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diff --git a/432-h/432-h.htm b/432-h/432-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..db953b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/432-h/432-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,22858 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ambassadors, by Henry James</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Ambassadors</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February, 1996 [eBook #432]<br /> +[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Richard D. Hathaway and Julia P DeRanek</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:70%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" /> +</div> + +<h1>The Ambassadors</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Henry James</h2> + +<h4> New York Edition (1909) </h4> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#volume01"><b>Volume I</b></a><br/><br/></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#preface">Preface</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">Book First</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">Book Second</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">Book Third</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">Book Fourth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">Book Fifth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">Book Sixth</a><br/><br/></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#volume02"><b>Volume II</b></a><br/><br/></td> +</tr> + + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">Book Seventh</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">Book Eighth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">Book Ninth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">Book Tenth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">Book Book Eleventh</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">Book Twelfth</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="volume01"></a>Volume I</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="preface"></a>Preface</h2> + +<p> +Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of “The +Ambassadors,” which first appeared in twelve numbers of <i>The North +American Review</i> (1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The +situation involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of +Book Fifth, for the reader’s benefit, into as few words as +possible—planted or “sunk,” stiffly and saliently, in the +centre of the current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can +a composition of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of +suggestion, and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have +yet lurked more in the mass as an independent particle. The whole case, in +fine, is in Lambert Strether’s irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on +the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani’s garden, the candour with which he +yields, for his young friend’s enlightenment, to the charming admonition +of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the very fact that an +hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him <i>as</i> a +crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could desire. +The remarks to which he thus gives utterance contain the essence of “The +Ambassadors,” his fingers close, before he has done, round the stem of +the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues officiously to +present to us. “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It +doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your +life. If you haven’t had that what <i>have</i> you had? I’m too +old—too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no +mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore +don’t, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was +either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now +I’m a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as +you don’t make it. For it <i>was</i> a mistake. Live, live!” Such +is the gist of Strether’s appeal to the impressed youth, whom he likes +and whom he desires to befriend; the word “mistake” occurs several +times, it will be seen, in the course of his remarks—which gives the +measure of the signal warning he feels attached to his case. He has accordingly +missed too much, though perhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a +better part, and he wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a +terrible question. <i>Would</i> there yet perhaps be time for +reparation?—reparation, that is, for the injury done his character; for +the affront, he is quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he +has even himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he now at +all events <i>sees</i>; so that the business of my tale and the march of my +action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration +of this process of vision. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole fits again into its germ. +That had been given me bodily, as usual, by the spoken word, for I was to take +the image over exactly as I happened to have met it. A friend had repeated to +me, with great appreciation, a thing or two said to him by a man of +distinction, much his senior, and to which a sense akin to that of +Strether’s melancholy eloquence might be imputed—said as chance +would have, and so easily might, in Paris, and in a charming old garden +attached to a house of art, and on a Sunday afternoon of summer, many persons +of great interest being present. The observation there listened to and gathered +up had contained part of the “note” that I was to recognise on the +spot as to my purpose—had contained in fact the greater part; the rest +was in the place and the time and the scene they sketched: these constituents +clustered and combined to give me further support, to give me what I may call +the note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway; driven +in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a cable, the swirl +of the current roundabout it. What amplified the hint to more than the bulk of +hints in general was the gift with it of the old Paris garden, for in that +token were sealed up values infinitely precious. There was of course the seal +to break and each item of the packet to count over and handle and estimate; but +somehow, in the light of the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort +most to my taste were there. I could even remember no occasion on which, so +confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in this +fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are degrees of +merit in subjects—in spite of the fact that to treat even one of the most +ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and +prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as <i>possibly</i> +absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely +good—since with such alone is it one’s theory of one’s honour +to be concerned—there is an ideal <i>beauty</i> of goodness the invoked +action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its maximum. Then truly, I +hold, one’s theme may be said to shine, and that of “The +Ambassadors,” I confess, wore this glow for me from beginning to end. +Fortunately thus I am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best, +“all round,” of all my productions; any failure of that +justification would have made such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous. +</p> + +<p> +I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective intermittence, never +one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow beneath one’s feet, a felt +ingratitude in the scheme adopted, under which confidence fails and opportunity +seems but to mock. If the motive of “The Wings of the Dove,” as I +have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of its face—though +without prejudice to its again, of a sudden, fairly grimacing with +expression—so in this other business I had absolute conviction and +constant clearness to deal with; it had been a frank proposition, the whole +bunch of data, installed on my premises like a monotony of fine weather. (The +order of composition, in these things, I may mention, was reversed by the order +of publication; the earlier written of the two books having appeared as the +later.) Even under the weight of my hero’s years I could feel my +postulate firm; even under the strain of the difference between those of Madame +de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable to be denounced as +shocking, I could still feel it serene. Nothing resisted, nothing betrayed, I +seem to make out, in this full and sound sense of the matter; it shed from any +side I could turn it to the same golden glow. I rejoiced in the promise of a +hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to bite into—since +it’s only into thickened motive and accumulated character, I think, that +the painter of life bites more than a little. My poor friend should have +accumulated character, certainly; or rather would be quite naturally and +handsomely possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and would always +have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet wouldn’t have +wrecked him. It was immeasurable, the opportunity to “do” a man of +imagination, for if <i>there</i> mightn’t be a chance to +“bite,” where in the world might it be? This personage of course, +so enriched, wouldn’t give me, for his type, imagination in +<i>predominance</i> or as his prime faculty, nor should I, in view of other +matters, have found that convenient. So particular a luxury—some +occasion, that is, for study of the high gift in <i>supreme</i> command of a +case or of a career—would still doubtless come on the day I should be +ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far back, remain hung up well +in view and just out of reach. The comparative case meanwhile would +serve—it was only on the minor scale that I had treated myself even to +comparative cases. +</p> + +<p> +I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the minor scale had thus +yielded, the instance in hand should enjoy the advantage of the full range of +the major; since most immediately to the point was the question of that +<i>supplement</i> of situation logically involved in our gentleman’s +impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the Sunday afternoon—or +if not involved by strict logic then all ideally and enchantingly implied in +it. (I say “ideally,” because I need scarce mention that for +development, for expression of its maximum, my glimmering story was, at the +earliest stage, to have nipped the thread of connexion with the possibilities +of the actual reported speaker. <i>He</i> remains but the happiest of +accidents; his actualities, all too definite, precluded any range of +possibilities; it had only been his charming office to project upon that wide +field of the artist’s vision—which hangs there ever in place like +the white sheet suspended for the figures of a child’s +magic-lantern—a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of +the teller of tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more +of the suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, +than just this business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme +half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage +already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds +and the rag of association can ever, for “excitement,” I judge, +have bettered it at its best. For the dramatist always, by the very law of his +genius, believes not only in a possible right issue from the rightly-conceived +tight place; he does much more than this—he believes, irresistibly, in +the necessary, the precious “tightness” of the place (whatever the +issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respectable +hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which +it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part of the charm attendant on +such questions that the “story,” with the omens true, as I say, +puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, +essentially—it begins to be, though it may more or less obscurely lurk, +so that the point is not in the least what to make of it, but only, very +delightfully and very damnably, where to put one’s hand on it. +</p> + +<p> +In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that admirable mixture +for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with what we see, it +must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it plucks its material, +otherwise expressed, in the garden of life—which material elsewhere grown +is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it has to take +account of a <i>process</i>—from which only when it’s the basest of +the servants of man, incurring ignominious dismissal with no +“character,” does it, and whether under some muddled pretext of +morality or on any other, pusillanimously edge away. The process, that of the +expression, the literal squeezing-out, of value is another affair—with +which the happy luck of mere finding has little to do. The joys of finding, at +this stage, are pretty well over; that quest of the subject as a whole by +“matching,” as the ladies say at the shops, the big piece with the +snippet, having ended, we assume, with a capture. The subject is found, and if +the problem is then transferred to the ground of what to do with it the field +opens out for any amount of doing. This is precisely the infusion that, as I +submit, completes the strong mixture. It is on the other hand the part of the +business that can least be likened to the chase with horn and hound. It’s +all a sedentary part—involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit +the highest salary paid to a chief accountant. Not, however, that the chief +accountant hasn’t <i>his</i> gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or at +least the equilibrium of the artist’s state dwells less, surely, in the +further delightful complications he can smuggle in than in those he succeeds in +keeping out. He sows his seed at the risk of too thick a crop; wherefore yet +again, like the gentlemen who audit ledgers, he must keep his head at any +price. In consequence of all which, for the interest of the matter, I might +seem here to have my choice of narrating my “hunt” for Lambert +Strether, of describing the capture of the shadow projected by my +friend’s anecdote, or of reporting on the occurrences subsequent to that +triumph. But I had probably best attempt a little to glance in each direction; +since it comes to me again and again, over this licentious record, that +one’s bag of adventures, conceived or conceivable, has been only +half-emptied by the mere telling of one’s story. It depends so on what +one means by that equivocal quantity. There is the story of one’s hero, +and then, thanks to the intimate connexion of things, the story of one’s +story itself. I blush to confess it, but if one’s a dramatist one’s +a dramatist, and the latter imbroglio is liable on occasion to strike me as +really the more objective of the two. +</p> + +<p> +The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful outbreak, the hour there, amid +such happy provision, striking for him, would have been then, on behalf of my +man of imagination, to be logically and, as the artless craft of comedy has it, +“led up” to; the probable course to such a goal, the goal of so +conscious a predicament, would have in short to be finely calculated. Where has +he come from and why has he come, what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we +only, say, in our foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that +<i>galère?</i> To answer these questions plausibly, to answer them as under +cross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for the prosecution, in other +words satisfactorily to account for Strether and for his “peculiar +tone,” was to possess myself of the entire fabric. At the same time the +clue to its whereabouts would lie in a certain principle of probability: he +wouldn’t have indulged in his peculiar tone without a reason; it would +take a felt predicament or a false position to give him so ironic an accent. +One hadn’t been noting “tones” all one’s life without +recognising when one heard it the voice of the false position. The dear man in +the Paris garden was then admirably and unmistakeably <i>in</i> one—which +was no small point gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the +determination of <i>this</i> identity. One could only go by probabilities, but +there was the advantage that the most general of the probabilities were virtual +certainties. Possessed of our friend’s nationality, to start with, there +was a general probability in his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one +had really but to keep under the lens for an hour to see it give up its +secrets. He would have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New +England—at the heels of which matter of course a perfect train of secrets +tumbled for me into the light. They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall +not reproduce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were all +there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking among them. What the +“position” would infallibly be, and why, on his hands, it had +turned “false”—these inductive steps could only be as rapid +as they were distinct. I accounted for everything—and +“everything” had by this time become the most promising +quantity—by the view that he had come to Paris in some state of mind +which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and unexpected assaults and +infusions, a change almost from hour to hour. He had come with a view that +might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; +and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of <i>application</i>, once +exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or +whatever, and might, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to +yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could say +to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at first, naturally, but +have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the <i>situation</i> clearly would +spring from the play of wildness and the development of extremes. I saw in a +moment that, should this development proceed both with force and logic, my +“story” would leave nothing to be desired. There is always, of +course, for the story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable +advantage of his interest in the story <i>as such</i>; it is ever, obviously, +overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have never +been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with whatever headlong +energy, may be said to pale before the energy with which it simply makes for +itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its best, to seem to offer itself in a +light, to seem to know, and with the very last knowledge, what it’s +about—liable as it yet is at moments to be caught by us with its tongue +in its cheek and absolutely no warrant but its splendid impudence. Let us grant +then that the impudence is always there—there, so to speak, for grace and +effect and <i>allure</i>; there, above all, because the Story is just the +spoiled child of art, and because, as we are always disappointed when the +pampered don’t “play up,” we like it, to that extent, to look +all its character. It probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter +ourselves that we negotiate with it by treaty. +</p> + +<p> +All of which, again, is but to say that the <i>steps</i>, for my fable, placed +themselves with a prompt and, as it were, functional assurance—an air +quite as of readiness to have dispensed with logic had I been in fact too +stupid for my clue. Never, positively, none the less, as the links multiplied, +had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor Strether’s +errand and for the apprehension of his issue. These things continued to fall +together, as by the neat action of their own weight and form, even while their +commentator scratched his head about them; he easily sees now that they were +always well in advance of him. As the case completed itself he had in fact, +from a good way behind, to catch up with them, breathless and a little +flurried, as he best could. <i>The</i> false position, for our belated man of +the world—belated because he had endeavoured so long to escape being one, +and now at last had really to face his doom—the false position for him, I +say, was obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that boundless +menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most approved pattern which was yet +framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts; that is to any at all +liberal appreciation of them. There would have been of course the case of the +Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself, only to judge and to feel +meanly; but <i>he</i> would have moved for me, I confess, enveloped in no +legend whatever. The actual man’s note, from the first of our seeing it +struck, is the note of discrimination, just as his drama is to become, under +stress, the drama of discrimination. It would have been his blest imagination, +we have seen, that had already helped him to discriminate; the element that was +for so much of the pleasure of my cutting thick, as I have intimated, into his +intellectual, into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at the same time, just +here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene. +</p> + +<p> +There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the platitudes of the human +comedy, that people’s moral scheme <i>does</i> break down in Paris; that +nothing is more frequently observed; that hundreds of thousands of more or less +hypocritical or more or less cynical persons annually visit the place for the +sake of the probable catastrophe, and that I came late in the day to work +myself up about it. There was in fine the <i>trivial</i> association, one of +the vulgarest in the world; but which give me pause no longer, I think, simply +because its vulgarity is so advertised. The revolution performed by Strether +under the influence of the most interesting of great cities was to have nothing +to do with any <i>bêtise</i> of the imputably “tempted” state; he +was to be thrown forward, rather, thrown quite with violence, upon his lifelong +trick of intense reflexion: which friendly test indeed was to bring him out, +through winding passages, through alternations of darkness and light, very much +<i>in</i> Paris, but with the surrounding scene itself a minor matter, a mere +symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the philosophy of Woollett. +Another surrounding scene would have done as well for our show could it have +represented a place in which Strether’s errand was likely to lie and his +crisis to await him. The <i>likely</i> place had the great merit of sparing me +preparations; there would have been too many involved—not at all +impossibilities, only rather worrying and delaying difficulties—in +positing elsewhere Chad Newsome’s interesting relation, his so +interesting complexity of relations. Strether’s appointed stage, in fine, +could be but Chad’s most luckily selected one. The young man had gone in, +as they say, for circumjacent charm; and where he would have found it, by the +turn of his mind, most “authentic,” was where his earnest +friend’s analysis would most find <i>him</i>; as well as where, for that +matter, the former’s whole analytic faculty would be led such a wonderful +dance. +</p> + +<p> +“The Ambassadors” had been, all conveniently, “arranged +for”; its first appearance was from month to month, in the <i>North +American Review</i> during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any +pleasant provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one’s actively +adopting—so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional +law—recurrent breaks and resumptions. I had made up my mind here +regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts—having +found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form and +pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major propriety, +recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but one centre and +keeping it all within my hero’s compass. The thing was to be so much this +worthy’s intimate adventure that even the projection of his consciousness +upon it from beginning to end without intermission or deviation would probably +still leave a part of its value for him, and <i>a fortiori</i> for ourselves, +unexpressed. I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be +room for—on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy. Other +persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each with his or her +axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail +of, his or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry +on. But Strether’s sense of these things, and Strether’s only, +should avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or +less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure among his +most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of +would give me more of the effect I should be most “after” than all +other possible observances together. It would give me a large unity, and that +in turn would crown me with the grace to which the enlightened story-teller +will at any time, for his interest, sacrifice if need be all other graces +whatever. I refer of course to the grace of intensity, which there are ways of +signally achieving and ways of signally missing—as we see it, all round +us, helplessly and woefully missed. Not that it isn’t, on the other hand, +a virtue eminently subject to appreciation—there being no strict, no +absolute measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite +escaped one’s perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully +hailed it. After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense amusement +of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate, for the fond +fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as his best of determinants. That +charming principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it +is a principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without +mercy, appeased with no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly +sacrifice and rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty—even as +ogres, with their “Fee-faw-fum!” rejoice in the smell of the blood +of Englishmen. +</p> + +<p> +Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so speedy, +definition of my gentleman’s job—his coming out, all solemnly +appointed and deputed, to “save” Chad, and his then finding the +young man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a new +issue altogether, in the connexion, prodigiously faces them, which has to be +dealt with in a new light—promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the +higher branches of the compositional art as one could possibly desire. Again +and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed with my survey, I find no +source of interest equal to this verification after the fact, as I may call it, +and the more in detail the better, of the scheme of consistency “gone +in” for. As always—since the charm never fails—the retracing +of the process from point to point brings back the old illusion. The old +intentions bloom again and flower—in spite of all the blossoms they were +to have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of adventure +<i>transposed</i>—the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs +of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably objective, +becoming the question at issue and keeping the author’s heart in his +mouth. Such an element, for instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away +off with her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less +intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less +felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest +portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I +say, once it’s unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too +much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished +intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as +little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for me the +pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in which I had sought to provide for it. +The mere charm of seeing such an idea constituent, in its degree; the fineness +of the measures taken—a real extension, if successful, of the very terms +and possibilities of representation and figuration—such things alone +were, after this fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the +probable success of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort +was to square. But oh the cares begotten, none the less, of that same +“judicious” sacrifice to a particular form of interest! One’s +work should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty; but +all the while—apart from one’s inevitable consciousness too of the +dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive +beauty—how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy +and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have +to be sweated for and paid for! Once achieved and installed it may always be +trusted to make the poor seeker feel he would have blushed to the roots of his +hair for failing of it; yet, how, as its virtue can be essentially but the +virtue of the whole, the wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and +pleading but the cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to +be kicked out of the path! All the sophistications in life, for example, might +have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace—the menace to a bright +variety—involved in Strether’s having all the subjective +“say,” as it were, to himself. +</p> + +<p> +Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with the +romantic privilege of the “first person”—the darkest abyss of +romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale—variety, and +many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a back door. +Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long piece, is a form +foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much my affair, had never +been so little so as on this particular occasion. All of which reflexions +flocked to the standard from the moment—a very early one—the +question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking so close to my central +figure and constantly taking its pattern from him had to be faced. He arrives +(arrives at Chester) as for the dreadful purpose of giving his creator +“no end” to tell about him—before which rigorous mission the +serenest of creators might well have quailed. I was far from the serenest; I +was more than agitated enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one +alternative or one substitute for “telling,” I must address myself +tooth and nail to another. I couldn’t, save by implication, make other +persons tell <i>each other</i> about him—blest resource, blest necessity, +of the drama, which reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths +absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they +were primarily <i>his</i> persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had +simply nothing to do. I had relations for him none the less, by the mercy of +Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could +only by implication and a show of consequence make other persons tell each +other about him, I could at least make him tell <i>them</i> whatever in the +world he must; and could so, by the same token—which was a further luxury +thrown in—see straight into the deep differences between what that could +do for me, or at all events for <i>him</i>, and the large ease of +“autobiography.” It may be asked why, if one so keeps to +one’s hero, one shouldn’t make a single mouthful of +“method,” shouldn’t throw the reins on his neck and, letting +them flap there as free as in “Gil Blas” or in “David +Copperfield,” equip him with the double privilege of subject and +object—a course that has at least the merit of brushing away questions at +a sweep. The answer to which is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if +one is prepared <i>not</i> to make certain precious discriminations. +</p> + +<p> +The “first person” then, so employed, is addressed by the author +directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon with, at the +best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely after all, so little +respectfully, on so scant a presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on +the other hand, encaged and provided for as “The Ambassadors” +encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more +salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to bring home to +him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible +<i>fluidity</i> of self-revelation. I may seem not to better the case for my +discrimination if I say that, for my first care, I had thus inevitably to set +him up a confidant or two, to wave away with energy the custom of the seated +mass of explanation after the fact, the inserted block of merely referential +narrative, which flourishes so, to the shame of the modern impatience, on the +serried page of Balzac, but which seems simply to appal our actual, our general +weaker, digestion. “Harking back to make up” took at any rate more +doing, as the phrase is, not only than the reader of to-day demands, but than +he will tolerate at any price any call upon him either to understand or +remotely to measure; and for the beauty of the thing when done the current +editorial mind in particular appears wholly without sense. It is not, however, +primarily for either of these reasons, whatever their weight, that +Strether’s friend Waymarsh is so keenly clutched at, on the threshold of +the book, or that no less a pounce is made on Maria Gostrey—without even +the pretext, either, of <i>her</i> being, in essence, Strether’s friend. +She is the reader’s friend much rather—in consequence of +dispositions that make him so eminently require one; and she acts in that +capacity, and <i>really</i> in that capacity alone, with exemplary devotion +from beginning to and of the book. She is an enrolled, a direct, aid to +lucidity; she is in fine, to tear off her mask, the most unmitigated and +abandoned of <i>ficelles</i>. Half the dramatist’s art, as we well +know—since if we don’t it’s not the fault of the proofs that +lie scattered about us—is in the use of <i>ficelles</i>; by which I mean +in a deep dissimulation of his dependence on them. Waymarsh only to a slighter +degree belongs, in the whole business, less to my subject than to my treatment +of it; the interesting proof, in these connexions, being that one has but to +take one’s subject for the stuff of drama to interweave with enthusiasm +as many Gostreys as need be. +</p> + +<p> +The material of “The Ambassadors,” conforming in this respect +exactly to that of “The Wings of the Dove,” published just before +it, is taken absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the +opportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the latter +work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic consistency. +It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world, by just +<i>looking</i>, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible; but it +sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does, into the parts +that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for scenes, and the parts, or +otherwise into the scenes, that justify and crown the preparation. It may +definitely be said, I think, that everything in it that is not scene (not, I of +course mean, complete and functional scene, treating <i>all</i> the submitted +matter, as by logical start, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated +preparation, is the fusion and synthesis of picture. These alternations propose +themselves all recogniseably, I think, from an early stage, as the very form +and figure of “The Ambassadors”; so that, to repeat, such an agent +as Miss Gostrey pre-engaged at a high salary, but waits in the draughty wing +with her shawl and her smelling-salts. Her function speaks at once for itself, +and by the time she has dined with Strether in London and gone to a play with +him her intervention as a <i>ficelle</i> is, I hold, expertly justified. Thanks +to it we have treated scenically, and scenically alone, the whole lumpish +question of Strether’s “past,” which has seen us more happily +on the way than anything else could have done; we have strained to a high +lucidity and vivacity (or at least we hope we have) certain indispensable +facts; we have seen our two or three immediate friends all conveniently and +profitably in “action”; to say nothing of our beginning to descry +others, of a remoter intensity, getting into motion, even if a bit vaguely as +yet, for our further enrichment. Let my first point be here that the scene in +question, that in which the whole situation at Woollett and the complex forces +that have propelled my hero to where this lively extractor of his value and +distiller of his essence awaits him, is normal and entire, is really an +excellent <i>standard</i> scene; copious, comprehensive, and accordingly never +short, but with its office as definite as that of the hammer on the gong of the +clock, the office of expressing <i>all that is in</i> the hour. +</p> + +<p> +The “<i>ficelle</i>” character of the subordinate party is as +artfully dissimulated, throughout, as may be, and to that extent that, with the +seams or joints of Maria Gostrey’s ostensible connectedness taken +particular care of, duly smoothed over, that is, and anxiously kept from +showing as “pieced on,” this figure doubtless achieves, after a +fashion, something of the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance but shows +us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear sources of +enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious springs of our +never-to-be-slighted “fun” for the reader and critic susceptible of +contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process +begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite—in illustration of +this—the mere interest and amusement of such at once +“creative” and critical questions as how and where and why to make +Miss Gostrey’s false connexion carry itself, under a due high polish, as +a real one. Nowhere is it more of an artful expedient for mere consistency of +form, to mention a case, than in the last “scene” of the book, +where its function is to give or to add nothing whatever, but only to express +as vividly as possible certain things quite other than itself and that are of +the already fixed and appointed measure. Since, however, all art is +<i>expression</i>, and is thereby vividness, one was to find the door open here +to any amount of delightful dissimulation. These verily are the refinements and +ecstasies of method—amid which, or certainly under the influence of any +exhilarated demonstration of which, one must keep one’s head and not lose +one’s way. To cultivate an adequate intelligence for them and to make +that sense operative is positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of +appearance that is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of +sense. To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to do +with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do with the +manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to treat it, at +close quarters and for fully economic expression’s possible sake, as if +it were important and essential—to do that sort of thing and yet muddle +nothing may easily become, as one goes, a signally attaching proposition; even +though it all remains but part and parcel, I hasten to recognise, of the merely +general and related question of expressional curiosity and expressional +decency. +</p> + +<p> +I am moved to add after so much insistence on the scenic side of my labour that +I have found the steps of re-perusal almost as much waylaid here by quite +another style of effort in the same signal interest—or have in other +words not failed to note how, even so associated and so discriminated, the +finest proprieties and charms of the non-scenic may, under the right hand for +them, still keep their intelligibility and assert their office. Infinitely +suggestive such an observation as this last on the whole delightful head, where +representation is concerned, of possible variety, of effective expressional +change and contrast. One would like, at such an hour as this, for critical +licence, to go into the matter of the noted inevitable deviation (from too fond +an original vision) that the exquisite treachery even of the straightest +execution may ever be trusted to inflict even on the most mature plan—the +case being that, though one’s last reconsidered production always seems +to bristle with that particular evidence, “The Ambassadors” would +place a flood of such light at my service. I must attach to my final remark +here a different import; noting in the other connexion I just glanced at that +such passages as that of my hero’s first encounter with Chad Newsome, +absolute attestations of the non-scenic form though they be, yet lay the +firmest hand too—so far at least as intention goes—on +representational effect. To report at all closely and completely of what +“passes” on a given occasion is inevitably to become more or less +scenic; and yet in the instance I allude to, <i>with</i> the conveyance, +expressional curiosity and expressional decency are sought and arrived at under +quite another law. The true inwardness of this may be at bottom but that one of +the suffered treacheries has consisted precisely, for Chad’s whole figure +and presence, of a direct presentability diminished and +compromised—despoiled, that is, of its <i>proportional</i> advantage; so +that, in a word, the whole economy of his author’s relation to him has at +important points to be redetermined. The book, however, critically viewed, is +touchingly full of these disguised and repaired losses, these insidious +recoveries, these intensely redemptive consistencies. The pages in which Mamie +Pocock gives her appointed and, I can’t but think, duly felt lift to the +whole action by the so inscrutably-applied side-stroke or short-cut of our just +watching and as quite at an angle of vision as yet untried, her single hour of +suspense in the hotel salon, in our partaking of her concentrated study of the +sense of matters bearing on her own case, all the bright warm Paris afternoon, +from the balcony that overlooks the Tuileries garden—these are as marked +an example of the representational virtue that insists here and there on being, +for the charm of opposition and renewal, other than the scenic. It +wouldn’t take much to make me further argue that from an equal play of +such oppositions the book gathers an intensity that fairly adds to the +dramatic—though the latter is supposed to be the sum of all intensities; +or that has at any rate nothing to fear from juxtaposition with it. I +consciously fail to shrink in fact from that extravagance—I risk it +rather, for the sake of the moral involved; which is not that the particular +production before us exhausts the interesting questions it raises, but that the +Novel remains still, under the right persuasion, the most independent, most +elastic, most prodigious of literary forms. +</p> + +<p class="right"> HENRY JAMES. