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

“I may be dangerous,” he said; “but I am not wicked. No, I am not wicked.” And he got up to go. Mrs. Tristram asked him to come back to dinner; but he answered that he did not feel like pledging himself to be present at an entertainment, even as a solitary guest. Later in the evening, if he should be able, he would come.

He walked away through the city, beside the Seine and over it, and took the direction of the Rue d’Enfer. The day had the softness of early spring; but the weather was gray and humid. Newman found himself in a part of Paris which he little knew — a region of convents and prisons, of streets bordered by long dead walls and traversed by a few wayfarers. At the intersection of two of these streets stood the house of the Carmelites — a dull, plain edifice, with a high-shouldered blank wall all round it. From without Newman could see its upper windows, its steep roof and its chimneys. But these things revealed no symptoms of human life; the place looked dumb, deaf, inanimate. The pale, dead, discolored wall stretched beneath it, far down the empty side street — a vista without a human figure. Newman stood there a long time; there were no passers; he was free to gaze his fill. This seemed the goal of his journey; it was what he had come for. It was a strange satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction; the barren stillness of the place seemed to be his own release from ineffectual longing. It told him that the woman within was lost beyond recall, and that the days and years of the future would pile themselves above her like the huge immovable slab of a tomb. These days and years, in this place, would always be just so gray and silent. Suddenly, from the thought of their seeing him stand there, again the charm utterly departed. He would never stand there again; it was gratuitous dreariness. He turned away with a heavy heart, but with a heart lighter than the one he had brought. Everything was over, and he too at last could rest. He walked down through narrow, winding streets to the edge of the Seine again, and there he saw, close above him, the soft, vast towers of Notre Dame. He crossed one of the bridges and stood a moment in the empty place before the great cathedral; then he went in beneath the grossly-imaged portals. He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he heard far-away bells chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest of the world. He was very tired; this was the best place he could be in. He said no prayers; he had no prayers to say. He had nothing to be thankful for, and he had nothing to ask; nothing to ask, because now he must take care of himself. But a great cathedral offers a very various hospitality, and Newman sat in his place, because while he was there he was out of the world. The most unpleasant thing that had ever happened to him had reached its formal conclusion, as it were; he could close the book and put it away. He leaned his head for a long time on the chair in front of him; when he took it up he felt that he was himself again. Somewhere in his mind, a tight knot seemed to have loosened. He thought of the Bellegardes; he had almost forgotten them. He remembered them as people he had meant to do something to. He gave a groan as he remembered what he had meant to do; he was annoyed at having meant to do it; the bottom, suddenly, had fallen out of his revenge. Whether it was Christian charity or unregenerate good nature — what it was, in the background of his soul — I don’t pretend to say; but Newman’s last thought was that of course he would let the Bellegardes go. If he had spoken it aloud he would have said that he didn’t want to hurt them. He was ashamed of having wanted to hurt them. They had hurt him, but such things were really not his game. At last he got up and came out of the darkening church; not with the elastic step of a man who had won a victory or taken a resolve, but strolling soberly, like a good-natured man who is still a little ashamed.

Going home, he said to Mrs. Bread that he must trouble her to put back his things into the portmanteau she had unpacked the evening before. His gentle stewardess looked at him through eyes a trifle bedimmed. “Dear me, sir,” she exclaimed, “I thought you said that you were going to stay forever.”

“I meant that I was going to stay away forever,” said Newman kindly. And since his departure from Paris on the following day he has certainly not returned. The gilded apartments I have so often spoken of stand ready to receive him; but they serve only as a spacious residence for Mrs. Bread, who wanders eternally from room to room, adjusting the tassels of the curtains, and keeps her wages, which are regularly brought her by a banker’s clerk, in a great pink Sevres vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf.

Late in the evening Newman went to Mrs. Tristram’s and found Tom Tristram by the domestic fireside. “I’m glad to see you back in Paris,” this gentleman declared. “You know it’s really the only place for a white man to live.” Mr. Tristram made his friend welcome, according to his own rosy light, and offered him a convenient resume of the Franco–American gossip of the last six months. Then at last he got up and said he would go for half an hour to the club. “I suppose a man who has been for six months in California wants a little intellectual conversation. I’ll let my wife have a go at you.”

Newman shook hands heartily with his host, but did not ask him to remain; and then he relapsed into his place on the sofa, opposite to Mrs. Tristram. She presently asked him what he had done after leaving her. “Nothing particular,” said Newman

“You struck me,” she rejoined, “as a man with a plot in his head. You looked as if you were bent on some sinister errand, and after you had left me I wondered whether I ought to have let you go.”

“I only went over to the other side of the river — to the Carmelites,” said Newman.

Mrs. Tristram looked at him a moment and smiled. “What did you do there? Try to scale the wall?”

“I did nothing. I looked at the place for a few minutes and then came away.”

Mrs. Tristram gave him a sympathetic glance. “You didn’t happen to meet M. de Bellegarde,” she asked, “staring hopelessly at the convent wall as well? I am told he takes his sister’s conduct very hard.”

“No, I didn’t meet him, I am happy to say,” Newman answered, after a pause.

“They are in the country,” Mrs. Tristram went on; “at — what is the name of the place? — Fleurieres. They returned there at the time you left Paris and have been spending the year in extreme seclusion. The little marquise must enjoy it; I expect to hear that she has eloped with her daughter’s music-master!”

Newman was looking at the light wood-fire; but he listened to this with extreme interest. At last he spoke: “I mean never to mention the name of those people again, and I don’t want to hear anything more about them.” And then he took out his pocket-book and drew forth a scrap of paper. He looked at it an instant, then got up and stood by the fire. “I am going to burn them up,” he said. “I am glad to have you as a witness. There they go!” And he tossed the paper into the flame.

Mrs. Tristram sat with her embroidery needle suspended. “What is that paper?” she asked.

Newman leaning against the fire-place, stretched his arms and drew a longer breath than usual. Then after a moment, “I can tell you now,” he said. “It was a paper containing a secret of the Bellegardes — something which would damn them if it were known.”

Mrs. Tristram dropped her embroidery with a reproachful moan. “Ah, why didn’t you show it to me?”

“I thought of showing it to you — I thought of showing it to every one. I thought of paying my debt to the Bellegardes that way. So I told them, and I frightened them. They have been staying in the country as you tell me, to keep out of the explosion. But I have given it up.”