion and filled with a stately crowd, their somewhat tarnished nobleness recovered its lustre. Mrs. Tristram, looking about her, dropped a series of softly-incisive comments upon her fellow-guests. But Newman made vague answers; he hardly heard her, his thoughts were elsewhere. They were lost in a cheerful sense of success, of attainment and victory. His momentary care as to whether he looked like a fool passed away, leaving him simply with a rich contentment. He had got what he wanted. The savor of success had always been highly agreeable to him, and it had been his fortune to know it often. But it had never before been so sweet, been associated with so much that was brilliant and suggestive and entertaining. The lights, the flowers, the music, the crowd, the splendid women, the jewels, the strangeness even of the universal murmur of a clever foreign tongue were all a vivid symbol and assurance of his having grasped his purpose and forced along his groove. If Newman’s smile was larger than usual, it was not tickled vanity that pulled the strings; he had no wish to be shown with the finger or to achieve a personal success. If he could have looked down at the scene, invisible, from a hole in the roof, he would have enjoyed it quite as much. It would have spoken to him about his own prosperity and deepened that easy feeling about life to which, sooner or later, he made all experience contribute. Just now the cup seemed full.

“It is a very pretty party,” said Mrs. Tristram, after they had walked a while. “I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning against the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes for a duke, but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who attends to the lamps. Do you think you could separate them? Knock over a lamp!”

I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram’s conversing with an ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near. Newman, some weeks previously, had presented Madame de Cintré’s youngest brother to Mrs. Tristram, for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish and to whom he had paid several visits.

“Did you ever read Keats’s Belle Dame sans Merci?” asked Mrs. Tristram. “You remind me of the hero of the ballad:—