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>Book First</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his +friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till +evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room +“only if not noisy,” reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at +the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than +at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, +that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh’s presence +at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of +it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. +They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old +Waymarsh—if not even, for that matter, to himself—there was little +fear that in the sequel they shouldn’t see enough of each other. The +principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly +disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive—the fruit of a sharp sense +that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much +separation, into his comrade’s face, his business would be a trifle +bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the +nearing steamer as the first “note,” of Europe. Mixed with +everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether’s part, that it +would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient +degree. +</p> + +<p> +That note had been meanwhile—since the previous afternoon, thanks to this +happier device—such a consciousness of personal freedom as he +hadn’t known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above +all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already, if +headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success. +There were people on the ship with whom he had easily consorted—so far as +ease could up to now be imputed to him—and who for the most part plunged +straight into the current that set from the landing-stage to London; there were +others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid +for a “look round” at the beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen +away from every one alike, had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, +had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves +fortunate in being, unlike himself, “met,” and had even +independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere +quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the +sensible. They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an +evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at +least undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh might +be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to describe himself +there as having “got in” so early, it would be difficult to make +the interval look particularly eager; but he was like a man who, elatedly +finding in his pocket more money than usual, handles it a while and idly and +pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of spending. +That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship’s +touching, and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely +the duration of delay—these things, it is to be conceived, were early +signs in him that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the +simplest. He was burdened, poor Strether—it had better be confessed at +the outset—with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was +detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference. +</p> + +<p> +After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her counter +the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend’s name, which she neatly +pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing a lady who met +his eyes as with an intention suddenly determined, and whose features—not +freshly young, not markedly fine, but on happy terms with each other—came +back to him as from a recent vision. For a moment they stood confronted; then +the moment placed her: he had noticed her the day before, noticed her at his +previous inn, where—again in the hall—she had been briefly engaged +with some people of his own ship’s company. Nothing had actually passed +between them, and he would as little have been able to say what had been the +sign of her face for him on the first occasion as to name the ground of his +present recognition. Recognition at any rate appeared to prevail on her own +side as well—which would only have added to the mystery. All she now +began by saying to him nevertheless was that, having chanced to catch his +enquiry, she was moved to ask, by his leave, if it were possibly a question of +Mr. Waymarsh of Milrose Connecticut—Mr. Waymarsh the American lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he replied, “my very well-known friend. He’s +to meet me here, coming up from Malvern, and I supposed he’d already have +arrived. But he doesn’t come till later, and I’m relieved not to +have kept him. Do you know him?” Strether wound up. +</p> + +<p> +It wasn’t till after he had spoken that he became aware of how much there +had been in him of response; when the tone of her own rejoinder, as well as the +play of something more in her face—something more, that is, than its +apparently usual restless light—seemed to notify him. “I’ve +met him at Milrose—where I used sometimes, a good while ago, to stay; I +had friends there who were friends of his, and I’ve been at his house. I +won’t answer for it that he would know me,” Strether’s new +acquaintance pursued; “but I should be delighted to see him. +Perhaps,” she added, “I shall—for I’m staying +over.” She paused while our friend took in these things, and it was as if +a good deal of talk had already passed. They even vaguely smiled at it, and +Strether presently observed that Mr. Waymarsh would, no doubt, be easily to be +seen. This, however, appeared to affect the lady as if she might have advanced +too far. She appeared to have no reserves about anything. “Oh,” she +said, “he won’t care!”—and she immediately thereupon +remarked that she believed Strether knew the Munsters; the Munsters being the +people he had seen her with at Liverpool. +</p> + +<p> +But he didn’t, it happened, know the Munsters well enough to give the +case much of a lift; so that they were left together as if over the mere laid +table of conversation. Her qualification of the mentioned connexion had rather +removed than placed a dish, and there seemed nothing else to serve. Their +attitude remained, none the less, that of not forsaking the board; and the +effect of this in turn was to give them the appearance of having accepted each +other with an absence of preliminaries practically complete. They moved along +the hall together, and Strether’s companion threw off that the hotel had +the advantage of a garden. He was aware by this time of his strange +inconsequence: he had shirked the intimacies of the steamer and had muffled the +shock of Waymarsh only to find himself forsaken, in this sudden case, both of +avoidance and of caution. He passed, under this unsought protection and before +he had so much as gone up to his room, into the garden of the hotel, and at the +end of ten minutes had agreed to meet there again, as soon as he should have +made himself tidy, the dispenser of such good assurances. He wanted to look at +the town, and they would forthwith look together. It was almost as if she had +been in possession and received him as a guest. Her acquaintance with the place +presented her in a manner as a hostess, and Strether had a rueful glance for +the lady in the glass cage. It was as if this personage had seen herself +instantly superseded. +</p> + +<p> +When in a quarter of an hour he came down, what his hostess saw, what she might +have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted, was the lean, the slightly loose +figure of a man of the middle height and something more perhaps than the middle +age—a man of five-and-fifty, whose most immediate signs were a marked +bloodless brownness of face, a thick dark moustache, of characteristically +American cut, growing strong and falling low, a head of hair still abundant but +irregularly streaked with grey, and a nose of bold free prominence, the even +line, the high finish, as it might have been called, of which, had a certain +effect of mitigation. A perpetual pair of glasses astride of this fine ridge, +and a line, unusually deep and drawn, the prolonged pen-stroke of time, +accompanying the curve of the moustache from nostril to chin, did something to +complete the facial furniture that an attentive observer would have seen +catalogued, on the spot, in the vision of the other party to Strether’s +appointment. She waited for him in the garden, the other party, drawing on a +pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic light gloves and presenting herself +with a superficial readiness which, as he approached her over the small smooth +lawn and in the watery English sunshine, he might, with his rougher +preparation, have marked as the model for such an occasion. She had, this lady, +a perfect plain propriety, an expensive subdued suitability, that her companion +was not free to analyse, but that struck him, so that his consciousness of it +was instantly acute, as a quality quite new to him. Before reaching her he +stopped on the grass and went through the form of feeling for something, +possibly forgotten, in the light overcoat he carried on his arm; yet the +essence of the act was no more than the impulse to gain time. Nothing could +have been odder than Strether’s sense of himself as at that moment +launched in something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the +sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then. It had +begun in fact already upstairs and before the dressing glass that struck him as +blocking further, so strangely, the dimness of the window of his dull bedroom; +begun with a sharper survey of the elements of Appearance than he had for a +long time been moved to make. He had during those moments felt these elements +to be not so much to his hand as he should have liked, and then had fallen back +on the thought that they were precisely a matter as to which help was supposed +to come from what he was about to do. He was about to go up to London, so that +hat and necktie might wait. What had come as straight to him as a ball in a +well-played game—and caught moreover not less neatly—was just the +air, in the person of his friend, of having seen and chosen, the air of +achieved possession of those vague qualities and quantities that collectively +figured to him as the advantage snatched from lucky chances. Without pomp or +circumstance, certainly, as her original address to him, equally with his own +response, had been, he would have sketched to himself his impression of her as: +“Well, she’s more thoroughly civilized—!” If +“More thoroughly than <i>whom?</i>” would not have been for him a +sequel to this remark, that was just by reason of his deep consciousness of the +bearing of his comparison. +</p> + +<p> +The amusement, at all events, of a civilisation intenser was +what—familiar compatriot as she was, with the full tone of the compatriot +and the rattling link not with mystery but only with dear dyspeptic +Waymarsh—she appeared distinctly to promise. His pause while he felt in +his overcoat was positively the pause of confidence, and it enabled his eyes to +make out as much of a case for her, in proportion, as her own made out for +himself. She affected him as almost insolently young; but an easily carried +five-and-thirty could still do that. She was, however, like himself marked and +wan; only it naturally couldn’t have been known to him how much a +spectator looking from one to the other might have discerned that they had in +common. It wouldn’t for such a spectator have been altogether +insupposable that, each so finely brown and so sharply spare, each confessing +so to dents of surface and aids to sight, to a disproportionate nose and a head +delicately or grossly grizzled, they might have been brother and sister. On +this ground indeed there would have been a residuum of difference; such a +sister having surely known in respect to such a brother the extremity of +separation, and such a brother now feeling in respect to such a sister the +extremity of surprise. Surprise, it was true, was not on the other hand what +the eyes of Strether’s friend most showed him while she gave him, +stroking her gloves smoother, the time he appreciated. They had taken hold of +him straightway measuring him up and down as if they knew how; as if he were +human material they had already in some sort handled. Their possessor was in +truth, it may be communicated, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories, +receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a full +experience, she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of +a compositor scattering type. She was as equipped in this particular as +Strether was the reverse, and it made an opposition between them which he might +well have shrunk from submitting to if he had fully suspected it. So far as he +did suspect it he was on the contrary, after a short shake of his +consciousness, as pleasantly passive as might be. He really had a sort of sense +of what she knew. He had quite the sense that she knew things he didn’t, +and though this was a concession that in general he found not easy to make to +women, he made it now as good-humouredly as if it lifted a burden. His eyes +were so quiet behind his eternal nippers that they might almost have been +absent without changing his face, which took its expression mainly, and not +least its stamp of sensibility, from other sources, surface and grain and form. +He joined his guide in an instant, and then felt she had profited still better +than he by his having been for the moments just mentioned, so at the disposal +of her intelligence. She knew even intimate things about him that he +hadn’t yet told her and perhaps never would. He wasn’t unaware that +he had told her rather remarkably many for the time, but these were not the +real ones. Some of the real ones, however, precisely, were what she knew. +</p> + +<p> +They were to pass again through the hall of the inn to get into the street, and +it was here she presently checked him with a question. “Have you looked +up my name?” +</p> + +<p> +He could only stop with a laugh. “Have you looked up mine?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dear, yes—as soon as you left me. I went to the office and +asked. Hadn’t <i>you</i> better do the same?” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered. “Find out who you are?—after the uplifted young woman +there has seen us thus scrape acquaintance!” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed on her side now at the shade of alarm in his amusement. +“Isn’t it a reason the more? If what you’re afraid of is the +injury for me—my being seen to walk off with a gentleman who has to ask +who I am—I assure you I don’t in the least mind. Here, +however,” she continued, “is my card, and as I find there’s +something else again I have to say at the office, you can just study it during +the moment I leave you.” +</p> + +<p> +She left him after he had taken from her the small pasteboard she had extracted +from her pocket-book, and he had extracted another from his own, to exchange +with it, before she came back. He read thus the simple designation “Maria +Gostrey,” to which was attached, in a corner of the card, with a number, +the name of a street, presumably in Paris, without other appreciable identity +than its foreignness. He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his +own meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post he met with +the smile of a straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to +his view. It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria +Gostrey, whoever she was—of which he hadn’t really the least +idea—in a place of safe keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he +should carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in. He gazed with +unseeing lingering eyes as he followed some of the implications of his act, +asking himself if he really felt admonished to qualify it as disloyal. It was +prompt, it was possibly even premature, and there was little doubt of the +expression of face the sight of it would have produced in a certain person. But +if it was “wrong”—why then he had better not have come out at +all. At this, poor man, had he already—and even before meeting +Waymarsh—arrived. He had believed he had a limit, but the limit had been +transcended within thirty-six hours. By how long a space on the plane of +manners or even of morals, moreover, he felt still more sharply after Maria +Gostrey had come back to him and with a gay decisive “So +now—!” led him forth into the world. This counted, it struck him as +he walked beside her with his overcoat on an arm, his umbrella under another +and his personal pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and +thumb, this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things. It +hadn’t been “Europe” at Liverpool no—not even in the +dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before—to the extent his +present companion made it so. She hadn’t yet done that so much as when, +after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to wonder if a +couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best have put on gloves +she almost pulled him up with an amused challenge. “But why—fondly +as it’s so easy to imagine your clinging to it—don’t you put +it away? Or if it’s an inconvenience to you to carry it, one’s +often glad to have one’s card back. The fortune one spends in +them!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he saw both that his way of marching with his own prepared tribute had +affected her as a deviation in one of those directions he couldn’t yet +measure, and that she supposed this emblem to be still the one he had received +from her. He accordingly handed her the card as if in restitution, but as soon +as she had it she felt the difference and, with her eyes on it, stopped short +for apology. “I like,” she observed, “your name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he answered, “you won’t have heard of it!” +Yet he had his reasons for not being sure but that she perhaps might. +</p> + +<p> +Ah it was but too visible! She read it over again as one who had never seen it. +“‘Mr. Lewis Lambert Strether’”—she sounded it +almost as freely as for any stranger. She repeated however that she liked +it—“particularly the Lewis Lambert. It’s the name of a novel +of Balzac’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I know that!” said Strether. +</p> + +<p> +“But the novel’s an awfully bad one.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know that too,” Strether smiled. To which he added with an +irrelevance that was only superficial: “I come from Woollett +Massachusetts.” It made her for some reason—the irrelevance or +whatever—laugh. Balzac had described many cities, but hadn’t +described Woollett Massachusetts. “You say that,” she returned, +“as if you wanted one immediately to know the worst.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I think it’s a thing,” he said, “that you must +already have made out. I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, +and, as people say there, ‘act’ it. It sticks out of me, and you +knew surely for yourself as soon as you looked at me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The worst, you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the fact of where I come from. There at any rate it <i>is</i>; so +that you won’t be able, if anything happens, to say I’ve not been +straight with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see”—and Miss Gostrey looked really interested in the +point he had made. “But what do you think of as happening?” +</p> + +<p> +Though he wasn’t shy—which was rather anomalous—Strether +gazed about without meeting her eyes; a motion that was frequent with him in +talk, yet of which his words often seemed not at all the effect. “Why +that you should find me too hopeless.” With which they walked on again +together while she answered, as they went, that the most “hopeless” +of her countryfolk were in general precisely those she liked best. All sorts of +other pleasant small things—small things that were yet large for +him—flowered in the air of the occasion, but the bearing of the occasion +itself on matters still remote concerns us too closely to permit us to multiply +our illustrations. Two or three, however, in truth, we should perhaps regret to +lose. The tortuous wall—girdle, long since snapped, of the little swollen +city, half held in place by careful civic hands—wanders in narrow file +between parapets smoothed by peaceful generations, pausing here and there for a +dismantled gate or a bridged gap, with rises and drops, steps up and steps +down, queer twists, queer contacts, peeps into homely streets and under the +brows of gables, views of cathedral tower and waterside fields, of huddled +English town and ordered English country. Too deep almost for words was the +delight of these things to Strether; yet as deeply mixed with it were certain +images of his inward picture. He had trod this walks in the far-off time, at +twenty-five; but that, instead of spoiling it, only enriched it for present +feeling and marked his renewal as a thing substantial enough to share. It was +with Waymarsh he should have shared it, and he was now accordingly taking from +him something that was his due. He looked repeatedly at his watch, and when he +had done so for the fifth time Miss Gostrey took him up. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re doing something that you think not right.” +</p> + +<p> +It so touched the place that he quite changed colour and his laugh grew almost +awkward. “Am I enjoying it as much as <i>that?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not enjoying it, I think, so much as you ought.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see”—he appeared thoughtfully to agree. “Great is my +privilege.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it’s not your privilege! It has nothing to do with <i>me</i>. +It has to do with yourself. Your failure’s general.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah there you are!” he laughed. “It’s the failure of +Woollett. <i>That’s</i> general.” +</p> + +<p> +“The failure to enjoy,” Miss Gostrey explained, “is what I +mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely. Woollett isn’t sure it ought to enjoy. If it were it +would. But it hasn’t, poor thing,” Strether continued, “any +one to show it how. It’s not like me. I have somebody.” +</p> + +<p> +They had stopped, in the afternoon sunshine—constantly pausing, in their +stroll, for the sharper sense of what they saw—and Strether rested on one +of the high sides of the old stony groove of the little rampart. He leaned back +on this support with his face to the tower of the cathedral, now admirably +commanded by their station, the high red-brown mass, square and subordinately +spired and crocketed, retouched and restored, but charming to his long-sealed +eyes and with the first swallows of the year weaving their flight all round it. +Miss Gostrey lingered near him, full of an air, to which she more and more +justified her right, of understanding the effect of things. She quite +concurred. “You’ve indeed somebody.” And she added: “I +wish you <i>would</i> let me show you how!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’m afraid of you!” he cheerfully pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +She kept on him a moment, through her glasses and through his own, a certain +pleasant pointedness. “Ah no, you’re not! You’re not in the +least, thank goodness! If you had been we shouldn’t so soon have found +ourselves here together. I think,” she comfortably concluded, “you +trust me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do!—but that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I +shouldn’t mind if I didn’t. It’s falling thus in twenty +minutes so utterly into your hands. I dare say,” Strether continued, +“it’s a sort of thing you’re thoroughly familiar with; but +nothing more extraordinary has ever happened to me.” +</p> + +<p> +She watched him with all her kindness. “That means simply that +you’ve recognised me—which <i>is</i> rather beautiful and rare. You +see what I am.” As on this, however, he protested, with a good-humoured +headshake, a resignation of any such claim, she had a moment of explanation. +“If you’ll only come on further as you <i>have</i> come +you’ll at any rate make out. My own fate has been too many for me, and +I’ve succumbed to it. I’m a general guide—to +‘Europe,’ don’t you know? I wait for people—I put them +through. I pick them up—I set them down. I’m a sort of superior +‘courier-maid.’ I’m a companion at large. I take people, as +I’ve told you, about. I never sought it—it has come to me. It has +been my fate, and one’s fate one accepts. It’s a dreadful thing to +have to say, in so wicked a world, but I verily believe that, such as you see +me, there’s nothing I don’t know. I know all the shops and the +prices—but I know worse things still. I bear on my back the huge load of +our national consciousness, or, in other words—for it comes to +that—of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed but of the men +and women individually on my shoulders? I don’t do it, you know, for any +particular advantage. I don’t do it, for instance—some people do, +you know—for money.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether could only listen and wonder and weigh his chance. “And yet, +affected as you are then to so many of your clients, you can scarcely be said +to do it for love.” He waited a moment. “How do we reward +you?” +</p> + +<p> +She had her own hesitation, but “You don’t!” she finally +returned, setting him again in motion. They went on, but in a few minutes, +though while still thinking over what she had said, he once more took out his +watch; mechanically, unconsciously and as if made nervous by the mere +exhilaration of what struck him as her strange and cynical wit. He looked at +the hour without seeing it, and then, on something again said by his companion, +had another pause. “You’re really in terror of him.” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled a smile that he almost felt to be sickly. “Now you can see why +I’m afraid of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I’ve such illuminations? Why they’re all for your +help! It’s what I told you,” she added, “just now. You feel +as if this were wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +He fell back once more, settling himself against the parapet as if to hear more +about it. “Then get me out!” +</p> + +<p> +Her face fairly brightened for the joy of the appeal, but, as if it were a +question of immediate action, she visibly considered. “Out of waiting for +him?—of seeing him at all?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—not that,” said poor Strether, looking grave. +“I’ve got to wait for him—and I want very much to see him. +But out of the terror. You did put your finger on it a few minutes ago. +It’s general, but it avails itself of particular occasions. That’s +what it’s doing for me now. I’m always considering something else; +something else, I mean, than the thing of the moment. The obsession of the +other thing is the terror. I’m considering at present for instance +something else than <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +She listened with charming earnestness. “Oh you oughtn’t to do +that!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what I admit. Make it then impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +She continued to think. “Is it really an ‘order’ from +you?—that I shall take the job? <i>Will</i> you give yourself up?” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Strether heaved his sigh. “If I only could! But that’s the +deuce of it—that I never can. No—I can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She wasn’t, however, discouraged. “But you want to at least?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh unspeakably!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then, if you’ll try!”—and she took over the job, as +she had called it, on the spot. “Trust me!” she exclaimed, and the +action of this, as they retraced their steps, was presently to make him pass +his hand into her arm in the manner of a benign dependent paternal old person +who wishes to be “nice” to a younger one. If he drew it out again +indeed as they approached the inn this may have been because, after more talk +had passed between them, the relation of age, or at least of +experience—which, for that matter, had already played to and fro with +some freedom—affected him as incurring a readjustment. It was at all +events perhaps lucky that they arrived in sufficiently separate fashion within +range of the hotel-door. The young lady they had left in the glass cage watched +as if she had come to await them on the threshold. At her side stood a person +equally interested, by his attitude, in their return, and the effect of the +sight of whom was instantly to determine for Strether another of those +responsive arrests that we have had so repeatedly to note. He left it to Miss +Gostrey to name, with the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her +“Mr. Waymarsh!” what was to have been, what—he more than ever +felt as his short stare of suspended welcome took things in—would have +been, but for herself, his doom. It was already upon him even at that +distance—Mr. Waymarsh was for <i>his</i> part joyless. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he knew almost +nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh, even with his memory +refreshed by contact, by her own prompt and lucid allusions and enquiries, by +their having publicly partaken of dinner in her company, and by another stroll, +to which she was not a stranger, out into the town to look at the cathedral by +moonlight—it was a blank that the resident of Milrose, though admitting +acquaintance with the Munsters, professed himself unable to fill. He had no +recollection of Miss Gostrey, and two or three questions that she put to him +about those members of his circle had, to Strether’s observation, the +same effect he himself had already more directly felt—the effect of +appearing to place all knowledge, for the time, on this original woman’s +side. It interested him indeed to mark the limits of any such relation for her +with his friend as there could possibly be a question of, and it particularly +struck him that they were to be marked altogether in Waymarsh’s quarter. +This added to his own sense of having gone far with her—gave him an early +illustration of a much shorter course. There was a certitude he immediately +grasped—a conviction that Waymarsh would quite fail, as it were, and on +whatever degree of acquaintances to profit by her. +</p> + +<p> +There had been after the first interchange among the three a talk of some five +minutes in the hall, and then the two men had adjourned to the garden, Miss +Gostrey for the time disappearing. Strether in due course accompanied his +friend to the room he had bespoken and had, before going out, scrupulously +visited; where at the end of another half-hour he had no less discreetly left +him. On leaving him he repaired straight to his own room, but with the prompt +effect of feeling the compass of that chamber resented by his condition. There +he enjoyed at once the first consequence of their reunion. A place was too +small for him after it that had seemed large enough before. He had awaited it +with something he would have been sorry, have been almost ashamed not to +recognise as emotion, yet with a tacit assumption at the same time that emotion +would in the event find itself relieved. The actual oddity was that he was only +more excited; and his excitement—to which indeed he would have found it +difficult instantly to give a name—brought him once more downstairs and +caused him for some minutes vaguely to wander. He went once more to the garden; +he looked into the public room, found Miss Gostrey writing letters and backed +out; he roamed, fidgeted and wasted time; but he was to have his more intimate +session with his friend before the evening closed. +</p> + +<p> +It was late—not till Strether had spent an hour upstairs with +him—that this subject consented to betake himself to doubtful rest. +Dinner and the subsequent stroll by moonlight—a dream, on +Strether’s part, of romantic effects rather prosaically merged in a mere +missing of thicker coats—had measurably intervened, and this midnight +conference was the result of Waymarsh’s having (when they were free, as +he put it, of their fashionable friend) found the smoking-room not quite what +he wanted, and yet bed what he wanted less. His most frequent form of words was +that he knew himself, and they were applied on this occasion to his certainty +of not sleeping. He knew himself well enough to know that he should have a +night of prowling unless he should succeed, as a preliminary, in getting +prodigiously tired. If the effort directed to this end involved till a late +hour the presence of Strether—consisted, that is, in the detention of the +latter for full discourse—there was yet an impression of minor discipline +involved for our friend in the picture Waymarsh made as he sat in trousers and +shirt on the edge of his couch. With his long legs extended and his large back +much bent, he nursed alternately, for an almost incredible time, his elbows and +his beard. He struck his visitor as extremely, as almost wilfully +uncomfortable; yet what had this been for Strether, from that first glimpse of +him disconcerted in the porch of the hotel, but the predominant notes. The +discomfort was in a manner contagious, as well as also in a manner inconsequent +and unfounded; the visitor felt that unless he should get used to it—or +unless Waymarsh himself should—it would constitute a menace for his own +prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the agreeable. On their +first going up together to the room Strether had selected for him Waymarsh had +looked it over in silence and with a sigh that represented for his companion, +if not the habit of disapprobation, at least the despair of felicity; and this +look had recurred to Strether as the key of much he had since observed. +“Europe,” he had begun to gather from these things, had up to now +rather failed of its message to him; he hadn’t got into tune with it and +had at the end of three months almost renounced any such expectation. +</p> + +<p> +He really appeared at present to insist on that by just perching there with the +gas in his eyes. This of itself somehow conveyed the futility of single +rectifications in a multiform failure. He had a large handsome head and a large +sallow seamed face—a striking significant physiognomic total, the upper +range of which, the great political brow, the thick loose hair, the dark +fuliginous eyes, recalled even to a generation whose standard had dreadfully +deviated the impressive image, familiar by engravings and busts, of some great +national worthy of the earlier part of the mid-century. He was of the personal +type—and it was an element in the power and promise that in their early +time Strether had found in him—of the American statesman, the statesman +trained in “Congressional halls,” of an elder day. The legend had +been in later years that as the lower part of his face, which was weak, and +slightly crooked, spoiled the likeness, this was the real reason for the growth +of his beard, which might have seemed to spoil it for those not in the secret. +He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable eyes, his auditor or his +observer; he wore no glasses and had a way, partly formidable, yet also partly +encouraging, as from a representative to a constituent, of looking very hard at +those who approached him. He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden +you enter. Strether, who hadn’t seen him for so long an interval, +apprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never done him +such ideal justice. The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than they need have +been for the career; but that only meant, after all, that the career was itself +expressive. What it expressed at midnight in the gas-glaring bedroom at Chester +was that the subject of it had, at the end of years, barely escaped, by flight +in time, a general nervous collapse. But this very proof of the full life, as +the full life was understood at Milrose, would have made to Strether’s +imagination an element in which Waymarsh could have floated easily had he only +consented to float. Alas nothing so little resembled floating as the rigour +with which, on the edge of his bed, he hugged his posture of prolonged +impermanence. It suggested to his comrade something that always, when kept up, +worried him—a person established in a railway-coach with a forward +inclination. It represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit through +the ordeal of Europe. +</p> + +<p> +Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the absorption +and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during years before this +sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of comparative ease, found so much as +a day for a meeting; a fact that was in some degree an explanation of the +sharpness with which most of his friend’s features stood out to Strether. +Those he had lost sight of since the early time came back to him; others that +it was never possible to forget struck him now as sitting, clustered and +expectant, like a somewhat defiant family-group, on the doorstep of their +residence. The room was narrow for its length, and the occupant of the bed +thrust so far a pair of slippered feet that the visitor had almost to step over +them in his recurrent rebounds from his chair to fidget back and forth. There +were marks the friends made on things to talk about, and on things not to, and +one of the latter in particular fell like the tap of chalk on the blackboard. +Married at thirty, Waymarsh had not lived with his wife for fifteen years, and +it came up vividly between them in the glare of the gas that Strether +wasn’t to ask about her. He knew they were still separate and that she +lived at hotels, travelled in Europe, painted her face and wrote her husband +abusive letters, of not one of which, to a certainty, that sufferer spared +himself the perusal; but he respected without difficulty the cold twilight that +had settled on this side of his companion’s life. It was a province in +which mystery reigned and as to which Waymarsh had never spoken the informing +word. Strether, who wanted to do him the highest justice wherever he +<i>could</i> do it, singularly admired him for the dignity of this reserve, and +even counted it as one of the grounds—grounds all handled and +numbered—for ranking him, in the range of their acquaintance, as a +success. He <i>was</i> a success, Waymarsh, in spite of overwork, or +prostration, of sensible shrinkage, of his wife’s letters and of his not +liking Europe. Strether would have reckoned his own career less futile had he +been able to put into it anything so handsome as so much fine silence. One +might one’s self easily have left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly +have paid one’s tribute to the ideal in covering with that attitude the +derision of having been left by her. Her husband had held his tongue and had +made a large income; and these were in especial the achievements as to which +Strether envied him. Our friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for +silence, which he fully appreciated; but it was a matter of a different sort, +and the figure of the income he had arrived at had never been high enough to +look any one in the face. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know as I quite see what you require it for. You +don’t appear sick to speak of.” It was of Europe Waymarsh thus +finally spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, who fell as much as possible into step, +“I guess I don’t <i>feel</i> sick now that I’ve started. But +I had pretty well run down before I did start.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh raised his melancholy look. “Ain’t you about up to your +usual average?” +</p> + +<p> +It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for the +purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very voice of +Milrose. He had long since made a mental distinction—though never in +truth daring to betray it—between the voice of Milrose and the voice even +of Woollett. It was the former he felt, that was most in the real tradition. +There had been occasions in his past when the sound of it had reduced him to +temporary confusion, and the present, for some reason, suddenly became such +another. It was nevertheless no light matter that the very effect of his +confusion should be to make him again prevaricate. “That description +hardly does justice to a man to whom it has done such a lot of good to see +<i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh fixed on his washing-stand the silent detached stare with which +Milrose in person, as it were, might have marked the unexpectedness of a +compliment from Woollett, and Strether for his part, felt once more like +Woollett in person. “I mean,” his friend presently continued, +“that your appearance isn’t as bad as I’ve seen it: it +compares favourably with what it was when I last noticed it.” On this +appearance Waymarsh’s eyes yet failed to rest; it was almost as if they +obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still stronger when, always +considering the basin and jug, he added: “You’ve filled out some +since then.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I have,” Strether laughed: “one does fill +out some with all one takes in, and I’ve taken in, I dare say, more than +I’ve natural room for. I was dog-tired when I sailed.” It had the +oddest sound of cheerfulness. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> was dog-tired,” his companion returned, “when I +arrived, and it’s this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of +me. The fact is, Strether—and it’s a comfort to have you here at +last to say it to; though I don’t know, after all, that I’ve really +waited; I’ve told it to people I’ve met in the cars—the fact +is, such a country as this ain’t my <i>kind</i> of country anyway. There +ain’t a country I’ve seen over here that <i>does</i> seem my kind. +Oh I don’t say but what there are plenty of pretty places and remarkable +old things; but the trouble is that I don’t seem to feel anywhere in +tune. That’s one of the reasons why I suppose I’ve gained so +little. I haven’t had the first sign of that lift I was led to +expect.” With this he broke out more earnestly. “Look here—I +want to go back.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes were all attached to Strether’s now, for he was one of the men +who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his friend to +look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest advantage in his eyes +by doing so. “That’s a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come +out on purpose to meet you!” +</p> + +<p> +Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh’s sombre glow. +“<i>Have</i> you come out on purpose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—very largely.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “Back of my desire to be with you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Back of your prostration.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his +head. “There are all the causes of it!” +</p> + +<p> +“And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. “Yes. One. There +<i>is</i> a matter that has had much to do with my coming out.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh waited a little. “Too private to mention?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not too private—for <i>you</i>. Only rather +complicated.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Waymarsh, who had waited again, “I <i>may</i> +lose my mind over here, but I don’t know as I’ve done so +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. “Why +not—if I can’t sleep?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because, my dear man, I <i>can!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Then where’s your prostration?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just in that—that I can put in eight hours.” And Strether +brought it out that if Waymarsh didn’t “gain” it was because +he didn’t go to bed: the result of which was, in its order, that, to do +the latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting +settled. Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this +consummation, and again found his own part in their relation auspiciously +enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and seeing to a +sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel +Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a +patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as much simplified +by it. He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged +him out of the bedclothes. “Is she really after you? Is that what’s +behind?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion’s +insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. “Behind my coming +out?” +</p> + +<p> +“Behind your prostration or whatever. It’s generally felt, you +know, that she follows you up pretty close.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s candour was never very far off. “Oh it has occurred to +you that I’m literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I haven’t <i>known</i> but what you are. You’re a very +attractive man, Strether. You’ve seen for yourself,” said Waymarsh +“what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,” he rambled +on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, “it’s you who +are after <i>her</i>. Is Mrs. Newsome <i>over</i> here?” He spoke as with +a droll dread of her. +</p> + +<p> +It made his friend—though rather dimly—smile. “Dear no; +she’s safe, thank goodness—as I think I more and more feel—at +home. She thought of coming, but she gave it up. I’ve come in a manner +instead of her; and come to that extent—for you’re right in your +inference—on her business. So you see there <i>is</i> plenty of +connexion.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. “Involving accordingly +the particular one I’ve referred to?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his +companion’s blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of +a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. +“Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But +don’t be afraid—you shall have them from me: you’ll probably +find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with. I shall—if +we keep together—very much depend on your impression of some of +them.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh’s acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically +indirect. “You mean to say you don’t believe we <i>will</i> keep +together?” +</p> + +<p> +“I only glance at the danger,” Strether paternally said, +“because when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such +possibilities of folly.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh took it—silent a little—like a large snubbed child +“What are you going to do with me?” +</p> + +<p> +It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and he +wondered if he had sounded like that. But <i>he</i> at least could be more +definite. “I’m going to take you right down to London.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’ve been down to London!” Waymarsh more softly moaned. +“I’ve no use, Strether, for anything down there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, good-humouredly, “I guess you’ve +some use for <i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I’ve got to go?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you’ve got to go further yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Waymarsh sighed, “do your damnedest! Only you +<i>will</i> tell me before you lead me on all the way—?” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for contrition, in +the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge that afternoon, such +another figure, that he for an instant missed the thread. “Tell +you—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why what you’ve got on hand.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “Why it’s such a matter as that even if I +positively wanted I shouldn’t be able to keep it from you.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh gloomily gazed. “What does that mean then but that your trip is +just <i>for</i> her?” +</p> + +<p> +“For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as I say. Very much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do you also say it’s for me?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, in impatience, violently played with his latch. “It’s +simple enough. It’s for both of you.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh at last turned over with a groan. “Well, <i>I</i> won’t +marry you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Neither, when it comes to that—!” But the visitor had +already laughed and escaped. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +He had told Miss Gostrey he should probably take, for departure with Waymarsh, +some afternoon train, and it thereupon in the morning appeared that this lady +had made her own plan for an earlier one. She had breakfasted when Strether +came into the coffee-room; but, Waymarsh not having yet emerged, he was in time +to recall her to the terms of their understanding and to pronounce her +discretion overdone. She was surely not to break away at the very moment she +had created a want. He had met her as she rose from her little table in a +window, where, with the morning papers beside her, she reminded him, as he let +her know, of Major Pendennis breakfasting at his club—a compliment of +which she professed a deep appreciation; and he detained her as pleadingly as +if he had already—and notably under pressure of the visions of the +night—learned to be unable to do without her. She must teach him at all +events, before she went, to order breakfast as breakfast was ordered in Europe, +and she must especially sustain him in the problem of ordering for Waymarsh. +The latter had laid upon his friend, by desperate sounds through the door of +his room, dreadful divined responsibilities in respect to beefsteak and +oranges—responsibilities which Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness +of action that matched her quick intelligence. She had before this weaned the +expatriated from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but +the creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories, to +falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there +was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies. “There are times +when to give them their head, you know—!” +</p> + +<p> +They had gone to wait together in the garden for the dressing of the meal, and +Strether found her more suggestive than ever “Well, what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is to bring about for them such a complexity of relations—unless +indeed we call it a simplicity!—that the situation <i>has</i> to wind +itself up. They want to go back.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you want them to go!” Strether gaily concluded. +</p> + +<p> +“I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I know—you take them to Liverpool.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any port will serve in a storm. I’m—with all my other +functions—an agent for repatriation. I want to re-people our stricken +country. What will become of it else? I want to discourage others.” +</p> + +<p> +The ordered English garden, in the freshness of the day, was delightful to +Strether, who liked the sound, under his feet, of the tight fine gravel, packed +with the chronic damp, and who had the idlest eye for the deep smoothness of +turf and the clean curves of paths. “Other people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Other countries. Other people—yes. I want to encourage our +own.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “Not to come? Why then do you ‘meet’ +them—since it doesn’t appear to be to stop them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh that they shouldn’t come is as yet too much to ask. What I +attend to is that they come quickly and return still more so. I meet them to +help it to be over as soon as possible, and though I don’t stop them +I’ve my way of putting them through. That’s my little system; and, +if you want to know,” said Maria Gostrey, “it’s my real +secret, my innermost mission and use. I only seem, you see, to beguile and +approve; but I’ve thought it all out and I’m working all the while +underground. I can’t perhaps quite give you my formula, but I think that +practically I succeed. I send you back spent. So you stay back. Passed through +my hands—” +</p> + +<p> +“We don’t turn up again?” The further she went the further he +always saw himself able to follow. “I don’t want your +formula—I feel quite enough, as I hinted yesterday, your abysses. +Spent!” he echoed. “If that’s how you’re arranging so +subtly to send me I thank you for the warning.” +</p> + +<p> +For a minute, amid the pleasantness—poetry in tariffed items, but all the +more, for guests already convicted, a challenge to consumption—they +smiled at each other in confirmed fellowship. “Do you call it subtly? +It’s a plain poor tale. Besides, you’re a special case.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh special cases—that’s weak!” She was weak enough, +further still, to defer her journey and agree to accompany the gentlemen on +their own, might a separate carriage mark her independence; though it was in +spite of this to befall after luncheon that she went off alone and that, with a +tryst taken for a day of her company in London, they lingered another night. +She had, during the morning—spent in a way that he was to remember later +on as the very climax of his foretaste, as warm with presentiments, with what +he would have called collapses—had all sorts of things out with Strether; +and among them the fact that though there was never a moment of her life when +she wasn’t “due” somewhere, there was yet scarce a perfidy to +others of which she wasn’t capable for his sake. She explained moreover +that wherever she happened to be she found a dropped thread to pick up, a +ragged edge to repair, some familiar appetite in ambush, jumping out as she +approached, yet appeasable with a temporary biscuit. It became, on her taking +the risk of the deviation imposed on him by her insidious arrangement of his +morning meal, a point of honour for her not to fail with Waymarsh of the larger +success too; and her subsequent boast to Strether was that she had made their +friend fare—and quite without his knowing what was the matter—as +Major Pendennis would have fared at the Megatherium. She had made him breakfast +like a gentleman, and it was nothing, she forcibly asserted, to what she would +yet make him do. She made him participate in the slow reiterated ramble with +which, for Strether, the new day amply filled itself; and it was by her art +that he somehow had the air, on the ramparts and in the Rows, of carrying a +point of his own. +</p> + +<p> +The three strolled and stared and gossiped, or at least the two did; the case +really yielding for their comrade, if analysed, but the element of stricken +silence. This element indeed affected Strether as charged with audible +rumblings, but he was conscious of the care of taking it explicitly as a sign +of pleasant peace. He wouldn’t appeal too much, for that provoked +stiffness; yet he wouldn’t be too freely tacit, for that suggested giving +up. Waymarsh himself adhered to an ambiguous dumbness that might have +represented either the growth of a perception or the despair of one; and at +times and in places—where the low-browed galleries were darkest, the +opposite gables queerest, the solicitations of every kind densest—the +others caught him fixing hard some object of minor interest, fixing even at +moments nothing discernible, as if he were indulging it with a truce. When he +met Strether’s eye on such occasions he looked guilty and furtive, fell +the next minute into some attitude of retractation. Our friend couldn’t +show him the right things for fear of provoking some total renouncement, and +was tempted even to show him the wrong in order to make him differ with +triumph. There were moments when he himself felt shy of professing the full +sweetness of the taste of leisure, and there were others when he found himself +feeling as if his passages of interchange with the lady at his side might fall +upon the third member of their party very much as Mr. Burchell, at Dr. +Primrose’s fireside, was influenced by the high flights of the visitors +from London. The smallest things so arrested and amused him that he repeatedly +almost apologised—brought up afresh in explanation his plea of a previous +grind. He was aware at the same time that his grind had been as nothing to +Waymarsh’s, and he repeatedly confessed that, to cover his frivolity, he +was doing his best for his previous virtue. Do what he might, in any case, his +previous virtue was still there, and it seemed fairly to stare at him out of +the windows of shops that were not as the shops of Woollett, fairly to make him +want things that he shouldn’t know what to do with. It was by the oddest, +the least admissible of laws demoralising him now; and the way it boldly took +was to make him want more wants. These first walks in Europe were in fact a +kind of finely lurid intimation of what one might find at the end of that +process. Had he come back after long years, in something already so like the +evening of life, only to be exposed to it? It was at all events over the +shop-windows that he made, with Waymarsh, most free; though it would have been +easier had not the latter most sensibly yielded to the appeal of the merely +useful trades. He pierced with his sombre detachment the plate-glass of +ironmongers and saddlers, while Strether flaunted an affinity with the dealers +in stamped letter-paper and in smart neckties. Strether was in fact recurrently +shameless in the presence of the tailors, though it was just over the heads of +the tailors that his countryman most loftily looked. This gave Miss Gostrey a +grasped opportunity to back up Waymarsh at his expense. The weary +lawyer—it was unmistakeable—had a conception of dress; but that, in +view of some of the features of the effect produced, was just what made the +danger of insistence on it. Strether wondered if he by this time thought Miss +Gostrey less fashionable or Lambert Strether more so; and it appeared probable +that most of the remarks exchanged between this latter pair about passers, +figures, faces, personal types, exemplified in their degree the disposition to +talk as “society” talked. +</p> + +<p> +Was what was happening to himself then, was what already <i>had</i> happened, +really that a woman of fashion was floating him into society and that an old +friend deserted on the brink was watching the force of the current? When the +woman of fashion permitted Strether—as she permitted him at the +most—the purchase of a pair of gloves, the terms she made about it, the +prohibition of neckties and other items till she should be able to guide him +through the Burlington Arcade, were such as to fall upon a sensitive ear as a +challenge to just imputations. Miss Gostrey was such a woman of fashion as +could make without a symptom of vulgar blinking an appointment for the +Burlington Arcade. Mere discriminations about a pair of gloves could thus at +any rate represent—always for such sensitive ears as were in +question—possibilities of something that Strether could make a mark +against only as the peril of apparent wantonness. He had quite the +consciousness of his new friend, for their companion, that he might have had of +a Jesuit in petticoats, a representative of the recruiting interests of the +Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, for Waymarsh—that was to say the +enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering groping +tentacles—was exactly society, exactly the multiplication of shibboleths, +exactly the discrimination of types and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of +Chester, rank with feudalism; exactly in short Europe. +</p> + +<p> +There was light for observation, however, in an incident that occurred just +before they turned back to luncheon. Waymarsh had been for a quarter of an hour +exceptionally mute and distant, and something, or other—Strether was +never to make out exactly what—proved, as it were, too much for him after +his comrades had stood for three minutes taking in, while they leaned on an old +balustrade that guarded the edge of the Row, a particularly crooked and huddled +street-view. “He thinks us sophisticated, he thinks us worldly, he thinks +us wicked, he thinks us all sorts of queer things,” Strether reflected; +for wondrous were the vague quantities our friend had within a couple of short +days acquired the habit of conveniently and conclusively lumping together. +There seemed moreover a direct connexion between some such inference and a +sudden grim dash taken by Waymarsh to the opposite side. This movement was +startlingly sudden, and his companions at first supposed him to have espied, to +be pursuing, the glimpse of an acquaintance. They next made out, however, that +an open door had instantly received him, and they then recognised him as +engulfed in the establishment of a jeweller, behind whose glittering front he +was lost to view. The fact had somehow the note of a demonstration, and it left +each of the others to show a face almost of fear. But Miss Gostrey broke into a +laugh. “What’s the matter with him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “he can’t stand it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But can’t stand what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything. Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then how will that jeweller help him?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed to make it out, from their position, between the interstices of +arrayed watches, of close-hung dangling gewgaws. “You’ll +see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s just what—if he buys anything—I’m +afraid of: that I shall see something rather dreadful.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether studied the finer appearances. “He may buy everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then don’t you think we ought to follow him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for worlds. Besides we can’t. We’re paralysed. We +exchange a long scared look, we publicly tremble. The thing is, you see, we +‘realise.’ He has struck for freedom.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered but she laughed. “Ah what a price to pay! And I was +preparing some for him so cheap.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” Strether went on, frankly amused now; “don’t +call it that: the kind of freedom you deal in is dear.” Then as to +justify himself: “Am I not in <i>my</i> way trying it? It’s +this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Being here, you mean, with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and talking to you as I do. I’ve known you a few hours, and +I’ve known <i>him</i> all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with +you about him isn’t magnificent”—and the thought of it held +him a moment—“why it’s rather base.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s magnificent!” said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it. +“And you should hear,” she added, “the ease <i>I</i> +take—and I above all intend to take—with Mr. Waymarsh.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought. “About <i>me?</i> Ah that’s no equivalent. The +equivalent would be Waymarsh’s himself serving me up—his +remorseless analysis of me. And he’ll never do that”—he was +sadly clear. “He’ll never remorselessly analyse me.” He quite +held her with the authority of this. “He’ll never say a word to you +about me.” +</p> + +<p> +She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason, her +restless irony, disposed of it. “Of course he won’t. For what do +you take people, that they’re able to say words about anything, able +remorselessly to analyse? There are not many like you and me. It will be only +because he’s too stupid.” +</p> + +<p> +It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time the +protest of the faith of years. “Waymarsh stupid?” +</p> + +<p> +“Compared with you.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller’s front, and he waited a +moment to answer. “He’s a success of a kind that I haven’t +approached.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean he has made money?” +</p> + +<p> +“He makes it—to my belief. And I,” said Strether, +“though with a back quite as bent, have never made anything. I’m a +perfectly equipped failure.” +</p> + +<p> +He feared an instant she’d ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was +glad she didn’t, for he really didn’t know to what the truth on +this unpleasant point mightn’t have prompted her. She only, however, +confirmed his assertion. “Thank goodness you’re a +failure—it’s why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too +hideous. Look about you—look at the successes. Would you <i>be</i> one, +on your honour? Look, moreover,” she continued, “at me.” +</p> + +<p> +For a little accordingly their eyes met. “I see,” Strether +returned. “You too are out of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“The superiority you discern in me,” she concurred, +“announces my futility. If you knew,” she sighed, “the dreams +of my youth! But our realities are what has brought us together. We’re +beaten brothers in arms.” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head. “It doesn’t +alter the fact that you’re expensive. You’ve cost me +already—!” +</p> + +<p> +But he had hung fire. “Cost you what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my past—in one great lump. But no matter,” he laughed: +“I’ll pay with my last penny.” +</p> + +<p> +Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade’s +return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop. “I hope +he hasn’t paid,” she said, “with <i>his</i> last; though +I’m convinced he has been splendid, and has been so for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no—not that!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then for me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite as little.” Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show +signs his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at +nothing in particular. +</p> + +<p> +“Then for himself?” +</p> + +<p> +“For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what has freedom to do with it?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s answer was indirect. “To be as good as you and me. But +different.” +</p> + +<p> +She had had time to take in their companion’s face; and with it, as such +things were easy for her, she took in all. “Different—yes. But +better!” +</p> + +<p> +If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them nothing, +left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had made some +extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only glowered +grandly at the tops of the old gables. “It’s the sacred +rage,” Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to +become between them, for convenient comprehension, the description of one of +his periodical necessities. It was Strether who eventually contended that it +did make him better than they. But by that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that +she didn’t want to be better than Strether. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>Book Second</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile from +Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless have their due +periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names for many other matters. +On no evening of his life perhaps, as he reflected, had he had to supply so +many as on the third of his short stay in London; an evening spent by Miss +Gostrey’s side at one of the theatres, to which he had found himself +transported, without his own hand raised, on the mere expression of a +conscientious wonder. She knew her theatre, she knew her play, as she had +triumphantly known, three days running, everything else, and the moment filled +to the brim, for her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, +whether or no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained +now to its limits his brief opportunity. Waymarsh hadn’t come with them; +he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had joined him—an +affirmation that had its full force when his friend ascertained by questions +that he had seen two and a circus. Questions as to what he had seen had on him +indeed an effect only less favourable than questions as to what he +hadn’t. He liked the former to be discriminated; but how could it be +done, Strether asked of their constant counsellor, without discriminating the +latter? +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small table +on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the rose-coloured +shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the lady—had +anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?—were so many touches in he +scarce knew what positive high picture. He had been to the theatre, even to the +opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than once acting as her only escort; +but there had been no little confronted dinner, no pink lights, no whiff of +vague sweetness, as a preliminary: one of the results of which was that at +present, mildly rueful, though with a sharpish accent, he actually asked +himself <i>why</i> there hadn’t. There was much the same difference in +his impression of the noticed state of his companion, whose dress was +“cut down,” as he believed the term to be, in respect to shoulders +and bosom, in a manner quite other than Mrs. Newsome’s, and who wore +round her throat a broad red velvet band with an antique jewel—he was +rather complacently sure it was antique—attached to it in front. Mrs. +Newsome’s dress was never in any degree “cut down,” and she +never wore round her throat a broad red velvet band: if she had, moreover, +would it ever have served so to carry on and complicate, as he now almost felt, +his vision? +</p> + +<p> +It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of the +ribbon from which Miss Gostrey’s trinket depended, had he not for the +hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perceptions. What was it +but an uncontrolled perception that his friend’s velvet band somehow +added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item—to that of her +smile and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of her +lips, her teeth, her eyes, her hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a +man’s work in the world to do with red velvet bands? He wouldn’t +for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked +hers, yet he <i>had</i> none the less not only caught himself in the +act—frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected—of +liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting-point for fresh backward, +fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs. Newsome’s +throat <i>was</i> encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order, +almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey’s was. Mrs. +Newsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress—very handsome, he +knew it was “handsome”—and an ornament that his memory was +able further to identify as a ruche. He had his association indeed with the +ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic. He had once said to the +wearer—and it was as “free” a remark as he had ever made to +her—that she looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen +Elizabeth; and it had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence +of that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special +tribute to the “frill” had grown slightly more marked. The +connexion, as he sat there and let his imagination roam, was to strike him as +vaguely pathetic; but there it all was, and pathetic was doubtless in the +conditions the best thing it could possibly be. It had assuredly existed at any +rate; for it seemed now to come over him that no gentleman of his age at +Woollett could ever, to a lady of Mrs. Newsome’s, which was not much less +than his, have embarked on such a simile. +</p> + +<p> +All sorts of things in fact now seemed to come over him, comparatively few of +which his chronicler can hope for space to mention. It came over him for +instance that Miss Gostrey looked perhaps like Mary Stuart: Lambert Strether +had a candour of fancy which could rest for an instant gratified in such an +antithesis. It came over him that never before—no, literally +never—had a lady dined with him at a public place before going to the +play. The publicity of the place was just, in the matter, for Strether, the +rare strange thing; it affected him almost as the achievement of privacy might +have affected a man of a different experience. He had married, in the far-away +years, so young as to have missed the time natural in Boston for taking girls +to the Museum; and it was absolutely true of hint that—even after the +close of the period of conscious detachment occupying the centre of his life, +the grey middle desert of the two deaths, that of his wife and that, ten years +later, of his boy—he had never taken any one anywhere. It came over him +in especial—though the monition had, as happened, already sounded, +fitfully gleamed, in other forms—that the business he had come out on +hadn’t yet been so brought home to him as by the sight of the people +about him. She gave him the impression, his friend, at first, more straight +than he got it for himself—gave it simply by saying with off-hand +illumination: “Oh yes, they’re types!”—but after he had +taken it he made to the full his own use of it; both while he kept silence for +the four acts and while he talked in the intervals. It was an evening, it was a +world of types, and this was a connexion above all in which the figures and +faces in the stalls were interchangeable with those on the stage. +</p> + +<p> +He felt as if the play itself penetrated him with the naked elbow of his +neighbour, a great stripped handsome red-haired lady who conversed with a +gentleman on her other side in stray dissyllables which had for his ear, in the +oddest way in the world, so much sound that he wondered they hadn’t more +sense; and he recognised by the same law, beyond the footlights, what he was +pleased to take for the very flush of English life. He had distracted drops in +which he couldn’t have said if it were actors or auditors who were most +true, and the upshot of which, each time, was the consciousness of new +contacts. However he viewed his job it was “types” he should have +to tackle. Those before him and around him were not as the types of Woollett, +where, for that matter, it had begun to seem to him that there must only have +been the male and the female. These made two exactly, even with the individual +varieties. Here, on the other hand, apart from the personal and the sexual +range—which might be greater or less—a series of strong stamps had +been applied, as it were, from without; stamps that his observation played with +as, before a glass case on a table, it might have passed from medal to medal +and from copper to gold. It befell that in the drama precisely there was a bad +woman in a yellow frock who made a pleasant weak good-looking young man in +perpetual evening dress do the most dreadful things. Strether felt himself on +the whole not afraid of the yellow frock, but he was vaguely anxious over a +certain kindness into which he found himself drifting for its victim. He +hadn’t come out, he reminded himself, to be too kind, or indeed to be +kind at all, to Chadwick Newsome. Would Chad also be in perpetual evening +dress? He somehow rather hoped it—it seemed so to add to <i>this</i> +young man’s general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him +with his own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have +likewise to be. This young man furthermore would have been much more easy to +handle—at least for <i>him</i>—than appeared probable in respect to +Chad. +</p> + +<p> +It came up for him with Miss Gostrey that there were things of which she would +really perhaps after all have heard, and she admitted when a little pressed +that she was never quite sure of what she heard as distinguished from things +such as, on occasions like the present, she only extravagantly guessed. +“I seem with this freedom, you see, to have guessed Mr. Chad. He’s +a young man on whose head high hopes are placed at Woollett; a young man a +wicked woman has got hold of and whom his family over there have sent you out +to rescue. You’ve accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked +woman. Are you quite sure she’s very bad for him?” +</p> + +<p> +Something in his manner showed it as quite pulling him up. “Of course we +are. Wouldn’t <i>you</i> be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I don’t know. One never does—does one?—beforehand. +One can only judge on the facts. Yours are quite new to me; I’m really +not in the least, as you see, in possession of them: so it will be awfully +interesting to have them from you. If you’re satisfied, that’s all +that’s required. I mean if you’re sure you <i>are</i> sure: sure it +won’t do.” +</p> + +<p> +“That he should lead such a life? Rather!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I don’t know, you see, about his life; you’ve not +told me about his life. She may be charming—his life!” +</p> + +<p> +“Charming?”—Strether stared before him. “She’s +base, venal—out of the streets.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. And <i>he</i>—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Chad, wretched boy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of what type and temper is he?” she went on as Strether had +lapsed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—the obstinate.” It was as if for a moment he had been +going to say more and had then controlled himself. +</p> + +<p> +That was scarce what she wished. “Do you like him?” +</p> + +<p> +This time he was prompt. “No. How <i>can</i> I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean because of your being so saddled with him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m thinking of his mother,” said Strether after a moment. +“He has darkened her admirable life.” He spoke with austerity. +“He has worried her half to death.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh that’s of course odious.” She had a pause as if for +renewed emphasis of this truth, but it ended on another note. “Is her +life very admirable?” +</p> + +<p> +“Extraordinarily.” +</p> + +<p> +There was so much in the tone that Miss Gostrey had to devote another pause to +the appreciation of it. “And has he only <i>her?</i> I don’t mean +the bad woman in Paris,” she quickly added—“for I assure you +I shouldn’t even at the best be disposed to allow him more than one. But +has he only his mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has also a sister, older than himself and married; and they’re +both remarkably fine women.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very handsome, you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +This promptitude—almost, as he might have thought, this precipitation, +gave him a brief drop; but he came up again. “Mrs. Newsome, I think, is +handsome, though she’s not of course, with a son of twenty-eight and a +daughter of thirty, in her very first youth. She married, however, extremely +young.” +</p> + +<p> +“And is wonderful,” Miss Gostrey asked, “for her age?