The American

“Ah, she’s gone!” And Newman, groaning, smote the pavement with his stick.

“She has gone straight to the convent—the Carmelites they call it. I see you 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?” cried Newman. “Good, good! And they are very fierce?”

“They are not pleased,” said Mrs. Bread. “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. You may say they are really not human, sir; they make you give up everything—forever. And to think of her there! If I was one that cried, sir, I could cry.”

Newman looked at her an instant. “We mustn’t cry, Mrs. Bread; we must act. Go and call them!” And he made a movement to enter farther.

But Mrs. Bread gently checked him. “May I take another liberty? I am told you were with my dearest Mr. Valentin, in his last hours. If you would tell me a word about him! The poor count was my own boy, sir; for the first year of his life he was hardly out of my arms; I taught him to speak. And the count spoke so well, 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 way! They have a story that he fought with a wine-merchant. I can’t believe that, sir! And was he in great pain?”

“You are 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. Mrs. Bread looked for a moment at his open palm, and then, as if fascinated by the novelty of the gesture, extended her own ladylike fingers. Newman held her hand firmly and deliberately, fixing his eyes upon her. “You want to know all about Mr. Valentin?” he said.

“It would be a sad pleasure, sir.”

“I can tell you everything. Can you sometimes leave this place?”

“The château, sir? I really don’t know. I 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 will wait for you there; I have something very important to tell you. An old woman like you can do as she pleases.”

Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips. “Is it from the count, sir?” she asked.

“From the count—from his death-bed,” said Newman.

“I will come, then. I will be bold, for once, for him.”

She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands. Newman 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 that Newman had a logical mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked. “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they advanced. “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” Madame de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night. Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman. He stood before them, and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.

“You see I have come back,” he said. “I have come to try again.”

“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”

“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman, with a laugh, “or that will bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t come to see you. Besides, I will make as short work as you please. Promise me to raise the blockade—to set Madame de Cintré at liberty—and I will retire instantly.”

“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honor. But it seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once.”

“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,” Newman answered. “I didn’t come however, for conversational purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don’t want her to turn nun—you know more about the horrors of it than I do. Marrying a commercial person is better than that. Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out. There’s your chance—I call those easy terms.”

“We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room. “I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her daughter should become Sœur Catherine than Mrs. 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 that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it. “Could anything compel you?” he asked. “Do you know of anything that would force you?”

“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 weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintré’s present intentions make time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and you two very different parties. I see no connection between you. Your brother was ashamed of you. Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologized to me for your conduct. He apologized to me for that of his mother.”

For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a physical blow. A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of steel. Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the sound, “Le misérable!”

“You show little respect for the living,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “but at least respect the dead. Don’t profane—don’t insult—the memory of my innocent son.”

“I speak the simple truth,” Newman declared, “and I speak it for a purpose. I repeat it—distinctly. Your son was utterly disgusted—your son apologized.”

Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was frowning at poor Valentin’s invidious image. Taken by surprise, his scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonor. But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag. “You are immensely mistaken, sir,” she said. “My son was sometimes light, but he was never indecent. He died faithful to his name.”

“You simply misunderstood him,” said the marquis, beginning to rally. “You affirm the impossible!”

“Oh, I don’t care for poor Valentin’s apology,” said Newman. “It was far more painful than pleasant to me. This atrocious thing was not his fault; he never hurt me, or anyone else; he was the soul of honor. But it shows how he took it.”

“If you wish to prove that my poor brother, in his last moments, was out of his head, we can only say that under the melancholy circumstances nothing was more possible. But confine yourself to that.”

“He was quite in his right mind,” said Newman, with gentle but dangerous doggedness; “I have never seen him so bright and clever. It was terrible to see that witty, capable fellow dying such a death. You know I was very fond of your brother. And I have further proof of his sanity,” Newman concluded.

The marquise gathered herself together majestically. “This is too gross!” she cried. “We decline to accept your story, sir—we repudiate it. 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 his 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 Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost brimming over into jocularity. “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, in the most delicate, best-bred voice, “I detest you personally,” he said.

“That’s the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don’t say it,” said Newman. “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 he paused a moment. “You have a secret—you have a skeleton in the closet.” M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not see whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. “You and your mother have committed a crime.” At this M. de Bellegarde’s eyes certainly did change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in his self-control.

“Continue,” said M. de Bellegarde.

Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. “Need I continue? You are trembling.”

“Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?” M. de Bellegarde asked, very softly.

“I shall be strictly accurate,” said Newman. “I won’t pretend to know more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known, something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don’t know what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and I will find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will leave you alone. It’s a bargain?”

The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual. But Newman’s mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He stood some moments, reflecting.

“My brother told you this,” he said, looking up.

Newman hesitated a moment. “Yes, your brother told me.”

The marquis smiled, handsomely. “Didn’t I say that he was out of his mind?”

“He was out of his mind if I don’t find out. He was very much in it if I do.”

