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

down over her flounces and then up at Newman.

“You had better have remained an honest girl,” Newman said quietly.

M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling. “You mean that I look so much like one? That’s more than most women do nowadays. Don’t judge me yet awhile,” she added. “I mean to succeed; that’s what I mean to do. I leave you; I don’t mean to be seen in cafés, for one thing. I can’t think what you want of my poor father; he’s very comfortable now. It isn’t his fault, either. Au revoir, little father.” And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute, looking at Newman. “Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to come and get it from me!” And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.

M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. “So you determined not to shoot her, after all,” Newman said presently.

M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche’s gaze was a profession of moral flatness. “You despise me terribly,” he said, in the weakest possible voice.

“Oh no,” said Newman, “it is none of my business. It’s a good plan to take things easily.”

“I made you too many fine speeches,” M. Nioche added. “I meant them at the time.”

“I am sure I am very glad you didn’t shoot her,” said Newman. “I was afraid you might have shot yourself. That is why I came to look you up.” And he began to button his coat.

“Neither,” said M. Nioche. “You despise me, and I can’t explain to you. I hoped I shouldn’t see you again.”

“Why, that’s rather shabby,” said Newman. “You shouldn’t drop your friends that way. Besides, the last time you came to see me I thought you particularly jolly.”

“Yes, I remember,” said M. Nioche musingly; “I was in a fever. I didn’t know what I said, what I did. It was delirium.”

“Ah, well, you are quieter now.”

M. Nioche was silent a moment. “As quiet as the grave,” he whispered softly.

“Are you very unhappy?”

M. Nioche rubbed his forehead slowly, and even pushed back his wig a little, looking askance at his empty glass. “Yes—yes. But that’s an old story. I have always been unhappy. My daughter does what she will with me. I take what she gives me, good or bad. I have no spirit, and when you have no spirit you must keep quiet. I shan’t trouble you any more.”

“Well,” said Newman, rather disgusted at the smooth operation of the old man’s philosophy, “that’s as you please.”

M. Nioche seemed to have been prepared to be despised but nevertheless he made a feeble movement of appeal from Newman’s faint praise. “After all,” he said, “she is my daughter, and I can still look after her. If she will do wrong, why she will. But there are many different paths, there are degrees. I can give her the benefit—give her the benefit”—and M. Nioche paused, staring vaguely at Newman, who began to suspect that his brain had softened—“the benefit of my experience,” M. Nioche added.

“Your experience?” inquired Newman, both amused and amazed.

“My experience of business,” said M. Nioche, gravely.

“Ah, yes,” said Newman, laughing, “that will be a great advantage to her!” And then he said good-bye, and offered the poor, foolish old man his hand.

M. Nioche took it and leaned back against the wall, holding it a moment and looking up at him. “I suppose you think my wits are going,” he said. “Very likely; I have always a pain in my head. That’s why I can’t explain, I can’t tell you. And she’s so strong, she makes me walk as she will, anywhere! But there’s this—there’s this.” And he stopped, still staring up at Newman. His little white eyes expanded and glittered for a moment like those of a cat in the dark. “It’s not as it seems. I haven’t forgiven her. Oh, no!”

“That’s right; don’t,” said Newman. “She’s a bad case.”

“It’s horrible, it’s horrible,” said M. Nioche; “but do you want to know the truth? I hate her! I take what she gives me, and I hate her more. To-day she brought me three hundred francs; they are here in my waistcoat pocket. Now I hate her almost cruelly. No, I haven’t forgiven her.”

“Why did you accept the money?” Newman asked.

“If I hadn’t,” said M. Nioche, “I should have hated her still more. That’s what misery is. No, I haven’t forgiven her.”

“Take care you don’t hurt her!” said Newman, laughing again. And with this he took his leave. As he passed along the glazed side of the café, on reaching the street, he saw the old man motioning the waiter, with a melancholy gesture, to replenish his glass.

One day, a week after his visit to the Café de la Patrie, he called upon Valentin de Bellegarde, and by good fortune found him at home. Newman spoke of his interview with M. Nioche and his daughter, and said he was afraid Valentin had judged the old man correctly. He had found the couple hobnobbing together in all amity; the old gentleman’s rigor was purely theoretic. Newman confessed that he was disappointed; he should have expected to see M. Nioche take high ground.

“High ground, my dear fellow,” said Valentin, laughing; “there is no high ground for him to take. The only perceptible eminence in M. Nioche’s horizon is Montmartre, which is not an edifying quarter. You can’t go mountaineering in a flat country.”