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed to feel with a certain disquiet the pressure of it. “I +don’t say she’s wonderful. Or rather,” he went on the next +moment, “I do say it. It’s exactly what she +<i>is</i>—wonderful. But I wasn’t thinking of her +appearance,” he explained—“striking as that doubtless is. I +was thinking—well, of many other things.” He seemed to look at +these as if to mention some of them; then took, pulling himself up, another +turn. “About Mrs. Pocock people may differ.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that the daughter’s name—‘Pocock’?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the daughter’s name,” Strether sturdily +confessed. +</p> + +<p> +“And people may differ, you mean, about <i>her</i> beauty?” +</p> + +<p> +“About everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>you</i> admire her?” +</p> + +<p> +He gave his friend a glance as to show how he could bear this “I’m +perhaps a little afraid of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Miss Gostrey, “I see her from here! You may say +then I see very fast and very far, but I’ve already shown you I do. The +young man and the two ladies,” she went on, “are at any rate all +the family?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite all. His father has been dead ten years, and there’s no +brother, nor any other sister. They’d do,” said Strether, +“anything in the world for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you’d do anything in the world for <i>them?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He shifted again; she had made it perhaps just a shade too affirmative for his +nerves. “Oh I don’t know!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d do at any rate this, and the ‘anything’ +they’d do is represented by their <i>making</i> you do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah they couldn’t have come—either of them. They’re +very busy people and Mrs. Newsome in particular has a large full life. +She’s moreover highly nervous—and not at all strong.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean she’s an American invalid?” +</p> + +<p> +He carefully distinguished. “There’s nothing she likes less than to +be called one, but she would consent to be one of those things, I think,” +he laughed, “if it were the only way to be the other.” +</p> + +<p> +“Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Strether, “the other way round. She’s at any +rate delicate sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself into +everything—” +</p> + +<p> +Ah Maria knew these things! “That she has nothing left for anything else? +Of course she hasn’t. To whom do you say it? High-strung? Don’t I +spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal? I see moreover how it has told +on you.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took this more lightly. “Oh I jam down the pedal too!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she lucidly returned, “we must from this moment bear +on it together with all our might.” And she forged ahead. “Have +they money?” +</p> + +<p> +But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry fell +short. “Mrs. Newsome,” he wished further to explain, +“hasn’t moreover your courage on the question of contact. If she +had come it would have been to see the person herself.” +</p> + +<p> +“The woman? Ah but that’s courage.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—it’s exaltation, which is a very different thing. +Courage,” he, however, accommodatingly threw out, “is what +<i>you</i> have.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head. “You say that only to patch me up—to cover the +nudity of my want of exaltation. I’ve neither the one nor the other. +I’ve mere battered indifference. I see that what you mean,” Miss +Gostrey pursued, “is that if your friend <i>had</i> come she would take +great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much for +her.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her formula. +“Everything’s too much for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then such a service as this of yours—” +</p> + +<p> +“Is more for her than anything else? Yes—far more. But so long as +it isn’t too much for <i>me</i>—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Her condition doesn’t matter? Surely not; we leave her condition +out; we take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as behind and +beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it does bear me up!” Strether laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Well then as yours bears <i>me</i> nothing more’s needed.” +With which she put again her question. “Has Mrs. Newsome money?” +</p> + +<p> +This time he heeded. “Oh plenty. That’s the root of the evil. +There’s money, to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the +free use of a great deal. But if he’ll pull himself together and come +home, all the same, he’ll find his account in it.” +</p> + +<p> +She had listened with all her interest. “And I hope to goodness +you’ll find yours!” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll take up his definite material reward,” said Strether +without acknowledgement of this. “He’s at the parting of the ways. +He can come into the business now—he can’t come later.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there a business?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, yes—a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.” +</p> + +<p> +“A great shop?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The +concern’s a manufacture—and a manufacture that, if it’s only +properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It’s +a little thing they make—make better, it appears, than other people can, +or than other people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at +least in that particular line,” Strether explained, “put them on it +with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense +lift.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a place in itself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony. +But above all it’s a thing. The article produced.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what <i>is</i> the article produced?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, +which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. “I’ll tell you next +time.” But when the next time came he only said he’d tell her later +on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately +reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture of the stage was now +overlaid with another image. His postponements, however, made her +wonder—wonder if the article referred to were anything bad. And she +explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong. But Strether, so far +as that went, could satisfy her. “Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly +talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a small, +trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it’s +just wanting in—what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to +distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so +grand—!” In short he shrank. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a false note?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sadly. It’s vulgar.” +</p> + +<p> +“But surely not vulgarer than this.” Then on his wondering as she +herself had done: “Than everything about us.” She seemed a trifle +irritated. “What do you take this for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why for—comparatively—divine!” +</p> + +<p> +“This dreadful London theatre? It’s impossible, if you really want +to know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh then,” laughed Strether, “I <i>don’t</i> really +want to know!” +</p> + +<p> +It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by the +mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. “‘Rather +ridiculous’? Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?” +</p> + +<p> +It brought him round. “No—you don’t even ‘burn.’ +I don’t think, you know, you’ll guess it.” +</p> + +<p> +“How then can I judge how vulgar it is?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll judge when I do tell you”—and he persuaded her +to patience. But it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel +never <i>was</i> to tell her. He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly +occurred that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire for the +information dropped and her attitude to the question converted itself into a +positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and +that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as +indeed unnameable—she could make their abstention enormously definite. +There might indeed have been for Strether the portent of this in what she next +said. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it perhaps then because it’s so bad—because your industry +as you call it, <i>is</i> so vulgar—that Mr. Chad won’t come back? +Does he feel the taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Strether laughed, “it wouldn’t appear—would +it?—that he feels ‘taints’! He’s glad enough of the +money from it, and the money’s his whole basis. There’s +appreciation in that—I mean as to the allowance his mother has hitherto +made him. She has of course the resource of cutting this allowance off; but +even then he has unfortunately, and on no small scale, his independent +supply—money left him by his grandfather, her own father.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wouldn’t the fact you mention then,” Miss Gostrey asked, +“make it just more easy for him to be particular? Isn’t he +conceivable as fastidious about the source—the apparent and public +source—of his income?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition. +“The source of his grandfather’s wealth—and thereby of his +own share in it—was not particularly noble.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what source was it?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether cast about. “Well—practices.” +</p> + +<p> +“In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he said with more emphasis than spirit, “I shan’t +describe <i>him</i> nor narrate his exploits.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what about him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Was he like the grandfather?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—he was on the other side of the house. And he was +different.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey kept it up. “Better?” +</p> + +<p> +Her friend for a moment hung fire. “No.” +</p> + +<p> +Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being mute. +“Thank you. <i>Now</i> don’t you see,” she went on, +“why the boy doesn’t come home? He’s drowning his +shame.” +</p> + +<p> +“His shame? What shame?” +</p> + +<p> +“What shame? Comment donc? <i>The</i> shame.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where and when,” Strether asked, “is ‘<i>the</i> +shame’—where is any shame—to-day? The men I speak +of—they did as every one does; and (besides being ancient history) it was +all a matter of appreciation.” +</p> + +<p> +She showed how she understood. “Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah I can’t speak for <i>her!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“In the midst of such doings—and, as I understand you, profiting by +them, she at least has remained exquisite?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I can’t talk of her!” Strether said. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought she was just what you <i>could</i> talk of. You +<i>don’t</i> trust me,” Miss Gostrey after a moment declared. +</p> + +<p> +It had its effect. “Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and +carried on with a large beneficence—” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a kind of expiation of wrongs? Gracious,” she added +before he could speak, “how intensely you make me see her!” +</p> + +<p> +“If you see her,” Strether dropped, “it’s all +that’s necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +She really seemed to have her. “I feel that. She <i>is</i>, in spite of +everything, handsome.” +</p> + +<p> +This at least enlivened him. “What do you mean by everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I mean <i>you</i>.” With which she had one of her swift +changes of ground. “You say the concern needs looking after; but +doesn’t Mrs. Newsome look after it?” +</p> + +<p> +“So far as possible. She’s wonderfully able, but it’s not her +affair, and her life’s a good deal overcharged. She has many, many +things.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you also?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—I’ve many too, if you will.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. But what I mean is,” Miss Gostrey amended, “do you +also look after the business?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I don’t touch the business.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only everything else?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes—some things.” +</p> + +<p> +“As for instance—?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether obligingly thought. “Well, the Review.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Review?—you have a Review?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. Woollett has a Review—which Mrs. Newsome, for the most +part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently, edit. My +name’s on the cover,” Strether pursued, “and I’m really +rather disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it.” +</p> + +<p> +She neglected for a moment this grievance. “And what kind of a Review is +it?” +</p> + +<p> +His serenity was now completely restored. “Well, it’s green.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean in political colour as they say here—in +thought?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I mean the cover’s green—of the most lovely +shade.” +</p> + +<p> +“And with Mrs. Newsome’s name on it too?” +</p> + +<p> +He waited a little. “Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out. +She’s behind the whole thing; but she’s of a delicacy and a +discretion—!” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey took it all. “I’m sure. She <i>would</i> be. I +don’t underrate her. She must be rather a swell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, she’s rather a swell!” +</p> + +<p> +“A Woollett swell—<i>bon!</i> I like the idea of a Woollett swell. +And you must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no,” said Strether, “that’s not the way it +works.” +</p> + +<p> +But she had already taken him up. “The way it works—you +needn’t tell me!—is of course that you efface yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“With my name on the cover?” he lucidly objected. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but you don’t put it on for yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon—that’s exactly what I do put it on for. +It’s exactly the thing that I’m reduced to doing for myself. It +seems to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the +refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little scrap of +an identity.” +</p> + +<p> +On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last simply +said was: “She likes to see it there. You’re the bigger swell of +the two,” she immediately continued, “because you think +you’re not one. She thinks she <i>is</i> one. However,” Miss +Gostrey added, “she thinks you’re one too. You’re at all +events the biggest she can get hold of.” She embroidered, she abounded. +“I don’t say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets +hold of a bigger one—!” Strether had thrown back his head as in +silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity, and +her flight meanwhile was already higher. “Therefore close with +her—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Close with her?” he asked as she seemed to hang poised. +</p> + +<p> +“Before you lose your chance.” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met over it. “What do you mean by closing?” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do I mean by your chance? I’ll tell you when you tell me +all the things <i>you</i> don’t. Is it her <i>greatest</i> fad?” +she briskly pursued. +</p> + +<p> +“The Review?” He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. +This resulted however but in a sketch. “It’s her tribute to the +ideal.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. You go in for tremendous things.” +</p> + +<p> +“We go in for the unpopular side—that is so far as we dare.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how far <i>do</i> you dare?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, she very far. I much less. I don’t begin to have her faith. +She provides,” said Strether, “three fourths of that. And she +provides, as I’ve confided to you, <i>all</i> the money.” +</p> + +<p> +It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey’s +eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. “I +hope then you make a good thing—” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>never</i> made a good thing!” he at once returned. +</p> + +<p> +She just waited. “Don’t you call it a good thing to be +loved?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only +just sweetly ignored.” +</p> + +<p> +She had another pause. “You don’t trust me!” she once more +repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I when I lift the last veil?—tell you the very secret +of the prison-house?” +</p> + +<p> +Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned +away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of +<i>that!</i>” After which however, and before he could protest, she was +off again. “She’s just a <i>moral</i> swell.” +</p> + +<p> +He accepted gaily enough the definition. “Yes—I really think that +describes her.” +</p> + +<p> +But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. “How does she do her +hair?” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed out. “Beautifully!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that doesn’t tell me. However, it doesn’t matter—I +know. It’s tremendously neat—a real reproach; quite remarkably +thick and without, as yet, a single strand of white. There!” +</p> + +<p> +He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. “You’re the +very deuce.” +</p> + +<p> +“What else <i>should</i> I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. +But don’t let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce—at +our age—is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but +half a joy.” With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. +“You assist her to expiate—which is rather hard when you’ve +yourself not sinned.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s she who hasn’t sinned,” Strether replied. +“I’ve sinned the most.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” Miss Gostrey cynically laughed, “what a picture of +<i>her!</i> Have you robbed the widow and the orphan?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve sinned enough,” said Strether. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough for whom? Enough for what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, to be where I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” They were disturbed at this moment by the passage +between their knees and the back of the seats before them of a gentleman who +had been absent during a part of the performance and who now returned for the +close; but the interruption left Miss Gostrey time, before the subsequent hush, +to express as a sharp finality her sense of the moral of all their talk. +“I knew you had something up your sleeve!” This finality, however, +left them in its turn, at the end of the play, as disposed to hang back as if +they had still much to say; so that they easily agreed to let every one go +before them—they found an interest in waiting. They made out from the +lobby that the night had turned to rain; yet Miss Gostrey let her friend know +that he wasn’t to see her home. He was simply to put her, by herself, +into a four-wheeler; she liked so in London, of wet nights after wild +pleasures, thinking things over, on the return, in lonely four-wheelers. This +was her great time, she intimated, for pulling herself together. The delays +caused by the weather, the struggle for vehicles at the door, gave them +occasion to subside on a divan at the back of the vestibule and just beyond the +reach of the fresh damp gusts from the street. Here Strether’s comrade +resumed that free handling of the subject to which his own imagination of it +already owed so much. “Does your young friend in Paris like you?” +</p> + +<p> +It had almost, after the interval, startled him. “Oh I hope not! Why +<i>should</i> he?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why shouldn’t he?” Miss Gostrey asked. “That +you’re coming down on him need have nothing to do with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see more in it,” he presently returned, “than I.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I see <i>you</i> in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then you see more in ‘me’!” +</p> + +<p> +“Than you see in yourself? Very likely. That’s always one’s +right. What I was thinking of,” she explained, “is the possible +particular effect on him of his <i>milieu</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh his <i>milieu</i>—!” Strether really felt he could +imagine it better now than three hours before. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean it can only have been so lowering?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why that’s my very starting-point.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but you start so far back. What do his letters say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. He practically ignores us—or spares us. He doesn’t +write.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. But there are all the same,” she went on, “two quite +distinct things that—given the wonderful place he’s in—may +have happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalised. The other is that +he may have got refined.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether stared—this <i>was</i> a novelty. “Refined?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she said quietly, “there <i>are</i> refinements.” +</p> + +<p> +The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. +“<i>You</i> have them!” +</p> + +<p> +“As one of the signs,” she continued in the same tone, “they +constitute perhaps the worst.” +</p> + +<p> +He thought it over and his gravity returned. “Is it a refinement not to +answer his mother’s letters?” +</p> + +<p> +She appeared to have a scruple, but she brought it out. “Oh I should say +the greatest of all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “<i>I’m</i> quite content to let +it, as one of the signs, pass for the worst that I know he believes he can do +what he likes with me.” +</p> + +<p> +This appeared to strike her. “How do you know it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’m sure of it. I feel it in my bones.” +</p> + +<p> +“Feel he <i>can</i> do it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Feel that he believes he can. It may come to the same thing!” +Strether laughed. +</p> + +<p> +She wouldn’t, however, have this. “Nothing for you will ever come +to the same thing as anything else.” And she understood what she meant, +it seemed, sufficiently to go straight on. “You say that if he does break +he’ll come in for things at home?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite positively. He’ll come in for a particular chance—a +chance that any properly constituted young man would jump at. The business has +so developed that an opening scarcely apparent three years ago, but which his +father’s will took account of as in certain conditions possible and +which, under that will, attaches to Chad’s availing himself of it a large +contingent advantage—this opening, the conditions having come about, now +simply awaits him. His mother has kept it for him, holding out against strong +pressure, till the last possible moment. It requires, naturally, as it carries +with it a handsome ‘part,’ a large share in profits, his being on +the spot and making a big effort for a big result. That’s what I mean by +his chance. If he misses it he comes in, as you say, for nothing. And to see +that he doesn’t miss it is, in a word, what I’ve come out +for.” +</p> + +<p> +She let it all sink in. “What you’ve come out for then is simply to +render him an immense service.” +</p> + +<p> +Well, poor Strether was willing to take it so. “Ah if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“He stands, as they say, if you succeed with him, to gain—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh a lot of advantages.” Strether had them clearly at his +fingers’ ends. +</p> + +<p> +“By which you mean of course a lot of money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, not only. I’m acting with a sense for him of other things +too. Consideration and comfort and security—the general safety of being +anchored by a strong chain. He wants, as I see him, to be protected. Protected +I mean from life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah voilà!”—her thought fitted with a click. “From +life. What you <i>really</i> want to get him home for is to marry him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s about the size of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” she said, “it’s rudimentary. But to any +one in particular?” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled at this, looking a little more conscious. “You get everything +out.” +</p> + +<p> +For a moment again their eyes met. “You put everything in!” +</p> + +<p> +He acknowledged the tribute by telling her. “To Mamie Pocock.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered; then gravely, even exquisitely, as if to make the oddity also +fit: “His own niece?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you must yourself find a name for the relation. His +brother-in-law’s sister. Mrs. Jim’s sister-in-law.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. “And who in +the world’s Mrs. Jim?” +</p> + +<p> +“Chad’s sister—who was Sarah Newsome. She’s +married—didn’t I mention it?—to Jim Pocock.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah yes,” she tacitly replied; but he had mentioned things—! +Then, however, with all the sound it could have, “Who in the +world’s Jim Pocock?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why Sally’s husband. That’s the only way we distinguish +people at Woollett,” he good-humoredly explained. +</p> + +<p> +“And is it a great distinction—being Sally’s husband?” +</p> + +<p> +He considered. “I think there can be scarcely a greater—unless it +may become one, in the future, to be Chad’s wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then how do they distinguish <i>you?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“They <i>don’t</i>—except, as I’ve told you, by the +green cover.” +</p> + +<p> +Once more their eyes met on it, and she held him an instant. “The green +cover won’t—nor will <i>any</i> cover—avail you with +<i>me</i>. You’re of a depth of duplicity!” Still, she could in her +own large grasp of the real condone it. “Is Mamie a great +<i>parti?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh the greatest we have—our prettiest brightest girl.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey seemed to fix the poor child. “I know what they <i>can</i> +be. And with money?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not perhaps with a great deal of that—but with so much of +everything else that we don’t miss it. We <i>don’t</i> miss money +much, you know,” Strether added, “in general, in America, in pretty +girls.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she conceded; “but I know also what you do sometimes +miss. And do you,” she asked, “yourself admire her?” +</p> + +<p> +It was a question, he indicated, that there might be several ways of taking; +but he decided after an instant for the humorous. “Haven’t I +sufficiently showed you how I admire <i>any</i> pretty girl?” +</p> + +<p> +Her interest in his problem was by this time such that it scarce left her +freedom, and she kept close to the facts. “I supposed that at Woollett +you wanted them—what shall I call it?—blameless. I mean your young +men for your pretty girls.” +</p> + +<p> +“So did I!” Strether confessed. “But you strike there a +curious fact—the fact that Woollett too accommodates itself to the spirit +of the age and the increasing mildness of manners. Everything changes, and I +hold that our situation precisely marks a date. We <i>should</i> prefer them +blameless, but we have to make the best of them as we find them. Since the +spirit of the age and the increasing mildness send them so much more to +Paris—” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve to take them back as they come. When they <i>do</i> come. +<i>Bon!</i>” Once more she embraced it all, but she had a moment of +thought. “Poor Chad!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Strether cheerfully “Mamie will save him!” +</p> + +<p> +She was looking away, still in her vision, and she spoke with impatience and +almost as if he hadn’t understood her. “<i>You’ll</i> save +him. That’s who’ll save him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but with Mamie’s aid. Unless indeed you mean,” he added, +“that I shall effect so much more with yours!” +</p> + +<p> +It made her at last again look at him. “You’ll do more—as +you’re so much better—than all of us put together.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I’m only better since I’ve known <i>you!</i>” +Strether bravely returned. +</p> + +<p> +The depletion of the place, the shrinkage of the crowd and now comparatively +quiet withdrawal of its last elements had already brought them nearer the door +and put them in relation with a messenger of whom he bespoke Miss +Gostrey’s cab. But this left them a few minutes more, which she was +clearly in no mood not to use. “You’ve spoken to me of +what—by your success—Mr. Chad stands to gain. But you’ve not +spoken to me of what you do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’ve nothing more to gain,” said Strether very simply. +</p> + +<p> +She took it as even quite too simple. “You mean you’ve got it all +‘down’? You’ve been paid in advance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah don’t talk about payment!” he groaned. +</p> + +<p> +Something in the tone of it pulled her up, but as their messenger still delayed +she had another chance and she put it in another way. “What—by +failure—do you stand to lose?” +</p> + +<p> +He still, however, wouldn’t have it. “Nothing!” he exclaimed, +and on the messenger’s at this instant reappearing he was able to sink +the subject in their responsive advance. When, a few steps up the street, under +a lamp, he had put her into her four-wheeler and she had asked him if the man +had called for him no second conveyance, he replied before the door was closed. +“You won’t take me with you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I shall walk.” +</p> + +<p> +“In the rain?” +</p> + +<p> +“I like the rain,” said Strether. “Good-night!” +</p> + +<p> +She kept him a moment, while his hand was on the door, by not answering; after +which she answered by repeating her question. “What do you stand to +lose?” +</p> + +<p> +Why the question now affected him as other he couldn’t have said; he +could only this time meet it otherwise. “Everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I thought. Then you shall succeed. And to that end I’m +yours—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, dear lady!” he kindly breathed. +</p> + +<p> +“Till death!” said Maria Gostrey. “Good-night.” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +Strether called, his second morning in Paris, on the bankers of the Rue Scribe +to whom his letter of credit was addressed, and he made this visit attended by +Waymarsh, in whose company he had crossed from London two days before. They had +hastened to the Rue Scribe on the morrow of their arrival, but Strether had not +then found the letters the hope of which prompted this errand. He had had as +yet none at all; hadn’t expected them in London, but had counted on +several in Paris, and, disconcerted now, had presently strolled back to the +Boulevard with a sense of injury that he felt himself taking for as good a +start as any other. It would serve, this spur to his spirit, he reflected, as, +pausing at the top of the street, he looked up and down the great foreign +avenue, it would serve to begin business with. His idea was to begin business +immediately, and it did much for him the rest of his day that the beginning of +business awaited him. He did little else till night but ask himself what he +should do if he hadn’t fortunately had so much to do; but he put himself +the question in many different situations and connexions. What carried him +hither and yon was an admirable theory that nothing he could do wouldn’t +be in some manner related to what he fundamentally had on hand, or <i>would</i> +be—should he happen to have a scruple—wasted for it. He did happen +to have a scruple—a scruple about taking no definite step till he should +get letters; but this reasoning carried it off. A single day to feel his +feet—he had felt them as yet only at Chester and in London—was he +could consider, none too much; and having, as he had often privately expressed +it, Paris to reckon with, he threw these hours of freshness consciously into +the reckoning. They made it continually greater, but that was what it had best +be if it was to be anything at all, and he gave himself up till far into the +evening, at the theatre and on the return, after the theatre, along the bright +congested Boulevard, to feeling it grow. Waymarsh had accompanied him this time +to the play, and the two men had walked together, as a first stage, from the +Gymnase to the Café Riche, into the crowded “terrace” of which +establishment—the night, or rather the morning, for midnight had struck, +being bland and populous—they had wedged themselves for refreshment. +Waymarsh, as a result of some discussion with his friend, had made a marked +virtue of his having now let himself go; and there had been elements of +impression in their half-hour over their watered beer-glasses that gave him his +occasion for conveying that he held this compromise with his stiffer self to +have become extreme. He conveyed it—for it was still, after all, his +stiffer self who gloomed out of the glare of the terrace—in solemn +silence; and there was indeed a great deal of critical silence, every way, +between the companions, even till they gained the Place de l’Opéra, as to +the character of their nocturnal progress. +</p> + +<p> +This morning there <i>were</i> letters—letters which had reached London, +apparently all together, the day of Strether’s journey, and had taken +their time to follow him; so that, after a controlled impulse to go into them +in the reception-room of the bank, which, reminding him of the post-office at +Woollett, affected him as the abutment of some transatlantic bridge, he slipped +them into the pocket of his loose grey overcoat with a sense of the felicity of +carrying them off. Waymarsh, who had had letters yesterday, had had them again +to-day, and Waymarsh suggested in this particular no controlled impulses. The +last one he was at all events likely to be observed to struggle with was +clearly that of bringing to a premature close any visit to the Rue Scribe. +Strether had left him there yesterday; he wanted to see the papers, and he had +spent, by what his friend could make out, a succession of hours with the +papers. He spoke of the establishment, with emphasis, as a post of superior +observation; just as he spoke generally of his actual damnable doom as a device +for hiding from him what was going on. Europe was best described, to his mind, +as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that +indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these +occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. +Strether, on his side, set himself to walk again—he had his relief in his +pocket; and indeed, much as he had desired his budget, the growth of +restlessness might have been marked in him from the moment he had assured +himself of the superscription of most of the missives it contained. This +restlessness became therefore his temporary law; he knew he should recognise as +soon as see it the best place of all for settling down with his chief +correspondent. He had for the next hour an accidental air of looking for it in +the windows of shops; he came down the Rue de la Paix in the sun and, passing +across the Tuileries and the river, indulged more than once—as if on +finding himself determined—in a sudden pause before the book-stalls of +the opposite quay. In the garden of the Tuileries he had lingered, on two or +three spots, to look; it was as if the wonderful Paris spring had stayed him as +he roamed. The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft +breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of +bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient +thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the +blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the +deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a +white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures +whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth +diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with +art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The palace +was gone, Strether remembered the palace; and when he gazed into the +irremediable void of its site the historic sense in him might have been freely +at play—the play under which in Paris indeed it so often winces like a +touched nerve. He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught the +gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters out, he could +tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift was, for reasons, to the other +side, and it floated him unspent up the Rue de Seine and as far as the +Luxembourg. In the Luxembourg Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his +nook, and here, on a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, +fountains, little trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill +little girls at play all sunnily “composed” together, he passed an +hour in which the cup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow. But a week +had elapsed since he quitted the ship, and there were more things in his mind +than so few days could account for. More than once, during the time, he had +regarded himself as admonished; but the admonition this morning was formidably +sharp. It took as it hadn’t done yet the form of a question—the +question of what he was doing with such an extraordinary sense of escape. This +sense was sharpest after he had read his letters, but that was also precisely +why the question pressed. Four of the letters were from Mrs. Newsome and none +of them short; she had lost no time, had followed on his heels while he moved, +so expressing herself that he now could measure the probable frequency with +which he should hear. They would arrive, it would seem, her communications, at +the rate of several a week; he should be able to count, it might even prove, on +more than one by each mail. If he had begun yesterday with a small grievance he +had therefore an opportunity to begin to-day with its opposite. He read the +letters successively and slowly, putting others back into his pocket but +keeping these for a long time afterwards gathered in his lap. He held them +there, lost in thought, as if to prolong the presence of what they gave him; or +as if at the least to assure them their part in the constitution of some +lucidity. His friend wrote admirably, and her tone was even more in her style +than in her voice—he might almost, for the hour, have had to come this +distance to get its full carrying quality; yet the plentitude of his +consciousness of difference consorted perfectly with the deepened intensity of +the connexion. It was the difference, the difference of being just where he was +and <i>as</i> he was, that formed the escape—this difference was so much +greater than he had dreamed it would be; and what he finally sat there turning +over was the strange logic of his finding himself so free. He felt it in a +manner his duty to think out his state, to approve the process, and when he +came in fact to trace the steps and add up the items they sufficiently +accounted for the sum. He had never expected—that was the truth of +it—again to find himself young, and all the years and other things it had +taken to make him so were exactly his present arithmetic. He had to make sure +of them to put his scruple to rest. +</p> + +<p> +It all sprang at bottom from the beauty of Mrs. Newsome’s desire that he +should be worried with nothing that was not of the essence of his task; by +insisting that he should thoroughly intermit and break