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

her no grudge for doing so, and he was determined to pay the young man exactly the proper sum. At this moment, however, his attention was attracted by a gentleman who had come from another part of the room and whose manner was that of a stranger to the gallery, although he was equipped with neither guide-book nor opera-glass. He carried a white sun-umbrella, lined with blue silk, and he strolled in front of the Paul Veronese, vaguely looking at it, but much too near to see anything but the grain of the canvas. Opposite to Christopher Newman he paused and turned, and then our friend, who had been observing him, had a chance to verify a suspicion aroused by an imperfect view of his face. The result of this larger scrutiny was that he presently sprang to his feet, strode across the room, and, with an outstretched hand, arrested the gentleman with the blue-lined umbrella. The latter stared, but put out his hand at a venture. He was corpulent and rosy, and though his countenance, which was ornamented with a beautiful flaxen beard, carefully divided in the middle and brushed outward at the sides, was not remarkable for intensity of expression, he looked like a person who would willingly shake hands with anyone. I know not what Newman thought of his face, but he found a want of response in his grasp.

“Oh, come, come,” he said, laughing; “don’t say, now, you don’t know me—if I have not got a white parasol!”

The sound of his voice quickened the other’s memory, his face expanded to its fullest capacity, and he also broke into a laugh. “Why, Newman—I’ll be blowed! Where in the world—I declare—who would have thought? You know you have changed.”

“You haven’t!” said Newman.

“Not for the better, no doubt. When did you get here?”

“Three days ago.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?”

“I had no idea you were here.”

“I have been here these six years.”

“It must be eight or nine since we met.”

“Something of that sort. We were very young.”

“It was in St. Louis, during the war. You were in the army.”

“Oh no, not I! But you were.”

“I believe I was.”

“You came out all right?”

“I came out with my legs and arms—and with satisfaction. All that seems very far away.”

“And how long have you been in Europe?”

“Seventeen days.”

“First time?”

“Yes, very much so.”

“Made your everlasting fortune?”

Christopher Newman was silent a moment, and then with a tranquil smile he answered, “Yes.”

“And come to Paris to spend it, eh?”

“Well, we shall see. So they carry those parasols here—the men-folk?”

“Of course they do. They’re great things. They understand comfort out here.”

“Where do you buy them?”

“Anywhere, everywhere.”

“Well, Tristram, I’m glad to get hold of you. You can show me the ropes. I suppose you know Paris inside out.”

Mr. Tristram gave a mellow smile of self-gratulation. “Well, I guess there are not many men that can show me much. I’ll take care of you.”

“It’s a pity you were not here a few minutes ago. I have just bought a picture. You might have put the thing through for me.”

“Bought a picture?” said Mr. Tristram, looking vaguely round at the walls. “Why, do they sell them?”

“I mean a copy.”

“Oh, I see. These,” said Mr. Tristram, nodding at the Titians and Vandykes, “these, I suppose, are originals.”

“I hope so,” cried Newman. “I don’t want a copy of a copy.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Tristram, mysteriously, “you can never tell. They imitate, you know, so deucedly well. It’s like the jewellers, with their false stones. Go into the Palais Royal, there; you see ‘Imitation’ on half the windows. The law obliges them to stick it on, you know; but you can’t tell the things apart. To tell the truth,” Mr. Tristram continued, with a wry face, “I don’t do much in pictures. I leave that to my wife.”

“Ah, you have got a wife?”

“Didn’t I mention it? She’s a very nice woman; you must know her. She’s up there in the Avenue d’Iéna.”

“So you are regularly fixed—house and children and all.”

“Yes, a tip-top house and a couple of youngsters.”

“Well,” said Christopher Newman, stretching his arms a little, with a sigh, “I envy you.”

“Oh no! you don’t!” answered Mr. Tristram, giving him a little poke with his parasol.

“I beg your pardon; I do!”

“Well, you won’t, then, when—when—”

“You don’t certainly mean when I have seen your establishment?”

“When you have seen Paris, my boy. You want to be your own master here.”

“Oh, I have been my own master all my life, and I’m tired of it.”

“Well, try Paris. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

“C’est le bel âge, as they say here.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that a man shouldn’t send away his plate till he has eaten his fill.”

“All that? I have just made arrangements to take French lessons.”

“Oh, you don’t want any lessons. You’ll pick it up. I never took any.”

