The American

“Oh, time’s a great consoler!” Newman answered with humorous sobriety. He was silent a moment, and then he added, in another tone, “I wish you would think of what I said to you the other day. Come over to America with us, and I will put you in the way of doing some business. You have a very good head, if you will only use it.”

Valentin made a genial grimace. “My head is much obliged to you. Do you mean the place in a bank?”

“There are several places, but I suppose you would consider the bank the most aristocratic.”

Valentin burst into a laugh. “My dear fellow, at night all cats are gray! When one derogates there are no degrees.”

Newman answered nothing for a minute. Then, “I think you will find there are degrees in success,” he said with a certain dryness.

Valentin had leaned forward again, with his elbows on his knees, and he was scratching the pavement with his stick. At last he said, looking up, “Do you really think I ought to do something?”

Newman laid his hand on his companion’s arm and looked at him a moment through sagaciously-narrowed eyelids. “Try it and see. You are not good enough for it, but we will stretch a point.”

“Do you really think I can make some money? I should like to see how it feels to have a little.”

“Do what I tell you, and you shall be rich,” said Newman. “Think of it.” And he looked at his watch and prepared to resume his way to Madame de Bellegarde’s box.

“Upon my word I will think of it,” said Valentin. “I will go and listen to Mozart another half hour—I can always think better to music—and profoundly meditate upon it.”

The marquis was with his wife when Newman entered their box; he was bland, remote, and correct as usual; or, as it seemed to Newman, even more than usual.

“What do you think of the opera?” asked our hero. “What do you think of the Don?”

“We all know what Mozart is,” said the marquis; “our impressions don’t date from this evening. Mozart is youth, freshness, brilliancy, facility—a little too great facility, perhaps. But the execution is here and there deplorably rough.”

“I am very curious to see how it ends,” said Newman.

“You speak as if it were a feuilleton in the Figaro,” observed the marquis. “You have surely seen the opera before?”

“Never,” said Newman. “I am sure I should have remembered it. Donna Elvira reminds me of Madame de Cintré; I don’t mean in her circumstances, but in the music she sings.”

“It is a very nice distinction,” laughed the marquis lightly. “There is no great possibility, I imagine, of Madame de Cintré being forsaken.”

“Not much!” said Newman. “But what becomes of the Don?”

“The devil comes down—or comes up,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “and carries him off. I suppose Zerlina reminds you of me.”

“I will go to the foyer for a few moments,” said the marquis, “and give you a chance to say that the commander—the man of stone—resembles me.” And he passed out of the box.

The little marquise stared an instant at the velvet ledge of the balcony, and then murmured, “Not a man of stone, a man of wood.” Newman had taken her husband’s empty chair. She made no protest, and then she turned suddenly and laid her closed fan upon his arm. “I am very glad you came in,” she said. “I want to ask you a favor. I wanted to do so on Thursday, at my mother-in-law’s ball, but you would give me no chance. You were in such very good spirits that I thought you might grant my little favor then; not that you look particularly doleful now. It is something you must promise me; now is the time to take you; after you are married you will be good for nothing. Come, promise!”

“I never sign a paper without reading it first,” said Newman. “Show me your document.”

“No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand. Come, before you put your head into the noose. You ought to be thankful to me for giving you a chance to do something amusing.”

“If it is so amusing,” said Newman, “it will be in even better season after I am married.”

“In other words,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “you will not do it at all. You will be afraid of your wife.”

“Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper,” said Newman, “I won’t go into it. If it is not, I will do it after my marriage.”

“You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain!” exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde. “Promise, then, after you are married. After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.”

“Well, then, after I am married,” said Newman serenely.

The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered what was coming. “I suppose you know what my life is,” she presently said. “I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me—what is the pretty word?—a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors? I am sure they never bothered about me. I don’t propose to live with a green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at. My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome. If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he. If they grew on one’s family tree I should only have to give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.”

“Oh, I see; you want to go to court,” said Newman, vaguely conjecturing that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to smooth her way to the imperial halls.

The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. “You are a thousand miles away. I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they will be very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille. I know what you are going to say: ‘How will you dare?’ But I shall dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft, smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of him—horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries. But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it’s my dream. I want to go to the Bal Bullier.”

“To the Bal Bullier?” repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant nothing.

“The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their mistresses. Don’t tell me you have not heard of it.”

“Oh yes,” said Newman; “I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even been there. And you want to go there?”

“It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go. Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drôle. My friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home.”

“It seems to me you are not at home now,” said Newman, “and I shouldn’t exactly say you were moping.”

“I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the last eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that: Pray, madam, haven’t you an opera box? Could a woman of taste want more? In the first place, my opera box was down in my contrat; they have to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband won’t go to the Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much. You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier’s; he says it is a mere imitation—and a bad one—of what they do at the Princess Kleinfuss’s. But as I don’t go to the Princess Kleinfuss’s, the next best thing is to go to Bullier’s. It is my dream, at any rate, it’s a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less compromising than anyone else. I don’t know why, but you are. I can arrange it. I shall risk something, but that is my own affair. Besides, fortune favors the bold. Don’t refuse me; it is my dream!”

Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one’s aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking off young men’s hats. It struck him as a theme for the moralist; but he had no time to moralize upon it. The curtain rose again; M. de Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.

He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him. In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration. “If you really meant to meditate,” he said, “you might have chosen a better place for it.”

“Oh, the place was not bad,” said Valentin. “I was not thinking of that girl. I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the play or looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal. At first it seemed quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra—I could distinguish it—began to say as it scraped away, ‘Why not, why not?’ And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and the conductor’s stick seemed to beat it in the air: ‘Why not, why not?’ I’m sure I can’t say! I don’t see why not. I don’t see why I shouldn’t do something. It appears to me really a very bright idea. This sort of thing is certainly very stale. And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call me a raffiné; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic, picturesque side; it would look well in my biography. It would look as if I were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated circumstances.”

“Never mind how it would look,” said Newman. “It always looks well to have half a million of dollars. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have them if you will mind what I tell you—I alone—and not talk to other parties.” He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors. Newman’s imagination began to glow with the idea of converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of business. He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal of the propagandist. Its ardor was in part the result of that general discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him; so fine an intelligence as Bellegarde’s ought to be dedicated to high uses. The highest uses known to Newman’s experience were certain transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d’Anjou and the Rue de l’Université, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one’s promenade was a continent, and one’s Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco. It mortified him, moreover, to think that Valentin lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it. It affected him as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach, touching some rudimentary branch of learning would have done. There were things that one knew about as a matter of course, he would have said in such a case. Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the world, one had money as a matter of course, one had made it! There was something almost ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions unaccompanied by large investments in railroads; though I may add that he would not have maintained that such investments were in themselves a proper ground for pretensions. “I will make you do something,” he said to Valentin; “I will put you through. I know half a dozen things in which we can make a place for you. You will see some lively work. It will take you a little while to get used to the life, but you will work in before long, and at the end of six months—after you have done a thing or two on your own account—you will like it. And then it will be very pleasant for you, having your sister over there. It will be pleasant for her to have you, too. Yes, Valentin,” continued Newman, pressing his friend’s arm genially, “I think I see just the opening for you. Keep quiet and I’ll push you right in.”

Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer. The two men strolled about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and questioned, many of his questions making Newman laugh loud at the naïveté of his ignorance of the vulgar processes of money-getting; smiling himself, too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was serious; he was fascinated by Newman’s plain prose version of the legend of El Dorado. It is true, however, that though to accept an “opening” in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original, and in its consequences extremely agreeable thing to do, he did not quite see himself objectively doing it. So that when the bell rang to indicate the close of the entr’acte, there was a certain mock-heroism in his saying, with his brilliant smile, “Well, then, put me through; push me in! I make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me into gold.”

They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of baignoires, and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which Mademoiselle Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, come, are you going back there?” asked Newman.

“Mon Dieu, oui,” said Valentin.

“Haven’t you another place?”

“Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls.”

“You had better go and occupy it, then.”

“I see her very well from there, too,” added Valentin, serenely, “and to-night she is worth seeing. But,” he added in a moment, “I have a particular reason for going back just now.”

“Oh, I give you up,” said Newman. “You are infatuated!”

“No, it is only this. There is a young man in the box whom I shall annoy by going in, and I want to annoy him.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Newman. “Can’t you leave the poor fellow alone?”

“No, he has given me cause. The box is not his. Noémie came in alone and installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments she asked me to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the ouvreuse had carried off. In my absence this gentleman came in and took the chair beside Noémie in which I had been sitting. My reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness to show it. He came within an ace of being impertinent. I don’t know who he is; he is some vulgar wretch. I can’t think where she picks up such acquaintances. He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is about. Just now, in the second act, he was unmannerly again. I shall put in another appearance for ten minutes—time enough to give him an opportunity to commit himself, if he feels inclined. I really can’t let the brute suppose that he is keeping me out of the box.”

“My dear fellow,” said Newman, remonstrantly, “what child’s play! You are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope.”

“That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention of picking a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to make a point that a gentleman must.”

“Oh, damn your point!” said Newman. “That is the trouble with you Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well,” he added, “be short. But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you off to America in advance.”

“Very good,” Valentin answered, “whenever you please. But if I go to America, I must not let this gentleman suppose that it is to run away from him.”

And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin was still in the baignoire. He strolled into the corridor again, expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of Mademoiselle Nioche’s box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by the young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant. The two gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part of the lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking. The manner of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger, who looked flushed, had begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his pocket-handkerchief. By this time Newman was abreast of the baignoire; the door had been left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside. He immediately went in. Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him with a brilliant smile.

“Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?” she exclaimed. “You just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit down.” There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek, and her eye had a noticeable spark. You would have said that she had received some very good news.

“Something has happened here!” said Newman, without sitting down.

