V
IF Mr. Newell read in the papers the announcement of his daughter's
marriage it did not cause him to lift the veil of seclusion in which
his wife represented him as shrouded.
A round of the American banks in Paris failed to give Garnett his
address, and it was only in chance talk with one of the young
secretaries of the Embassy that he was put on Mr. Newell's track.
The secretary's father, it appeared, had known the Newells some
twenty years earlier. He had had business relations with Mr. Newell,
who was then a man of property, with factories or something of the
kind, the narrator thought, somewhere in Western New York. There had
been at this period, for Mrs. Newell, a phase of large hospitality
and showy carriages in Washington and at Narragansett. Then her
husband had had reverses, had lost heavily in Wall Street, and had
finally drifted abroad and been lost to sight. The young man did not
know at what point in his financial decline Mr. Newell had parted
company with his wife and daughter; "though you may bet your hat,"
he philosophically concluded, "that the old girl hung on as long as
there were any pickings." He did not himself know Mr. Newell's
address, but opined that it might be extracted from a certain
official at the Consulate, if Garnett could give a sufficiently good
reason for the request; and here in fact Mrs. Newell's emissary
learned that her husband was to be found in an obscure street of the
Luxembourg quarter.
In order to be near the scene of action, Garnett went to breakfast
at his usual haunt, determined to despatch his business as early in
the day as politeness allowed. The head waiter welcomed him to a
table near that of the transatlantic sage, who sat in his customary
corner, his head tilted back against the blistered mirror at an
angle suggesting that in a freer civilization his feet would have
sought the same level. He greeted Garnett affably and the two
exchanged their usual generalizations on life till the sage rose to
go; whereupon it occurred to Garnett to accompany him. His friend
took the offer in good part, merely remarking that he was going to
the Luxembourg gardens, where it was his invariable habit, on good
days, to feed the sparrows with the remains of his breakfast roll;
and Garnett replied that, as it happened, his own business lay in
the same direction.
"Perhaps, by the way," he added, "you can tell me how to find the
rue Panonceaux where I must go presently. I thought I knew this
quarter fairly well, but I have never heard of it."
His companion came to a sudden halt on the narrow sidewalk, to the
confusion of the dense and desultory traffic which marks the old
streets of the Latin quarter. He fixed his mild eye on Garnett and
gave a twist to the cigar which lingered in the corner of his mouth.
"The rue Panonceaux? It _is_ an out of the way hole, but I can tell
you how to find it," he answered.
He made no motion to do so, however, but continued to bend on the
young man the full force of his interrogative gaze; then he added
abruptly: "Would you mind telling me your object in going there?"
Garnett looked at him with surprise: a question so unblushingly
personal was strangely out of keeping with his friend's usual
attitude of detachment. Before he could reply, however, the other
had quietly continued: "Do you happen to be in search of Samuel C.
Newell?"
"Why, yes, I am," said Garnett with a start of conjecture.
His companion uttered a sigh. "I supposed so," he said resignedly;
"and in that case," he added, "we may as well have the matter out in
the Luxembourg."
Garnett had halted before him with deepening astonishment. "But you
don't mean to tell me--?" he stammered.
The little man made a motion of assent. "I am Samuel C. Newell," he
said drily; "and if you have no objection, I prefer not to break
through my habit of feeding the sparrows. We are five minutes late
as it is."
He quickened his pace without awaiting any reply from Garnett, who
walked beside him in unsubdued wonder till they reached the
Luxembourg gardens, where Mr. Newell, making for one of the less
frequented alleys, seated himself on a bench and drew the fragment
of a roll from his pocket. His coming was evidently expected, for a
shower of little dusky bodies at once descended on him, and the
gravel fluttered with battling wings and beaks as he distributed his
dole with impartial gestures.
It was not till the ground was white with crumbs, and the first
frenzy of his pensioners appeased, that he turned to Garnett and
said: "I presume, sir, that you come from my wife."
Garnett coloured with embarrassment: the more simply the old man
took his mission the more complicated it appeared to himself.
"From your wife--and from Miss Newell," he said at length. "You have
perhaps heard that she is to be married."
"Oh, yes--I read the _Herald_ pretty faithfully," said Miss Newell's
parent, shaking out another handful of crumbs.
Garnett cleared his throat. "Then you have no doubt thought it
natural that, under the circumstances, they should wish to
communicate with you."
The sage continued to fix his attention on the sparrows. "My wife,"
he remarked, "might have written to me."
"Mrs. Newell was afraid she might not hear from you in reply."
