He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs. Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He would have been incapable of asking for it, for he had no perception of difficulties, and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an immense, amazing spectacle, but it neither inflamed his imagination nor irritated his curiosity. He kept his hands in his pockets, looked on good-humoredly, desired to miss nothing important, observed a great many things narrowly, and never reverted to himself. Mrs. Tristrams advice was a part of the show, and a more entertaining element, in her abundant gossip, than the others. He enjoyed her talking about himself; it seemed a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made an application of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away from her. For herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting thing she had had to think about in many a month. She wished to do something with himshe hardly knew what. There was so much of him; he was so rich and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy constantly on the alert. For the present, the only thing she could do was to like him. She told him that he was horribly Western, but in this compliment the adverb was tinged with insincerity. She led him about with her, introduced him to fifty people, and took extreme satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted every proposal, shook hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed equally unfamiliar with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram complained of his wifes avidity, and declared that he could never have a clear five minutes with his friend. If he had known how things were going to turn out, he never would have brought him to the Avenue dIéna. The two men, formerly, had not been intimate, but Newman remembered his earlier impression of his host, and did Mrs. Tristram, who had by no means taken him into her confidence, but whose secret he presently discovered, the justice to admit that her husband was a rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he had been a good fellow, and in this respect he was unchanged; but of a man of his age one expected something more. People said he was sociable, but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a high order of sociability. He was a great gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club, to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all round, to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of the American colony. He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish. He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United States were not good enough for Mr. Tristram. He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little better than a vulgar smell in his friends nostrils, and he finally broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world, that they could put all Europe into their breeches pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston. (This, for Newman was putting it very vindictively.) Tristram was a comfortable man to snub, he bore no malice, and he continued to insist on Newmans finishing his evening at the Occidental Club.
Christopher Newman dined several times in the Avenue dIéna, and his host always proposed an early adjournment to this institution. Mrs. Tristram protested, and declared that her husband exhausted his ingenuity in trying to displease her.
Oh no, I never try, my love, he answered. I know you loathe me quite enough when I take my chance.
Newman hated to see a husband and wife on these terms, and he was sure one or other of them must be very unhappy. He knew it was not Tristram. Mrs. Tristram had a balcony before her windows, upon which, during the June evenings, she was fond of sitting, and Newman used frankly to say that he preferred the balcony to the club. It had a fringe of perfumed plants in tubs, and enabled you to look up the broad street and see the Arch of Triumph vaguely massing its heroic sculptures in the summer starlight. Sometimes Newman kept his promise of following Mr. Tristram, in half an hour, to the Occidental, and sometimes he forgot it. His hostess asked him a great many questions about himself, but on this subject he was an indifferent talker. He was not what is called subjective, though when he felt that her interest was sincere, he made an almost heroic attempt to be. He told her a great many things he had done, and regaled her with anecdotes of Western life; she was from Philadelphia, and with her eight years in Paris, talked of herself as a languid Oriental. But some other person was always the hero of the tale, by no means always to his advantage; and Newmans own emotions were but scantily chronicled. She had an especial wish to know whether he had ever been in loveseriously, passionatelyand, failing to gather any satisfaction from his allusions, she at last directly inquired. He hesitated a while, and at last he said, No! She declared that she was delighted to hear it, as it confirmed her private conviction that he was a man of no feeling.
Really? he asked, very gravely. Do you think so? How do you recognize a man of feeling?
I cant make out, said Mrs. Tristram, whether you are very simple or very deep.
Im very deep. Thats a fact.
I believe that if I were to tell you with a certain air that you have no feeling, you would implicitly believe me.
A certain air? said Newman. Try it and see.
You would believe me, but you would not care, said Mrs. Tristram.
You have got it all wrong. I should care immensely, but I shouldnt believe you. The fact is I have never had time to feel things. I have had to do them, to make myself felt.
I can imagine that you may have done that tremendously, sometimes.
Yes, theres no mistake about that.
When you are in a fury it cant be pleasant.
I am never in a fury.
Angry, then, or displeased.
I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that I have quite forgotten it.
I dont believe, said Mrs. Tristram, that you are never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad enough always to keep your temper.
I lose it perhaps once in five years.
The time is coming round, then, said his hostess. Before I have known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.
Do you mean to put me into one?
I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me. And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in the world, the consciousness of having bought your pleasure beforehand and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over.
Well, I suppose I am happy, said Newman, meditatively.
You have been odiously successful.
Successful in copper, said Newman, only so-so in railroads, and a hopeless fizzle in oil.
It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money. Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.