“You find me in a very fine moment,” she repeated. “Two gentlemen—one of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe to you—have just had words about your humble servant. Very big words too. They can’t come off without crossing swords. A duel—that will give me a push!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie clapping her little hands. “C’est ça qui pose une femme!”

“You don’t mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about you!” exclaimed Newman disgustedly.

“Nothing else!” and she looked at him with a hard little smile. “No, no, you are not galant! And if you prevent this affair I shall owe you a grudge—and pay my debt!”

Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief—it consisted simply of the interjection “Oh!” followed by a geographical, or more correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters—had better not be transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony upon the pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found Valentin and his companion walking towards him. The latter was thrusting a card into his waistcoat pocket. Mademoiselle Noémie’s jealous votary was a tall, robust young man with a thick nose, a prominent blue eye, a Germanic physiognomy, and a massive watch-chain. When they reached the box, Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for him to pass in first. Newman touched Valentin’s arm as a sign that he wished to speak with him, and Bellegarde answered that he would be with him in an instant. Valentin entered the box after the robust young man, but a couple of minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.

“She is immensely tickled,” he said. “She says we will make her fortune. I don’t want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible.”

“So you are going to fight?” said Newman.

“My dear fellow, don’t look so mortally disgusted. It was not my choice. The thing is all arranged.”

“I told you so!” groaned Newman.

“I told him so,” said Valentin, smiling.

“What did he do to you?”

“My good friend, it doesn’t matter what. He used an expression—I took it up.”

“But I insist upon knowing; I can’t, as your elder brother, have you rushing into this sort of nonsense.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Valentin. “I have nothing to conceal, but I can’t go into particulars now and here.”

“We will leave this place, then. You can tell me outside.”

“Oh no, I can’t leave this place, why should I hurry away? I will go to my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera.”

“You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied.”

Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted him on the arm. “You are delightfully simple! Before an affair a man is quiet. The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place.”

“Ah,” said Newman, “you want her to see you there—you and your quietness. I am not so simple! It is a poor business.”

Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin again, and they went into the street together. Valentin shook his head at his friend’s proposal that he should get into Newman’s own vehicle, and stopped on the edge of the pavement. “I must go off alone,” he said; “I must look up a couple of friends who will take charge of this matter.”

“I will take charge of it,” Newman declared. “Put it into my hands.”

“You are very kind, but that is hardly possible. In the first place, you are, as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to marry my sister. That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your impartiality. And if it didn’t, it would be enough for me that I strongly suspect you of disapproving of the affair. You would try to prevent a meeting.”

“Of course I should,” said Newman. “Whoever your friends are, I hope they will do that.”

“Unquestionably they will. They will urge that excuses be made, proper excuses. But you would be too good-natured. You won’t do.”

Newman was silent a moment. He was keenly annoyed, but he saw it was useless to attempt interference. “When is this precious performance to come off?” he asked.

“The sooner the better,” said Valentin. “The day after to-morrow, I hope.”

“Well,” said Newman, “I have certainly a claim to know the facts. I can’t consent to shut my eyes to the matter.”

“I shall be most happy to tell you the facts,” said Valentin. “They are very simple, and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I will jump into a cab; you had better drive to my room and wait for me there. I will turn up at the end of an hour.”

Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook himself to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d’Anjou. It was more than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that this gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an associate. Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin’s faded fire, upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the richly-encumbered little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and shadows. He listened in silence to Valentin’s account of what had passed between him and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket—M. Stanislas Kapp, of Strasbourg—after his return to Mademoiselle Nioche’s box. This hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance on the other side of the house, and had expressed her displeasure at his not having the civility to come and pay her a visit. “Oh, let him alone!” M. Stanislas Kapp had hereupon exclaimed. “There are too many people in the box already.” And he had fixed his eyes with a demonstrative stare upon M. de Bellegarde. Valentin had promptly retorted that if there were too many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the number. “I shall be most happy to open the door for you!” M. Kapp exclaimed. “I shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!” Valentin had answered. “Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!” Miss Noémie had gleefully ejaculated. “M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde, pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra—anywhere! I don’t care who does which, so long as you make a scene.” Valentin answered that they would make no scene, but that the gentleman would be so good as to step into the corridor with him. In the corridor, after a brief further exchange of words, there had been an exchange of cards. M. Stanislas Kapp was very stiff. He evidently meant to force his offence home.

“The man, no doubt, was insolent,” Newman said; “but if you hadn’t gone back into the box the thing wouldn’t have happened.”

“Why, don’t you see,” Valentin replied, “that the event proves the extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case—that is, when he has been, so to speak, notified—a man must be on hand to receive the provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to my saying to M. Stanislas Kapp, ‘Oh, if you are going to be disagreeable’”– —

“‘You must manage it by yourself; damned if I’ll help you!’ That would have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only attraction for you seems to have been the prospect of M. Kapp’s impertinence,” Newman went on. “You told me you were not going back for that girl.”