M. de Bellegarde gave a shrug. “Eh, sir, find out or not, as you please.”

“I don’t frighten you?” demanded Newman.

“That’s for you to judge.”

“No, it’s for you to judge, at your leisure. Think it over, feel yourself all round. I will give you an hour or two. I can’t give you more, for how do we know how fast they may be making Madame de Cintré a nun? Talk it over with your mother; let her judge whether she is frightened. I don’t believe she is as easily frightened, in general, as you; but you will see. I will go and wait in the village, at the inn, and 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. Only, you know, in case of a yes I shall expect you, this time, to stick to your bargain.” And with this Newman opened the door and let himself out. The marquis did not move, and Newman, retiring, gave him another look. “At the inn, in the village,” he repeated. Then he turned away altogether and passed out of the house.

He was extremely excited by what he had been doing, for it was inevitable that there should be a certain emotion in calling up the spectre of dishonor before 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 that Urbain de Bellegarde would give no sign; for an answer to his challenge, in either sense, would be a confession of guilt. What he most expected was silence—in other words defiance. But he prayed that, as he imagined 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 de Bellegarde’s handsome English hand. It ran as follows:—

“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 your audacious pertinacity.

“HENRI-URBAIN DE BELLEGARDE.”

Newman put the letter into his pocket, and continued his walk up and down the inn-parlor. 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 out to keep his rendezvous with Mrs. Bread. The path which led up the hill to the ruin was easy to find, and Newman 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. Newman 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 enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black satin dress disposed itself in vaguely lustrous folds about her person. She had judged it proper to the occasion to appear in her stateliest apparel. She had been sitting with her eyes fixed upon the ground, but when Newman passed before her she looked up at him, and then she rose.

“Are you a Catholic, Mrs. Bread?” he asked.

“No, sir; I’m a good Church-of-England woman, very Low,” she answered. “But I thought I should be safer in here than outside. I was never out in the evening before, sir.”

“We shall be safer,” said Newman, “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 and found himself in a nook peculiarly favorable 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 château. Mrs. Bread rustled slowly after her guide, and Newman, satisfying himself that one of the fallen stones was steady, proposed to her to sit upon it. She cautiously complied, and he placed himself upon another, near her.

CHAPTER XXII

“I am very much obliged to you for coming,” Newman said. “I hope it won’t get you into trouble.”

“I don’t think I shall be missed. My lady, in these days, is not fond of having me about her.” This was said with a certain fluttered eagerness which increased Newman’s sense of having inspired the old woman with confidence.

“From the first, you know,” he answered, “you took an interest in my prospects. You were on my side. That gratified me, I assure you. And now that you know what they have done to me, I am sure you are with me all the more.”

“They have not done well—I must say it,” said Mrs. Bread. “But you mustn’t blame the poor countess; they pressed her hard.”

“I would give a million of dollars to know what they did to her!” cried Newman.

Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the château. “They worked on her feelings; they knew that was the way. She is a delicate creature. They made her feel wicked. She is only too good.”

“Ah, they made her feel wicked,” said Newman, slowly; and then he repeated it. “They made her feel wicked,—they made her feel wicked.” The words seemed to him for the moment a vivid description of infernal ingenuity.

“It was because she was so good that she gave up—poor sweet lady!” added Mrs. Bread.

“But she was better to them than to me,” said Newman.

“She was afraid,” said Mrs. Bread, very confidently; “she has always been afraid, or at least for a long time. That was the real trouble, sir. She was like a fair peach, I may say, with just one little speck. She had one little sad spot. You pushed her into the sunshine, sir, and it almost disappeared. Then they pulled her back into the shade and in a moment it began to spread. Before we knew it she was gone. She was a delicate creature.”

This singular attestation of Madame de Cintré’s delicacy, for all its singularity, set Newman’s wound aching afresh. “I see,” he presently said; “she knew something bad about her mother.”

“No, sir, she knew nothing,” said Mrs. Bread, holding her head very stiff and keeping her eyes fixed upon the glimmering windows of the château.

“She guessed something, then, or suspected it.”

“She was afraid to know,” said Mrs. Bread.

“But you know, at any rate,” said Newman.

She slowly turned her vague eyes upon Newman, squeezing her hands together in her lap. “You are not quite faithful, sir. I thought it was to tell me about Mr. Valentin you asked me to come here.”

“Oh, the more we talk of Mr. Valentin the better,” said Newman. “That’s exactly what I want. I was with him, as I told you, in his last hour. He was in a great deal of pain, but he was quite himself. You know what that means; he was bright and lively and clever.”

“Oh, he would always be clever, sir,” said Mrs. Bread. “And did he know of your trouble?”

“Yes, he guessed it of himself.”

“And what did he say to it?”

“He said it was a disgrace to his name—but it was not the first.”

“Lord, Lord!” murmured Mrs. Bread.

“He said that his mother and his brother had once put their heads together and invented something even worse.”

