The American

H >> Henry James >> The American


"You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain!"
exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde. "Promise, then, after you are married.
After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it."

"Well, then, after I am married," said Newman serenely.

The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered
what was coming. "I suppose you know what my life is," she presently
said. "I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing. I live in Paris
as I might live at Poitiers. My mother-in-law calls me--what is the
pretty word?--a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and
thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my
ancestors on my fingers. But why should I bother about my ancestors?
I am sure they never bothered about me. I don't propose to live with
a green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at. My
husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that
the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar. If the Tuileries are vulgar, his
principles are tiresome. If I chose I might have principles quite as
well as he. If they grew on one's family tree I should only have to give
mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest. At any rate, I prefer
clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons."

"Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to
smooth her way to the imperial halls.

The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. "You are a thousand miles away.
I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they
will be very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an
imperial quadrille. I know what you are going to say: 'How will you
dare?' But I SHALL dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft,
smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of
him--horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.
But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must
live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream. I want
to go to the Bal Bullier."

"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant
nothing.

"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their
mistresses. Don't tell me you have not heard of it."

"Oh yes," said Newman; "I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even
been there. And you want to go there?"

"It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go.
Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drole. My
friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home."

"It seems to me you are not at home now," said Newman, "and I shouldn't
exactly say you were moping."

"I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the last
eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that:
Pray, madam, haven't you an opera box? Could a woman of taste want more?
In the first place, my opera box was down in my contrat; they have
to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a
thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband won't go to the
Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much. You may
imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier's; he says it is
a mere imitation--and a bad one--of what they do at the Princess
Kleinfuss's. But as I don't go to the Princess Kleinfuss's, the next
best thing is to go to Bullier's. It is my dream, at any rate, it's
a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less
compromising than any one else. I don't know why, but you are. I can
arrange it. I shall risk something, but that is my own affair. Besides,
fortune favors the bold. Don't refuse me; it is my dream!"

Newman gave a loud laugh. It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the
wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress
of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one's
aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking
off young men's hats. It struck him as a theme for the moralist; but
he had no time to moralize upon it. The curtain rose again; M. de
Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.

He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the
baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her
companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him.
In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had
reflected upon possible emigration. "If you really meant to meditate,"
he said, "you might have chosen a better place for it."

"Oh, the place was not bad," said Valentin. "I was not thinking of that
girl. I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the play or
looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal. At first it seemed
quite fantastic. And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra--I could
distinguish it--began to say as it scraped away, 'Why not, why not?'
And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and the
conductor's stick seemed to beat it in the air: 'Why not, why not?' I'm
sure I can't say! I don't see why not. I don't see why I shouldn't do
something. It appears to me really a very bright idea. This sort of
thing is certainly very stale. And then I could come back with a trunk
full of dollars. Besides, I might possibly find it amusing. They call me
a raffine; who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in
shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic, picturesque side;
it would look well in my biography. It would look as if I were a strong
man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated circumstances."

"Never mind how it would look," said Newman. "It always looks well to
have half a million of dollars. There is no reason why you shouldn't
have them if you will mind what I tell you--I alone--and not talk to
other parties." He passed his arm into that of his companion, and
the two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented
corridors. Newman's imagination began to glow with the idea of
converting his bright, impracticable friend into a first-class man of
business. He felt for the moment a sort of spiritual zeal, the zeal
of the propagandist. Its ardor was in part the result of that general
discomfort which the sight of all uninvested capital produced in him; so
fine an intelligence as Bellegarde's ought to be dedicated to high uses.
The highest uses known to Newman's experience were certain transcendent
sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his zeal was
quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity
for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de
Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that
Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots
between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking the
Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one's
promenade was a continent, and one's Boulevard stretched from New York
to San Francisco. It mortified him, moreover, to think that Valentin
lacked money; there was a painful grotesqueness in it. It affected him
as the ignorance of a companion, otherwise without reproach, touching
some rudimentary branch of learning would have done. There were things
that one knew about as a matter of course, he would have said in such a
case. Just so, if one pretended to be easy in the world, one had money
as a matter of course, one had made it! There was something almost
ridiculously anomalous to Newman in the sight of lively pretensions
unaccompanied by large investments in railroads; though I may add that
he would not have maintained that such investments were in themselves a
proper ground for pretensions. "I will make you do something," he said
to Valentin; "I will put you through. I know half a dozen things in
which we can make a place for you. You will see some lively work. It
will take you a little while to get used to the life, but you will work
in before long, and at the end of six months--after you have done a
thing or two on your own account--you will like it. And then it will
be very pleasant for you, having your sister over there. It will be
pleasant for her to have you, too. Yes, Valentin," continued Newman,
pressing his friend's arm genially, "I think I see just the opening for
you. Keep quiet and I'll push you right in."

