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Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue d’Iena, and his host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs. Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his ingenuity in trying to displease her.
“Oh no, I never try, my love,” he answered. “I know you loathe me quite enough when I take my chance.”
Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram. Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram, in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the tale, by no means always to his advantage; and Newman’s own emotions were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been in love—seriously, passionately—and, failing to gather any satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired. He hesitated a while, and at last he said, “No!” She declared that she was delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he was a man of no feeling.
“Really?” he asked, very gravely. “Do you think so? How do you recognize a man of feeling?”
“I can’t make out,” said Mrs. Tristram, “whether you are very simple or very deep.”
“I’m very deep. That’s a fact.”
“I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have no feeling, you would implicitly believe me.”
“A certain air?” said Newman. “Try it and see.”
“You would believe me, but you would not care,” said Mrs. Tristram.
“You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldn’t believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things. I have had to DO them, to make myself felt.”
“I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes.”
“Yes, there’s no mistake about that.”
“When you are in a fury it can’t be pleasant.”
“I am never in a fury.”
“Angry, then, or displeased.”
“I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that I have quite forgotten it.”
“I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad enough always to keep your temper.”
“I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
“The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
“Do you mean to put me into one?”
“I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me. And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman, meditatively.
“You have been odiously successful.”
“Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a hopeless fizzle in oil.”
“It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money. Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
“Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am not intellectual.”
“One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a moment, “Besides, you are!”
“Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
“Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing a while at this poor effete Old World and then swooping down on it.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
“I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket and feathers. There are different shades.”
“I am a highly civilized man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
Mrs. Tristram was silent a while. “I should like to make you prove it,” she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
“Pray do,” said Newman.
“That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
“Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
“I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time and I will.” And Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded; but as he was rising to take his leave she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you, Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
“Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
“Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit would increase insufferably.”
Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
“Forgive all my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
“I shall remember everything you have told me,” said Newman. “There are so many forms and ceremonies over here—”
“Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.”
“Ah, but I want to observe them,” said Newman. “Haven’t I as good a right as another? They don’t scare me, and you needn’t give me leave to violate them. I won’t take it.”
“That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it, as you choose.”
“Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it!” said Newman.
The next time that he dined in the Avenue d’Iena was a Sunday, a day on which Mr. Tristram left the cards unshuffled, so that there was a trio in the evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last Mrs. Tristram suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high time he should take a wife.
“Listen to her; she has the audacity!” said Tristram, who on Sunday evenings was always rather acrimonious.
“I don’t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?” Mrs. Tristram continued.
“Heaven forbid!” cried Newman. “I am sternly resolved on it.”
“It’s very easy,” said Tristram; “fatally easy!”
“Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.”
“On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.”
“One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose to you?”
“No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.”
“Tell me some of your thoughts.”
“Well,” said Newman, slowly, “I want to marry very well.”
“Marry a woman of sixty, then,” said Tristram.
“‘Well’ in what sense?”
“In every sense. I shall be hard to please.”
“You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful girl in the world can give but what she has.”
“Since you ask me,” said Newman, “I will say frankly that I want extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with: before I know it I shall be forty. And then I’m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry now, so long as I didn’t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must do it with my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I do not only want to make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I want to take my pick. My wife must be a magnificent woman.”
“Voila ce qui s’appelle parler!” cried Mrs. Tristram.
“Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.”
“Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in love.”
“When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife shall be very comfortable.”
“You are superb! There’s a chance for the magnificent women.”
“You are not fair.” Newman rejoined. “You draw a fellow out and put him off guard, and then you laugh at him.”
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious. To prove it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here, to marry you?”
“To hunt up a wife for me?”
“She is already found. I will bring you together.”
“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau. He will think you want your commission.”
“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I will marry her tomorrow.”
“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you. I didn’t suppose you would be so coldblooded and calculating.”
Newman was silent a while. “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great woman. I stick to that. That’s one thing I CAN treat myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?” Tristram demanded. “I have been trying so to make you fond of ME!”
“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram. “I like to see a man know his own mind.”
“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on. “I made up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can. He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties, on purpose; he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such wits as he has, and to try.”
“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”
“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”
“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”
“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”
“I see you have a taste for splendor.”
Newman hesitated a little; and then, “I honestly believe I have!” he said.
“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”
“A good deal, according to opportunity.”
“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”
“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”
“You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and Fortunio and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I should like to help you.”
“Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?” Tristram cried. “We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but magnificent women are not so common.”
“Have you any objections to a foreigner?” his wife continued, addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair and, with his feet on a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking at the stars.
“No Irish need apply,” said Tristram.
Newman meditated a while. “As a foreigner, no,” he said at last; “I have no prejudices.”
“My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!” cried Tristram. “You don’t know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the ‘magnificent’ ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a dagger in her belt?”
Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. “I would marry a Japanese, if she pleased me,” he affirmed.
“We had better confine ourselves to Europe,” said Mrs. Tristram. “The only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?”
“She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!” Tristram groaned.
“Assuredly. I won’t deny that, other things being equal, I should prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language, and that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner. Besides, I rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges the field of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can bring your choice to a finer point!”
“You talk like Sardanapalus!” exclaimed Tristram.
“You say all this to the right person,” said Newman’s hostess. “I happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world. Neither more nor less. I don’t say a very charming person or a very estimable woman or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest woman in the world.”