she had so provided for +his freedom that she would, as it were, have only herself to thank. Strether +could not at this point indeed have completed his thought by the image of what +she might have to thank herself <i>for</i>: the image, at best, of his own +likeness—poor Lambert Strether washed up on the sunny strand by the waves +of a single day, poor Lambert Strether thankful for breathing-time and +stiffening himself while he gasped. There he was, and with nothing in his +aspect or his posture to scandalise: it was only true that if he had seen Mrs. +Newsome coming he would instinctively have jumped up to walk away a little. He +would have come round and back to her bravely, but he would have had first to +pull himself together. She abounded in news of the situation at home, proved to +him how perfectly she was arranging for his absence, told him who would take up +this and who take up that exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact +chapter and verse for the moral that nothing would suffer. It filled for him, +this tone of hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum +of vain things. This latter effect was what he tried to justify—and with +the success that, grave though the appearance, he at last lighted on a form +that was happy. He arrived at it by the inevitable recognition of his having +been a fortnight before one of the weariest of men. If ever a man had come off +tired Lambert Strether was that man; and hadn’t it been distinctly on the +ground of his fatigue that his wonderful friend at home had so felt for him and +so contrived? It seemed to him somehow at these instants that, could he only +maintain with sufficient firmness his grasp of that truth, it might become in a +manner his compass and his helm. What he wanted most was some idea that would +simplify, and nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for +and finished. If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in his +cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his scheme. He +was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as his convenience, +and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he might do +everything he wanted. +</p> + +<p> +Everything he wanted was comprised moreover in a single boon—the common +unattainable art of taking things as they came. He appeared to himself to have +given his best years to an active appreciation of the way they didn’t +come; but perhaps—as they would seemingly here be things quite +other—this long ache might at last drop to rest. He could easily see that +from the moment he should accept the notion of his foredoomed collapse the last +thing he would lack would be reasons and memories. Oh if he <i>should</i> do +the sum no slate would hold the figures! The fact that he had failed, as he +considered, in everything, in each relation and in half a dozen trades, as he +liked luxuriously to put it, might have made, might still make, for an empty +present; but it stood solidly for a crowded past. It had not been, so much +achievement missed, a light yoke nor a short load. It was at present as if the +backward picture had hung there, the long crooked course, grey in the shadow of +his solitude. It had been a dreadful cheerful sociable solitude, a solitude of +life or choice, of community; but though there had been people enough all round +it there had been but three or four persons <i>in</i> it. Waymarsh was one of +these, and the fact struck him just now as marking the record. Mrs. Newsome was +another, and Miss Gostrey had of a sudden shown signs of becoming a third. +Beyond, behind them was the pale figure of his real youth, which held against +its breast the two presences paler than itself—the young wife he had +early lost and the young son he had stupidly sacrificed. He had again and again +made out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull +boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those years so +insanely given himself to merely missing the mother. It was the soreness of his +remorse that the child had in all likelihood not really been dull—had +been dull, as he had been banished and neglected, mainly because the father had +been unwittingly selfish. This was doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, +which had slowly given way to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to +make the spirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing +up, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost. Had ever a man, he had +finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so +much for so little? There had been particular reasons why all yesterday, beyond +other days, he should have had in one ear this cold enquiry. His name on the +green cover, where he had put it for Mrs. Newsome, expressed him doubtless just +enough to make the world—the world as distinguished, both for more and +for less, from Woollett—ask who he was. He had incurred the ridicule of +having to have his explanation explained. He was Lambert Strether because he +was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he +was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether. He would have done anything +for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous—as he might, for that +matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of +fate was all he had to show at fifty-five. +</p> + +<p> +He judged the quantity as small because it <i>was</i> small, and all the more +egregiously since it couldn’t, as he saw the case, so much as thinkably +have been larger. He hadn’t had the gift of making the most of what he +tried, and if he had tried and tried again—no one but himself knew how +often—it appeared to have been that he might demonstrate what else, in +default of that, <i>could</i> be made. Old ghosts of experiments came back to +him, old drudgeries and delusions, and disgusts, old recoveries with their +relapses, old fevers with their chills, broken moments of good faith, others of +still better doubt; adventures, for the most part, of the sort qualified as +lessons. The special spring that had constantly played for him the day before +was the recognition—frequent enough to surprise him—of the promises +to himself that he had after his other visit never kept. The reminiscence +to-day most quickened for him was that of the vow taken in the course of the +pilgrimage that, newly-married, with the War just over, and helplessly young in +spite of it, he had recklessly made with the creature who was so much younger +still. It had been a bold dash, for which they had taken money set apart for +necessities, but kept sacred at the moment in a hundred ways, and in none more +so than by this private pledge of his own to treat the occasion as a relation +formed with the higher culture and see that, as they said at Woollett, it +should bear a good harvest. He had believed, sailing home again, that he had +gained something great, and his theory—with an elaborate innocent plan of +reading, digesting, coming back even, every few years—had then been to +preserve, cherish and extend it. As such plans as these had come to nothing, +however, in respect to acquisitions still more precious, it was doubtless +little enough of a marvel that he should have lost account of that handful of +seed. Buried for long years in dark corners at any rate these few germs had +sprouted again under forty-eight hours of Paris. The process of yesterday had +really been the process of feeling the general stirred life of connexions long +since individually dropped. Strether had become acquainted even on this ground +with short gusts of speculation—sudden flights of fancy in Louvre +galleries, hungry gazes through clear plates behind which lemon-coloured +volumes were as fresh as fruit on the tree. +</p> + +<p> +There were instants at which he could ask whether, since there had been +fundamentally so little question of his keeping anything, the fate after all +decreed for him hadn’t been only to <i>be</i> kept. Kept for something, +in that event, that he didn’t pretend, didn’t possibly dare as yet +to divine; something that made him hover and wonder and laugh and sigh, made +him advance and retreat, feeling half ashamed of his impulse to plunge and more +than half afraid of his impulse to wait. He remembered for instance how he had +gone back in the sixties with lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as +well as with a dozen—selected for his wife too—in his trunk; and +nothing had at the moment shown more confidence than this invocation of the +finer taste. They were still somewhere at home, the dozen—stale and +soiled and never sent to the binder; but what had become of the sharp +initiation they represented? They represented now the mere sallow paint on the +door of the temple of taste that he had dreamed of raising up—a structure +he had practically never carried further. Strether’s present highest +flights were perhaps those in which this particular lapse figured to him as a +symbol, a symbol of his long grind and his want of odd moments, his want +moreover of money, of opportunity, of positive dignity. That the memory of the +vow of his youth should, in order to throb again, have had to wait for this +last, as he felt it, of all his accidents—that was surely proof enough of +how his conscience had been encumbered. If any further proof were needed it +would have been to be found in the fact that, as he perfectly now saw, he had +ceased even to measure his meagreness, a meagreness that sprawled, in this +retrospect, vague and comprehensive, stretching back like some unmapped +Hinterland from a rough coast-settlement. His conscience had been amusing +itself for the forty-eight hours by forbidding him the purchase of a book; he +held off from that, held off from everything; from the moment he didn’t +yet call on Chad he wouldn’t for the world have taken any other step. On +this evidence, however, of the way they actually affected him he glared at the +lemon-coloured covers in confession of the subconsciousness that, all the same, +in the great desert of the years, he must have had of them. The green covers at +home comprised, by the law of their purpose, no tribute to letters; it was of a +mere rich kernel of economics, politics, ethics that, glazed and, as Mrs. +Newsome maintained rather against <i>his</i> view, pre-eminently pleasant to +touch, they formed the specious shell. Without therefore any needed instinctive +knowledge of what was coming out, in Paris, on the bright highway, he struck +himself at present as having more than once flushed with a suspicion: he +couldn’t otherwise at present be feeling so many fears confirmed. There +were “movements” he was too late for: weren’t they, with the +fun of them, already spent? There were sequences he had missed and great gaps +in the procession: he might have been watching it all recede in a golden cloud +of dust. If the playhouse wasn’t closed his seat had at least fallen to +somebody else. He had had an uneasy feeling the night before that if he was at +the theatre at all—though he indeed justified the theatre, in the +specific sense, and with a grotesqueness to which his imagination did all +honour, as something he owed poor Waymarsh—he should have been there +with, and as might have been said, <i>for</i> Chad. +</p> + +<p> +This suggested the question of whether he could properly have taken him to such +a play, and what effect—it was a point that suddenly rose—his +peculiar responsibility might be held in general to have on his choice of +entertainment. It had literally been present to him at the Gymnase—where +one was held moreover comparatively safe—that having his young friend at +his side would have been an odd feature of the work of redemption; and this +quite in spite of the fact that the picture presented might well, confronted +with Chad’s own private stage, have seemed the pattern of propriety. He +clearly hadn’t come out in the name of propriety but to visit unattended +equivocal performances; yet still less had he done so to undermine his +authority by sharing them with the graceless youth. Was he to renounce all +amusement for the sweet sake of that authority? and <i>would</i> such +renouncement give him for Chad a moral glamour? The little problem bristled the +more by reason of poor Strether’s fairly open sense of the irony of +things. Were there then sides on which his predicament threatened to look +rather droll to him? Should he have to pretend to believe—either to +himself or the wretched boy—that there was anything that could make the +latter worse? Wasn’t some such pretence on the other hand involved in the +assumption of possible processes that would make him better? His greatest +uneasiness seemed to peep at him out of the imminent impression that almost any +acceptance of Paris might give one’s authority away. It hung before him +this morning, the vast bright Babylon, like some huge iridescent object, a +jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor +differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, +and what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next. It was a +place of which, unmistakeably, Chad was fond; wherefore if he, Strether, should +like it too much, what on earth, with such a bond, would become of either of +them? It all depended of course—which was a gleam of light—on how +the “too much” was measured; though indeed our friend fairly felt, +while he prolonged the meditation I describe, that for himself even already a +certain measure had been reached. It will have been sufficiently seen that he +was not a man to neglect any good chance for reflexion. Was it at all possible +for instance to like Paris enough without liking it too much? He luckily +however hadn’t promised Mrs. Newsome not to like it at all. He was ready +to recognise at this stage that such an engagement <i>would</i> have tied his +hands. The Luxembourg Gardens were incontestably just so adorable at this hour +by reason—in addition to their intrinsic charm—of his not having +taken it. The only engagement he had taken, when he looked the thing in the +face, was to do what he reasonably could. +</p> + +<p> +It upset him a little none the less and after a while to find himself at last +remembering on what current of association he had been floated so far. Old +imaginations of the Latin Quarter had played their part for him, and he had +duly recalled its having been with this scene of rather ominous legend that, +like so many young men in fiction as well as in fact, Chad had begun. He was +now quite out of it, with his “home,” as Strether figured the +place, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, now; which was perhaps why, repairing, not +to fail of justice either, to the elder neighbourhood, our friend had felt he +could allow for the element of the usual, the immemorial, without courting +perturbation. He was not at least in danger of seeing the youth and the +particular Person flaunt by together; and yet he was in the very air of +which—just to feel what the early natural note must have been—he +wished most to take counsel. It became at once vivid to him that he had +originally had, for a few days, an almost envious vision of the boy’s +romantic privilege. Melancholy Mürger, with Francine and Musette and Rodolphe, +at home, was, in the company of the tattered, one—if he not in his single +self two or three—of the unbound, the paper-covered dozen on the shelf; +and when Chad had written, five years ago, after a sojourn then already +prolonged to six months, that he had decided to go in for economy and the real +thing, Strether’s fancy had quite fondly accompanied him in this +migration, which was to convey him, as they somewhat confusedly learned at +Woollett, across the bridges and up the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. This was the +region—Chad had been quite distinct about it—in which the best +French, and many other things, were to be learned at least cost, and in which +all sorts of clever fellows, compatriots there for a purpose, formed an awfully +pleasant set. The clever fellows, the friendly countrymen were mainly young +painters, sculptors, architects, medical students; but they were, Chad sagely +opined, a much more profitable lot to be with—even on the footing of not +being quite one of them—than the “terrible toughs” (Strether +remembered the edifying discrimination) of the American bars and banks +roundabout the Opéra. Chad had thrown out, in the communications following this +one—for at that time he did once in a while communicate—that +several members of a band of earnest workers under one of the great artists had +taken him right in, making him dine every night, almost for nothing, at their +place, and even pressing him not to neglect the hypothesis of there being as +much “in him” as in any of them. There had been literally a moment +at which it appeared there might be something in him; there had been at any +rate a moment at which he had written that he didn’t know but what a +month or two more might see him enrolled in some <i>atelier</i>. The season had +been one at which Mrs. Newsome was moved to gratitude for small mercies; it had +broken on them all as a blessing that their absentee <i>had</i> perhaps a +conscience—that he was sated in fine with idleness, was ambitious of +variety. The exhibition was doubtless as yet not brilliant, but Strether +himself, even by that time much enlisted and immersed, had determined, on the +part of the two ladies, a temperate approval and in fact, as he now +recollected, a certain austere enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +But the very next thing that happened had been a dark drop of the curtain. The +son and brother had not browsed long on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève—his +effective little use of the name of which, like his allusion to the best +French, appeared to have been but one of the notes of his rough cunning. The +light refreshment of these vain appearances had not accordingly carried any of +them very far. On the other hand it had gained Chad time; it had given him a +chance, unchecked, to strike his roots, had paved the way for initiations more +direct and more deep. It was Strether’s belief that he had been +comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the first +effects of the migration would not have been, without some particular bad +accident, to have been deplored. There had been three months—he had +sufficiently figured it out—in which Chad had wanted to try. He +<i>had</i> tried, though not very hard—he had had his little hour of good +faith. The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any accident +attestedly bad enough was stronger. Such had at any rate markedly been the case +for the precipitation of a special series of impressions. They had proved, +successively, these impressions—all of Musette and Francine, but Musette +and Francine vulgarised by the larger evolution of the type—irresistibly +sharp: he had “taken up,” by what was at the time to be shrinkingly +gathered, as it was scantly mentioned, with one ferociously +“interested” little person after another. Strether had read +somewhere of a Latin motto, a description of the hours, observed on a clock by +a traveller in Spain; and he had been led to apply it in thought to +Chad’s number one, number two, number three. <i>Omnes vulnerant, ultima +necat</i>—they had all morally wounded, the last had morally killed. The +last had been longest in possession—in possession, that is, of whatever +was left of the poor boy’s finer mortality. And it hadn’t been she, +it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined the second +migration, the expensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly +to be presumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the +worst. +</p> + +<p> +He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not with the +feeling that he had taken his walk in vain. He prolonged it a little, in the +immediate neighbourhood, after he had quitted his chair; and the upshot of the +whole morning for him was that his campaign had begun. He had wanted to put +himself in relation, and he would be hanged if he were <i>not</i> in relation. +He was that at no moment so much as while, under the old arches of the Odéon, +he lingered before the charming open-air array of literature classic and +casual. He found the effect of tone and tint, in the long charged tables and +shelves, delicate and appetising; the impression—substituting one kind of +low-priced <i>consommation</i> for another—might have been that of one of +the pleasant cafés that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but he +edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind him. He +wasn’t there to dip, to consume—he was there to reconstruct. He +wasn’t there for his own profit—not, that is, the direct; he was +there on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of +youth. He felt it in fact, he had it beside him; the old arcade indeed, as his +inner sense listened, gave out the faint sound, as from far off, of the wild +waving of wings. They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations; +but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed +slouch-hatted loiterers whose young intensity of type, in the direction of pale +acuteness, deepened his vision, and even his appreciation, of racial +differences, and whose manipulation of the uncut volume was too often, however, +but a listening at closed doors. He reconstructed a possible groping Chad of +three or four years before, a Chad who had, after all, simply—for that +was the only way to see it—been too vulgar for his privilege. Surely it +<i>was</i> a privilege to have been young and happy just there. Well, the best +thing Strether knew of him was that he had had such a dream. +</p> + +<p> +But his own actual business, half an hour later, was with a third floor on the +Boulevard Malesherbes—so much as that was definite; and the fact of the +enjoyment by the third-floor windows of a continuous balcony, to which he was +helped by this knowledge, had perhaps something to do with his lingering for +five minutes on the opposite side of the street. There were points as to which +he had quite made up his mind, and one of these bore precisely on the wisdom of +the abruptness to which events had finally committed him, a policy that he was +pleased to find not at all shaken as he now looked at his watch and wondered. +He <i>had</i> announced himself—six months before; had written out at +least that Chad wasn’t to be surprised should he see him some day turn +up. Chad had thereupon, in a few words of rather carefully colourless answer, +offered him a general welcome; and Strether, ruefully reflecting that he might +have understood the warning as a hint to hospitality, a bid for an invitation, +had fallen back upon silence as the corrective most to his own taste. He had +asked Mrs. Newsome moreover not to announce him again; he had so distinct an +opinion on his attacking his job, should he attack it at all, in his own way. +Not the least of this lady’s high merits for him was that he could +absolutely rest on her word. She was the only woman he had known, even at +Woollett, as to whom his conviction was positive that to lie was beyond her +art. Sarah Pocock, for instance, her own daughter, though with social ideals, +as they said, in some respects different—Sarah who <i>was</i>, in her +way, æsthetic, had never refused to human commerce that mitigation of rigour; +there were occasions when he had distinctly seen her apply it. Since, +accordingly, at all events, he had had it from Mrs. Newsome that she had, at +whatever cost to her more strenuous view, conformed, in the matter of preparing +Chad, wholly to his restrictions, he now looked up at the fine continuous +balcony with a safe sense that if the case had been bungled the mistake was at +least his property. Was there perhaps just a suspicion of that in his present +pause on the edge of the Boulevard and well in the pleasant light? +</p> + +<p> +Many things came over him here, and one of them was that he should doubtless +presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another was that the +balcony in question didn’t somehow show as a convenience easy to +surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognise the truth that +wherever one paused in Paris the imagination reacted before one could stop it. +This perpetual reaction put a price, if one would, on pauses; but it piled up +consequences till there was scarce room to pick one’s steps among them. +What call had he, at such a juncture, for example, to like Chad’s very +house? High broad clear—he was expert enough to make out in a moment that +it was admirably built—it fairly embarrassed our friend by the quality +that, as he would have said, it “sprang” on him. He had struck off +the fancy that it might, as a preliminary, be of service to him to be seen, by +a happy accident, from the third-story windows, which took all the March sun, +but of what service was it to find himself making out after a moment that the +quality “sprung,” the quality produced by measure and balance, the +fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably—aided by +the presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet, and by the complexion +of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by +life—neither more nor less than a case of distinction, such a case as he +could only feel unexpectedly as a sort of delivered challenge? Meanwhile, +however, the chance he had allowed for—the chance of being seen in time +from the balcony—had become a fact. Two or three of the windows stood +open to the violet air; and, before Strether had cut the knot by crossing, a +young man had come out and looked about him, had lighted a cigarette and tossed +the match over, and then, resting on the rail, had given himself up to watching +the life below while he smoked. His arrival contributed, in its order, to +keeping Strether in position; the result of which in turn was that Strether +soon felt himself noticed. The young man began to look at him as in +acknowledgement of his being himself in observation. +</p> + +<p> +This was interesting so far as it went, but the interest was affected by the +young man’s not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he were perhaps +Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much of alteration. The +young man was light bright and alert—with an air too pleasant to have +been arrived at by patching. Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not +beyond recognition. He was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they +stood; it was a sufficient amendment that the gentleman up there should be +Chad’s friend. He was young too then, the gentleman up there—he was +very young; young enough apparently to be amused at an elderly watcher, to be +curious even to see what the elderly watcher would do on finding himself +watched. There was youth in that, there was youth in the surrender to the +balcony, there was youth for Strether at this moment in everything but his own +business; and Chad’s thus pronounced association with youth had given the +next instant an extraordinary quick lift to the issue. The balcony, the +distinguished front, testified suddenly, for Strether’s fancy, to +something that was up and up; they placed the whole case materially, and as by +an admirable image, on a level that he found himself at the end of another +moment rejoicing to think he might reach. The young man looked at him still, he +looked at the young man; and the issue, by a rapid process, was that this +knowledge of a perched privacy appeared to him the last of luxuries. To him too +the perched privacy was open, and he saw it now but in one light—that of +the only domicile, the only fireside, in the great ironic city, on which he had +the shadow of a claim. Miss Gostrey had a fireside; she had told him of it, and +it was something that doubtless awaited him; but Miss Gostrey hadn’t yet +arrived—she mightn’t arrive for days; and the sole attenuation of +his excluded state was his vision of the small, the admittedly secondary hotel +in the bye-street from the Rue de la Paix, in which her solicitude for his +purse had placed him, which affected him somehow as all indoor chill, +glass-roofed court and slippery staircase, and which, by the same token, +expressed the presence of Waymarsh even at times when Waymarsh might have been +certain to be round at the bank. It came to pass before he moved that Waymarsh, +and Waymarsh alone, Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively strengthened, +struck him as the present alternative to the young man in the balcony. When he +did move it was fairly to escape that alternative. Taking his way over the +street at last and passing through the <i>porte-cochère</i> of the house was +like consciously leaving Waymarsh out. However, he would tell him all about it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Book Third</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Strether told Waymarsh all about it that very evening, on their dining together +at the hotel; which needn’t have happened, he was all the while aware, +hadn’t he chosen to sacrifice to this occasion a rarer opportunity. The +mention to his companion of the sacrifice was moreover exactly what introduced +his recital—or, as he would have called it with more confidence in his +interlocutor, his confession. His confession was that he had been captured and +that one of the features of the affair had just failed to be his engaging +himself on the spot to dinner. As by such a freedom Waymarsh would have lost +him he had obeyed his scruple; and he had likewise obeyed another +scruple—which bore on the question of his himself bringing a guest. +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh looked gravely ardent, over the finished soup, at this array of +scruples; Strether hadn’t yet got quite used to being so unprepared for +the consequences of the impression he produced. It was comparatively easy to +explain, however, that he hadn’t felt sure his guest would please. The +person was a young man whose acquaintance he had made but that afternoon in the +course of rather a hindered enquiry for another person—an enquiry his new +friend had just prevented in fact from being vain. “Oh,” said +Strether, “I’ve all sorts of things to tell you!”—and +he put it in a way that was a virtual hint to Waymarsh to help him to enjoy the +telling. He waited for his fish, he drank of his wine, he wiped his long +moustache, he leaned back in his chair, he took in the two English ladies who +had just creaked past them and whom he would even have articulately greeted if +they hadn’t rather chilled the impulse; so that all he could do +was—by way of doing something—to say “Merci, François!” +out quite loud when his fish was brought. Everything was there that he wanted, +everything that could make the moment an occasion, that would do +beautifully—everything but what Waymarsh might give. The little waxed +salle-à-manger was sallow and sociable; François, dancing over it, all smiles, +was a man and a brother; the high-shouldered patronne, with her high-held, +much-rubbed hands, seemed always assenting exuberantly to something unsaid; the +Paris evening in short was, for Strether, in the very taste of the soup, in the +goodness, as he was innocently pleased to think it, of the wine, in the +pleasant coarse texture of the napkin and the crunch of the thick-crusted +bread. These all were things congruous with his confession, and his confession +was that he <i>had</i>—it would come out properly just there if Waymarsh +would only take it properly—agreed to breakfast out, at twelve literally, +the next day. He didn’t quite know where; the delicacy of the case came +straight up in the remembrance of his new friend’s “We’ll +see; I’ll take you somewhere!”—for it had required little +more than that, after all, to let him right in. He was affected after a minute, +face to face with his actual comrade, by the impulse to overcolour. There had +already been things in respect to which he knew himself tempted by this +perversity. If Waymarsh thought them bad he should at least have his reason for +his discomfort; so Strether showed them as worse. Still, he was now, in his +way, sincerely perplexed. +</p> + +<p> +Chad had been absent from the Boulevard Malesherbes—was absent from Paris +altogether; he had learned that from the concierge, but had nevertheless gone +up, and gone up—there were no two ways about it—from an +uncontrollable, a really, if one would, depraved curiosity. The concierge had +mentioned to him that a friend of the tenant of the troisième was for the time +in possession; and this had been Strether’s pretext for a further +enquiry, an experiment carried on, under Chad’s roof, without his +knowledge. “I found his friend in fact there keeping the place warm, as +he called it, for him; Chad himself being, as appears, in the south. He went a +month ago to Cannes and though his return begins to be looked for it +can’t be for some days. I might, you see, perfectly have waited a week; +might have beaten a retreat as soon as I got this essential knowledge. But I +beat no retreat; I did the opposite; I stayed, I dawdled, I trifled; above all +I looked round. I saw, in fine; and—I don’t know what to call +it—I sniffed. It’s a detail, but it’s as if there were +something—something very good—<i>to</i> sniff.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh’s face had shown his friend an attention apparently so remote +that the latter was slightly surprised to find it at this point abreast with +him. “Do you mean a smell? What of?” +</p> + +<p> +“A charming scent. But I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh gave an inferential grunt. “Does he live there with a +woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh waited an instant for more, then resumed. “Has he taken her off +with him?” +</p> + +<p> +“And will he bring her back?”—Strether fell into the enquiry. +But he wound it up as before. “I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +The way he wound it up, accompanied as this was with another drop back, another +degustation of the Léoville, another wipe of his moustache and another good +word for François, seemed to produce in his companion a slight irritation. +“Then what the devil <i>do</i> you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether almost gaily, “I guess I don’t +know anything!” His gaiety might have been a tribute to the fact that the +state he had been reduced to did for him again what had been done by his talk +of the matter with Miss Gostrey at the London theatre. It was somehow +enlarging; and the air of that amplitude was now doubtless more or +less—and all for Waymarsh to feel—in his further response. +“That’s what I found out from the young man.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I thought you said you found out nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing but that—that I don’t know anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what good does that do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just,” said Strether, “what I’ve come to +you to help me to discover. I mean anything about anything over here. I +<i>felt</i> that, up there. It regularly rose before me in its might. The young +man moreover—Chad’s friend—as good as told me so.” +</p> + +<p> +“As good as told you you know nothing about anything?” Waymarsh +appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told <i>him</i>. +“How old is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I guess not thirty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet you had to take that from him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I took a good deal more—since, as I tell you, I took an +invitation to déjeuner.” +</p> + +<p> +“And are you <i>going</i> to that unholy meal?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you’ll come with me. He wants you too, you know. I told him +about you. He gave me his card,” Strether pursued, “and his +name’s rather funny. It’s John Little Bilham, and he says his two +surnames are, on account of his being small, inevitably used together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, +“what’s he doing up there?” +</p> + +<p> +“His account of himself is that he’s ‘only a little +artist-man.’ That seemed to me perfectly to describe him. But he’s +yet in the phase of study; this, you know, is the great art-school—to +pass a certain number of years in which he came over. And he’s a great +friend of Chad’s, and occupying Chad’s rooms just now because +they’re so pleasant. <i>He’s</i> very pleasant and curious +too,” Strether added—“though he’s not from +Boston.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. “Where <i>is</i> he +from?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought. “I don’t know that, either. But he’s +‘notoriously,’ as he put it himself, not from Boston.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, “every one +can’t notoriously <i>be</i> from Boston. Why,” he continued, +“is he curious?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps just for <i>that</i>—for one thing! But really,” +Strether added, “for everything. When you meet him you’ll +see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I don’t want to meet him,” Waymarsh impatiently growled. +“Why don’t he go home?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “Well, because he likes it over here.” +</p> + +<p> +This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear. “He ought then +to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too, why drag him +in?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s reply again took time. “Perhaps I do think so +myself—though I don’t quite yet admit it. I’m not a bit +sure—it’s again one of the things I want to find out. I liked him, +and <i>can</i> you like people—? But no matter.” He pulled himself +up. “There’s no doubt I want you to come down on me and squash +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not the dish +he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the effect of causing +his imagination temporarily to wander. But it presently broke out at a softer +spot. “Have they got a handsome place up there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things. I never saw +such a place”—and Strether’s thought went back to it. +“For a little artist-man—!” He could in fact scarce express +it. +</p> + +<p> +But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, life can hold nothing better. Besides, they’re things of +which he’s in charge.” +</p> + +<p> +“So that he does doorkeeper for your precious pair? Can life,” +Waymarsh enquired, “hold nothing better than <i>that?</i>” Then as +Strether, silent, seemed even yet to wonder, “Doesn’t he know what +<i>she</i> is?” he went on. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t know. I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t. It +was impossible. You wouldn’t either. Besides I didn’t want to. No +more would you.” Strether in short explained it at a stroke. “You +can’t make out over here what people do know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what did you come over for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself—without their +aid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what do you want mine for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Strether laughed, “you’re not one of <i>them!</i> +I do know what <i>you</i> know.” +</p> + +<p> +As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him +hard—such being the latter’s doubt of its implications—he +felt his justification lame. Which was still more the case when Waymarsh +presently said: “Look here, Strether. Quit this.” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own. “Do you mean my tone?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—damn your tone. I mean your nosing round. Quit the whole job. +Let them stew in their juice. You’re being used for a thing you +ain’t fit for. People don’t take a fine-tooth comb to groom a +horse.” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I a fine-tooth comb?” Strether laughed. “It’s +something I never called myself!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what you are, all the same. You ain’t so young as you +were, but you’ve kept your teeth.” +</p> + +<p> +He acknowledged his friend’s humour. “Take care I don’t get +them into <i>you!</i> You’d like them, my friends at home, +Waymarsh,” he declared; “you’d really particularly like them. +And I know”—it was slightly irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and +singular force—“I know they’d like you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh don’t work them off on <i>me!</i>” Waymarsh groaned. +</p> + +<p> +Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets. “It’s +really quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indispensable to whom? To you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” Strether presently said. +</p> + +<p> +“Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether faced it. “Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if you don’t get him you don’t get her?” +</p> + +<p> +It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch. “I think it might +have some effect on our personal understanding. Chad’s of real +importance—or can easily become so if he will—to the +business.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the business is of real importance to his mother’s +husband?