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. Nioches 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 dont know you.
But my father has complained to you, said Mademoiselle Noémie.
He says you are a coquette.
He shouldnt go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you dont believe it?
No, said Newman gravely, I dont 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 doesnt 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 dont 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 portraitthe golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two magnificent arms?
Everythingjust 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 youno 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? Thats 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. Its 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. Shouldnt you like one of those great Rubensesthe 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 thatgood! 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 dont understand you, she said with a smile. I dont understand how a man can be so ignorant.
Oh, I am ignorant, certainly, said Newman, putting his hands into his pockets.
Its ridiculous! I dont know how to paint.
You dont know how?
I paint like a cat; I cant 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 Noémies 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 companions 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 cant do all that, of course you cant. 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. But for a poor girl isnt it rather an expensive amusement?
Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that, said Mademoiselle Noémie. But rather than earn my living as some girls dotoiling with a needle, in little black holes, out of the worldI would throw myself into the Seine.
There is no need of that, Newman answered; your father told you my offer?
Your offer?
He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance to earn your dot.
He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it! Why should you take such an interest in my marriage?
My interest was in your father. I hold to my offer; do what you can, and I will buy what you paint.
She stood for some time, meditating, with her eyes on the ground. At last, looking up, What sort of a husband can you get for twelve thousand francs? she asked.
Your father tells me he knows some very good young men.
Grocers and butchers and little maîtres de cafés! I will not marry at all if I cant marry well.
I would advise you not to be too fastidious, said Newman. Thats all the advice I can give you.
I am very much vexed at what I have said! cried the young girl. It has done me no good. But I couldnt help it.
What good did you expect it to do you?
I couldnt help it, simply.
Newman looked at her a moment. Well, your pictures may be bad, he said, but you are too clever for me, nevertheless. I dont understand you. Good-bye! And he put out his hand.
She made no response, and offered him no farewell. She turned away and seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back of her hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures. Newman stood a moment and then turned on his heel and retreated. He had understood her better than he confessed; this singular scene was a practical commentary upon her fathers statement that she was a frank coquette.
CHAPTER V
When Newman related to Mrs. Tristram his fruitless visit to Madame de Cintré, she urged him not to be discouraged, but to carry out his plan of seeing Europe during the summer, and return to Paris in the autumn and settle down comfortably for the winter. Madame de Cintré will keep, she said; she is not a woman who will marry from one day to another. Newman made no distinct affirmation that he would come back to Paris; he even talked about Rome and the Nile, and abstained from professing any especial interest in Madame de Cintrés continued widowhood. This circumstance was at variance with his habitual frankness, and may perhaps be regarded as characteristic of the incipient stage of that passion which is more particularly known as the mysterious one. The truth is that the expression of a pair of eyes that were at once brilliant and mild had become very familiar to his memory, and he would not easily have resigned himself to the prospect of never looking into them again. He communicated to Mrs. Tristram a number of other facts, of greater or less importance, as you choose; but on this particular point he kept his own counsel. He took a kindly leave of M. Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the blue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at his interview with Mademoiselle Noémie; and left the old man nursing his breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might have been defied to dissipate. Newman then started on his travels, with all his usual appearance of slow-strolling leisure, and all his essential directness and intensity of aim. No man seemed less in a hurry, and yet no man achieved more in brief periods. He had certain practical instincts which served him excellently in his trade of tourist. He found his way in foreign cities by divination, his memory was excellent when once his attention had been at all cordially given, and he emerged from dialogues in foreign tongues, of which he had, formally, not understood a word, in full possession of the particular fact he had desired to ascertain. His appetite for facts was capacious, and although many of those which he noted would have seemed woefully dry and colorless to the ordinary sentimental traveler, a careful inspection of the list would have shown that he had a soft spot in his imagination. In the charming city of Brusselshis first stopping-place after leaving Parishe asked a great many questions about the street-cars, and took extreme satisfaction in the reappearance of this familiar symbol of American civilization; but he was also greatly struck with the beautiful Gothic tower of the Hôtel de Ville, and wondered whether it would not be possible to get up something like it in San Francisco. He stood for half an hour in the crowded square before this edifice, in imminent danger from carriage-wheels, listening to a toothless old cicerone mumble in broken English the touching history of Counts Egmont and Horn; and he wrote the names of these gentlemenfor reasons best known to himselfon the back of an old letter.
At the outset, on his leaving Paris, his curiosity had not been intense; passive entertainment, in the Champs Élysées and at the theatres, seemed about as much as he need expect of himself, and although, as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious, satisfying best, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience, and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the hour. He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe. He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, evena false shame, possiblyif he had caught himself looking intellectually into the mirror. Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high sense of responsibility; it was his prime conviction that a mans life should be easy, and that he should be able to resolve privilege into a matter of course. The world, to his sense, was a great bazaar, where one might stroll about and purchase handsome things; but he was no more conscious, individually, of social pressure than he admitted the existence of such a thing as an obligatory purchase. He had not only a dislike, but a sort of moral mistrust, of uncomfortable thoughts, and it was both uncomfortable and slightly contemptible to feel obliged to square ones self with a standard. Ones standard was the ideal of ones own good-humored prosperity, the prosperity which enabled one to give as well as take. To expand, without bothering about itwithout shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the otherto the full compass of what he would have called a pleasant experience, was Newmans most definite programme of life. He had always hated to hurry to catch railroad trains, and yet he had always caught them; and just so an undue solicitude for culture seemed a sort of silly dawdling at the station, a proceeding properly confined to women, foreigners, and other unpractical persons. All this admitted, Newman enjoyed his journey, when once he had fairly entered the current, as profoundly as the most zealous dilettante. Ones theories, after all, matter little; it is ones humor that is the great thing. Our friend was intelligent, and he could not help that. He lounged through Belgium and Holland and the Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy, planning about nothing, but seeing everything. The guides and valets de place found him an excellent subject. He was always approachable, for he was much addicted to standing about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and he availed himself little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion which are so liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel with long purses. When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, was proposed to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveying his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down at a little table and order something to drink. The cicerone, during this process, usually retreated to a respectful distance; otherwise I am not sure that Newman would not have bidden him sit down and have a glass also, and tell him as an honest fellow whether his church or his gallery was really worth a mans trouble. At last he rose and stretched his long legs, beckoned to the man of monuments, looked at his watch, and fixed his eye on his adversary. What is it? he asked. How far? And whatever the answer was, although he sometimes seemed to hesitate, he never declined. He stepped into an open cab, made his conductor sit beside him to answer questions, bade the driver go fast (he had a particular aversion to slow driving) and rolled, in all probability through a dusty suburb, to the goal of his pilgrimage. If the goal was a disappointment, if the church was meagre, or the ruin a heap of rubbish, Newman never protested or berated his cicerone; he looked with an impartial eye upon great monuments and small, made the guide recite his lesson, listened to it religiously, asked if there was nothing else to be seen in the neighborhood, and drove back again at a rattling pace. It is to be feared that his perception of the difference between good architecture and bad was not acute, and that he might sometimes have been seen gazing with culpable serenity at inferior productions. Ugly churches were a part of his pastime in Europe, as well as beautiful ones, and his tour was altogether a pastime. But there is sometimes nothing like the imagination of these people who have none, and Newman, now and then, in an unguided stroll in a foreign city, before some lonely, sad-towered church, or some angular image of one who had rendered civic service in an unknown past, had felt a singular inward tremor. It was not an excitement or a perplexity; it was a placid, fathomless sense of diversion.