Part 49 (1/2)
”I am cold,” said Madame de Cintre, ”I am as cold as that flowing river.”
Newman gave a great rap on the floor with his stick, and a long, grim laugh. ”Good, good!” he cried. ”You go altogether too far--you overshoot the mark. There isn't a woman in the world as bad as you would make yourself out. I see your game; it's what I said. You are blackening yourself to whiten others. You don't want to give me up, at all; you like me--you like me. I know you do; you have shown it, and I have felt it. After that, you may be as cold as you please! They have bullied you, I say; they have tortured you. It's an outrage, and I insist upon saving you from the extravagance of your own generosity. Would you chop off your hand if your mother requested it?”
Madame de Cintre looked a little frightened. ”I spoke of my mother too blindly, the other day. I am my own mistress, by law and by her approval. She can do nothing to me; she has done nothing. She has never alluded to those hard words I used about her.”
”She has made you feel them, I'll promise you!” said Newman.
”It's my conscience that makes me feel them.”
”Your conscience seems to me to be rather mixed!” exclaimed Newman, pa.s.sionately.
”It has been in great trouble, but now it is very clear,” said Madame de Cintre. ”I don't give you up for any worldly advantage or for any worldly happiness.”
”Oh, you don't give me up for Lord Deepmere, I know,” said Newman. ”I won't pretend, even to provoke you, that I think that. But that's what your mother and your brother wanted, and your mother, at that villainous ball of hers--I liked it at the time, but the very thought of it now makes me rabid--tried to push him on to make up to you.”
”Who told you this?” said Madame de Cintre softly.
”Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I didn't know at the time that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You said then that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you.”
”That was before--before THIS,” said Madame de Cintre.
”It doesn't matter,” said Newman; ”and, besides, I think I know. He's an honest little Englishman. He came and told you what your mother was up to--that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a commercial person.
If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you over and give me the slip. Lord Deepmere isn't very intellectual, so she had to spell it out to him. He said he admired you 'no end,' and that he wanted you to know it; but he didn't like being mixed up with that sort of underhand work, and he came to you and told tales. That was about the amount of it, wasn't it? And then you said you were perfectly happy.”
”I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere,” said Madame de Cintre. ”It was not for that you came here. And about my mother, it doesn't matter what you suspect and what you know. When once my mind has been made up, as it is now, I should not discuss these things.
Discussing anything, now, is very idle. We must try and live each as we can. I believe you will be happy again; even, sometimes, when you think of me. When you do so, think this--that it was not easy, and that I did the best I could. I have things to reckon with that you don't know. I mean I have feelings. I must do as they force me--I must, I must. They would haunt me otherwise,” she cried, with vehemence; ”they would kill me!”
”I know what your feelings are: they are superst.i.tions! They are the feeling that, after all, though I AM a good fellow, I have been in business; the feeling that your mother's looks are law and your brother's words are gospel; that you all hang together, and that it's a part of the everlasting proprieties that they should have a hand in everything you do. It makes my blood boil. That is cold; you are right.
And what I feel here,” and Newman struck his heart and became more poetical than he knew, ”is a glowing fire!”
A spectator less preoccupied than Madame de Cintre's distracted wooer would have felt sure from the first that her appealing calm of manner was the result of violent effort, in spite of which the tide of agitation was rapidly rising. On these last words of Newman's it overflowed, though at first she spoke low, for fear of her voice betraying her. ”No. I was not right--I am not cold! I believe that if I am doing what seems so bad, it is not mere weakness and falseness. Mr.
Newman, it's like a religion. I can't tell you--I can't! It's cruel of you to insist. I don't see why I shouldn't ask you to believe me--and pity me. It's like a religion. There's a curse upon the house; I don't know what--I don't know why--don't ask me. We must all bear it. I have been too selfish; I wanted to escape from it. You offered me a great chance--besides my liking you. It seemed good to change completely, to break, to go away. And then I admired you. But I can't--it has overtaken and come back to me.” Her self-control had now completely abandoned her, and her words were broken with long sobs. ”Why do such dreadful things happen to us--why is my brother Valentin killed, like a beast in the midst of his youth and his gayety and his brightness and all that we loved him for? Why are there things I can't ask about--that I am afraid to know? Why are there places I can't look at, sounds I can't hear?
Why is it given to me to choose, to decide, in a case so hard and so terrible as this? I am not meant for that--I am not made for boldness and defiance. I was made to be happy in a quiet, natural way.” At this Newman gave a most expressive groan, but Madame de Cintre went on. ”I was made to do gladly and gratefully what is expected of me. My mother has always been very good to me; that's all I can say. I must not judge her; I must not criticize her. If I did, it would come back to me. I can't change!”
”No,” said Newman, bitterly; ”I must change--if I break in two in the effort!”
”You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have all kinds of consolation. You were born--you were trained, to changes.
Besides--besides, I shall always think of you.”
”I don't care for that!” cried Newman. ”You are cruel--you are terribly cruel. G.o.d forgive you! You may have the best reasons and the finest feelings in the world; that makes no difference. You are a mystery to me; I don't see how such hardness can go with such loveliness.”
Madame de Cintre fixed him a moment with her swimming eyes. ”You believe I am hard, then?”
Newman answered her look, and then broke out, ”You are a perfect, faultless creature! Stay by me!”
”Of course I am hard,” she went on. ”Whenever we give pain we are hard.
And we MUST give pain; that's the world,--the hateful, miserable world!