Newman pursued this favoring strain for some time longer. The two
men strolled about for a quarter of an hour. Valentin listened and
questioned, many of his questions making Newman laugh loud at the
naivete of his ignorance of the vulgar processes of money-getting;
smiling himself, too, half ironical and half curious. And yet he was
serious; he was fascinated by Newman's plain prose version of the legend
of El Dorado. It is true, however, that though to accept an "opening"
in an American mercantile house might be a bold, original, and in its
consequences extremely agreeable thing to do, he did not quite see
himself objectively doing it. So that when the bell rang to indicate the
close of the entr'acte, there was a certain mock-heroism in his saying,
with his brilliant smile, "Well, then, put me through; push me in! I
make myself over to you. Dip me into the pot and turn me into gold."

They had passed into the corridor which encircled the row of baignoires,
and Valentin stopped in front of the dusky little box in which
Mademoiselle Nioche had bestowed herself, laying his hand on the
doorknob. "Oh, come, are you going back there?" asked Newman.

"Mon Dieu, oui," said Valentin.

"Haven't you another place?"

"Yes, I have my usual place, in the stalls."

"You had better go and occupy it, then."

"I see her very well from there, too," added Valentin, serenely, "and
to-night she is worth seeing. But," he added in a moment, "I have a
particular reason for going back just now."

"Oh, I give you up," said Newman. "You are infatuated!"

"No, it is only this. There is a young man in the box whom I shall annoy
by going in, and I want to annoy him."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Newman. "Can't you leave the poor fellow
alone?"

"No, he has given me cause. The box is not his. Noemie came in alone
and installed herself. I went and spoke to her, and in a few moments she
asked me to go and get her fan from the pocket of her cloak, which the
ouvreuse had carried off. In my absence this gentleman came in and took
the chair beside Noemie in which I had been sitting. My reappearance
disgusted him, and he had the grossness to show it. He came within an
ace of being impertinent. I don't know who he is; he is some vulgar
wretch. I can't think where she picks up such acquaintances. He has been
drinking, too, but he knows what he is about. Just now, in the second
act, he was unmannerly again. I shall put in another appearance for ten
minutes--time enough to give him an opportunity to commit himself, if he
feels inclined. I really can't let the brute suppose that he is keeping
me out of the box."

"My dear fellow," said Newman, remonstrantly, "what child's play! You
are not going to pick a quarrel about that girl, I hope."

"That girl has nothing to do with it, and I have no intention of picking
a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to make a
point that a gentleman must."

"Oh, damn your point!" said Newman. "That is the trouble with you
Frenchmen; you must be always making points. Well," he added, "be short.
But if you are going in for this kind of thing, we must ship you off to
America in advance."

"Very good," Valentin answered, "whenever you please. But if I go to
America, I must not let this gentleman suppose that it is to run away
from him."

And they separated. At the end of the act Newman observed that Valentin
was still in the baignoire. He strolled into the corridor again,
expecting to meet him, and when he was within a few yards of
Mademoiselle Nioche's box saw his friend pass out, accompanied by
the young man who had been seated beside its fair occupant. The two
gentlemen walked with some quickness of step to a distant part of the
lobby, where Newman perceived them stop and stand talking. The manner
of each was perfectly quiet, but the stranger, who looked flushed, had
begun to wipe his face very emphatically with his pocket-handkerchief.
By this time Newman was abreast of the baignoire; the door had been
left ajar, and he could see a pink dress inside. He immediately went in.
Mademoiselle Nioche turned and greeted him with a brilliant smile.

"Ah, you have at last decided to come and see me?" she exclaimed. "You
just save your politeness. You find me in a fine moment. Sit down."
There was a very becoming little flush in her cheek, and her eye had a
noticeable spark. You would have said that she had received some very
good news.

"Something has happened here!" said Newman, without sitting down.

"You find me in a very fine moment," she repeated. "Two gentlemen--one
of them is M. de Bellegarde, the pleasure of whose acquaintance I owe to
you--have just had words about your humble servant. Very big words too.
They can't come off without crossing swords. A duel--that will give me
a push!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie clapping her little hands. "C'est ca
qui pose une femme!"

"You don't mean to say that Bellegarde is going to fight about YOU!"
exclaimed Newman, disgustedly.

"Nothing else!" and she looked at him with a hard little smile. "No,
no, you are not galant! And if you prevent this affair I shall owe you a
grudge--and pay my debt!"

