Authors: Henry James
“Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman meditatively.
“You have been odiously successful.”
“Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a hopeless fizzle in oil.”
“It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money. Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
“Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am not intellectual.”
“One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a moment: “Besides, you are!”
“Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
“Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing awhile at this poor effete Old World, and then swooping down on it.”
“Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
“I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket and feathers. There are different shades.”
“I am a highly civilised man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
Mrs. Tristram was silent awhile. “I should like to make you prove it,” she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
“Pray do,” said Newman.
“That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
“Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
“I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time, and I will.” And Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded; but as he was rising to take his leave, she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you, Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
“Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
“Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit would increase insufferably.”
Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
“Forgive all my meddlesome chatter, and forget my advice. It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge for yourself.”
“I shall remember everything you have told me,” said Newman. “There are so many forms and ceremonies over here—–”
“Forms and ceremonies are what I mean, of course.”
“Ah, but I want to observe them,” said Newman. “Haven’t I as good a right as another? They don’t scare me, and you needn’t give me leave to violate them. I won’t take it.”
“That is not what I mean. I mean, observe them in your own way. Settle nice questions for yourself. Cut the knot or untie it,
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as you choose.”
“Oh, I am sure I shall never fumble over it,” said Newman.
The next time that he dined in the Avenue d’Iéna was a Sunday, a day on which Mr. Tristram left the cards
unshuffled, so that there was a trio in the evening on the balcony. The talk was of many things, and at last Mrs. Tristram suddenly observed to Christopher Newman that it was high time he should take a wife.
“Listen to her; she has the audacity!” said Tristram, who on Sunday evenings was always rather acrimonious.
“I don’t suppose you have made up your mind not to marry?” Mrs. Tristram continued.
“Heaven forbid!” cried Newman. “I am sternly resolved on it.”
“It’s very easy,” said Tristram; “fatally easy!”
“Well, then, I suppose you do not mean to wait till you are fifty.”
“On the contrary, I am in a great hurry.”
“One would never suppose it. Do you expect a lady to come and propose to you?”
“No; I am willing to propose. I think a great deal about it.”
“Tell me some of your thoughts.”
“Well,” said Newman, slowly, “I want to marry very well.”
“Marry a woman of sixty, then,” said Tristram.
“‘Well’ in what sense?”
“In every sense. I shall be hard to please.”
“You must remember that, as the French proverb says, the most beautiful girl in the world can give but what she has.”
“Since you ask me,” said Newman, “I will say frankly that I want extremely to marry. It is time, to begin with; before I know it I shall be forty. And then I’m lonely and helpless and dull. But if I marry now, so long as I didn’t do it in hot haste when I was twenty, I must do it with my eyes open. I want to do the thing in handsome style. I not only want to make no mistakes, but I want to make a great hit. I want to take my pick. My wife must be a magnificent woman.”
“Voilà ce qui s’appelle parler!”
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cried Mrs. Tristram.
“Oh, I have thought an immense deal about it.”
“Perhaps you think too much. The best thing is simply to fall in love.”
“When I find the woman who pleases me, I shall love her enough. My wife shall be very comfortable.”
“You are superb! There’s a chance for the magnificent women.”
“You are not fair,” Newman rejoined. “You draw a fellow out and put him off his guard, and then you laugh at him.”
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that I am very serious. To prove it, I will make you a proposal. Should you like me, as they say here, to marry you?”
“To hunt up a wife for me?”
“She is already found. I will bring you together.”
“Oh, come,” said Tristram, “we don’t keep a matrimonial bureau. He will think you want your commission.”
“Present me to a woman who comes up to my notions,” said Newman, “and I will marry her to-morrow.”
“You have a strange tone about it, and I don’t quite understand you. I didn’t suppose you would be so cold-blooded and calculating.”
Newman was silent a while. “Well,” he said, at last, “I want a great woman. I stick to that. That’s one thing I
can
treat myself to, and if it is to be had I mean to have it. What else have I toiled and struggled for all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
“Why didn’t you tell a fellow all this at the outset?”
Tristram demanded. “I have been trying so to make you fond of
me!”
“This is very interesting,” said Mrs. Tristram. “I like to see a man know his own mind.”
“I have known mine for a long time,” Newman went on. “I made up my mind tolerably early in life that a beautiful wife was the thing best worth having, here below. It is the greatest victory over circumstances. When I say beautiful, I mean beautiful in mind and in manners, as well as in person. It is a thing every man has an equal right to; he may get it if he can. He doesn’t have to be born with certain faculties on purpose;
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he needs only to be a man. Then he needs only to use his will, and such wits as he has, and to try.”
“It strikes me that your marriage is to be rather a matter of vanity.”
“Well, it is certain,” said Newman, “that if people notice my wife and admire her, I shall be mightily tickled.”
