第130章

I felt as if I were walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower of London! My dear boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money.

I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money!

Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose because they could get some one else's without working so hard for it.

It isn't worth finding out.It may be that it was not Madame de Cintre that backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it.

I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?

You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind to that.

If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so much;and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place des la Concorde."Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye;never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram.Mrs.Tristram's glance at her husband had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile.

"You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which Mr.Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."But even without the aid of Tom Tristram's conversational felicities, Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.

He could cease to think of them only when he ceased to think of his loss and privation, and the days had as yet but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity.

In vain Mrs.Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.

"How can I help it?" he demanded with a trembling voice.

"I feel like a widower--and a widower who has not even the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife--who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat.

I feel," he added in a moment "as if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at large."Mrs.Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said, with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were;"Are you very sure that you would have been happy?"Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head."That's weak,"he said; "that won't do."

"Well," said Mrs.Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, "I don't believe you would have been happy."Newman gave a little laugh."Say I should have been miserable, then;it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."Mrs.Tristram began to muse."I should have been curious to see;it would have been very strange."

"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?""A little," said Mrs.Tristram, growing still more audacious.

Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her, turned away and took up his hat.She watched him a moment, and then she said, "That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.

Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do.I wanted very much to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place;second, what would happen if it should take place.""So you didn't believe," said Newman, resentfully.

"Yes, I believed--I believed that it would take place, and that you would be happy.Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations, a very heartless creature.BUT," she continued, laying her hand upon Newman's arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest flight ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!"Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for three months.Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed it."I really feel," Newman rejoined, "as if to leave YOU, at least, would do me good--and cost me very little effort.

You are growing cynical, you shock me and pain me.""Very good," said Mrs.Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as may be thought most probable."I shall certainly see you again."Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery.

He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his preparations.

Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train that would transport him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain.

As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.

He arrived in London in the midst of what is called "the season,"and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself in the way of being diverted from his heavy-heartedness.

He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy.

Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman, and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred within him a dull vivacity of contemplation.It is on record that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality;he took long walks and explored London in every direction;he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining Drive, watching the people and the horses and the carriages;the rosy English beauties, the wonderful English dandies, and the splendid flunkies.He went to the opera and found it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and found a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest points of which came within the range of his comprehension.