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

“I know no better proof that I have treated you very well,” Newman had said, “than the fact that you make so free with my character. Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a little proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to dinner say I was going to the Princess Borealska’s. But I have not any pride where my pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to see me — if you must see me only to call me bad names — I will agree to anything you choose; I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris.” Newman, in fact, had declined an invitation personally given by the Princess Borealska, an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined at Mrs. Tristram’s; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of his hostess of the Avenue d’Iena that he was faithless to his early friendships. She needed the theory to explain a certain moral irritation by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation was unsound, a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having launched our hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well; she had played her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards. Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was “satisfactory.” The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in perceiving that, in essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was. Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from Newman’s half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment that she had ever encountered. Newman was, according to the French phrase, only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures exerted a singular effect upon the ardor which she herself had so freely manifested a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely critical view of Madame de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that she did not in the least answer for her being a compendium of all the virtues. “No woman was ever so good as that woman seems,” she said. “Remember what Shakespeare calls Desdemona; ‘a supersubtle Venetian.’ Madame de Cintre is a supersubtle Parisian. She is a charming woman, and she has five hundred merits; but you had better keep that in mind.” Was Mrs. Tristram simply finding out that she was jealous of her dear friend on the other side of the Seine, and that in undertaking to provide Newman with an ideal wife she had counted too much on her own disinterestedness? We may be permitted to doubt it. The inconsistent little lady of the Avenue d’Iena had an insuperable need of changing her place, intellectually. She had a lively imagination, and she was capable, at certain times, of imagining the direct reverse of her most cherished beliefs, with a vividness more intense than that of conviction. She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking wrong. In the midst of her mysterious perversities she had admirable flashes of justice. One of these occurred when Newman related to her that he had made a formal proposal to Madame de Cintre. He repeated in a few words what he had said, and in a great many what she had answered. Mrs. Tristram listened with extreme interest.

“But after all,” said Newman, “there is nothing to congratulate me upon. It is not a triumph.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Tristram; “it is a great triumph. It is a great triumph that she did not silence you at the first word, and request you never to speak to her again.”

“I don’t see that,” observed Newman.

“Of course you don’t; Heaven forbid you should! When I told you to go on your own way and do what came into your head, I had no idea you would go over the ground so fast. I never dreamed you would offer yourself after five or six morning-calls. As yet, what had you done to make her like you? You had simply sat — not very straight — and stared at her. But she does like you.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“No, that is proved. What will come of it remains to be seen. That you should propose to marry her, without more ado, could never have come into her head. You can form very little idea of what passed through her mind as you spoke; if she ever really marries you, the affair will be characterized by the usual justice of all human beings towards women. You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you. As she stood there in front of you the other day, she plunged into it. She said ‘Why not?’ to something which, a few hours earlier, had been inconceivable. She turned about on a thousand gathered prejudices and traditions as on a pivot, and looked where she had never looked hitherto. When I think of it — when I think of Claire de Cintre and all that she represents, there seems to me something very fine in it. When I recommended you to try your fortune with her I of course thought well of you, and in spite of your sins I think so still. But I confess I don’t see quite what you are and what you have done, to make such a woman do this sort of thing for you.”

“Oh, there is something very fine in it!” said Newman with a laugh, repeating her words. He took an extreme satisfaction in hearing that there was something fine in it. He had not the least doubt of it himself, but he had already begun to value the world’s admiration of Madame de Cintre, as adding to the prospective glory of possession.

It was immediately after this conversation that Valentin de Bellegarde came to conduct his friend to the Rue de l’Universite to present him to the other members of his family. “You are already introduced,” he said, “and you have begun to be talked about. My sister has mentioned your successive visits to my mother, and it was an accident that my mother was present at none of them. I have spoken of you as an American of immense wealth, and the best fellow in the world, who is looking for something very superior in the way of a wife.”

“Do you suppose,” asked Newman, “that Madame de Cintre has related to your mother the last conversation I had with her?”

“I am very certain that she has not; she will keep her own counsel. Meanwhile you must make your way with the rest of the family. Thus much is known about you: you have made a great fortune in trade, you are a little eccentric, and you frankly admire our dear Claire. My sister-in-law, whom you remember seeing in Madame de Cintre’s sitting-room, took, it appears, a fancy to you; she has described you as having beaucoup de cachet. My mother, therefore, is curious to see you.”

“She expects to laugh at me, eh?” said Newman.

“She never laughs. If she does not like you, don’t hope to purchase favor by being amusing. Take warning by me!”

This conversation took place in the evening, and half an hour later Valentin ushered his companion into an apartment of the house of the Rue de l’Universite into which he had not yet penetrated, the salon of the dowager Marquise de Bellegarde. It was a vast, high room, with elaborate and ponderous mouldings, painted a whitish gray, along the upper portion of the walls and the ceiling; with a great deal of faded and carefully repaired tapestry in the doorways and chair-backs; a Turkey carpet in light colors, still soft and deep, in spite of great antiquity, on the floor, and portraits of each of Madame de Bellegarde’s children, at the age of ten, suspended against an old screen of red silk. The room was illumined, exactly enough for conversation, by half a dozen candles, placed in odd corners, at a great distance apart. In a deep armchair, near the fire, sat an old lady in black; at the other end of the room another person was seated at the piano, playing a very expressive waltz. In this latter person Newman recognized the young Marquise de Bellegarde.