“I suppose you speak French as well as English?”

“Better!” said Mr. Tristram, roundly. “It’s a splendid language. You can say all sorts of bright things in it.”

“But I suppose,” said Christopher Newman, with an earnest desire for information, “that you must be bright to begin with.”

“Not a bit; that’s just the beauty of it.”

The two friends, as they exchanged these remarks, had remained standing where they met, and leaning against the rail which protected the pictures. Mr. Tristram at last declared that he was overcome with fatigue and should be happy to sit down. Newman recommended in the highest terms the great divan on which he had been lounging, and they prepared to seat themselves. “This is a great place; isn’t it?” said Newman, with ardor.

“Great place, great place. Finest thing in the world.” And then, suddenly, Mr. Tristram hesitated and looked about him. “I suppose they won’t let you smoke here.”

Newman stared. “Smoke? I’m sure I don’t know. You know the regulations better than I.”

“I? I never was here before!”

“Never! in six years?”

“I believe my wife dragged me here once when we first came to Paris, but I never found my way back.”

“But you say you know Paris so well!”

“I don’t call this Paris!” cried Mr. Tristram, with assurance. “Come; let’s go over to the Palais Royal and have a smoke.”

“I don’t smoke,” said Newman.

“A drink, then.”

And Mr. Tristram led his companion away. They passed through the glorious halls of the Louvre, down the staircases, along the cool, dim galleries of sculpture, and out into the enormous court. Newman looked about him as he went, but he made no comments, and it was only when they at last emerged into the open air that he said to his friend, “It seems to me that in your place I should have come here once a week.”

“Oh, no you wouldn’t!” said Mr. Tristram. “You think so, but you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have had time. You would always mean to go, but you never would go. There’s better fun than that, here in Paris. Italy’s the place to see pictures; wait till you get there. There you have to go; you can’t do anything else. It’s an awful country; you can’t get a decent cigar. I don’t know why I went in there, to-day; I was strolling along, rather hard up for amusement. I sort of noticed the Louvre as I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was going on. But if I hadn’t found you there I should have felt rather sold. Hang it, I don’t care for pictures; I prefer the reality!” And Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance which the numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose of “culture” might have envied him.

The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais Royal, where they seated themselves at one of the little tables stationed at the door of the café which projects into the great open quadrangle. The place was filled with people, the fountains were spouting, a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gaiety in the whole scene, and Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.

“And now,” began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which he had caused to be served to them, “now just give an account of yourself. What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from and where are you going? In the first place, where are you staying?”

“At the Grand Hotel,” said Newman.

Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage. “That won’t do! You must change.”

“Change?” demanded Newman. “Why, it’s the finest hotel I ever was in.”

“You don’t want a ‘fine’ hotel; you want something small and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you—your person is recognized.”

“They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the bell,” said Newman “and as for my person they are always bowing and scraping to it.”

“I suppose you are always tipping them. That’s very bad style.”

“Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him if he wouldn’t sit down. Was that bad style?”

“Very!”

“But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last night until two o’clock in the morning, watching the coming and going, and the people knocking about.”

“You’re easily pleased. But you can do as you choose—a man in your shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?”

“I have made enough.”

“Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?”

“Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about me, to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and, if the fancy takes me, to marry a wife.” Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his habitual mode of utterance, but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted.

“Jupiter! There’s a programme!” cried Mr. Tristram. “Certainly, all that takes money, especially the wife; unless indeed she gives it, as mine did. And what’s the story? How have you done it?”

Newman had pushed his hat back from his forehead, folded his arms, and stretched his legs. He listened to the music, he looked about him at the bustling crowd, at the plashing fountains, at the nurses and the babies. “I have worked!” he answered at last.

Tristram looked at him for some moments, and allowed his placid eyes to measure his friend’s generous longitude and rest upon his comfortably contemplative face. “What have you worked at?” he asked.

“Oh, at several things.”

“I suppose you’re a smart fellow, eh?”

Newman continued to look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the scene a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. “Yes,” he said at last, “I suppose I am.” And then, in answer to his companion’s inquiries, he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman had come out of the war with a brevet of brigadier-general, an honor which in this case—without invidious comparisons—had lighted upon shoulders amply competent to bear it. But though he could manage a fight, when need was, Newman heartily disliked the business; his four years in the army had left him with an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious things—life and time and money and “smartness” and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and his lively perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as