“After this,” cried Mrs. Tristram, “call any man modest!”
“But none of them will admire her so much as I.”
“I see you have a taste for splendour.”
Newman hesitated a little; and then: “I honestly believe I have!” he said.
“And I suppose you have already looked about you a good deal.”
“A good deal, according to opportunity.”
“And you have seen nothing that satisfied you?”
“No,” said Newman, half reluctantly, “I am bound to say in honesty that I have seen nothing that really satisfied me.”
“You remind me of the heroes of the French romantic poets, Rolla and Fortunio
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and all those other insatiable gentlemen for whom nothing in this world was handsome enough. But I see you are in earnest, and I should like to help you.”
“Who the deuce is it, darling, that you are going to put upon him?” Tristram cried. “We know a good many pretty girls, thank Heaven, but magnificent women are not so common.”
“Have you any objections to a foreigner?” his wife continued, addressing Newman, who had tilted back his chair, and, with his feet on a bar of the balcony railing and his hands in his pockets, was looking at the stars.
“No Irish need apply,”
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said Tristram.
Newman meditated awhile. “As a foreigner, no,” he said at last; “I have no prejudices.”
“My dear fellow, you have no suspicions!” cried Tristram. “You don’t know what terrible customers these foreign women are; especially the ‘magnificent’ ones. How should you like a fair Circassian, with a dagger in her belt?”
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Newman administered a vigorous slap to his knee. “I would marry a Japanese, if she pleased me,” he affirmed.
“We had better confine ourselves to Europe,” said Mrs. Tristram. “The only thing is, then, that the person be in herself to your taste?”
“She is going to offer you an unappreciated governess!” Tristram groaned.
“Assuredly. I won’t deny that, other things being equal, I should prefer one of my own countrywomen. We should speak the same language, and that would be a comfort. But I am not afraid of a foreigner. Besides, I rather like the idea of taking in Europe, too. It enlarges the field of selection. When you choose from a greater number, you can bring your choice to a finer point.”
“You talk like Sardanapalus!”
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exclaimed Tristram.
“You say all this to the right person,” said Newman’s hostess. “I happen to number among my friends the loveliest woman in the world. Neither more nor less. I don’t say a very charming person or a very estimable woman
or a very great beauty; I say simply the loveliest woman in the world.”
“The deuce!” cried Tristram, “you have kept very quiet about her. Were you afraid of me?”
“You have seen her,” said his wife, “but you have no perception of such merit as Claire’s.”
“Ah, her name is Claire? I give it up.”
“Does your friend wish to marry?” asked Newman.
“Not in the least. It is for you to make her change her mind. It will not be easy; she has had one husband, and he gave her a low opinion of the species.”
“Oh, she is a widow, then?” said Newman.
“Are you already afraid? She was married at eighteen, by her parents, in the French fashion, to a disagreeable old man. But he had the good taste to die a couple of years afterward, and she is now twenty-five.”
“So she is French?”
“French by her father, English by her mother. She is really more English than French, and she speaks English as well as you or I—or rather much better. She belongs to the very top of the basket, as they say here. Her family, on each side, is of fabulous antiquity; her mother is the daughter of an English Catholic earl. Her father is dead, and since her widowhood she has lived with her mother and a married brother. There is another brother, younger, who I believe is wild. They have an old hotel in the Rue de l’Université,
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but their fortune is small, and they make a common household, for economy’s sake. When I was a girl I was put into a convent here for my education, while my father made the tour of Europe. It was a silly thing to do with me, but it had the advantage that it made me acquainted with Claire de Bellegarde. She was younger than I, but we became fast friends. I took a tremendous fancy to her, and she returned my passion as far as she could. They kept such a tight rein on her that she could do very little, and when I left the convent she had to give me up. I was
not of her
monde
;
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I am not now, either, but we sometimes meet. They are terrible people—her
monde
; all mounted upon stilts a mile high, and with pedigrees long in proportion. It is the skim of the milk of the old
noblesse.
16
Do you know what a Legitimist is, or an Ultramontane?
17
Go into Madame de Cintré’s drawing-room some afternoon, at five o’clock, and you will see the best-preserved specimens. I say go, but no one is admitted who can’t show his fifty quarterings.”
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“And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?” asked Newman. “A lady I can’t even approach?”
“But you said just now that you recognised no obstacles.”
Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his moustache. “Is she a beauty?” he demanded.
“No.”
“Oh, then it’s no use—–”
“She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things. A beauty has no faults in her face; the face of a beautiful woman may have faults that only deepen its charm.”
“I remember Madame de Cintré, now,” said Tristram. “She is as plain as a pikestaff. A man wouldn’t look at her twice.”
“In saying that
he
would not look at her twice, my husband sufficiently describes her,” Mrs. Tristram rejoined.
“Is she good; is she clever?” Newman asked.