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants. And the thing will be +much better if we have our own man in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you have your own man in it, in other words,” Waymarsh said, +“you’ll marry—you personally—more money. She’s +already rich, as I understand you, but she’ll be richer still if the +business can be made to boom on certain lines that you’ve laid +down.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> haven’t laid them down,” Strether promptly +returned. “Mr. Newsome—who knew extraordinarily well what he was +about—laid them down ten years ago.” +</p> + +<p> +Oh well, Waymarsh seemed to indicate with a shake of his mane, <i>that</i> +didn’t matter! “You’re fierce for the boom anyway.” +</p> + +<p> +His friend weighed a moment in silence the justice of the charge. “I can +scarcely be called fierce, I think, when I so freely take my chance of the +possibility, the danger, of being influenced in a sense counter to Mrs. +Newsome’s own feelings.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh gave this proposition a long hard look. “I see. You’re +afraid yourself of being squared. But you’re a humbug,” he added, +“all the same.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” Strether quickly protested. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you ask me for protection—which makes you very interesting; +and then you won’t take it. You say you want to be squashed—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but not so easily! Don’t you see,” Strether demanded +“where my interest, as already shown you, lies? It lies in my not being +squared. If I’m squared where’s my marriage? If I miss my errand I +miss that; and if I miss that I miss everything—I’m nowhere.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh—but all relentlessly—took this in. “What do I care +where you are if you’re spoiled?” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met on it an instant. “Thank you awfully,” Strether at +last said. “But don’t you think <i>her</i> judgement of +that—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ought to content me? No.” +</p> + +<p> +It kept them again face to face, and the end of this was that Strether again +laughed. “You do her injustice. You really <i>must</i> know her. +Good-night.” +</p> + +<p> +He breakfasted with Mr. Bilham on the morrow, and, as inconsequently befell, +with Waymarsh massively of the party. The latter announced, at the eleventh +hour and much to his friend’s surprise, that, damn it, he would as soon +join him as do anything else; on which they proceeded together, strolling in a +state of detachment practically luxurious for them to the Boulevard +Malesherbes, a couple engaged that day with the sharp spell of Paris as +confessedly, it might have been seen, as any couple among the daily thousands +so compromised. They walked, wandered, wondered and, a little, lost themselves; +Strether hadn’t had for years so rich a consciousness of time—a bag +of gold into which he constantly dipped for a handful. It was present to him +that when the little business with Mr. Bilham should be over he would still +have shining hours to use absolutely as he liked. There was no great pulse of +haste yet in this process of saving Chad; nor was that effect a bit more marked +as he sat, half an hour later, with his legs under Chad’s mahogany, with +Mr. Bilham on one side, with a friend of Mr. Bilham’s on the other, with +Waymarsh stupendously opposite, and with the great hum of Paris coming up in +softness, vagueness—for Strether himself indeed already positive +sweetness—through the sunny windows toward which, the day before, his +curiosity had raised its wings from below. The feeling strongest with him at +that moment had borne fruit almost faster than he could taste it, and Strether +literally felt at the present hour that there was a precipitation in his fate. +He had known nothing and nobody as he stood in the street; but hadn’t his +view now taken a bound in the direction of every one and of every thing? +</p> + +<p> +“What’s he up to, what’s he up to?”—something +like that was at the back of his head all the while in respect to little +Bilham; but meanwhile, till he should make out, every one and every thing were +as good as represented for him by the combination of his host and the lady on +his left. The lady on his left, the lady thus promptly and ingeniously invited +to “meet” Mr. Strether and Mr. Waymarsh—it was the way she +herself expressed her case—was a very marked person, a person who had +much to do with our friend’s asking himself if the occasion weren’t +in its essence the most baited, the most gilded of traps. Baited it could +properly be called when the repast was of so wise a savour, and gilded +surrounding objects seemed inevitably to need to be when Miss +Barrace—which was the lady’s name—looked at them with convex +Parisian eyes and through a glass with a remarkably long tortoise-shell handle. +Why Miss Barrace, mature meagre erect and eminently gay, highly adorned, +perfectly familiar, freely contradictious and reminding him of some +last-century portrait of a clever head without powder—why Miss Barrace +should have been in particular the note of a “trap” Strether +couldn’t on the spot have explained; he blinked in the light of a +conviction that he should know later on, and know well—as it came over +him, for that matter, with force, that he should need to. He wondered what he +was to think exactly of either of his new friends; since the young man, +Chad’s intimate and deputy, had, in thus constituting the scene, +practised so much more subtly than he had been prepared for, and since in +especial Miss Barrace, surrounded clearly by every consideration, hadn’t +scrupled to figure as a familiar object. It was interesting to him to feel that +he was in the presence of new measures, other standards, a different scale of +relations, and that evidently here were a happy pair who didn’t think of +things at all as he and Waymarsh thought. Nothing was less to have been +calculated in the business than that it should now be for him as if he and +Waymarsh were comparatively quite at one. +</p> + +<p> +The latter was magnificent—this at least was an assurance privately given +him by Miss Barrace. “Oh your friend’s a type, the grand old +American—what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, +who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father +and who was usually the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court. +I haven’t seen one these ever so many years; the sight of it warms my +poor old chilled heart; this specimen is wonderful; in the right quarter, you +know, he’ll have a <i>succès fou</i>.” Strether hadn’t failed +to ask what the right quarter might be, much as he required his presence of +mind to meet such a change in their scheme. “Oh the artist-quarter and +that kind of thing; <i>here</i> already, for instance, as you see.” He +had been on the point of echoing “‘Here’?—is +<i>this</i> the artist-quarter?” but she had already disposed of the +question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy “Bring him to +<i>me!</i>” He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring +him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot with poor +Waymarsh’s judgement of it. He was in the trap still more than his +companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of it; which was +precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre glow. Little did Miss +Barrace know that what was behind it was his grave estimate of her own laxity. +The general assumption with which our two friends had arrived had been that of +finding Mr. Bilham ready to conduct them to one or other of those resorts of +the earnest, the æsthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of +Paris. In this character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on +discharging their score. Waymarsh’s only proviso at the last had been +that nobody should pay for him; but he found himself, as the occasion +developed, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out that he +already nursed retribution. Strether was conscious across the table of what +worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the small salon to which, the +previous evening, he himself had made so rich a reference; conscious most of +all as they stepped out to the balcony in which one would have had to be an +ogre not to recognise the perfect place for easy aftertastes. These things were +enhanced for Miss Barrace by a succession of excellent +cigarettes—acknowledged, acclaimed, as a part of the wonderful supply +left behind him by Chad—in an almost equal absorption of which Strether +found himself blindly, almost wildly pushing forward. He might perish by the +sword as well as by famine, and he knew that his having abetted the lady by an +excess that was rare with him would count for little in the sum—as +Waymarsh might so easily add it up—of her licence. Waymarsh had smoked of +old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave him his +advantage over people who took things up lightly just when others had laid them +heavily down. Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his +friend that this had been only because of a reason. The reason, it now began to +appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with. +</p> + +<p> +It was this lady’s being there at all, however, that was the strange free +thing; perhaps, since she <i>was</i> there, her smoking was the least of her +freedoms. If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what—with Bilham +in especial—she talked about, he might have traced others and winced at +them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense +of the range of reference was merely general and that he on several different +occasions guessed and interpreted only to doubt. He wondered what they meant, +but there were things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and +“Oh no—not <i>that!</i>” was at the end of most of his +ventures. This was the very beginning with him of a condition as to which, +later on, it will be seen, he found cause to pull himself up; and he was to +remember the moment duly as the first step in a process. The central fact of +the place was neither more nor less, when analysed—and a pressure +superficial sufficed—than the fundamental impropriety of Chad’s +situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered. Accordingly, +since they took it for granted, they took for granted all that was in connexion +with it taken for granted at Woollett—matters as to which, verily, he had +been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence. That was the +consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the +accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their badness. It +befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself that their badness +was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before +him was, so to speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading +a roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up. This, he was well +aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he could only +gather, of a relation to the irregular life. +</p> + +<p> +It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that was the +insidious, the delicate marvel. He was eager to concede that their relation to +it was all indirect, for anything else in him would have shown the grossness of +bad manners; but the indirectness was none the less consonant—<i>that</i> +was striking—with a grateful enjoyment of everything that was +Chad’s. They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his good name and good +nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether was that all their mention +of him was of a kind to do him honour. They commended his munificence and +approved his taste, and in doing so sat down, as it seemed to Strether, in the +very soil out of which these things flowered. Our friend’s final +predicament was that he himself was sitting down, for the time, <i>with</i> +them, and there was a supreme moment at which, compared with his collapse, +Waymarsh’s erectness affected him as really high. One thing was +certain—he saw he must make up his mind. He must approach Chad, must wait +for him, deal with him, master him, but he mustn’t dispossess himself of +the faculty of seeing things as they were. He must bring him to +<i>him</i>—not go himself, as it were, so much of the way. He must at any +rate be clearer as to what—should he continue to do that for +convenience—he was still condoning. It was on the detail of this +quantity—and what could the fact be but mystifying?—that Bilham and +Miss Barrace threw so little light. So there they were. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +When Miss Gostrey arrived, at the end of a week, she made him a sign; he went +immediately to see her, and it wasn’t till then that he could again close +his grasp on the idea of a corrective. This idea however was luckily all before +him again from the moment he crossed the threshold of the little entresol of +the Quartier Marbœuf into which she had gathered, as she said, picking them up +in a thousand flights and funny little passionate pounces, the makings of a +final nest. He recognised in an instant that there really, there only, he +should find the boon with the vision of which he had first mounted Chad’s +stairs. He might have been a little scared at the picture of how much more, in +this place, he should know himself “in” hadn’t his friend +been on the spot to measure the amount to his appetite. Her compact and crowded +little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with accumulations, +represented a supreme general adjustment to opportunities and conditions. +Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory or an old brocade, and he scarce knew +where to sit for fear of a misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of +a sudden as more charged with possession even than Chad’s or than Miss +Barrace’s; wide as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of +“things,” what was before him still enlarged it; the lust of the +eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their temple. It was the innermost +nook of the shrine—as brown as a pirate’s cave. In the brownness +were glints of gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that +caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low +windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they +brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with +him, might have been whisked under his nose. But after a full look at his +hostess he knew none the less what most concerned him. The circle in which they +stood together was warm with life, and every question between them would live +there as nowhere else. A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his +answer, with a laugh, was quickly: “Well, they’ve got hold of +me!” Much of their talk on this first occasion was his development of +that truth. He was extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly +what she most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing +unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days was to +need it or miss it for ever. She was the blessing that had now become his need, +and what could prove it better than that without her he had lost himself? +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” she asked with an absence of alarm that, +correcting him as if he had mistaken the “period” of one of her +pieces, gave him afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had +but begun to tread. “What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed +to do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why exactly the wrong thing. I’ve made a frantic friend of little +Bilham.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been +allowed for from the first.” And it was only after this that, quite as a +minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When she +learned that he was a friend of Chad’s and living for the time in +Chad’s rooms in Chad’s absence, quite as if acting in Chad’s +spirit and serving Chad’s cause, she showed, however, more interest. +“Should you mind my seeing him? Only once, you know,” she added. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh the oftener the better: he’s amusing—he’s +original.” +</p> + +<p> +“He doesn’t shock you?” Miss Gostrey threw out. +</p> + +<p> +“Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection—! I feel it +to be largely, no doubt, because I don’t half-understand him; but our +<i>modus vivendi</i> isn’t spoiled even by that. You must dine with me to +meet him,” Strether went on. “Then you’ll see.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Are you giving dinners?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—there I am. That’s what I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +All her kindness wondered. “That you’re spending too much +money?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear no—they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to +<i>them</i>. I ought to hold off.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought again—she laughed. “The money you must be spending to +think it cheap! But I must be out of it—to the naked eye.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. “Then you +won’t meet them?” It was almost as if she had developed an +unexpected personal prudence. +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated. “Who are they—first?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why little Bilham to begin with.” He kept back for the moment Miss +Barrace. “And Chad—when he comes—you must absolutely +see.” +</p> + +<p> +“When then does he come?” +</p> + +<p> +“When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me. +Bilham, however,” he pursued, “will report +favourably—favourably for Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I +want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you’ll do yourself for your bluff.” She was perfectly +easy. “At the rate you’ve gone I’m quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but I haven’t,” said Strether, “made one +protest.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned it over. “Haven’t you been seeing what there’s to +protest about?” +</p> + +<p> +He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. “I +haven’t yet found a single thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t there any one <i>with</i> him then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of the sort I came out about?” Strether took a moment. “How +do I know? And what do I care?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh oh!”—and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by +the effect on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. <i>She</i> +saw, however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them. +“You’ve got at no facts at all?” +</p> + +<p> +He tried to muster them. “Well, he has a lovely home.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that, in Paris,” she quickly returned, “proves nothing. +That is rather it <i>dis</i>proves nothing. They may very well, you see, the +people your mission is concerned with, have done it <i>for</i> him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh and +I sat guzzling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,” she +replied, “you might easily die of starvation.” With which she +smiled at him. “You’ve worse before you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah I’ve <i>everything</i> before me. But on our hypothesis, you +know, they must be wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“They <i>are!</i>” said Miss Gostrey. “You’re not +therefore, you see,” she added, “wholly without facts. +They’ve <i>been</i>, in effect, wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a little to +help—a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection was washed. +“My young man does admit furthermore that they’re our +friend’s great interest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that the expression he uses?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether more exactly recalled. “No—not quite.” +</p> + +<p> +“Something more vivid? Less?” +</p> + +<p> +He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small stand; +and at this he came up. “It was a mere allusion, but, on the lookout as I +was, it struck me. ‘Awful, you know, as Chad is’—those were +Bilham’s words.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Awful, you know’—? Oh!”—and Miss Gostrey +turned them over. She seemed, however, satisfied. “Well, what more do you +want?” +</p> + +<p> +He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back. +“But it <i>is</i> all the same as if they wished to let me have it +between the eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Quoi donc?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why what I speak of. The amenity. They can stun you with that as well as +with anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she answered, “you’ll come round! I must see them +each,” she went on, “for myself. I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. +Newsome—Mr. Bilham naturally first. Once only—once for each; that +will do. But face to face—for half an hour. What’s Mr. Chad,” +she immediately pursued, “doing at Cannes? Decent men don’t go to +Cannes with the—well, with the kind of ladies you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t they?” Strether asked with an interest in decent men +that amused her. +</p> + +<p> +“No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes. Cannes is different. Cannes is better. +Cannes is best. I mean it’s all people you know—when you do know +them. And if <i>he</i> does, why that’s different too. He must have gone +alone. She can’t be with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t,” Strether confessed in his weakness, “the +least idea.” There seemed much in what she said, but he was able after a +little to help her to a nearer impression. The meeting with little Bilham took +place, by easy arrangement, in the great gallery of the Louvre; and when, +standing with his fellow visitor before one of the splendid Titians—the +overwhelming portrait of the young man with the strangely-shaped glove and the +blue-grey eyes—he turned to see the third member of their party advance +from the end of the waxed and gilded vista, he had a sense of having at last +taken hold. He had agreed with Miss Gostrey—it dated even from +Chester—for a morning at the Louvre, and he had embraced independently +the same idea as thrown out by little Bilham, whom he had already accompanied +to the museum of the Luxembourg. The fusion of these schemes presented no +difficulty, and it was to strike him again that in little Bilham’s +company contrarieties in general dropped. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh he’s all right—he’s one of <i>us!</i>” Miss +Gostrey, after the first exchange, soon found a chance to murmur to her +companion; and Strether, as they proceeded and paused and while a quick +unanimity between the two appeared to have phrased itself in half a dozen +remarks—Strether knew that he knew almost immediately what she meant, and +took it as still another sign that he had got his job in hand. This was the +more grateful to him that he could think of the intelligence now serving him as +an acquisition positively new. He wouldn’t have known even the day before +what she meant—that is if she meant, what he assumed, that they were +intense Americans together. He had just worked round—and with a sharper +turn of the screw than any yet—to the conception of an American intense +as little Bilham was intense. The young man was his first specimen; the +specimen had profoundly perplexed him; at present however there was light. It +was by little Bilham’s amazing serenity that he had at first been +affected, but he had inevitably, in his circumspection, felt it as the trail of +the serpent, the corruption, as he might conveniently have said, of Europe; +whereas the promptness with which it came up for Miss Gostrey but as a special +little form of the oldest thing they knew justified it at once to his own +vision as well. He wanted to be able to like his specimen with a clear good +conscience, and this fully permitted it. What had muddled him was precisely the +small artist-man’s way—it was so complete—of being more +American than anybody. But it now for the time put Strether vastly at his ease +to have this view of a new way. +</p> + +<p> +The amiable youth then looked out, as it had first struck Strether, at a world +in respect to which he hadn’t a prejudice. The one our friend most +instantly missed was the usual one in favour of an occupation accepted. Little +Bilham had an occupation, but it was only an occupation declined; and it was by +his general exemption from alarm, anxiety or remorse on this score that the +impression of his serenity was made. He had come out to Paris to paint—to +fathom, that is, at large, that mystery; but study had been fatal to him so far +as anything <i>could</i> be fatal, and his productive power faltered in +proportion as his knowledge grew. Strether had gathered from him that at the +moment of his finding him in Chad’s rooms he hadn’t saved from his +shipwreck a scrap of anything but his beautiful intelligence and his confirmed +habit of Paris. He referred to these things with an equal fond familiarity, and +it was sufficiently clear that, as an outfit, they still served him. They were +charming to Strether through the hour spent at the Louvre, where indeed they +figured for him as an unseparated part of the charged iridescent air, the +glamour of the name, the splendour of the space, the colour of the masters. Yet +they were present too wherever the young man led, and the day after the visit +to the Louvre they hung, in a different walk, about the steps of our party. He +had invited his companions to cross the river with him, offering to show them +his own poor place; and his own poor place, which was very poor, gave to his +idiosyncrasies, for Strether—the small sublime indifference and +independences that had struck the latter as fresh—an odd and engaging +dignity. He lived at the end of an alley that went out of an old short cobbled +street, a street that went in turn out of a new long smooth avenue—street +and avenue and alley having, however, in common a sort of social shabbiness; +and he introduced them to the rather cold and blank little studio which he had +lent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence. The comrade was another +ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to await them +“regardless,” and this reckless repast, and the second ingenuous +compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes and its gaps, its +delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its overflow of taste and +conviction and its lack of nearly all else—these things wove round the +occasion a spell to which our hero unreservedly surrendered. +</p> + +<p> +He liked the ingenuous compatriots—for two or three others soon gathered; +he liked the delicate daubs and the free discriminations—involving +references indeed, involving enthusiasms and execrations that made him, as they +said, sit up; he liked above all the legend of good-humoured poverty, of mutual +accommodation fairly raised to the romantic, that he soon read into the scene. +The ingenuous compatriots showed a candour, he thought, surpassing even the +candour of Woollett; they were red-haired and long-legged, they were quaint and +queer and dear and droll; they made the place resound with the vernacular, +which he had never known so marked as when figuring for the chosen language, he +must suppose, of contemporary art. They twanged with a vengeance the æsthetic +lyre—they drew from it wonderful airs. This aspect of their life had an +admirable innocence; and he looked on occasion at Maria Gostrey to see to what +extent that element reached her. She gave him however for the hour, as she had +given him the previous day, no further sign than to show how she dealt with +boys; meeting them with the air of old Parisian practice that she had for every +one, for everything, in turn. Wonderful about the delicate daubs, masterful +about the way to make tea, trustful about the legs of chairs and familiarly +reminiscent of those, in the other time, the named, the numbered or the +caricatured, who had flourished or failed, disappeared or arrived, she had +accepted with the best grace her second course of little Bilham, and had said +to Strether, the previous afternoon on his leaving them, that, since her +impression was to be renewed, she would reserve judgement till after the new +evidence. +</p> + +<p> +The new evidence was to come, as it proved, in a day or two. He soon had from +Maria a message to the effect that an excellent box at the Français had been +lent her for the following night; it seeming on such occasions not the least of +her merits that she was subject to such approaches. The sense of how she was +always paying for something in advance was equalled on Strether’s part +only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for his +consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic, the exchange of +such values as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French +play, anything but a box—just as she hated at the English anything but a +stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press +upon her. But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham: she too +always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time. It made her +constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself +how on the day of their settlement their account would stand. He endeavoured +even now to keep it a little straight by arranging that if he accepted her +invitation she should dine with him first; but the upshot of this scruple was +that at eight o’clock on the morrow he awaited her with Waymarsh under +the pillared portico. She hadn’t dined with him, and it was +characteristic of their relation that she had made him embrace her refusal +without in the least understanding it. She ever caused her rearrangements to +affect him as her tenderest touches. It was on that principle for instance +that, giving him the opportunity to be amiable again to little Bilham, she had +suggested his offering the young man a seat in their box. Strether had +dispatched for this purpose a small blue missive to the Boulevard Malesherbes, +but up to the moment of their passing into the theatre he had received no +response to his message. He held, however, even after they had been for some +time conveniently seated, that their friend, who knew his way about, would come +in at his own right moment. His temporary absence moreover seemed, as never +yet, to make the right moment for Miss Gostrey. Strether had been waiting till +tonight to get back from her in some mirrored form her impressions and +conclusions. She had elected, as they said, to see little Bilham once; but now +she had seen him twice and had nevertheless not said more than a word. +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh meanwhile sat opposite him with their hostess between; and Miss +Gostrey spoke of herself as an instructor of youth introducing her little +charges to a work that was one of the glories of literature. The glory was +happily unobjectionable, and the little charges were candid; for herself she +had travelled that road and she merely waited on their innocence. But she +referred in due time to their absent friend, whom it was clear they should have +to give up. “He either won’t have got your note,” she said, +“or you won’t have got his: he has had some kind of hindrance, and, +of course, for that matter, you know, a man never writes about coming to a +box.” She spoke as if, with her look, it might have been Waymarsh who had +written to the youth, and the latter’s face showed a mixture of austerity +and anguish. She went on however as if to meet this. “He’s far and +away, you know, the best of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“The best of whom, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why of all the long procession—the boys, the girls, or the old men +and old women as they sometimes really are; the hope, as one may say, of our +country. They’ve all passed, year after year; but there has been no one +in particular I’ve ever wanted to stop. I feel—don’t +<i>you?</i>—that I want to stop little Bilham; he’s so exactly +right as he is.” She continued to talk to Waymarsh. “He’s too +delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always <i>will</i>; they +always do; they always have.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think Waymarsh knows,” Strether said after a moment, +“quite what it’s open to Bilham to spoil.” +</p> + +<p> +“It can’t be a good American,” Waymarsh lucidly enough +replied; “for it didn’t strike me the young man had developed much +in <i>that</i> shape.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” Miss Gostrey sighed, “the name of the good American is +as easily given as taken away! What <i>is</i> it, to begin with, to <i>be</i> +one, and what’s the extraordinary hurry? Surely nothing that’s so +pressing was ever so little defined. It’s such an order, really, that +before we cook you the dish we must at least have your receipt. Besides the +poor chicks have time! What I’ve seen so often spoiled,” she +pursued, “is the happy attitude itself, the state of faith and—what +shall I call it?—the sense of beauty. You’re right about +him”—she now took in Strether; “little Bilham has them to a +charm, we must keep little Bilham along.” Then she was all again for +Waymarsh. “The others have all wanted so dreadfully to do something, and +they’ve gone and done it in too many cases indeed. It leaves them never +the same afterwards; the charm’s always somehow broken. Now <i>he</i>, I +think, you know, really won’t. He won’t do the least dreadful +little thing. We shall continue to enjoy him just as he is. No—he’s +quite beautiful. He sees everything. He isn’t a bit ashamed. He has every +scrap of the courage of it that one could ask. Only think what he <i>might</i> +do. One wants really—for fear of some accident—to keep him in view. +At this very moment perhaps what mayn’t he be up to? I’ve had my +disappointments—the poor things are never really safe; or only at least +when you have them under your eye. One can never completely trust them. +One’s uneasy, and I think that’s why I most miss him now.” +</p> + +<p> +She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her +idea—an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost +wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh alone. +<i>He</i> knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn’t a reason +for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn’t. It was craven of him +perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the occasion, have liked +Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit. Her recognition of it gave him away and, +before she had done with him or with that article, would give him worse. What +was he, all the same, to do? He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes +met; something queer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that +it was better not to touch, passed in silence between them. Well, the effect of +it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency +to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway? It was one of the quiet +instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to the +historic muse. The only qualification of the quietness was the synthetic +“Oh hang it!” into which Strether’s share of the silence +soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final impulse to +burn his ships. These ships, to the historic muse, may seem of course mere +cockles, but when he presently spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at +least of applying the torch. “Is it then a conspiracy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Between the two young men? Well, I don’t pretend to be a seer or a +prophetess,” she presently replied; “but if I’m simply a +woman of sense he’s working for you to-night. I don’t quite know +how—but it’s in my bones.” And she looked at him at last as +if, little material as she yet gave him, he’d really understand. +“For an opinion <i>that’s</i> my opinion. He makes you out too well +not to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not to work for me to-night?” Strether wondered. “Then I +hope he isn’t doing anything very bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve got you,” she portentously answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean he <i>is</i>—?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’ve got you,” she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed +the prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had ever +met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes. “You must +face it now.” +</p> + +<p> +He faced it on the spot. “They <i>had</i> arranged—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Every move in the game. And they’ve been arranging ever since. He +has had every day his little telegram from Cannes.” +</p> + +<p> +It made Strether open his eyes. “Do you <i>know</i> that?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do better. I see it. This was, before I met him, what I wondered +whether I <i>was</i> to see. But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and +our second meeting made me sure. I took him all in. He was acting—he is +still—on his daily instructions.” +</p> + +<p> +“So that Chad has done the whole thing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—not the whole. <i>We’ve</i> done some of it. You and I +and ‘Europe.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Europe—yes,” Strether mused. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear old Paris,” she seemed to explain. But there was more, and, +with one of her turns, she risked it. “And dear old Waymarsh. You,” +she declared, “have been a good bit of it.” +</p> + +<p> +He sat massive. “A good bit of what, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here. You’ve +helped too in your way to float him to where he is.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where the devil <i>is</i> he?” +</p> + +<p> +She passed it on with a laugh. “Where the devil, Strether, are +you?” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. “Well, quite already in +Chad’s hands, it would seem.” And he had had with this another +thought. “Will that be—just all through Bilham—the way +he’s going to work it? It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad +with an idea—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” she asked while the image held him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, is Chad—what shall I say?—monstrous?