"In reply? Why should she? I suppose she merely wishes to announce
the marriage. She knows I have no money left to buy
wedding-presents," said Mr. Newell astonishingly.
Garnett felt his colour deepen: he had a vague sense of standing as
the representative of something guilty and enormous, with which he
had rashly identified himself.
"I don't think you understand," he said. "Mrs. Newell and your
daughter have asked me to see you because they are anxious that you
should consent to appear at the wedding."
Mr. Newell, at this, ceased to give his attention to the birds, and
turned a compassionate gaze upon Garnett.
"My dear sir--I don't know your name--" he remarked, "would you mind
telling me how long you have been acquainted with Mrs. Newell?" And
without waiting for an answer he added judicially: "If you wait long
enough she will ask you to do some very disagreeable things for
her."
This echo of his own thoughts gave Garnett a sharp twinge of
discomfort, but he made shift to answer good-humouredly: "If you
refer to my present errand, I must tell you that I don't find it
disagreeable to do anything which may be of service to Miss
Hermione."
Mr. Newell fumbled in his pocket, as though searching unavailingly
for another morsel of bread; then he said: "From her point of view I
shall not be the most important person at the ceremony."
Garnett smiled. "That is hardly a reason--" he began; but he was
checked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: "I
am not aware that I am called upon to give you my reasons."
"You are certainly not," the young man rejoined, "except in so far
as you are willing to consider me as the messenger of your wife and
daughter."
"Oh, I accept your credentials," said the other with his dry smile;
"what I don't recognize is their right to send a message."
This reduced Garnett to silence, and after a moment's pause Mr.
Newell drew his watch from his pocket.
"I am sorry to cut the conversation short, but my days are mapped
out with a certain regularity, and this is the hour for my nap." He
rose as he spoke and held out his hand with a glint of melancholy
humour in his small clear eyes.
"You dismiss me, then? I am to take back a refusal?" the young man
exclaimed.
"My dear sir, those ladies have got on very well without me for a
number of years: I imagine they can put through this wedding without
my help."
"You are mistaken, then; if it were not for that I shouldn't have
undertaken this errand."
Mr. Newell paused as he was turning away. "Not for what?" he
enquired.
"The fact that, as it happens, the wedding can't be put through
without your help."
Mr. Newell's thin lips formed a noiseless whistle. "They've got to
have my consent, have they? Well, is he a good young man?"
"The bridegroom?" Garnett echoed in surprise. "I hear the best
accounts of him--and Miss Newell is very much in love."
Her parent met this with an odd smile. "Well, then, I give my
consent--it's all I've got left to give," he added philosophically.
Garnett hesitated. "But if you consent--if you approve--why do you
refuse your daughter's request?"
Mr. Newell looked at him a moment. "Ask Mrs. Newell!" he said. And
as Garnett was again silent, he turned away with a slight gesture of
leave-taking.
But in an instant the young man was at his side. "I will not ask
your reasons, sir," he said, "but I will give you mine for being
here. Miss Newell cannot be married unless you are present at the
ceremony. The young man's parents know that she has a father living,
and they give their consent only on condition that he appears at her
marriage. I believe it is customary in old French families--."
"Old French families be damned!" said Mr. Newell with sudden vigour.
"She had better marry an American." And he made a more decided
motion to free himself from Garnett's importunities.
But his resistance only strengthened the young man's. The more
unpleasant the latter's task became, the more unwilling he grew to
see his efforts end in failure. During the three days which had been
consumed in his quest it had become clear to him that the
bridegroom's parents, having been surprised into a reluctant
consent, were but too ready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr.
Newell's non-appearance. Mrs. Newell, on the last edge of tension,
had confided to Garnett that the Morningfields were "being nasty";
and he could picture the whole powerful clan, on both sides of the
Channel, arrayed in a common resolve to exclude poor Hermione from
their ranks. The very inequality of the contest stirred his blood,
and made him vow that in this case at least the sins of the parents
should not be visited on the children. In his talk with the young
secretary he had obtained some glimpses of Baron Schenkelderff's
past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, at one time a familiar
figure in a much-observed London set, had been mixed up in an ugly
money-lending business ending in suicide, which had excluded him
from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance with Mrs.
Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a
forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because
it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from
social extinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in
their game did not in the least affect Garnett's view of its
urgency. If on their part it was a sordid speculation, to her it had
the freshness of the first wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in
their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk
of such base uses; and to achieve this had become a necessity to
him.
The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might not
easily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite of
the resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force of
his plea into the tone with which he cried: "Ah, you don't know your
daughter!"
