Part 37 (2/2)
”Sure?” said Newman. ”So foolish a question deserves a foolish answer.
Yes!”
”You are not afraid of anything?”
”What should I be afraid of? You can't hurt me unless you kill me by some violent means. That I should indeed consider a tremendous sell.
I want to live and I mean to live. I can't die of illness, I am too ridiculously tough; and the time for dying of old age won't come round yet a while. I can't lose my wife, I shall take too good care of her. I may lose my money, or a large part of it; but that won't matter, for I shall make twice as much again. So what have I to be afraid of?”
”You are not afraid it may be rather a mistake for an American man of business to marry a French countess?”
”For the countess, possibly; but not for the man of business, if you mean me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her happiness!” And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy cert.i.tude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh. ”Got a headache?” Newman asked.
”Je suis triste,” said Valentin, with Gallic simplicity.
”You are sad, eh? It is about the lady you said the other night that you adored and that you couldn't marry?”
”Did I really say that? It seemed to me afterwards that the words had escaped me. Before Claire it was bad taste. But I felt gloomy as I spoke, and I feel gloomy still. Why did you ever introduce me to that girl?”
”Oh, it's Noemie, is it? Lord deliver us! You don't mean to say you are lovesick about her?”
”Lovesick, no; it's not a grand pa.s.sion. But the cold-blooded little demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something crazy in consequence. It's very low, it's disgustingly low. She's the most mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of mind; she is always running in my head. It's a striking contrast to your n.o.ble and virtuous attachment--a vile contrast! It is rather pitiful that it should be the best I am able to do for myself at my present respectable age. I am a nice young man, eh, en somme? You can't warrant my future, as you do your own.”
”Drop that girl, short,” said Newman; ”don't go near her again, and your future will do. Come over to America and I will get you a place in a bank.”
”It is easy to say drop her,” said Valentin, with a light laugh. ”You can't drop a pretty woman like that. One must be polite, even with Noemie. Besides, I'll not have her suppose I am afraid of her.”
”So, between politeness and vanity, you will get deeper into the mud?
Keep them both for something better. Remember, too, that I didn't want to introduce you to her: you insisted. I had a sort of uneasy feeling about it.”
”Oh, I don't reproach you,” said Valentin. ”Heaven forbid! I wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don't know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me,” he added in an instant; ”she doesn't amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one.
Let us talk of something else.” Valentin introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving pictures of her manners and quoting specimens of her mots. These were very witty, and, for a young woman who six months before had been painting the most artless madonnas, startlingly cynical. But at last, abruptly, he stopped, became thoughtful, and for some time afterwards said nothing. When he rose to go it was evident that his thoughts were still running upon Mademoiselle Nioche. ”Yes, she's a frightful little monster!” he said.
CHAPTER XVI
The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known. He saw Madame de Cintre every day, and never saw either old Madame de Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law. Madame de Cintre at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize for their never being present. ”They are much taken up,” she said, ”with doing the honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere.” There was a smile in her gravity as she made this declaration, and it deepened as she added, ”He is our seventh cousin, you know, and blood is thicker than water. And then, he is so interesting!” And with this she laughed.
Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times, always roaming about with graceful vagueness, as if in search of an unattainable ideal of amus.e.m.e.nt. She always reminded him of a painted perfume-bottle with a crack in it; but he had grown to have a kindly feeling for her, based on the fact of her owing conjugal allegiance to Urbain de Bellegarde.
He pitied M. de Bellegarde's wife, especially since she was a silly, thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a suggestion of an unregulated heart. The small marquise sometimes looked at him with an intensity too marked not to be innocent, for coquetry is more finely shaded.
She apparently wanted to ask him something or tell him something; he wondered what it was. But he was shy of giving her an opportunity, because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her matrimonial lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had a fancy, however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after looking around behind her) with a little pa.s.sionate hiss, ”I know you detest my husband; let me have the pleasure of a.s.suring you for once that you are right. Pity a poor woman who is married to a clock-image in papier-mache!” Possessing, however, in default of a competent knowledge of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the ”meanness”
of certain actions, it seemed to him to belong to his position to keep on his guard; he was not going to put it into the power of these people to say that in their house he had done anything unpleasant. As it was, Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of the dress she meant to wear at his wedding, and which had not yet, in her creative imagination, in spite of many interviews with the tailor, resolved itself into its composite totality. ”I told you pale blue bows on the sleeves, at the elbows,” she said. ”But to-day I don't see my blue bows at all. I don't know what has become of them. To-day I see pink--a tender pink. And then I pa.s.s through strange, dull phases in which neither blue nor pink says anything to me. And yet I must have the bows.”
”Have them green or yellow,” said Newman.
”Malheureux!” the little marquise would cry. ”Green bows would break your marriage--your children would be illegitimate!”
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