The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 21
XXI
There is a pretty public walk at Poitiers, laid out upon the crest of the high hill around which the little city clusters, planted with thick trees and looking down on the fertile fields in which the old English princes fought for their right and held it. Newman paced up and down this retreat for the greater part of the next day, letting his eyes wander over the historic prospect; but he would have been sadly at a loss to tell you afterwards if the latter was made up of coal fields or of vineyards. He was wholly possessed by his pang, of which reflection by no means diminished the ache. He feared the creature he had thus learned to adore was irretrievably lost; and yet in what case of straight violation of his right of property had he ever merely sat down and groaned? In what case had he not made some attempt at recovery? Wholly unused to giving up in difficulties, he found it impossible to turn his back upon Fleurières and its inhabitants; it seemed to him some germ of hope or reparation must lurk there somewhere if he could only stretch his arm out far enough to pluck it. It was as if he had his hand on a door-knob and were closing his clenched fist on it: he had thumped, he had called, he had pressed the door with his powerful knee and shaken it with all his strength, and dead, damning silence had answered him. And yet something held him there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. His satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive, for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury and walk away without looking behind him was a stretch of accommodation of which he found himself incapable. He looked behind him intently and continually, and what he saw there did n't assuage his resentment. He saw himself trustful, generous, liberal, patient, easy, pocketing frequent irritation and furnishing unlimited modesty. To have eaten humble pie, to have been snubbed and patronised and satirised, and have consented to take it as one of the conditions of the bargain—to have done this, and done it all for nothing, surely gave one a right to protest.
And to be turned off because one was a commercial person! As if he had ever talked or dreamt of the commercial since his connexion with the Bellegardes began—as if he had made the least circumstance of the commercial—as if he would n't have consented to confound the commercial fifty times a day if it might have increased by a hair's breadth the chance of his not suffering this so much more than commercial treachery! Granted one's being commercial was fair ground for one's being cleverly "sold," how little they knew about the class so designated and its enter rising way of not standing on trifles! It was in the light of his injury that the weight of his past endurance seemed so heavy; his current irritation had not been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his more intimate relation. But now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous and ever-present; he felt himself as swindled as he had been confiding. As for his friend's spiritual position, it moved him but to dismal mystification; it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to understand it or feel the reality of its motives only made it a deadlier oppression. He had never let the fact of her religious faith trouble him; Catholicism was only a name to him, and to express a mistrust of her forms of worship would have implied that he had other and finer ones to offer: which was as little possible as might be. If such flawless white flowers as that could bloom in Catholic soil they but attested its richness. But it was one thing to be a Catholic and another to turn nun—on your hands! There was something lugubriously comical in the way Newman's thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an extravagance, a hoax. But the hours passed without disproving anything, passed leaving him only the aftertaste of the vehemence with which he had held her to his heart. He remembered her words and her looks—he lived through again the sense of her short submission; he turned them over and tried to make them square with the saving of something from his wreck. How had she meant that the force driving her was, as a thing apart from the conventual question, a "religion"? It was the religion simply of the family laws, the religion of which her implacable mother was priestess. Twist the thing about as her generosity would, the one certain fact was that they had been able to determine her act. Her generosity had tried to screen them, but Newman's heart rose into his throat at the thought that they should go scot-free.
The twenty-four hours spent themselves, and the next morning he sprang to his feet with the resolution to return to Fleurières and demand another interview with Madame de Bellegarde and her son. He lost no time in putting it into practice. As he rolled swiftly over the excellent road in the little calèche furnished him at the inn at Poitiers, he drew forth, as it were, from the very safe place in his mind to which he had consigned it, the last information given him by poor Valentin. Valentin had told him he could do something with it, and Newman thought it would be well to have it at hand. This was of course not the first time, lately, that he had given it his attention. It was information in the rough—it was formless and obscure; but he was neither helpless nor afraid. Valentin had clearly meant to put him in possession of a weapon he could use, though he could n't be said to have placed the handle very securely in his grasp. But if he had told him nothing definite he had at least given him a clue—a clue of which the decidedly remarkable Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she held clues; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem he suspected she might be induced to share with him her knowledge. So long as there was only Mrs. Bread to deal with he felt easy. As to what there was to find out, he had only one fear—that it might not be bad enough. Then, when the image of the Marquise and her son rose before him again, standing side by side, the old woman's hand in Urbain's arm and the same cold guarded glare in the eyes of each, he cried out to himself that the fear was groundless. There was crime in the air at the very least! He arrived at Fleurières almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself, logically, that in the presence of his threat of penetration they would, as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like loosened buckets. He remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare—first ascertain what there was to penetrate; but after that why should n't his happiness be as good as new? Mother and son, dropping in terror the tender victim they had mauled, would take to hiding, and Madame de Cintré, left to herself, would surely come back to him. Give her a chance and she would rise to the surface and return to the light. How could she fail to perceive that his house would have all the security of a convent and none of the dampness?
