The American by Henry James (free e reader txt) 📕

you a warning. After all, you are a man, you are young and at liberty. Let me beseech you, then, to respect the innocence of Mademoiselle Nioche!”

Newman had wondered what was coming, and at this he broke into a laugh. He was on the point of declaring that his own innocence struck him as the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the young girl with nothing less than veneration. He found her waiting for him, seated upon the great divan in the Salon Carré. She was not in her working-day costume, but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her parasol, in honor of the occasion. These articles had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived. She made Newman a most respectful curtsey and expressed her gratitude for his liberality in a wonderfully graceful little speech. It annoyed him to have a charming young girl stand there thanking him, and it made him feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally in his pay. He assured her, in such French as he could muster, that the thing was not worth mentioning, and that he considered her services a great favor.

“Whenever you please, then,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “we will pass the review.”

They walked slowly round the room, then passed into the others and strolled about for half an hour. Mademoiselle Noémie evidently relished her situation, and had no desire to bring her public interview with her striking-looking patron to a close. Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her. The little thin-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father on the occasion of their former meeting had given place to the most lingering and caressing tones.

“What sort of pictures do you desire?” she asked. “Sacred, or profane?”

“Oh, a few of each,” said Newman. “But I want something bright and gay.”

“Something gay? There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre. But we will see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm. My father has done wonders.”

“Oh, I am a bad subject,” said Newman. “I am too old to learn a language.”

“Too old? Quelle folie!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, with a clear, shrill laugh. “You are a very young man. And how do you like my father?”

“He is a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders.”

“He is very comme il faut, my papa,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, “and as honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could trust him with millions.”

“Do you always obey him?” asked Newman.

“Obey him?”

“Do you do what he bids you?”

The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too much for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. “Why do you ask me that?” she demanded.

“Because I want to know.”

“You think me a bad girl?” And she gave a strange smile.

Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche’s solicitude for her “innocence,” and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow her searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father nervous; but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had any; she had been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St. Johns; she had kept an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature around her, and she had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do something very audacious, but she would never do anything foolish. Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried utterance, was always, mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself, now, what she was looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that she would like him to confess that he did think her a bad girl.

“Oh, no,” he said at last; “it would be very bad manners in me to judge you that way. I don’t know you.”

“But my father has complained to you,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.

“He says you are a coquette.”

“He shouldn’t go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don’t believe it?”

“No,” said Newman gravely, “I don’t believe it.”

She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. “How should you like that?” she asked.

“It doesn’t please me,” said Newman. “The young lady in the yellow dress is not pretty.”

“Ah, you are a great connoisseur,” murmured Mademoiselle Noémie.

“In pictures? Oh, no; I know very little about them.”

“In pretty women, then.”

“In that I am hardly better.”

“What do you say to that, then?” the young girl asked, indicating a superb Italian portrait of a lady. “I will do it for you on a smaller scale.”

“On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?”

Mademoiselle Noémie glanced at the glowing splendor of the Venetian masterpiece and gave a little toss of her head. “I don’t like that woman. She looks stupid.”

“I do like her,” said Newman. “Decidedly, I must have her, as large as life. And just as stupid as she is there.”

The young girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile, “It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!” she said.

“What do you mean?” asked Newman, puzzled.

She gave another little shrug. “Seriously, then, you want that portrait—the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two magnificent arms?”

“Everything—just as it is.”

“Would nothing else do, instead?”

“Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too.”

Mademoiselle Noémie turned away a moment, walked to the other side of the hall, and stood there, looking vaguely about her. At last she came back. “It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate. Venetian portraits, as large as life! You go at it en prince. And you are going to travel about Europe that way?”

“Yes, I intend to travel,” said Newman.

“Ordering, buying, spending money?”

“Of course I shall spend some money.”

“You are very happy to have it. And you are perfectly free?”

“How do you mean, free?”

“You have nothing to bother you—no family, no wife, no fiancée?”

“Yes, I am tolerably free.”

“You are very happy,” said Mademoiselle Noémie, gravely.

“Je le veux bien!” said Newman, proving that he had learned more French than he admitted.

“And how long shall you stay in Paris?” the young girl went on.

“Only a few days more.”

“Why do you go away?”

“It is getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland.”

“To Switzerland? That’s a fine country. I would give my new parasol to see it! Lakes and mountains, romantic valleys and icy peaks! Oh, I congratulate you. Meanwhile, I shall sit here through all the hot summer, daubing at your pictures.”

“Oh, take your time about it,” said Newman. “Do them at your convenience.”

They walked farther and looked at a dozen other things. Newman pointed out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noémie generally criticised it, and proposed something else. Then suddenly she diverged and began to talk about some personal matter.

“What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carré?” she abruptly asked.

“I admired your picture.”

“But you hesitated a long time.”

“Oh, I do nothing rashly,” said Newman.

“Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never supposed you were going to speak to me. I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you to-day. It’s very curious.”

“It is very natural,” observed Newman.

“Oh, I beg your pardon; not to me. Coquette as you think me, I have never walked about in public with a gentleman before. What was my father thinking of, when he consented to our interview?”

“He was repenting of his unjust accusations,” replied Newman.

Mademoiselle Noémie remained silent; at last she dropped into a seat. “Well then, for those five it is fixed,” she said. “Five copies as brilliant and beautiful as I can make them. We have one more to choose. Shouldn’t you like one of those great Rubenses—the marriage of Marie de Médicis? Just look at it and see how handsome it is.”

“Oh, yes; I should like that,” said Newman. “Finish off with that.”

“Finish off with that—good!” And she laughed. She sat a moment, looking at him, and then she suddenly rose and stood before him, with her hands hanging and clasped in front of her. “I don’t understand you,” she said with a smile. “I don’t understand how a man can be so ignorant.”

“Oh, I am ignorant, certainly,” said Newman, putting his hands into his pockets.

“It’s ridiculous! I don’t know how to paint.”

“You don’t know how?”

“I paint like a cat; I can’t draw a straight line. I never sold a picture until you bought that thing the other day.” And as she offered this surprising information she continued to smile.

Newman burst into a laugh. “Why do you tell me this?” he asked.

“Because it irritates me to see a clever man blunder so. My pictures are grotesque.”

“And the one I possess—”

“That one is rather worse than usual.”

“Well,” said Newman, “I like it all the same!”

She looked at him askance. “That is a very pretty thing to say,” she answered; “but it is my duty to warn you before you go farther. This order of yours is impossible, you know. What do you take me for? It is work for ten men. You pick out the six most difficult pictures in the Louvre, and you expect me to go to work as if I were sitting down to hem a dozen pocket handkerchiefs. I wanted to see how far you would go.”

Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle Noémie’s sudden frankness was not essentially more honest than her leaving him in error would have been. She was playing a game; she was not simply taking pity on his æsthetic verdancy. What was it she expected to win? The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting that the prize might be great, Newman could not resist a movement of admiration for his companion’s intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand, whatever she might intend to do with the other, a very handsome sum of money.

“Are you joking,” he said, “or are you serious?”

“Oh, serious!” cried Mademoiselle Noémie, but with her extraordinary smile.

“I know very little about pictures or how they are painted. If you can’t do all that, of course you can’t. Do what you can, then.”

“It will be very bad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.

“Oh,” said Newman, laughing, “if you are determined it shall be bad, of course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?”

“I can do nothing else; I have no real talent.”

“You are deceiving your father, then.”

The young girl hesitated a moment. “He knows very well!”

“No,” Newman declared; “I am sure he believes in you.”

“He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place to come to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp room, on a court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter.”

“Of course it is much more amusing,” said Newman.