“He remarked, indeed,” said Newman, “that he has not forgiven her. But she’ll never find it out.”

“We must do him the justice to suppose he doesn’t like the thing,” Valentin rejoined. “Mademoiselle Nioche is like the great artists whose biographies we read, who at the beginning of their career have suffered opposition in the domestic circle. Their vocation has not been recognized by their families, but the world has done it justice. Mademoiselle Nioche has a vocation.”

“Oh, come,” said Newman, impatiently, “you take the little baggage too seriously.”

“I know I do; but when one has nothing to think about, one must think of little baggages. I suppose it is better to be serious about light things than not to be serious at all. This little baggage entertains me.”

“Oh, she has discovered that. She knows you have been hunting her up and asking questions about her. She is very much tickled by it. That’s rather annoying.”

“Annoying, my dear fellow,” laughed Valentin; “not the least!”

“Hanged if I should want to have a greedy little adventuress like that know I was giving myself such pains about her!” said Newman.

“A pretty woman is always worth one’s pains,” objected Valentin. “Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity, and to know that I am tickled that she is tickled. She is not so much tickled, by the way.”

“You had better go and tell her,” Newman rejoined. “She gave me a message for you of some such drift.”

“Bless your quiet imagination,” said Valentin, “I have been to see her—three times in five days. She is a charming hostess; we talk of Shakespeare and the musical glasses. She is extremely clever and a very curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse; determined not to be. She means to take very good care of herself. She is extremely perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she has not a grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped out of a big amethyst. You can’t scratch her even with a diamond. Extremely pretty,—really, when you know her, she is wonderfully pretty,—intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon my honor, extremely entertaining.”

“It’s a fine list of attractions,” said Newman; “they would serve as a police-detective’s description of a favorite criminal. I should sum them up by another word than ‘entertaining.’”

“Why, that is just the word to use. I don’t say she is laudable or lovable. I don’t want her as my wife or my sister. But she is a very curious and ingenious piece of machinery; I like to see it in operation.”

“Well, I have seen some very curious machines too,” said Newman; “and once, in a needle factory, I saw a gentleman from the city, who had stopped too near one of them, picked up as neatly as if he had been prodded by a fork, swallowed down straight, and ground into small pieces.”

Re-entering his domicile, late in the evening, three days after Madame de Bellegarde had made her bargain with him—the expression is sufficiently correct—touching the entertainment at which she was to present him to the world, he found on his table a card of goodly dimensions bearing an announcement that this lady would be at home on the 27th of the month, at ten o’clock in the evening. He stuck it into the frame of his mirror and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was gained. Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly, when Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room. Valentin’s glance presently followed the direction of Newman’s, and he perceived his mother’s invitation.

“And what have they put into the corner?” he asked. “Not the customary ‘music,’ ‘dancing,’ or ‘tableaux vivants’? They ought at least to put ‘An American.’”

“Oh, there are to be several of us,” said Newman. “Mrs. Tristram told me to-day that she had received a card and sent an acceptance.”

“Ah, then, with Mrs. Tristram and her husband you will have support. My mother might have put on her card ‘Three Americans.’ But I suspect you will not lack amusement. You will see a great many of the best people in France. I mean the long pedigrees and the high noses, and all that. Some of them are awful idiots; I advise you to take them up cautiously.”

“Oh, I guess I shall like them,” said Newman. “I am prepared to like every one and everything in these days; I am in high good-humor.”

Valentin looked at him a moment in silence and then dropped himself into a chair with an unwonted air of weariness.

“Happy man!” he said with a sigh. “Take care you don’t become offensive.”

“If anyone chooses to take offense, he may. I have a good conscience,” said Newman.

“So you are really in love with my sister.”

“Yes, sir!” said Newman, after a pause.

“And she also?”

“I guess she likes me,” said Newman.

“What is the witchcraft you have used?” Valentin asked. “How do you make love?”

“Oh, I haven’t any general rules,” said Newman. “In any way that seems acceptable.”

“I suspect that, if one knew it,” said Valentin, laughing, “you are a terrible customer. You walk in seven-league boots.”

“There is something the matter with you to-night,” Newman said in response to this. “You are vicious. Spare me all discordant sounds until after my marriage. Then, when I have settled down for life, I shall be better able to take things as they come.”

“And when does your marriage take place?”

“About six weeks hence.”

Valentin was silent a while, and then he said, “And you feel very confident about the future?”

“Confident. I knew what I wanted, exactly, and I know what I have got.”

“You are sure you are going to be happy?”

“Sure?” said Newman. “So foolish a question