Newman uttered an imprecation which, though brief--it consisted simply
of the interjection "Oh!" followed by a geographical, or more
correctly, perhaps a theological noun in four letters--had better not
be transferred to these pages. He turned his back without more ceremony
upon the pink dress and went out of the box. In the corridor he found
Valentin and his companion walking towards him. The latter was thrusting
a card into his waistcoat pocket. Mademoiselle Noemie's jealous votary
was a tall, robust young man with a thick nose, a prominent blue eye, a
Germanic physiognomy, and a massive watch-chain. When they reached the
box, Valentin with an emphasized bow made way for him to pass in first.
Newman touched Valentin's arm as a sign that he wished to speak with
him, and Bellegarde answered that he would be with him in an instant.
Valentin entered the box after the robust young man, but a couple of
minutes afterwards he reappeared, largely smiling.

"She is immensely tickled," he said. "She says we will make her fortune.
I don't want to be fatuous, but I think it is very possible."

"So you are going to fight?" said Newman.

"My dear fellow, don't look so mortally disgusted. It was not my choice.
The thing is all arranged."

"I told you so!" groaned Newman.

"I told HIM so," said Valentin, smiling.

"What did he do to you?"

"My good friend, it doesn't matter what. He used an expression--I took
it up."

"But I insist upon knowing; I can't, as your elder brother, have you
rushing into this sort of nonsense."

"I am very much obliged to you," said Valentin. "I have nothing to
conceal, but I can't go into particulars now and here."

"We will leave this place, then. You can tell me outside."

"Oh no, I can't leave this place, why should I hurry away? I will go to
my orchestra-stall and sit out the opera."

"You will not enjoy it; you will be preoccupied."

Valentin looked at him a moment, colored a little, smiled, and patted
him on the arm. "You are delightfully simple! Before an affair a man is
quiet. The quietest thing I can do is to go straight to my place."

"Ah," said Newman, "you want her to see you there--you and your
quietness. I am not so simple! It is a poor business."

Valentin remained, and the two men, in their respective places, sat
out the rest of the performance, which was also enjoyed by Mademoiselle
Nioche and her truculent admirer. At the end Newman joined Valentin
again, and they went into the street together. Valentin shook his head
at his friend's proposal that he should get into Newman's own vehicle,
and stopped on the edge of the pavement. "I must go off alone," he
said; "I must look up a couple of friends who will take charge of this
matter."

"I will take charge of it," Newman declared. "Put it into my hands."

"You are very kind, but that is hardly possible. In the first place, you
are, as you said just now, almost my brother; you are about to marry
my sister. That alone disqualifies you; it casts doubts on your
impartiality. And if it didn't, it would be enough for me that I
strongly suspect you of disapproving of the affair. You would try to
prevent a meeting."

"Of course I should," said Newman. "Whoever your friends are, I hope
they will do that."

"Unquestionably they will. They will urge that excuses be made, proper
excuses. But you would be too good-natured. You won't do."

Newman was silent a moment. He was keenly annoyed, but he saw it was
useless to attempt interference. "When is this precious performance to
come off?" he asked.

"The sooner the better," said Valentin. "The day after to-morrow, I
hope."

"Well," said Newman, "I have certainly a claim to know the facts. I
can't consent to shut my eyes to the matter."

"I shall be most happy to tell you the facts," said Valentin. "They are
very simple, and it will be quickly done. But now everything depends on
my putting my hands on my friends without delay. I will jump into a cab;
you had better drive to my room and wait for me there. I will turn up at
the end of an hour."

Newman assented protestingly, let his friend go, and then betook himself
to the picturesque little apartment in the Rue d'Anjou. It was more
than an hour before Valentin returned, but when he did so he was able
to announce that he had found one of his desired friends, and that this
gentleman had taken upon himself the care of securing an associate.
Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin's faded fire, upon
which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the richly-encumbered
little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and shadows. He
listened in silence to Valentin's account of what had passed between him
and the gentleman whose card he had in his pocket--M. Stanislas Kapp,
of Strasbourg--after his return to Mademoiselle Nioche's box. This
hospitable young lady had espied an acquaintance on the other side
of the house, and had expressed her displeasure at his not having the
civility to come and pay her a visit. "Oh, let him alone!" M. Stanislas
Kapp had hereupon exclaimed. "There are too many people in the box
already." And he had fixed his eyes with a demonstrative stare upon M.
de Bellegarde. Valentin had promptly retorted that if there were too
many people in the box it was easy for M. Kapp to diminish the number.
"I shall be most happy to open the door for YOU!" M. Kapp exclaimed. "I
shall be delighted to fling you into the pit!" Valentin had answered.
"Oh, do make a rumpus and get into the papers!" Miss Noemie had
gleefully ejaculated. "M. Kapp, turn him out; or, M. de Bellegarde,
pitch him into the pit, into the orchestra--anywhere! I don't care who
does which, so long as you make a scene." Valentin answered that they
would make no scene, but that the gentleman would be so good as to
step into the corridor with him. In the corridor, after a brief further
exchange of words, there had been an exchange of cards. M. Stanislas
Kapp was very stiff. He evidently meant to force his offence home.