Newman, as he had done before, left his conveyance at the inn and walked the short remaining distance to the château. When he reached the gate, however, a singular feeling took possession of him—a feeling which, strange as it may seem, had its source in his unfathomable good-nature. He stood there a while, looking through the bars at the large time-stained face beyond and wondering to what special misdeed it was that the dark old dwelling with the flowery name had given convenient occasion. It had given occasion, first and last, to tyrannies and sufferings enough, Newman said to himself; it was an evil-looking place to live in. Then suddenly came the reflexion: what a horrible rubbish-heap of iniquity to fumble through! The attitude of inquisitor turned its ignoble face, and with the same movement he declared that the Bellegardes should have another chance. He would appeal once more directly to their sense of fairness and not to their fear; and if they should be accessible to reason he need know nothing worse about them than what he already knew. That was bad enough.
The gate-keeper let him in through the same "mean" crevice of aperture—for so he qualified it—as before, and he passed through the court and over the rustic bridge of the moat. The door was opened before he had reached it, and, as if to put his clemency to rout with the suggestion of a richer opportunity, Mrs. Bread stood there awaiting him. Her face, as usual, looked hopelessly blank, like the tide-smoothed sea-sand, and her black garments hung as heavy as if soaked in salt tears. Newman had already learned how interesting she could make the expression of nothing at all, and he scarce knew whether she now struck him as almost dumb or as almost effusive. "I thought you would try again, sir. I was looking out for you."
"I'm glad to see you," he answered; "I think you 're my friend."
Mrs. Bread looked at him opaquely. "I wish you well, sir; but it's vain wishing now."
"You know then how they've treated me?"
"Oh, sir," she dryly returned, "I know everything."
He frankly enough wondered. "Everything?"
Her eyes just visibly lighted. "I know at least too much."
"One can never know too much. I congratulate you on every scrap of it. I've come to see Madame de Bellegarde and her son," Newman added. "Are they at home? If they're not I 'll wait."
"My lady's always at home," Mrs. Bread replied, "and the Marquis is mostly with her."
"Please then tell them—one or the other, or both—that I'm here and that I should like to see them."
Mrs. Bread hesitated. "May I take a great liberty, sir?"
"You've never taken a liberty but you've justified it," said Newman with diplomatic urbanity.
She dropped her wrinkled eyelids as if she were curtseying; but the curtsey stopped there: the occasion was too grave. "You 've come to plead with them again, sir? Perhaps you don't know this—that the poor Countess returned this morning to Paris."
"Ah, she's gone!" And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement with his stick.
"She's gone straight to the convent—the Carmelites, you know, is the miserable name. I see you do know, sir. My lady and the Marquis take it very ill. It was only last night she told them."
"Ah, she had kept it back then?" he cried. "Well, that's all right. And they're highly worked up?"
"They're certainly not pleased. But they may well dislike it. They tell me it's most dreadful, sir; of all the nuns in Christendom the Carmelites are the worst. They're so unnatural that you may say they're really not human; they make you give up everything in the world you have—for ever and for ever. And to think of her in that destitution! If I was one who sat down and cried, sir, I could give way at this moment."
Newman looked at her an instant. "We must n't cry, Mrs. Bread, and still less must we sit down. We must stand right up and act. Please let them know." And he took a forward step.
But she gently checked him. "May I take another liberty? I'm told you were with poor Count Valentin, heaven forgive him, in his last hours, and I should bless you, sir, if you could tell me a word about him. He was my own dear boy, sir; for the first year of his life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him the first words he spoke—and he spoke so beautifully, did n't he, sir? He always spoke well to his poor old Bread. When he grew up and took his pleasure he always had a kind word for me. And to die in that wild wrong way! They've a story that he fought with a wine-merchant. I can't believe that of him, sir! And was he in great pain?"
"You're a wise, kind old woman, Mrs. Bread," said Newman. "I hoped I might see you with my own children in your arms. Perhaps I shall yet." And he put out his hand. She looked for a moment at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike member. Newman held it firmly and deliberately, fixing his eyes on her. "You want to know all about the Count?"
"It would be a terrible pleasure, sir."
"I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?"
"The château, sir? I really don't know. I've never tried."
"Try then; try hard. Try this evening at dusk. Come to me in the old ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church. I 'll wait for you on that spot; I've something very important to tell you. A grand old woman like you can do as she pleases."