“You shouldn’t have listened to that, sir.”

“Perhaps not. But I did listen, and I don’t forget it. Now I want to know what it is they did.”

Mrs. Bread gave a soft moan. “And you have enticed me up into this strange place to tell you?”

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Newman. “I won’t say a word that shall be disagreeable to you. Tell me as it suits you, and when it suits you. Only remember that it was Mr. Valentin’s last wish that you should.”

“Did he say that?”

“He said it with his last breath—‘Tell Mrs. Bread I told you to ask her.’”

“Why didn’t he tell you himself?”

“It was too long a story for a dying man; he had no breath left in his body. He could only say that he wanted me to know—that, wronged as I was, it was my right to know.”

“But how will it help you, sir?” said Mrs. Bread.

“That’s for me to decide. Mr. Valentin believed it would, and that’s why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke.”

Mrs. Bread was evidently awe-struck by this statement; she shook her clasped hands slowly up and down. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “if I take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you are speaking? I must ask you that; must I not, sir?”

“There’s no offense. It is the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. Mr. Valentin himself would certainly have told me more if he had been able.”

“Oh, sir, if he knew more!”

“Don’t you suppose he did?”

“There’s no saying what he knew about anything,” said Mrs. Bread, with a mild head-shake. “He was so mightily clever. He could make you believe he knew things that he didn’t, and that he didn’t know others that he had better not have known.”

“I suspect he knew something about his brother that kept the marquis civil to him,” Newman propounded; “he made the marquis feel him. What he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance to make the marquis feel me.”

“Mercy on us!” cried the old waiting-woman, “how wicked we all are!”

“I don’t know,” said Newman; “some of us are wicked, certainly. I am very angry, I am very sore, and I am very bitter, but I don’t know that I am wicked. I have been cruelly injured. They have hurt me, and I want to hurt them. I don’t deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly that it is the use I want to make of your secret.”

Mrs. Bread seemed to hold her breath. “You want to publish them—you want to shame them?”

“I want to bring them down,—down, down, down! I want to turn the tables upon them—I want to mortify them as they mortified me. They took me up into a high place and made me stand there for all the world to see me, and then they stole behind me and pushed me into this bottomless pit, where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth! I made a fool of myself before all their friends; but I shall make something worse of them.”

This passionate sally, which Newman uttered with the greater fervor that it was the first time he had had a chance to say all this aloud, kindled two small sparks in Mrs. Bread’s fixed eyes. “I suppose you have a right to your anger, sir; but think of the dishonor you will draw down on Madame de Cintré.”

“Madame de Cintré is buried alive,” cried Newman. “What are honor or dishonor to her? The door of the tomb is at this moment closing behind her.”

“Yes, it’s most awful,” moaned Mrs. Bread.

“She has moved off, like her brother Valentin, to give me room to work. It’s as if it were done on purpose.”

“Surely,” said Mrs. Bread, apparently impressed by the ingenuity of this reflection. She was silent for some moments; then she added, “And would you bring my lady before the courts?”

“The courts care nothing for my lady,” Newman replied. “If she has committed a crime, she will be nothing for the courts but a wicked old woman.”

“And will they hang her, sir?”

“That depends upon what she has done.” And Newman eyed Mrs. Bread intently.

“It would break up the family most terribly, sir!”

“It’s time such a family should be broken up!” said Newman, with a laugh.

“And me at my age out of place, sir!” sighed Mrs. Bread.

“Oh, I will take care of you! You shall come and live with me. You shall be my housekeeper, or anything you like. I will pension you for life.”

“Dear, dear, sir, you think of everything.” And she seemed to fall a-brooding.

Newman watched her a while, and then he said suddenly. “Ah, Mrs. Bread, you are too fond of my lady!”

She looked at him as quickly. “I wouldn’t have you say that, sir. I don’t think it any part of my duty to be fond of my lady. I have served her faithfully this many a year; but if she were to die to-morrow, I believe, before Heaven I shouldn’t shed a tear for her.” Then, after a pause, “I have no reason to love her!” Mrs. Bread added. “The most she has done for me has been not to turn me out of the house.” Newman felt that decidedly his companion was more and more confidential—that if luxury is corrupting, Mrs. Bread’s conservative habits were already relaxed by the spiritual comfort of this preconcerted interview, in a remarkable locality, with a free-spoken millionaire. All his native shrewdness admonished him that his part was simply to let her take her time—let the charm of the occasion work. So he said nothing; he only looked at her kindly. Mrs. Bread sat nursing her lean elbows. “My lady once did me a great wrong,” she went on at last. “She has a terrible tongue when she is vexed. It was many a year ago, but I have never forgotten it. I have never mentioned it to a human creature; I have kept my grudge to myself. I dare say I have been wicked, but my grudge has grown old with me. It has grown good for nothing, too, I dare say; but it has lived along, as I have lived. It will die when I die,—not before!”