"The man, no doubt, was insolent," Newman said; "but if you hadn't gone
back into the box the thing wouldn't have happened."

"Why, don't you see," Valentin replied, "that the event proves the
extreme propriety of my going back into the box? M. Kapp wished to
provoke me; he was awaiting his chance. In such a case--that is, when
he has been, so to speak, notified--a man must be on hand to receive the
provocation. My not returning would simply have been tantamount to
my saying to M. Stanislas Kapp, 'Oh, if you are going to be
disagreeable'"--

"'You must manage it by yourself; damned if I'll help you!' That would
have been a thoroughly sensible thing to say. The only attraction for
you seems to have been the prospect of M. Kapp's impertinence," Newman
went on. "You told me you were not going back for that girl."

"Oh, don't mention that girl any more," murmured Valentin. "She's a
bore."

"With all my heart. But if that is the way you feel about her, why
couldn't you let her alone?"

Valentin shook his head with a fine smile. "I don't think you quite
understand, and I don't believe I can make you. She understood the
situation; she knew what was in the air; she was watching us."

"A cat may look at a king! What difference does that make?"

"Why, a man can't back down before a woman."

"I don't call her a woman. You said yourself she was a stone," cried
Newman.

"Well," Valentin rejoined, "there is no disputing about tastes. It's a
matter of feeling; it's measured by one's sense of honor."

"Oh, confound your sense of honor!" cried Newman.

"It is vain talking," said Valentin; "words have passed, and the thing
is settled."

Newman turned away, taking his hat. Then pausing with his hand on the
door, "What are you going to use?" he asked.

"That is for M. Stanislas Kapp, as the challenged party, to decide.
My own choice would be a short, light sword. I handle it well. I'm an
indifferent shot."

Newman had put on his hat; he pushed it back, gently scratching his
forehead, high up. "I wish it were pistols," he said. "I could show you
how to lodge a bullet!"

Valentin broke into a laugh. "What is it some English poet says about
consistency? It's a flower or a star, or a jewel. Yours has the beauty
of all three!" But he agreed to see Newman again on the morrow, after
the details of his meeting with M. Stanislas Kapp should have been
arranged.

In the course of the day Newman received three lines from him, saying
that it had been decided that he should cross the frontier, with his
adversary, and that he was to take the night express to Geneva. He
should have time, however, to dine with Newman. In the afternoon Newman
called upon Madame de Cintre, but his visit was brief. She was as
gracious and sympathetic as he had ever found her, but she was sad, and
she confessed, on Newman's charging her with her red eyes, that she had
been crying. Valentin had been with her a couple of hours before, and
his visit had left her with a painful impression. He had laughed and
gossiped, he had brought her no bad news, he had only been, in his
manner, rather more affectionate than usual. His fraternal tenderness
had touched her, and on his departure she had burst into tears. She had
felt as if something strange and sad were going to happen; she had tried
to reason away the fancy, and the effort had only given her a headache.
Newman, of course, was perforce tongue-tied about Valentin's projected
duel, and his dramatic talent was not equal to satirizing Madame de
Cintre's presentiment as pointedly as perfect security demanded. Before
he went away he asked Madame de Cintre whether Valentin had seen his
mother.

"Yes," she said, "but he didn't make her cry."

It was in Newman's own apartment that Valentin dined, having brought
his portmanteau, so that he might adjourn directly to the railway. M.
Stanislas Kapp had positively declined to make excuses, and he, on his
side, obviously, had none to offer. Valentin had found out with whom he
was dealing. M. Stanislas Kapp was the son of and heir of a rich brewer
of Strasbourg, a youth of a sanguineous--and sanguinary--temperament.
He was making ducks and drakes of the paternal brewery, and although he
passed in a general way for a good fellow, he had already been observed
to be quarrelsome after dinner. "Que voulez-vous?" said Valentin.
"Brought up on beer, he can't stand champagne." He had chosen pistols.
Valentin, at dinner, had an excellent appetite; he made a point, in view
of his long journey, of eating more than usual. He took the liberty
of suggesting to Newman a slight modification in the composition of a
certain fish-sauce; he thought it would be worth mentioning to the
cook. But Newman had no thoughts for fish-sauce; he felt thoroughly
discontented. As he sat and watched his amiable and clever companion
going through his excellent repast with the delicate deliberation of
hereditary epicurism, the folly of so charming a fellow traveling off
to expose his agreeable young life for the sake of M. Stanislas and
Mademoiselle Noemie struck him with intolerable force. He had grown fond
of Valentin, he felt now how fond; and his sense of helplessness only
increased his irritation.

"Well, this sort of thing may be all very well," he cried at last, "but
I declare I don't see it. I can't stop you, perhaps, but at least I can
protest. I do protest, violently."

"My dear fellow, don't make a scene," said Valentin. "Scenes in these
cases are in very bad taste."