She wondered with parted lips. "Is it from the dear Count, sir?"
"From the dear Count—from his damnable deathbed."
"I'll come, then. I'll be bold, for once, for him."
She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already made acquaintance, and retired to carry his message. He waited a long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his request. He was looking round him for a bell when the Marquis came in with his mother on his arm. It will be seen he had a logical mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin's supreme communication, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked and capable of the blackest evil. "There's no mistake about it now," he reflected as they advanced. "They're a bad, bad lot; they've pulled off the varnished mask." Madame de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation; they were plainly people who had passed a sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural they should meet their visitor with conciliatory looks. He stood before them, and of the coldest glare they could command he had the full benefit. He felt as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened and the damp darkness were exhaled.
"You see I've come back," he said, however, with a tentative freshness. "I've come to try again."
"It would be ridiculous," the Marquis returned, "to pretend that we're glad to see you or that we don't question the taste of your visit."
"Oh, don't talk about taste!'—and Newman permitted himself perhaps the harshest laugh into which he had ever broken; "that would bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly would n't come to see you. Besides, I 'll make as short work as you please. Give me a guarantee that you'll raise the blockade—that you 'll set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and I 'll retire on the spot."
"We hesitated as to whether we would see you," said Madame de Bellegarde; "and we were on the point of declining the honour. But it seemed to me we should act with civility, as we've always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are certain weaknesses people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once."
"You may be weak but once, but you 'll be audacious many times, madam," Newman rang out. "I did n't come, however, for conversational purposes. I came to say this simply: that if you 'll write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to our marriage I 'll take care of the rest. You don't want to make of her a cloistered nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a commercial person is better than being buried alive. Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you give way and that she may take me with your blessing, and I'll take it to her at her place of retreat and bring that retreat to an instant end. There's your chance—and I call them easy terms."
"We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call any terms that you can propose impossible," Urbain declared. They had all remained standing stiffly in the middle of the room. "I think my mother will tell you that she 'd rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than Mrs. Christopher Newman."
But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating: "But once, Mr. Newman; but once!"
Nothing he had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of polished marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it. "Is there anything that would weigh with you?" he asked. "Is there anything that would, as we say, squeeze you?" he continued.
"This language, sir," said the Marquis, "addressed to people in bereavement and grief, is beyond all qualification."
"In most cases," Newman answered, "your objection would have some force, even admitting that Madame de Cintré's present intentions make time precious. But I've thought of what you speak of, and I've come here to-day without superfluous scruples simply because I regard your brother and you as very different parties. I see no connexion between you. Your brother was mortally ashamed of you both. Lying there wounded and dying, lying there confounded and disgusted, he formally apologised to me for your conduct. He apologised to me for that of his mother."
For a moment the effect of these words was as if he had struck a physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the charged faces before him—it was like a jolt of full glasses, making them spill their wine. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of which the aftersense came to him in the reverberation of the sound. Le misérable!"
"You show little respect for the afflicted living," said Madame de Bellegarde, "but you might at least respect the helpless dead. Don't profane—don't touch with your unholy hands—the memory of my innocent son."
"I speak the simple sacred truth," Newman now imperturbably proceeded, "and, speaking it for a purpose, I desire you shall have no genuine doubt of it. You made Valentin's last hour an hour of anguish, and my friend's generous spirit repudiates your abominable act."
Urbain de Bellegarde had, from whatever emotion, turned so pale that it might have been at the evoked spectre of his brother; but not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her crest. You have beau jeu, as we say, before the silence of the grave, for every calumny and every insult. But I don't know," she admirably wound up, "that it in the least matters."
"Ah, I don't know that poor Valentin's apology particularly does either," Newman reflectively conceded. "I pitied him certainly more for having to utter it than I felicitate myself even now for your having to hear it."
The Marquise wrapt herself for a minute in a high aloofness so entire, so of her whole being, as he could feel, that she fairly appeared rather to contract than to expand with the intensity and dignity of it; and out of the heart of this withdrawn extravagance her final estimate of their case sounded clear. "To have broken with you, sir, almost consoles me; and you can judge how much that says! Urbain, open the door." She turned away with an imperious motion to her son and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The Marquis went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.
He lifted a finger as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then our friend had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of wrong almost brim over into gaiety. "Come," he said, "you don't treat me well. At least admit that."
M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot and then spoke in the most delicate, best-bred voice. "I execrate you personally."
