"I can tell you everything.Can you sometimes leave this place?""The chateau, sir? I really don't know.I never tried.""Try, then; try hard.Try this evening, at dusk.Come to me in the old ruin there on the hill, in the court before the church.
I will wait for you there; I have something very important to tell you.
An old woman like you can do as she pleases."Mrs.Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips.
"Is it from the count, sir?" she asked.
"From the count--from his death-bed," said Newman.
"I will come, then.I will be bold, for once, for HIM."She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands.
Newman waited a long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his request.He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his arm.
It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when Isay that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin's dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked."There is no mistake about it now,"he said to himself as they advanced."They're a bad lot;they have pulled off the mask." Madame de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation;they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night.
Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman.He stood before them, and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him;Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.
"You see I have come back," he said."I have come to try again.""It would be ridiculous," said M.de Bellegarde, "to pretend that we are glad to see you or that we don't question the taste of your visit.""Oh, don't talk about taste," said Newman, with a laugh, "or that will bring us round to yours! If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn't come to see you.Besides, I will make as short work as you please.
Promise me to raise the blockade--to set Madame de Cintre at liberty--and I will retire instantly."
"We hesitated as to whether we would see you," said Madame de Bellegarde; "and we were on the point of declining the honor.
But it seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once.""You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,''
Newman answered."I didn't come however, for conversational purposes.
I came to say this, simply: that if you will write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage, I will take care of the rest.You don't want her to turn nun--you know more about the horrors of it than I do.Marrying a commercial person is better than that.Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.
There's your chance--I call those easy terms.""We look at the matter otherwise, you know.
We call them very hard terms," said Urbain de Bellegarde.
They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room.
"I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her daughter should become Soeur Catherine than Mrs.Newman."But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her epigrams for her.She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head and repeating, "But once, Mr.Newman; but once!"Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
"Could anything compel you?" he asked."Do you know of anything that would force you?""This language, sir," said the marquis, "addressed to people in bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification.""In most cases," Newman answered, "your objection would have some weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintre's present intentions make time precious.But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come here to-day without scruple simply because Iconsider your brother and you two very different parties.
I see no connection between you.Your brother was ashamed of you.
Lying there wounded and dying, the poor fellow apologized to me for your conduct.He apologized to me for that of his mother."For a moment the effect of these words was as if Newman had struck a physical blow.A quick flush leaped into the faces of Madame de Bellegarde and her son, and they exchanged a glance like a twinkle of steel.Urbain uttered two words which Newman but half heard, but of which the sense came to him as it were in the reverberation of the sound, "Le miserable!""You show little respect for the living," said Madame de Bellegarde, "but at least respect the dead.Don't profane--don't insult--the memory of my innocent son."
"I speak the simple truth," Newman declared, "and I speak it for a purpose.
I repeat it--distinctly.Your son was utterly disgusted--your son apologized."
Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was frowning at poor Valentin's invidious image.Taken by surprise, his scant affection for his brother had made a momentary concession to dishonor.
But not for an appreciable instant did his mother lower her flag.
"You are immensely mistaken, sir," she said."My son was sometimes light, but he was never indecent.He died faithful to his name.""You simply misunderstood him," said the marquis, beginning to rally.
"You affirm the impossible!"
"Oh, I don't care for poor Valentin's apology," said Newman.
