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

“Nothing, I repeat, that need make you unhappy. My agitation is over. Some day I will tell you what it was; not now. I can’t now!”

“Well, I confess,” remarked Newman, “I don’t want to hear anything unpleasant. I am satisfied with everything — most of all with you. I have seen all the ladies and talked with a great many of them; but I am satisfied with you.” Madame de Cintre covered him for a moment with her large, soft glance, and then turned her eyes away into the starry night. So they stood silent a moment, side by side. “Say you are satisfied with me,” said Newman.

He had to wait a moment for the answer; but it came at last, low yet distinct: “I am very happy.”

It was presently followed by a few words from another source, which made them both turn round. “I am sadly afraid Madame de Cintre will take a chill. I have ventured to bring a shawl.” Mrs. Bread stood there softly solicitous, holding a white drapery in her hand.

“Thank you,” said Madame de Cintre, “the sight of those cold stars gives one a sense of frost. I won’t take your shawl, but we will go back into the house.”

She passed back and Newman followed her, Mrs. Bread standing respectfully aside to make way for them. Newman paused an instant before the old woman, and she glanced up at him with a silent greeting. “Oh, yes,” he said, “you must come and live with us.”

“Well then, sir, if you will,” she answered, “you have not seen the last of me!”

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Newman was fond of music and went often to the opera. A couple of evenings after Madame de Bellegarde’s ball he sat listening to “Don Giovanni,” having in honor of this work, which he had never yet seen represented, come to occupy his orchestra-chair before the rising of the curtain. Frequently he took a large box and invited a party of his compatriots; this was a mode of recreation to which he was much addicted. He liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre, and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at remote restaurants. He liked doing things which involved his paying for people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed “treating” them. This was not because he was what is called purse-proud; handling money in public was on the contrary positively disagreeable to him; he had a sort of personal modesty about it, akin to what he would have felt about making a toilet before spectators. But just as it was a gratification to him to be handsomely dressed, just so it was a private satisfaction to him (he enjoyed it very clandestinely) to have interposed, pecuniarily, in a scheme of pleasure. To set a large group of people in motion and transport them to a distance, to have special conveyances, to charter railway-carriages and steamboats, harmonized with his relish for bold processes, and made hospitality seem more active and more to the purpose. A few evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera to listen to Madame Alboni — a party which included Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near Newman in the box, discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr’actes, but during many of the finest portions of the performance, so that Newman had really come away with an irritated sense that Madame Alboni had a thin, shrill voice, and that her musical phrase was much garnished with a laugh of the giggling order. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.

When the curtain had fallen upon the first act of “Don Giovanni” he turned round in his place to observe the house. Presently, in one of the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little marquise was sweeping the house very busily with a glass, and Newman, supposing that she saw him, determined to go and bid her good evening. M. de Bellegarde was leaning against a column, motionless, looking straight in front of him, with one hand in the breast of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly, “bathing-tubs,” a face which even the dim light and the distance could not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman, and it was surmounted with a coiffure of pink roses and diamonds. This person was looking round the house, and her fan was moving to and fro with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it, Newman perceived a pair of plump white shoulders and the edge of a rose-colored dress. Beside her, very close to the shoulders and talking, apparently with an earnestness which it pleased her scantily to heed, sat a young man with a red face and a very low shirt-collar. A moment’s gazing left Newman with no doubts; the pretty young woman was Noemie Nioche. He looked hard into the depths of the box, thinking her father might perhaps be in attendance, but from what he could see the young man’s eloquence had no other auditor. Newman at last made his way out, and in doing so he passed beneath the baignoire of Mademoiselle Noemie. She saw him as he approached and gave him a nod and smile which seemed meant as an assurance that she was still a good-natured girl, in spite of her enviable rise in the world. Newman passed into the foyer and walked through it. Suddenly he paused in front of a gentleman seated on one of the divans. The gentleman’s elbows were on his knees; he was leaning forward and staring at the pavement, lost apparently in meditations of a somewhat gloomy cast. But in spite of his bent head Newman recognized him, and in a moment sat down beside him. Then the gentleman looked up and displayed the expressive countenance of Valentin de Bellegarde.

“What in the world are you thinking of so hard?” asked Newman.

“A subject that requires hard thinking to do it justice,” said Valentin. “My immeasurable idiocy.”

“What is the matter now?”

“The matter now is that I am a man again, and no more a fool than usual. But I came within an inch of taking that girl au serieux.”

“You mean the young lady below stairs, in a baignoire in a pink dress?” said Newman.

“Did you notice what a brilliant kind of pink it was?” Valentin inquired, by way of answer. “It makes her look as white as new milk.”

“White or black, as you please. But you have stopped going to see her?”

“Oh, bless you, no. Why should I stop? I have changed, but she hasn’t,” said Valentin. “I see she is a vulgar little wretch, after all. But she is as amusing as ever, and one MUST be amused.”

“Well, I am glad she strikes you so unpleasantly,” Newman rejoiced. “I suppose you have swallowed all those fine words you used about her the other night. You compared her to a sapphire, or a topaz, or an amethyst — some precious stone; what was it?”

“I don’t remember,” said Valentin, “it may have been to a carbuncle! But she won’t make a fool of me now. She has no real charm. It’s an awfully low thing to make a mistake about a person of that sort.”

“I congratulate you,” Newman declared, “upon the scales having fallen from your eyes. It’s a great triumph; it ought to make you feel better.”

“Yes, it makes me feel better!” said Valentin, gayly. Then, checking himself, he looked askance at Newman. “I rather think you are laughing at me. If you were not one of the family I would take it up.”

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing, any more than I am one of the family. You make me feel badly. You are too clever a fellow, you are made of too good stuff, to spend your time in ups and downs over that class of goods. The idea of splitting hairs about Miss Nioche! It seems to me awfully foolish. You say you have given up taking her seriously; but you take her seriously so long as you take her at all.”