"That's the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don't say it. It's singular I should want so much to be your brother-in-law, but I can't give it up. Let me try once more." And Newman paused a moment. "You've something on your mind and on your conscience, your mother and you—some thing in your life that you've kept as much as possible in the dark because it would n't look well in the light of day. You've a skeleton, as they say, in your closet." M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but it was a question if his eyes betrayed anything; the expression of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again and then went on. "You've done, between you, somehow and at some time, something still more base—wonderful as that may seem—than what you've done to me." At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did change; they flickered like blown candles. Newman could feel him turn cold; but his form was still quite perfect.
"Continue," he encouragingly said.
Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. "Need I continue? You know what I mean."
"Pray, where did you obtain this interesting information?" M. de Bellegarde inordinately fluted.
"I shall be strictly accurate," said Newman. "I won't pretend to know more than I do. At present that's all I know. You've done something regularly nefarious, something that would ruin you if it were known, something that would disgrace the name you're so proud of. I don't know what it is, but I've reason to believe I can find out—though of course I had much rather not. Persist in your present course, however, and I will find out. Depart from that course, let your sister go in peace, and then fancy how I'll leave you alone. It's a bargain?"
Urbain's face looked to him now like a mirror, very smooth fine glass, breathed upon and blurred; but what he would have liked still better to see was a spreading, disfiguring crack. There was something of that, to be sure, in the grimace with which the Marquis brought out: "My brother regaled you with this infamy?"
Newman scantly hesitated. "Yes—it was a treat!"
The grimace, if anything, deepened. "He raved at the last then so horribly?"
"He raved if I find nothing out. If I find—what you know I may find—he was beautifully inspired."
M. de Bellegarde's shoulders declined even a shrug. "Eh, sir, find what you 'damn please'!"
"What I say has no weight with you?" Newman was thus reduced to asking.
"That's for you to judge."
"No, it's for you to judge—at your leisure. Think it over; feel yourself all round; I'll give you an hour or two. I can't give you more, for how do we know how tight they may n't be locking your sister up? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge what weight she attaches. She's constitutionally less accessible to pressure than you, I think; but enfin, as you say, you'll see. I'll go and wait in the village, at the inn, where I beg you to let me know as soon as possible. Say by three o'clock. A simple Yes or No on paper will do. That will refer to your attaching or not attaching what we call weight; or better still, to your consenting or refusing to take your hands off Madame de Cintré. Only you understand that if you do engage again I shall expect you this time to stick to your bargain." And with this Newman opened the door to let himself out. The Marquis made no motion, and his guest paused but for a last emphasis. "I can give you, let me add, no more than the time." Then Newman turned away altogether and passed out of the house.
He felt greatly uplifted by what he had been doing, as it was inevitable some emotion should proceed for him from the evocation of the spectre of dishonour for a family a thousand years old. But he went back to the inn and contrived to wait there, deliberately, for the next two hours. He thought it more than probable Urbain would give no sign; since an answer to his challenge, in either case, would be a recognition of his reference. What he most expected was silence—in other words defiance. He prayed, however, that, as he imaged it, his shot might bring them down. It did bring, by three o clock, a note, delivered by a footman; a note addressed in Urbain's handsome English hand.
"I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of letting you know that I return to Paris to-morrow, with my mother, in order that we may see my sister and confirm her in the resolution which is the most effectual reply to a delirium extravagant even as a result of your injury.—Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde."
Newman put the letter into his pocket and continued his walk up and down the inn parlour. He had spent most of his time, for the past week, in walking up and down. He continued to measure the length of the little salle of the Armes de France until the day began to wane, when he went forth to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path leading up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and he in a short time had followed it to the top. He passed beneath the rugged arch of the castle wall and looked about him in the early dusk for an old woman in black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open. He went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just helped him to distinguish a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer inspection led him to recognise Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendour. She wore a large black silk bonnet with imposing bows of crape, while an old black satin gown disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had invoked for the occasion the highest dignity of dress. She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when he passed before her she looked up at him and then rose.
"Are you of this awful faith, Mrs. Bread?"
"No, indeed, sir; I'm a good Church of England woman—very Low. But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out in the evening before, sir," she added.
"We shall be safer," he returned, "where no one can hear us." And he led the way back into the castle court and then followed a path beside the church, which he was sure must lead into another part of the ruin. He was not deceived. It wandered along the crest of the hill and terminated before a fragment of wall pierced by a rough aperture which had once been a door. Through this aperture Newman passed, to find himself in a nook peculiarly favourable to quiet conversation, as probably many an earnest couple, otherwise assorted than our friends, had assured themselves. The hill sloped abruptly away, and on the remnant of its crest were scattered two or three fragments of stone. Beneath, over the plain, lay the gathered twilight, through which, in the near distance, gleamed two or three lights from the Fleurières. Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit on it. She cautiously complied, and he placed him self near her on another.