Henry James - Henry James - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 10)

“Who is that lady?” he asked.

“Miss Dora Finch. How do you like her?”

“She’s too noisy.”

“She is thought so bright! Certainly, you are fastidious,” said Mrs. Tristram.

Newman stood a moment, hesitating. Then at last “Don’t forget about your friend,” he said, “Madame What’s-her-name? the proud beauty. Ask her to dinner, and give me a good notice.” And with this he departed.

Some days later he came back; it was in the afternoon. He found Mrs. Tristram in her drawing-room; with her was a visitor, a woman young and pretty, dressed in white. The two ladies had risen and the visitor was apparently taking her leave. As Newman approached, he received from Mrs. Tristram a glance of the most vivid significance, which he was not immediately able to interpret.

“This is a good friend of ours,” she said, turning to her companion, “Mr. Christopher Newman. I have spoken of you to him and he has an extreme desire to make your acquaintance. If you had consented to come and dine, I should have offered him an opportunity.”

The stranger turned her face toward Newman, with a smile. He was not embarrassed, for his unconscious sang-froid was boundless; but as he became aware that this was the proud and beautiful Madame de Cintre, the loveliest woman in the world, the promised perfection, the proposed ideal, he made an instinctive movement to gather his wits together. Through the slight preoccupation that it produced he had a sense of a long, fair face, and of two eyes that were both brilliant and mild.

“I should have been most happy,” said Madame de Cintre. “Unfortunately, as I have been telling Mrs. Tristram, I go on Monday to the country.”

Newman had made a solemn bow. “I am very sorry,” he said.

“Paris is getting too warm,” Madame de Cintre added, taking her friend’s hand again in farewell.

Mrs. Tristram seemed to have formed a sudden and somewhat venturesome resolution, and she smiled more intensely, as women do when they take such resolution. “I want Mr. Newman to know you,” she said, dropping her head on one side and looking at Madame de Cintre’s bonnet ribbons.

Christopher Newman stood gravely silent, while his native penetration admonished him. Mrs. Tristram was determined to force her friend to address him a word of encouragement which should be more than one of the common formulas of politeness; and if she was prompted by charity, it was by the charity that begins at home. Madame de Cintre was her dearest Claire, and her especial admiration but Madame de Cintre had found it impossible to dine with her and Madame de Cintre should for once be forced gently to render tribute to Mrs. Tristram.

“It would give me great pleasure,” she said, looking at Mrs. Tristram.

“That’s a great deal,” cried the latter, “for Madame de Cintre to say!”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram can speak better for me than I can speak for myself.”

Madame de Cintre looked at him again, with the same soft brightness. “Are you to be long in Paris?” she asked.

“We shall keep him,” said Mrs. Tristram.

“But you are keeping ME!” and Madame de Cintre shook her friend’s hand.

“A moment longer,” said Mrs. Tristram.

Madame de Cintre looked at Newman again; this time without her smile. Her eyes lingered a moment. “Will you come and see me?” she asked.

Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her leave. Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a moment. Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. “It was a fortunate chance,” she said. “She had come to decline my invitation. You triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes, to her house.”

“It was you who triumphed,” said Newman. “You must not be too hard upon her.”

Mrs. Tristram stared. “What do you mean?”

“She did not strike me as so proud. I should say she was shy.”

“You are very discriminating. And what do you think of her face?”

“It’s handsome!” said Newman.

“I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.”

“To-morrow!” cried Newman.

“No, not to-morrow; the next day. That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris on Monday. If you don’t see her; it will at least be a beginning.” And she gave him Madame de Cintre’s address.

He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open in answer to his ring. It admitted him into a wide, graveled court, surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin canopy. The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman’s conception of a convent. The portress could not tell him whether Madame de Cintre was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door. He crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer. He rose as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell, said with a smile, in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting; the servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn’t know what the deuce was in them. He was a young man, his English was excellent, and his smile very frank. Newman pronounced the name of Madame de Cintre.

“I think,” said the young man, “that my sister is visible. Come in, and if you will give me your card I will carry it to her myself.”

Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight sentiment, I will not say of defiance — a readiness for aggression or defense, as they might prove needful — but of reflection, good-humored suspicion. He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a card upon which, under his name, he had written the words “San Francisco,” and while he presented it he looked warily at his interlocutor. His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young man’s face; it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintre. He was evidently her brother. The young man, on his side, had made a rapid inspection of Newman’s person. He had taken the card and was about to enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the threshold — an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress. He looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him. “Madame de Cintre,” the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor. The other took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely but urbanely, “Madame de Cintre is not at home.”

The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, “I am very sorry, sir,” he said.

Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and retraced his steps. At the porter’s lodge he stopped; the two men were still standing on the portico.

“Who is the gentleman with the dog?” he asked of the old woman who reappeared. He had begun to learn French.

“That is Monsieur le Comte.”

“And the other?”

“That is Monsieur le Marquis.”

“A marquis?” said Christopher in English, which the old woman fortunately did not understand. “Oh, then he’s not the butler!”

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