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,” she said, +“won’t have been his best. He’ll have a better. It +won’t be all through little Bilham that he’ll work it.” +</p> + +<p> +This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. “Through whom else +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what we shall see!” But quite as she spoke she +turned, and Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click +of the <i>ouvreuse</i>, from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, +had come in with a quick step. The door closed behind him, and, though their +faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was all good +confidence. The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the hush of the general +attention, Strether’s challenge was tacit, as was also the greeting, with +a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the unannounced visitor. He discreetly +signed that he would wait, would stand, and these things and his face, one look +from which she had caught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey. She fitted to +them all an answer for Strether’s last question. The solid stranger was +simply the answer—as she now, turning to her friend, indicated. She +brought it straight out for him—it presented the intruder. “Why, +through this gentleman!” The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though +sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain. +Strether gasped the name back—then only had he seen Miss Gostrey had said +more than she knew. They were in presence of Chad himself. +</p> + +<p> +Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and again—he was going over +it much of the time that they were together, and they were together constantly +for three or four days: the note had been so strongly struck during that first +half-hour that everything happening since was comparatively a minor +development. The fact was that his perception of the young man’s +identity—so absolutely checked for a minute—had been quite one of +the sensations that count in life; he certainly had never known one that had +acted, as he might have said, with more of a crowded rush. And the rush though +both vague and multitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were, +yet at the same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a +stretch of decorous silence. They couldn’t talk without disturbing the +spectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that matter, +came to Strether—being a thing of the sort that did come to +him—that these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed +tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually brilliant, +in which relief has to await its time. Relief was never quite near at hand for +kings, queens, comedians and other such people, and though you might be +yourself not exactly one of those, you could yet, in leading the life of high +pressure, guess a little how they sometimes felt. It was truly the life of high +pressure that Strether had seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there, +close to Chad, during the long tension of the act. He was in presence of a fact +that occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses +themselves all together; but he couldn’t without inconvenience show +anything—which moreover might count really as luck. What he might have +shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotion—the emotion +of bewilderment—that he had proposed to himself from the first, whatever +should occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had suddenly sat down there +with him was a phenomenon of change so complete that his imagination, which had +worked so beforehand, felt itself, in the connexion, without margin or +allowance. It had faced every contingency but that Chad should not <i>be</i> +Chad, and this was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an +uncomfortable flush. +</p> + +<p> +He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way to commit +himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision, might habituate it, +so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was too remarkable, the truth; +for what could be more remarkable than this sharp rupture of an identity? You +could deal with a man as himself—you couldn’t deal with him as +somebody else. It was a small source of peace moreover to be reduced to +wondering how little he might know in such an event what a sum he was setting +you. He couldn’t absolutely not know, for you couldn’t absolutely +not let him. It was a <i>case</i> then simply, a strong case, as people +nowadays called such things, a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope +was but in the general law that strong cases were liable to control from +without. Perhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of +it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldn’t be, would +she?—and he had never seen any one less aware of anything than Waymarsh +as he glowered at Chad. The social sightlessness of his old friend’s +survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating way, the inevitable +limits of direct aid from this source. He was not certain, however, of not +drawing a shade of compensation from the privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing +more about something in particular than Miss Gostrey did. His situation too was +a case, for that matter, and he was now so interested, quite so privately agog, +about it, that he had already an eye to the fun it would be to open up to her +afterwards. He derived during his half-hour no assistance from her, and just +this fact of her not meeting his eyes played a little, it must be confessed, +into his predicament. +</p> + +<p> +He had introduced Chad, in the first minutes, under his breath, and there was +never the primness in her of the person unacquainted; but she had none the less +betrayed at first no vision but of the stage, where she occasionally found a +pretext for an appreciative moment that she invited Waymarsh to share. The +latter’s faculty of participation had never had, all round, such an +assault to meet; the pressure on him being the sharper for this chosen attitude +in her, as Strether judged it, of isolating, for their natural intercourse, +Chad and himself. This intercourse was meanwhile restricted to a frank friendly +look from the young man, something markedly like a smile, but falling far short +of a grin, and to the vivacity of Strether’s private speculation as to +whether <i>he</i> carried himself like a fool. He didn’t quite see how he +could so feel as one without somehow showing as one. The worst of that question +moreover was that he knew it as a symptom the sense of which annoyed him. +“If I’m going to be odiously conscious of how I may strike the +fellow,” he reflected, “it was so little what I came out for that I +may as well stop before I begin.” This sage consideration too, +distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he <i>was</i> going to be +conscious. He was conscious of everything but of what would have served him. +</p> + +<p> +He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing would have +been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose to Chad to seek +with him the refuge of the lobby. He hadn’t only not proposed it, but had +lacked even the presence of mind to see it as possible. He had stuck there like +a schoolboy wishing not to miss a minute of the show; though for that portion +of the show then presented he hadn’t had an instant’s real +attention. He couldn’t when the curtain fell have given the slightest +account of what had happened. He had therefore, further, not at that moment +acknowledged the amenity added by this acceptance of his awkwardness to +Chad’s general patience. Hadn’t he none the less known at the very +time—known it stupidly and without reaction—that the boy was +accepting something? He was modestly benevolent, the boy—that was at +least what he had been capable of the superiority of making out his chance to +be; and one had one’s self literally not had the gumption to get in ahead +of him. If we should go into all that occupied our friend in the watches of the +night we should have to mend our pen; but an instance or two may mark for us +the vividness with which he could remember. He remembered the two absurdities +that, if his presence of mind <i>had</i> failed, were the things that had had +most to do with it. He had never in his life seen a young man come into a box +at ten o’clock at night, and would, if challenged on the question in +advance, have scarce been ready to pronounce as to different ways of doing so. +But it was in spite of this definite to him that Chad had had a way that was +wonderful: a fact carrying with it an implication that, as one might imagine +it, he knew, he had learned, how. +</p> + +<p> +Here already then were abounding results; he had on the spot and without the +least trouble of intention taught Strether that even in so small a thing as +that there were different ways. He had done in the same line still more than +this; had by a mere shake or two of the head made his old friend observe that +the change in him was perhaps more than anything else, for the eye, a matter of +the marked streaks of grey, extraordinary at his age, in his thick black hair; +as well as that this new feature was curiously becoming to him, did something +for him, as characterisation, also even—of all things in the +world—as refinement, that had been a good deal wanted. Strether felt, +however, he would have had to confess, that it wouldn’t have been easy +just now, on this and other counts, in the presence of what had been supplied, +to be quite clear as to what had been missed. A reflexion a candid critic might +have made of old, for instance, was that it would have been happier for the son +to look more like the mother; but this was a reflexion that at present would +never occur. The ground had quite fallen away from it, yet no resemblance +whatever to the mother had supervened. It would have been hard for a young +man’s face and air to disconnect themselves more completely than +Chad’s at this juncture from any discerned, from any imaginable aspect of +a New England female parent. That of course was no more than had been on the +cards; but it produced in Strether none the less one of those frequent +phenomena of mental reference with which all judgement in him was actually +beset. +</p> + +<p> +Again and again as the days passed he had had a sense of the pertinence of +communicating quickly with Woollett—communicating with a quickness with +which telegraphy alone would rhyme; the fruit really of a fine fancy in him for +keeping things straight, for the happy forestalment of error. No one could +explain better when needful, nor put more conscience into an account or a +report; which burden of conscience is perhaps exactly the reason why his heart +always sank when the clouds of explanation gathered. His highest ingenuity was +in keeping the sky of life clear of them. Whether or no he had a grand idea of +the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact—for any one +else—explained. One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a +waste of life. A personal relation was a relation only so long as people either +perfectly understood or, better still, didn’t care if they didn’t. +From the moment they cared if they didn’t it was living by the sweat of +one’s brow; and the sweat of one’s brow was just what one might buy +one’s self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of +delusion. It easily grew too fast, and the Atlantic cable now alone could race +with it. That agency would each day have testified for him to something that +was not what Woollett had argued. He was not at this moment absolutely sure +that the effect of the morrow’s—or rather of the +night’s—appreciation of the crisis wouldn’t be to determine +some brief missive. “Have at last seen him, but oh +dear!”—some temporary relief of that sort seemed to hover before +him. It hovered somehow as preparing them all—yet preparing them for +what? If he might do so more luminously and cheaply he would tick out in four +words: “Awfully old—grey hair.” To this particular item in +Chad’s appearance he constantly, during their mute half-hour, reverted; +as if so very much more than he could have said had been involved in it. The +most he could have said would have been: “If he’s going to make me +feel young—!” which indeed, however, carried with it quite enough. +If Strether was to feel young, that is, it would be because Chad was to feel +old; and an aged and hoary sinner had been no part of the scheme. +</p> + +<p> +The question of Chadwick’s true time of life was, doubtless, what came up +quickest after the adjournment of the two, when the play was over, to a café in +the Avenue de l’Opéra. Miss Gostrey had in due course been perfect for +such a step; she had known exactly what they wanted—to go straight +somewhere and talk; and Strether had even felt she had known what he wished to +say and that he was arranging immediately to begin. She hadn’t pretended +this, as she <i>had</i> pretended on the other hand, to have divined +Waymarsh’s wish to extend to her an independent protection homeward; but +Strether nevertheless found how, after he had Chad opposite to him at a small +table in the brilliant halls that his companion straightway selected, sharply +and easily discriminated from others, it was quite, to his mind, as if she +heard him speak; as if, sitting up, a mile away, in the little apartment he +knew, she would listen hard enough to catch. He found too that he liked that +idea, and he wished that, by the same token, Mrs. Newsome might have caught as +well. For what had above all been determined in him as a necessity of the first +order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction of one; was to advance, to +overwhelm, with a rush. This was how he would anticipate—by a +night-attack, as might be—any forced maturity that a crammed +consciousness of Paris was likely to take upon itself to assert on behalf of +the boy. He knew to the full, on what he had just extracted from Miss Gostrey, +Chad’s marks of alertness; but they were a reason the more for not +dawdling. If he was himself moreover to be treated as young he wouldn’t +at all events be so treated before he should have struck out at least once. His +arms might be pinioned afterwards, but it would have been left on record that +he was fifty. The importance of this he had indeed begun to feel before they +left the theatre; it had become a wild unrest, urging him to seize his chance. +He could scarcely wait for it as they went; he was on the verge of the +indecency of bringing up the question in the street; he fairly caught himself +going on—so he afterwards invidiously named it—as if there would be +for him no second chance should the present be lost. Not till, on the purple +divan before the perfunctory <i>bock</i>, he had brought out the words +themselves, was he sure, for that matter, that the present would be saved. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Book Fourth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +“I’ve come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither +more nor less, and take you straight home; so you’ll be so good as +immediately and favourably to consider it!”—Strether, face to face +with Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost breathlessly, and with +an effect at first positively disconcerting to himself alone. For Chad’s +receptive attitude was that of a person who had been gracefully quiet while the +messenger at last reaching him has run a mile through the dust. During some +seconds after he had spoken Strether felt as if <i>he</i> had made some such +exertion; he was not even certain that the perspiration wasn’t on his +brow. It was the kind of consciousness for which he had to thank the look that, +while the strain lasted, the young man’s eyes gave him. They +reflected—and the deuce of the thing was that they reflected really with +a sort of shyness of kindness—his momentarily disordered state; which +fact brought on in its turn for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might +simply “take it out”—take everything out—in being sorry +for him. Such a fear, any fear, was unpleasant. But everything was unpleasant; +it was odd how everything had suddenly turned so. This however was no reason +for letting the least thing go. Strether had the next minute proceeded as +roundly as if with an advantage to follow up. “Of course I’m a +busybody, if you want to fight the case to the death; but after all mainly in +the sense of having known you and having given you such attention as you kindly +permitted when you were in jackets and knickerbockers. Yes—it was +knickerbockers, I’m busybody enough to remember that; and that you had, +for your age—I speak of the first far-away time—tremendously stout +legs. Well, we want you to break. Your mother’s heart’s +passionately set upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments +and reasons. I’ve not put them into her head—I needn’t remind +you how little she’s a person who needs that. But they exist—you +must take it from me as a friend both of hers and yours—for myself as +well. I didn’t invent them, I didn’t originally work them out; but +I understand them, I think I can explain them—by which I mean make you +actively do them justice; and that’s why you see me here. You had better +know the worst at once. It’s a question of an immediate rupture and an +immediate return. I’ve been conceited enough to dream I can sugar that +pill. I take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it +already before I left home, and I don’t mind telling you that, altered as +you are, I take it still more now that I’ve seen you. You’re older +and—I don’t know what to call it!—more of a handful; but +you’re by so much the more, I seem to make out, to our purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I strike you as improved?” Strether was to recall that Chad had +at this point enquired. +</p> + +<p> +He was likewise to recall—and it had to count for some time as his +greatest comfort—that it had been “given” him, as they said +at Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind: “I haven’t the +least idea.” He was really for a while to like thinking he had been +positively hard. On the point of conceding that Chad had improved in +appearance, but that to the question of appearance the remark must be confined, +he checked even that compromise and left his reservation bare. Not only his +moral, but also, as it were, his æsthetic sense had a little to pay for this, +Chad being unmistakeably—and wasn’t it a matter of the confounded +grey hair again?—handsomer than he had ever promised. That however fell +in perfectly with what Strether had said. They had no desire to keep down his +proper expansion, and he wouldn’t be less to their purpose for not +looking, as he had too often done of old, only bold and wild. There was indeed +a signal particular in which he would distinctly be more so. Strether +didn’t, as he talked, absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was +clutching his thread and that he held it from moment to moment a little +tighter; his mere uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do +that. He had frequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this +very occasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought +of—everything was so totally different. +</p> + +<p> +But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window. This was what he had +done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as having shaken +it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in front of his +companion’s nose. It gave him really almost the sense of having already +acted his part. The momentary relief—as if from the knowledge that +nothing of <i>that</i> at least could be undone—sprang from a particular +cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostrey’s box, +with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and that had been concerned +since then in every throb of his consciousness. What it came to was that with +an absolutely <i>new</i> quantity to deal with one simply couldn’t know. +The new quantity was represented by the fact that Chad had been made over. That +was all; whatever it was it was everything. Strether had never seen the thing +so done before—it was perhaps a speciality of Paris. If one had been +present at the process one might little by little have mastered the result; but +he was face to face, as matters stood, with the finished business. It had +freely been noted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles, +but that was on the basis of the old quantity. He had originally thought of +lines and tones as things to be taken, but these possibilities had now quite +melted away. There was no computing at all what the young man before him would +think or feel or say on any subject whatever. This intelligence Strether had +afterwards, to account for his nervousness, reconstituted as he might, just as +he had also reconstituted the promptness with which Chad had corrected his +uncertainty. An extraordinarily short time had been required for the +correction, and there had ceased to be anything negative in his +companion’s face and air as soon as it was made. “Your engagement +to my mother has become then what they call here a <i>fait +accompli?</i>”—it had consisted, the determinant touch, in nothing +more than that. +</p> + +<p> +Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He had +felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him than that it +should hang fire too long. “Yes,” he said brightly, “it was +on the happy settlement of the question that I started. You see therefore to +what tune I’m in your family. Moreover,” he added, +“I’ve been supposing you’d suppose it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’ve been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me +helps me to understand that you should want to do something. To do something, I +mean,” said Chad, “to commemorate an event so—what do they +call it?—so auspicious. I see you make out, and not unnaturally,” +he continued, “that bringing me home in triumph as a sort of +wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than anything else. You +want to make a bonfire in fact,” he laughed, “and you pitch me on. +Thank you, thank you!” he laughed again. +</p> + +<p> +He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see how at bottom, +and in spite of the shade of shyness that really cost him nothing, he had from +the first moment been easy about everything. The shade of shyness was mere good +taste. People with manners formed could apparently have, as one of their best +cards, the shade of shyness too. He had leaned a little forward to speak; his +elbows were on the table; and the inscrutable new face that he had got +somewhere and somehow was brought by the movement nearer to his critic’s. +There was a fascination for that critic in its not being, this ripe +physiognomy, the face that, under observation at least, he had originally +carried away from Woollett. Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in +defining it as that of a man of the world—a formula that indeed seemed to +come now in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had +happened and were variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did perhaps +peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly merged. Chad was brown +and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been rough. Was all the difference +therefore that he was actually smooth? Possibly; for that he <i>was</i> smooth +was as marked as in the taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand. The effect of +it was general—it had retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner +line. It had cleared his eyes and settled his colour and polished his fine +square teeth—the main ornament of his face; and at the same time that it +had given him a form and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice, +established his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other motions +to less. He had formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very little; +and he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost none at all. It was as +if in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm +mould and turned successfully out. The phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it +as a phenomenon, an eminent case—was marked enough to be touched by the +finger. He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad’s +arm. “If you’ll promise me—here on the spot and giving me +your word of honour—to break straight off, you’ll make the future +the real right thing for all of us alike. You’ll ease off the strain of +this decent but none the less acute suspense in which I’ve for so many +days been waiting for you, and let me turn in to rest. I shall leave you with +my blessing and go to bed in peace.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled himself a little; +in which posture he looked, though he rather anxiously smiled, only the more +earnest. Then Strether seemed to see that he was really nervous, and he took +that as what he would have called a wholesome sign. The only mark of it +hitherto had been his more than once taking off and putting on his wide-brimmed +crush hat. He had at this moment made the motion again to remove it, then had +only pushed it back, so that it hung informally on his strong young grizzled +crop. It was a touch that gave the note of the familiar—the intimate and +the belated—to their quiet colloquy; and it was indeed by some such +trivial aid that Strether became aware at the same moment of something else. +The observation was at any rate determined in him by some light too fine to +distinguish from so many others, but it was none the less sharply determined. +Chad looked unmistakeably during these instants—well, as Strether put it +to himself, all he was worth. Our friend had a sudden apprehension of what that +would on certain sides be. He saw him in a flash as the young man marked out by +women; and for a concentrated minute the dignity, the comparative austerity, as +he funnily fancied it, of this character affected him almost with awe. There +was an experience on his interlocutor’s part that looked out at him from +under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a force of its own, +the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not through Chad’s +intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men marked out by women +<i>were</i>—and also the men by whom the women were doubtless in turn +sufficiently distinguished. It affected Strether for thirty seconds as a +relevant truth, a truth which, however, the next minute, had fallen into its +relation. “Can’t you imagine there being some questions,” +Chad asked, “that a fellow—however much impressed by your charming +way of stating things—would like to put to you first?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—easily. I’m here to answer everything. I think I can +even tell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you won’t +know enough to ask me. We’ll take as many days to it as you like. But I +want,” Strether wound up, “to go to bed now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused. “Can’t you +believe it?—with what you put me through?” +</p> + +<p> +The young man seemed to consider. “Oh I haven’t put you through +much—yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean there’s so much more to come?” Strether laughed. +“All the more reason then that I should gird myself.” And as if to +mark what he felt he could by this time count on he was already on his feet. +</p> + +<p> +Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he passed between +their table and the next. “Oh we shall get on!” +</p> + +<p> +The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have desired; and +quite as good the expression of face with which the speaker had looked up at +him and kindly held him. All these things lacked was their not showing quite so +much as the fruit of experience. Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, +if he didn’t play any grossness of defiance. Of course experience was in +a manner defiance; but it wasn’t, at any rate—rather indeed quite +the contrary!—grossness; which was so much gained. He fairly grew older, +Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned. Then with his mature pat of his +visitor’s arm he also got up; and there had been enough of it all by this +time to make the visitor feel that something <i>was</i> settled. Wasn’t +it settled that he had at least the testimony of Chad’s own belief in a +settlement? Strether found himself treating Chad’s profession that they +would get on as a sufficient basis for going to bed. He hadn’t +nevertheless after this gone to bed directly; for when they had again passed +out together into the mild bright night a check had virtually sprung from +nothing more than a small circumstance which might have acted only as +confirming quiescence. There were people, expressive sound, projected light, +still abroad, and after they had taken in for a moment, through everything, the +great clear architectural street, they turned off in tacit union to the quarter +of Strether’s hotel. “Of course,” Chad here abruptly began, +“of course Mother’s making things out with you about me has been +natural—and of course also you’ve had a good deal to go upon. +Still, you must have filled out.” +</p> + +<p> +He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point he wished to +make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile to make one. “Oh +we’ve never pretended to go into detail. We weren’t in the least +bound to <i>that</i>. It was ‘filling out’ enough to miss you as we +did.” +</p> + +<p> +But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at their corner, +where they paused, he had at first looked as if touched by Strether’s +allusion to the long sense, at home, of his absence. “What I mean is you +must have imagined.” +</p> + +<p> +“Imagined what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—horrors.” +</p> + +<p> +It affected Strether: horrors were so little—superficially at +least—in this robust and reasoning image. But he was none the less there +to be veracious. “Yes, I dare say we <i>have</i> imagined horrors. But +where’s the harm if we haven’t been wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments at which he +had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of designedly showing himself. It +was as if at these instants he just presented himself, his identity so rounded +off, his palpable presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the +chain as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as +if—and how but anomalously?—he couldn’t after all help +thinking sufficiently well of these things to let them go for what they were +worth. What could there be in this for Strether but the hint of some +self-respect, some sense of power, oddly perverted; something latent and beyond +access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The intimation had the next thing, in a +flash, taken on a name—a name on which our friend seized as he asked +himself if he weren’t perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young +Pagan. This description—he quite jumped at it—had a sound that +gratified his mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it. +Pagan—yes, that was, wasn’t it? what Chad <i>would</i> logically +be. It was what he must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, +instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made +out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to, +the thing most wanted at Woollett. They’d be able to do with one—a +good one; he’d find an opening—yes; and Strether’s +imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the first appearance there of +the rousing personage. He had only the slight discomfort of feeling, as the +young man turned away from the lamp, that his thought had in the momentary +silence possibly been guessed. “Well, I’ve no doubt,” said +Chad, “you’ve come near enough. The details, as you say, +don’t matter. It <i>has</i> been generally the case that I’ve let +myself go. But I’m coming round—I’m not so bad now.” +With which they walked on again to Strether’s hotel. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” the latter asked as they approached the door, +“that there isn’t any woman with you now?” +</p> + +<p> +“But pray what has that to do with it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why it’s the whole question.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of my going home?” Chad was clearly surprised. “Oh not much! +Do you think that when I want to go any one will have any power—” +</p> + +<p> +“To keep you”—Strether took him straight up—“from +carrying out your wish? Well, our idea has been that somebody has +hitherto—or a good many persons perhaps—kept you pretty well from +‘wanting.’ That’s what—if you’re in +anybody’s hands—may again happen. You don’t answer my +question”—he kept it up; “but if you aren’t in +anybody’s hands so much the better. There’s nothing then but what +makes for your going.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad turned this over. “I don’t answer your question?” He +spoke quite without resenting it. “Well, such questions have always a +rather exaggerated side. One doesn’t know quite what you mean by being in +women’s ‘hands.’ It’s all so vague. One is when one +isn’t. One isn’t when one is. And then one can’t quite give +people away.” He seemed kindly to explain. “I’ve <i>never</i> +got stuck—so very hard; and, as against anything at any time really +better, I don’t think I’ve ever been afraid.” There was +something in it that held Strether to wonder, and this gave him time to go on. +He broke out as with a more helpful thought. “Don’t you know how I +like Paris itself?” +</p> + +<p> +The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel. “Oh if +<i>that’s</i> all that’s the matter with you—!” It was +<i>he</i> who almost showed resentment. +</p> + +<p> +Chad’s smile of a truth more than met it. “But isn’t that +enough?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated, but it came out. “Not enough for your mother!” +Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd—the effect of which was that +Chad broke into a laugh. Strether, at this, succumbed as well, though with +extreme brevity. “Permit us to have still our theory. But if you +<i>are</i> so free and so strong you’re inexcusable. I’ll write in +the morning,” he added with decision. “I’ll say I’ve +got you.” +</p> + +<p> +This appeared to open for Chad a new interest. “How often do you +write?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh perpetually.” +</p> + +<p> +“And at great length?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had become a little impatient. “I hope it’s not found too +great.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’m sure not. And you hear as often?” +</p> + +<p> +Again Strether paused. “As often as I deserve.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother writes,” said Chad, “a lovely letter.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, before the closed <i>porte-cochère</i>, fixed him a moment. +“It’s more, my boy, than <i>you</i> do! But our suppositions +don’t matter,” he added, “if you’re actually not +entangled.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad’s pride seemed none the less a little touched. “I never +<i>was</i> that—let me insist. I always had my own way.” With which +he pursued: “And I have it at present.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what are you here for? What has kept you,” Strether asked, +“if you <i>have</i> been able to leave?” +</p> + +<p> +It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back. “Do you think +one’s kept only by women?” His surprise and his verbal emphasis +rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he remembered +the safety of their English speech. “Is that,” the young man +demanded, “what they think at Woollett?” At the good faith in the +question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would have said, he +had put his foot in it. He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what they +thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him. +“I must say then you show a low mind!” +</p> + +<p> +It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own prompted +in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its disconcerting +force was rather unfairly great. It was a dig that, administered by +himself—and administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome—was no more than +salutary; but administered by Chad—and quite logically—it came +nearer drawing blood. They <i>hadn’t</i> a low mind—nor any +approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain +smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate +pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had +absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled +up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride. There was no doubt Woollett +<i>had</i> insisted on his coarseness; and what he at present stood there for +in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking the other note, to make +of such insistence a preoccupation compromising to the insisters. It was +exactly as if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture +caused to fall from him. The devil of the case was that Strether felt it, by +the same stroke, as falling straight upon himself. He had been wondering a +minute ago if the boy weren’t a Pagan, and he found himself wondering now +if he weren’t by chance a gentleman. It didn’t in the least, on the +spot, spring up helpfully for him that a person couldn’t at the same time +be both. There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the +combination; there was everything to give it on the contrary something of a +flourish. It struck Strether into the bargain as doing something to meet the +most difficult of the questions; though perhaps indeed only by substituting +another. Wouldn’t it be precisely by having learned to be a gentleman +that he had mastered the consequent trick of looking so well that one could +scarce speak to him straight? But what in the world was the clue to such a +prime producing cause? There were too many clues then that Strether still +lacked, and these clues to clues were among them. What it accordingly amounted +to for him was that he had to take full in the face a fresh attribution of +ignorance. He had grown used by this time to reminders, especially from his own +lips, of what he didn’t know; but he had borne them because in the first +place they were private and because in the second they practically conveyed a +tribute. He didn’t know what was bad, and—as others didn’t +know how little he knew it—he could put up with his state. But if he +didn’t know, in so important a particular, what was good, Chad at least +was now aware he didn’t; and that, for some reason, affected our friend +as curiously public. It was in fact an exposed condition that the young man +left him in long enough for him to feel its chill—till he saw fit, in a +word, generously again to cover him. This last was in truth what Chad quite +gracefully did. But he did it as with a simple thought that met the whole of +the case. “Oh I’m all right!” It was what Strether had rather +bewilderedly to go to bed on. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +It really looked true moreover from the way Chad was to behave after this. He +was full of attentions to his mother’s ambassador; in spite of which, all +the while, the latter’s other relations rather remarkably contrived to +assert themselves. Strether’s sittings pen in hand with Mrs. Newsome up +in his own room were broken, yet they were richer; and they were more than ever +interspersed with the hours in which he reported himself, in a different +fashion, but with scarce less earnestness and fulness, to Maria Gostrey. Now +that, as he would have expressed it, he had really something to talk about he +found himself, in respect to any oddity that might reside for him in the double +connexion, at once more aware and more indifferent. He had been fine to Mrs. +Newsome about his useful friend, but it had begun to haunt his imagination that +Chad, taking up again for her benefit a pen too long disused, might possibly be +finer. It wouldn’t at all do, he saw, that anything should come up for +him at Chad’s hand but what specifically <i>was</i> to have come; the +greatest divergence from which would be precisely the element of any +lubrication of their intercourse by levity. It was accordingly to forestall +such an accident that he frankly put before the young man the several facts, +just as they had occurred, of his funny alliance. He spoke of these facts, +pleasantly and obligingly, as “the whole story,” and felt that he +might qualify the alliance as funny if he remained sufficiently grave about it. +He flattered himself that he even exaggerated the wild freedom of his original +encounter with the wonderful lady; he was scrupulously definite about the +absurd conditions in which they had made acquaintance—their having picked +each other up almost in the street; and he had (finest inspiration of all!) a +conception of carrying the war into the enemy’s country by showing +surprise at the enemy’s ignorance. +</p> + +<p> +He had always had a notion that this last was the grand style of fighting; the +greater therefore the reason for it, as he couldn’t remember that he had +ever before fought in the grand style. Every one, according to this, knew Miss +Gostrey: how came it Chad didn’t know her? The difficulty, the +impossibility, was really to escape it; Strether put on him, by what he took +for granted, the burden of proof of the contrary. This tone was so far +successful as that Chad quite appeared to recognise her as a person whose fame +had reached him, but against his acquaintance with whom much mischance had +worked. He made the point at the same time that his social relations, such as +they could be called, were perhaps not to the extent Strether supposed with the +rising flood of their compatriots. He hinted at his having more and more given +way to a different principle of selection; the moral of which seemed to be that +he went about little in the “colony.” For the moment certainly he +had quite another interest. It was deep, what he understood, and Strether, for +himself, could only so observe it. He couldn’t see as yet how deep. Might +he not all too soon! For there was really too much of their question that Chad +had already committed himself to liking. He liked, to begin with, his +prospective stepfather; which was distinctly what had not been on the cards. +His hating him was the untowardness for which Strether had been best prepared; +he hadn’t expected the boy’s actual form to give him more to do +than his imputed. It gave him more through suggesting that he must somehow make +up to himself for not being sure he was sufficiently disagreeable. That had +really been present to him as his only way to be sure he was sufficiently +thorough. The point was that if Chad’s tolerance of his thoroughness were +insincere, were but the best of devices for gaining time, it none the less did +treat everything as tacitly concluded. +</p> + +<p> +That seemed at the end of ten days the upshot of the abundant, the recurrent +talk through which Strether poured into him all it concerned him to know, put +him in full possession of facts and figures. Never cutting these colloquies +short by a minute, Chad behaved, looked and spoke as if he were rather heavily, +perhaps even a trifle gloomily, but none the less fundamentally and comfortably +free. He made no crude profession of eagerness to yield, but he asked the most +intelligent questions, probed, at moments, abruptly, even deeper than his +friend’s layer of information, justified by these touches the native +estimate of his latent stuff, and had in every way the air of trying to live, +reflectively, into the square bright picture. He walked up and down in front of +this production, sociably took Strether’s arm at the points at which he +stopped, surveyed it repeatedly from the right and from the left, inclined a +critical head to either quarter, and, while he puffed a still more critical +cigarette, animadverted to his companion on this passage and that. Strether +sought relief—there were hours when he required it—in repeating +himself; it was in truth not to be blinked that Chad had a way. The main +question as yet was of what it was a way <i>to</i>. It made vulgar questions no +more easy; but that was unimportant when all questions save those of his own +asking had dropped. That he was free was answer enough, and it wasn’t +quite ridiculous that this freedom should end by presenting itself as what was +difficult to move. His changed state, his lovely home, his beautiful things, +his easy talk, his very appetite for Strether, insatiable and, when all was +said, flattering—what were such marked matters all but the notes of his +freedom? He had the effect of making a sacrifice of it just in these handsome +forms to his visitor; which was mainly the reason the visitor was privately, +for the time, a little out of countenance. Strether was at this period again +and again thrown back on a felt need to remodel somehow his plan. He fairly +caught himself shooting rueful glances, shy looks of pursuit, toward the +embodied influence, the definite adversary, who had by a stroke of her own +failed him and on a fond theory of whose palpable presence he had, under Mrs. +Newsome’s inspiration, altogether proceeded. He had once or twice, in +secret, literally expressed the irritated wish that <i>she</i> would come out +and find her. +</p> + +<p> +He couldn’t quite yet force it upon Woollett that such a career, such a +perverted young life, showed after all a certain plausible side, <i>did</i> in +the case before them flaunt something like an impunity for the social man; but +he could at least treat himself to the statement that would prepare him for the +sharpest echo. This echo—as distinct over there in the dry thin air as +some shrill “heading” above a column of print—seemed to reach +him even as he wrote. “He says there’s no woman,” he could +hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; +and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of the reader of the journal. He +could see in the younger lady’s face the earnestness of her attention and +catch the full scepticism of her but slightly delayed “What is there +then?” Just so he could again as little miss the mother’s clear +decision: “There’s plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend +there isn’t.” Strether had, after posting his letter, the whole +scene out; and it was a scene during which, coming and going, as befell, he +kept his eye not least upon the daughter. He had his fine sense of the +conviction Mrs. Pocock would take occasion to reaffirm—a conviction +bearing, as he had from the first deeply divined it to bear, on Mr. +Strether’s essential inaptitude. She had looked him in his conscious eyes +even before he sailed, and that she didn’t believe <i>he</i> would find +the woman had been written in her book. Hadn’t she at the best but a +scant faith in his ability to find women? It wasn’t even as if he had +found her mother—so much more, to her discrimination, had her mother +performed the finding. Her mother had, in a case her private judgement of which +remained educative of Mrs. Pocock’s critical sense, found the man. The +man owed his unchallenged state, in general, to the fact that Mrs. +Newsome’s discoveries were accepted at Woollett; but he knew in his +bones, our friend did, how almost irresistibly Mrs. Pocock would now be moved +to show what she thought of his own. Give <i>her</i> a free hand, would be the +moral, and the woman would soon be found. +</p> + +<p> +His impression of Miss Gostrey after her introduction to Chad was meanwhile an +impression of a person almost unnaturally on her guard. He struck himself as at +first unable to extract from her what he wished; though indeed <i>of</i> what +he wished at this special juncture he would doubtless have contrived to make +but a crude statement. It sifted and settled nothing to put to her, <i>tout +bêtement</i>, as she often said, “Do you like him, +eh?”—thanks to his feeling it actually the least of his needs to +heap up the evidence in the young man’s favour. He repeatedly knocked at +her door to let her have it afresh that Chad’s case—whatever else +of minor interest it might yield—was first and foremost a miracle almost +monstrous. It was the alteration of the entire man, and was so signal an +instance that nothing else, for the intelligent observer, +could—<i>could</i> it?—signify. “It’s a plot,” he +declared—“there’s more in it than meets the eye.” He +gave the rein to his fancy. “It’s a plant!” +</p> + +<p> +His fancy seemed to please her. “Whose then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the party responsible is, I suppose, the fate that waits for one, +the dark doom that rides. What I mean is that with such elements one +can’t count. I’ve but my poor individual, my modest human means. It +isn’t playing the game to turn on the uncanny. All one’s energy +goes to facing it, to tracking it. One wants, confound it, don’t you +see?” he confessed with a queer face—“one wants to enjoy +anything so rare. Call it then life”—he puzzled it +out—“call it poor dear old life simply that springs the surprise. +Nothing alters the fact that the surprise is paralysing, or at any rate +engrossing—all, practically, hang it, that one sees, that one <i>can</i> +see.” +</p> + +<p> +Her silences were never barren, nor even dull. “Is that what you’ve +written home?” +</p> + +<p> +He tossed it off. “Oh dear, yes!” +</p> + +<p> +She had another pause while, across her carpets, he had another walk. “If +you don’t look out you’ll have them straight over.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I’ve said he’ll go back.” +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>will</i> he?” Miss Gostrey asked. +</p> + +<p> +The special tone of it made him, pulling up, look at her long. +“What’s that but just the question I’ve spent treasures of +patience and ingenuity in giving <i>you</i>, by the sight of him—after +everything had led up—every facility to answer? What is it but just the +thing I came here to-day to get out of you? Will he?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—he won’t,” she said at last. “He’s not +free.” +</p> + +<p> +The air of it held him. “Then you’ve all the while +known—?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve known nothing but what I’ve seen; and I wonder,” +she declared with some impatience, “that you didn’t see as much. It +was enough to be with him there—” +</p> + +<p> +“In the box? Yes,” he rather blankly urged. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—to feel sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure of what?” +</p> + +<p> +She got up from her chair, at this, with a nearer approach than she had ever +yet shown to dismay at his dimness. She even, fairly pausing for it, spoke with +a shade of pity. “Guess!” +</p> + +<p> +It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for a +moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them. “You +mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story? Very good; +I’m not such a fool, on my side, as that I don’t understand you, or +as that I didn’t in some degree understand <i>him</i>. That he has done +what he liked most isn’t, among any of us, a matter the least in dispute. +There’s equally little question at this time of day of what it is he does +like most. But I’m not talking,” he reasonably explained, “of +any mere wretch he may still pick up. I’m talking of some person who in +his present situation may have held her own, may really have counted.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s exactly what <i>I</i> am!” said Miss Gostrey. But she +as quickly made her point. “I thought you thought—or that they +think at Woollett—that that’s what mere wretches necessarily do. +Mere wretches necessarily <i>don’t!</i>” she declared with spirit. +“There must, behind every appearance to the contrary, still be +somebody—somebody who’s not a mere wretch, since we accept the +miracle. What else but such a somebody can such a miracle be?” +</p> + +<p> +He took it in. “Because the fact itself <i>is</i> the woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>A</i> woman. Some woman or other. It’s one of the things that +<i>have</i> to be.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you mean then at least a good one.” +</p> + +<p> +“A good woman?” She threw up her arms with a laugh. “I should +call her excellent!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why does he deny her?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey thought a moment. “Because she’s too good to admit! +Don’t you see,” she went on, “how she accounts for +him?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see other +things. “But isn’t what we want that he shall account for +<i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive him +if it isn’t quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether could imagine; but still—! “Even when the woman’s +good?” +</p> + +<p> +Again she laughed out. “Yes, and even when the man is! There’s +always a caution in such cases,” she more seriously +explained—“for what it may seem to show. There’s nothing +that’s taken as showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then you’re speaking now,” Strether said, “of +people who are <i>not</i> nice.” +</p> + +<p> +“I delight,” she replied, “in your classifications. But do +you want me,” she asked, “to give you in the matter, on this +ground, the wisest advice I’m capable of? Don’t consider her, +don’t judge her at all in herself. Consider her and judge her only in +Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +He had the courage at least of his companion’s logic. “Because then +I shall like her?” He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he +already did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little it would +suit his book. “But is that what I came out for?” +</p> + +<p> +She had to confess indeed that it wasn’t. But there was something else. +“Don’t make up your mind. There are all sorts of things. You +haven’t seen him all.” +</p> + +<p> +This on his side Strether recognised; but his acuteness none the less showed +him the danger. “Yes, but if the more I see the better he seems?” +</p> + +<p> +Well, she found something. “That may be—but his disavowal of her +isn’t, all the same, pure consideration. There’s a hitch.” +She made it out. “It’s the effort to sink her.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether winced at the image. “To ‘sink’—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I mean there’s a struggle, and a part of it is just what he +hides. Take time—that’s the only way not to make some mistake that +you’ll regret. Then you’ll see. He does really want to shake her +off.” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend had by this time so got into the vision that he almost gasped. +“After all she has done for him?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey gave him a look which broke the next moment into a wonderful +smile. “He’s not so good as you think!” +</p> + +<p> +They remained with him, these words, promising him, in their character of +warning, considerable help; but the support he tried to draw from them found +itself on each renewal of contact with Chad defeated by something else. What +could it be, this disconcerting force, he asked himself, but the sense, +constantly renewed, that Chad <i>was</i>—quite in fact insisted on +being—as good as he thought? It seemed somehow as if he couldn’t +<i>but</i> be as good from the moment he wasn’t as bad. There was a +succession of days at all events when contact with him—and in its +immediate effect, as if it could produce no other—elbowed out of +Strether’s consciousness everything but itself. Little Bilham once more +pervaded the scene, but little Bilham became even in a higher degree than he +had originally been one of the numerous forms of the inclusive relation; a +consequence promoted, to our friend’s sense, by two or three incidents +with which we have yet to make acquaintance. Waymarsh himself, for the +occasion, was drawn into the eddy; it absolutely, though but temporarily, +swallowed him down, and there were days when Strether seemed to bump against +him as a sinking swimmer might brush a submarine object. The fathomless medium +held them—Chad’s manner was the fathomless medium; and our friend +felt as if they passed each other, in their deep immersion, with the round +impersonal eye of silent fish. It was practically produced between them that +Waymarsh was giving him then his chance; and the shade of discomfort that +Strether drew from the allowance resembled not a little the embarrassment he +had known at school, as a boy, when members of his family had been present at +exhibitions. He could perform before strangers, but relatives were fatal, and +it was now as if, comparatively, Waymarsh were a relative. He seemed to hear +him say “Strike up then!” and to enjoy a foretaste of conscientious +domestic criticism. He <i>had</i> struck up, so far as he actually could; Chad +knew by this time in profusion what he wanted; and what vulgar violence did his +fellow pilgrim expect of him when he had really emptied his mind? It went +somehow to and fro that what poor Waymarsh meant was “I told you +so—that you’d lose your immortal soul!” but it was also +fairly explicit that Strether had his own challenge and that, since they must +go to the bottom of things, he wasted no more virtue in watching Chad than Chad +wasted in watching him. His dip for duty’s sake—where was it worse +than Waymarsh’s own? For <i>he</i> needn’t have stopped resisting +and refusing, needn’t have parleyed, at that rate, with the foe. +</p> + +<p> +The strolls over Paris to see something or call somewhere were accordingly +inevitable and natural, and the late sessions in the wondrous troisième, the +lovely home, when men dropped in and the picture composed more suggestively +through the haze of tobacco, of music more or less good and of talk more or +less polyglot, were on a principle not to be distinguished from that of the +mornings and the afternoons. Nothing, Strether had to recognise as he leaned +back and smoked, could well less resemble a scene of violence than even the +liveliest of these occasions. They were occasions of discussion, none the less, +and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on so many subjects. +There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three or four. The differences +were there to match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were +quiet—they were, as might be said, almost as shy as if people had been +ashamed of them. People showed little diffidence about such things, on the +other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of +them—or indeed of anything else—that they often seemed to have +invented them to avert those agreements that destroy the taste of talk. No one +had ever done that at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he +himself had been tempted to it without quite knowing why. He saw why at +present—he had but wanted to promote intercourse. +</p> + +<p> +These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by his affair +on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the stretch it was +because he missed violence. When he asked himself if none would then, in +connexion with it, ever come at all, he might almost have passed as wondering +how to provoke it. It would be too absurd if such a vision as <i>that</i> +should have to be invoked for relief; it was already marked enough as absurd +that he should actually have begun with flutters and dignities on the score of +a single accepted meal. What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be, +anyway?—Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to make +it in private. He could himself, comparatively recent as it was—it was +truly but the fact of a few days since—focus his primal crudity; but he +would on the approach of an observer, as if handling an illicit possession, +have slipped the reminiscence out of sight. There were echoes of it still in +Mrs. Newsome’s letters, and there were moments when these echoes made him +exclaim on her want of tact. He blushed of course, at once, still more for the +explanation than for the ground of it: it came to him in time to save his +manners that she couldn’t at the best become tactful as quickly as he. +Her tact had to reckon with the Atlantic Ocean, the General Post-Office and the +extravagant curve of the globe. Chad had one day offered tea at the Boulevard +Malesherbes to a chosen few, a group again including the unobscured Miss +Barrace; and Strether had on coming out walked away with the acquaintance whom +in his letters to Mrs. Newsome he always spoke of as the little artist-man. He +had had full occasion to mention him as the other party, so oddly, to the only +close personal alliance observation had as yet detected in Chad’s +existence. Little Bilham’s way this afternoon was not Strether’s, +but he had none the less kindly come with him, and it was somehow a part of his +kindness that as it had sadly begun to rain they suddenly found themselves +seated for conversation at a café in which they had taken refuge. He had passed +no more crowded hour in Chad’s society than the one just ended; he had +talked with Miss Barrace, who had reproached him with not having come to see +her, and he had above all hit on a happy thought for causing Waymarsh’s +tension to relax. Something might possibly be extracted for the latter from the +idea of his success with that lady, whose quick apprehension of what might +amuse her had given Strether a free hand. What had she meant if not to ask +whether she couldn’t help him with his splendid encumbrance, and +mightn’t the sacred rage at any rate be kept a little in abeyance by thus +creating for his comrade’s mind even in a world of irrelevance the +possibility of a relation? What was it but a relation to be regarded as so +decorative and, in especial, on the strength of it, to be whirled away, amid +flounces and feathers, in a coupé lined, by what Strether could make out, with +dark blue brocade? He himself had never been whirled away—never at least +in a coupé and behind a footman; he had driven with Miss Gostrey in cabs, with +Mrs. Pocock, a few times, in an open buggy, with Mrs. Newsome in a four-seated +cart and, occasionally up at the mountains, on a buckboard; but his +friend’s actual adventure transcended his personal experience. He now +showed his companion soon enough indeed how inadequate, as a general monitor, +this last queer quantity could once more feel itself. +</p> + +<p> +“What game under the sun is he playing?” He signified the next +moment that his allusion was not to the fat gentleman immersed in dominoes on +whom his eyes had begun by resting, but to their host of the previous hour, as +to whom, there on the velvet bench, with a final collapse of all consistency, +he treated himself to the comfort of indiscretion. “Where do you see him +come out?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost paternal. +“Don’t you like it over here?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether laughed out—for the tone was indeed droll; he let himself go. +“What has that to do with it? The only thing I’ve any business to +like is to feel that I’m moving him. That’s why I ask you whether +you believe I <i>am?</i> Is the creature”—and he did his best to +show that he simply wished to ascertain—“honest?” +</p> + +<p> +His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small dim smile. +“What creature do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange. “Is it +untrue that he’s free? How then,” Strether asked wondering +“does he arrange his life?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is the creature you mean Chad himself?” little Bilham said. +</p> + +<p> +Strether here, with a rising hope, just thought, “We must take one of +them at a time.” But his coherence lapsed. “<i>Is</i> there some +woman? Of whom he’s really afraid of course I mean—or who does with +him what she likes.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s awfully charming of you,” Bilham presently remarked, +“not to have asked me that before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’m not fit for my job!” +</p> + +<p> +The exclamation had escaped our friend, but it made little Bilham more +deliberate. “Chad’s a rare case!” he luminously observed. +“He’s awfully changed,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you see it too?” +</p> + +<p> +“The way he has improved? Oh yes—I think every one must see it. But +I’m not sure,” said little Bilham, “that I didn’t like +him about as well in his other state.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then this <i>is</i> really a new state altogether?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” the young man after a moment returned, “I’m not +sure he was really meant by nature to be quite so good. It’s like the new +edition of an old book that one has been fond of—revised and amended, +brought up to date, but not quite the thing one knew and loved. However that +may be at all events,” he pursued, “I don’t think, you know, +that he’s really playing, as you call it, any game. I believe he really +wants to go back and take up a career. He’s capable of one, you know, +that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won’t then,” +little Bilham continued to remark, “be my pleasant well-rubbed +old-fashioned volume at all. But of course I’m beastly immoral. I’m +afraid it would be a funny world altogether—a world with things the way I +like them. I ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself. Only +I’d simply rather die—simply. And I’ve not the least +difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly why, and in +defending my ground against all comers. All the same,” he wound up, +“I assure you I don’t say a word against it—for himself, I +mean—to Chad. I seem to see it as much the best thing for him. You see +he’s not happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Do</i> I?”—Strether stared. “I’ve been +supposing I see just the opposite—an extraordinary case of the +equilibrium arrived at and assured.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh there’s a lot behind it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah there you are!” Strether exclaimed. “That’s just +what I want to get at. You speak of your familiar volume altered out of +recognition. Well, who’s the editor?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. “He ought to get +married. <i>That</i> would do it. And he wants to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wants to marry her?” +</p> + +<p> +Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had information, Strether +scarce knew what was coming. “He wants to be free. He isn’t used, +you see,” the young man explained in his lucid way, “to being so +good.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “Then I may take it from you that he <i>is</i> +good?” +</p> + +<p> +His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet fulness. +“<i>Do</i> take it from me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then why isn’t he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile +does nothing—except of course that he’s so kind to me—to +prove it; and couldn’t really act much otherwise if he weren’t. My +question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy: +as if instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and set +me a bad example.” +</p> + +<p> +As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter +was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend pushed back to him +a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in +question retreated. “You give too much,” little Bilham permitted +himself benevolently to observe. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I always give too much!” Strether helplessly sighed. “But +you don’t,” he went on as if to get quickly away from the +contemplation of that doom, “answer my question. Why isn’t he +free?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a +signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan. The effect +of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified +waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found himself deferring to +his companion’s abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as +soon as they were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the +outer air they had turned the next corner. There our friend had kept it up. +“Why isn’t he free if he’s good?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham looked him full in the face. “Because it’s a virtuous +attachment.” +</p> + +<p> +This had settled the question so effectually for the time—that is for the +next few days—that it had given Strether almost a new lease of life. It +must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle +in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste +of the lees rising as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other +words already dealt with his young friend’s assertion; of which it had +made something that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion of his +seeing Maria Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a +new circumstance—a circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a +day in ignorance of. “When I said to him last night,” he +immediately began, “that without some definite word from him now that +will enable me to speak to them over there of our sailing—or at least of +mine, giving them some sort of date—my responsibility becomes +uncomfortable and my situation awkward; when I said that to him what do you +think was his reply?” And then as she this time gave it up: “Why +that he has two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to +arrive in Paris—coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so +furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by +kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see +them again himself. Is that,” Strether enquired, “the way +he’s going to try to get off? These are the people,” he explained, +“that he must have gone down to see before I arrived. They’re the +best friends he has in the world, and they take more interest than any one else +in what concerns him. As I’m his next best he sees a thousand reasons why +we should comfortably meet. He hasn’t broached the question sooner +because their return was uncertain—seemed in fact for the present +impossible. But he more than intimates that—if you can believe +it—their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their +surmounting difficulties.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re dying to see you?” Miss Gostrey asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Dying. Of course,” said Strether, “they’re the +virtuous attachment.” He had already told her about that—had seen +her the day after his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out +together the bearing of the revelation. She had helped him to put into it the +logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly deficient Strether +hadn’t pressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly +described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible +scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other article +worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small principle of +pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; wishing to make with +this the great point that Chad’s virtuous attachments were none of his +business. He had wanted from the first not to think too much of his dignity, +but that was no reason for not allowing it any little benefit that might turn +up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for +interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever +he could that he didn’t interfere. That had of course at the same time +not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which +however he had reduced to some order before communicating his knowledge. When +he had done this at last it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey +might, like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on +reflexion that such an account of the matter did after all fit the confirmed +appearances. Nothing certainly, on all the indications, could have been a +greater change for him than a virtuous attachment, and since they had been in +search of the “word” as the French called it, of that change, +little Bilham’s announcement—though so long and so oddly +delayed—would serve as well as another. She had assured Strether in fact +after a pause that the more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet +her assurance hadn’t so weighed with him as that before they parted he +hadn’t ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn’t she believe the +attachment <i>was</i> virtuous?—he had made sure of her again with the +aid of that question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were +moreover such as would help him to make surer still. +</p> + +<p> +She showed at first none the less as only amused. “You say there are two? +An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost necessarily be +innocent.” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. “Mayn’t he be still +in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he likes +best?” +</p> + +<p> +She gave it more thought. “Oh it must be the daughter—at his +age.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly. Yet what do we know,” Strether asked, “about hers? +She may be old enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Old enough for what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad +wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even <i>we</i>, at a pinch, could +do with it—that is if she doesn’t prevent repatriation—why it +may be plain sailing yet.” +</p> + +<p> +It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his remarks, as +it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all events to wait a +moment to hear the slight splash of this one. “I don’t see why if +Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn’t already done it or +hasn’t been prepared with some statement to you about it. And if he both +wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why isn’t he +‘free’?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. “Perhaps the girl herself +doesn’t like him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s mind echoed the question, but also again met it. +“Perhaps it’s with the mother he’s on good terms.” +</p> + +<p> +“As against the daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if she’s trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, +what could make him like the mother more? Only,” Strether threw out, +“why shouldn’t the daughter consent to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Miss Gostrey, “mayn’t it be that every one +else isn’t quite so struck with him as you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t regard him you mean as such an ‘eligible’ +young man? <i>Is</i> that what I’ve come to?” he audibly and rather +gravely sought to know. “However,” he went on, “his marriage +is what his mother most desires—that is if it will help. And +oughtn’t <i>any</i> marriage to help? They must want him”—he +had already worked it out—“to be better off. Almost any girl he may +marry will have a direct interest in his taking up his chances. It won’t +suit <i>her</i> at least that he shall miss them.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey cast about. “No—you reason well! But of course on the +other hand there’s always dear old Woollett itself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he mused—“there’s always dear old +Woollett itself.” +</p> + +<p> +She waited a moment. “The young lady mayn’t find herself able to +swallow <i>that</i> quantity. She may think it’s paying too much; she may +weigh one thing against another.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn “It will all +depend on who she is. That of course—the proved ability to deal with dear +old Woollett, since I’m sure she does deal with it—is what makes so +strongly for Mamie.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamie?” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it +represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his +exclamation come. “You surely haven’t forgotten about Mamie!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I haven’t forgotten about Mamie,” she smiled. +“There’s no doubt whatever that there’s ever so much to be +said for her. Mamie’s <i>my</i> girl!” she roundly declared. +</p> + +<p> +Strether resumed for a minute his walk. “She’s really perfectly +lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I’ve seen over here +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s precisely on what I perhaps most build.” And she +mused a moment in her friend’s way. “I should positively like to +take her in hand!” +</p> + +<p> +He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. “Oh but +don’t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can’t, you +know, be left.” +</p> + +<p> +But she kept it up. “I wish they’d send her out to me!” +</p> + +<p> +“If they knew you,” he returned, “they would.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but don’t they?—after all that, as I’ve understood +you you’ve told them about me?” +</p> + +<p> +He had paused before her again, but he continued his course “They +<i>will</i>—before, as you say, I’ve done.” Then he came out +with the point he had wished after all most to make. “It seems to give +away now his game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along for. +He has been waiting for them.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. “You see a good deal in it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,” he went on, +“that you don’t see—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what?”—she pressed him as he paused. +</p> + +<p> +“Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been +going on from the first; even from before I came.” +</p> + +<p> +She took a minute to answer. “Who are they then—if it’s so +grave?” +</p> + +<p> +“It mayn’t be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it’s +marked. Only I don’t know,” Strether had to confess, +“anything about them. Their name for instance was a thing that, after +little Bilham’s information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel +obliged to follow up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she returned, “if you think you’ve got +off—!” +</p> + +<p> +Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. “I don’t think +I’ve got off. I only think I’m breathing for about five minutes. I +dare say I <i>shall</i> have, at the best, still to get on.” A look, over +it all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good +humour. “I don’t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their +name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English, +Polish?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care the least little ‘hang,’” he +smiled, “for their nationality. It would be nice if they’re +Polish!” he almost immediately added. +</p> + +<p> +“Very nice indeed.” The transition kept up her spirits. “So +you see you do care.” +</p> + +<p> +He did this contention a modified justice. “I think I should if they +<i>were</i> Polish. Yes,” he thought—“there might be joy in +<i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us then hope for it.” But she came after this nearer to the +question. “If the girl’s of the right age of course the mother +can’t be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl’s +twenty—and she can’t be less—the mother must be at least +forty. So it puts the mother out. <i>She’s</i> too old for him.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. “Do you think so? Do +you think any one would be too old for him? <i>I’m</i> eighty, and +I’m too young. But perhaps the girl,” he continued, +“<i>isn’t</i> twenty. Perhaps she’s only ten—but such a +little dear that Chad finds himself counting her in as an attraction of the +acquaintance. Perhaps she’s only five. Perhaps the mother’s but +five-and-twenty—a charming young widow.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. “She <i>is</i> a widow +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t the least idea!” They once more, in spite of this +vagueness, exchanged a look—a look that was perhaps the longest yet. It +seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which it did as +it could. “I only feel what I’ve told you—that he has some +reason.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey’s imagination had taken its own flight. “Perhaps +she’s <i>not</i> a widow.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he accepted it. +“Then that’s why the attachment—if it’s to her—is +virtuous.” +</p> + +<p> +But she looked as if she scarce followed. “Why is it virtuous +if—since she’s free—there’s nothing to impose on it any +condition?” +</p> + +<p> +He laughed at her question. “Oh I perhaps don’t mean as virtuous as +<i>that!</i> Your idea is that it can be virtuous—in any sense worthy of +the name—only if she’s <i>not</i> free? But what does it become +then,” he asked, “for <i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s another matter.” He said nothing for a moment, and +she soon went on. “I dare say you’re right, at any rate, about Mr. +Newsome’s little plan. He <i>has</i> been trying you—has been +reporting on you to these friends.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether meanwhile had had time to think more. “Then where’s his +straightness?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, as we say, it’s struggling up, breaking out, asserting +itself as it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can +help him. But he has made out,” said Miss Gostrey, “that +you’ll do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do for what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, for <i>them</i>—for <i>ces dames</i>. He has watched you, +studied you, liked you—and recognised that <i>they</i> must. It’s a +great compliment to you, my dear man; for I’m sure they’re +particular. You came out for a success. Well,” she gaily declared, +“you’re having it!” +</p> + +<p> +He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly away. It +was always convenient to him that there were so many fine things in her room to +look at. But the examination of two or three of them appeared soon to have +determined a speech that had little to do with them. “You don’t +believe in it!” +</p> + +<p> +“In what?” +</p> + +<p> +“In the character of the attachment. In its innocence.” +</p> + +<p> +But she defended herself. “I don’t pretend to know anything about +it. Everything’s possible. We must see.” +</p> + +<p> +“See?” he echoed with a groan. “Haven’t we seen +enough?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> haven’t,” she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?” +</p> + +<p> +“You must find out.” +</p> + +<p> +It made him almost turn pale. “Find out any <i>more?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him, to +have the last word. “Wasn’t what you came out for to find out +<i>all?</i>” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Book Fifth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had let his +friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had already been a +question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani, who was at home on Sunday +afternoons and at whose house, for the most part, fewer bores were to be met +than elsewhere; but the project, through some accident, had not had instant +effect, and now revived in happier conditions. Chad had made the point that the +celebrated sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather—spring +at last frank and fair—was propitious; and two or three of his other +allusions had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special. He +had by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself recklessly +go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed him he was showing +at least himself. He could have wished indeed, so far as this went, that Chad +were less of a mere cicerone; for he was not without the impression—now +that the vision of his game, his plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently +assert itself—of his taking refuge from the realities of their +intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased it, +<i>panem et circenses</i>. Our friend continued to feel rather smothered in +flowers, though he made in his other moments the almost angry inference that +this was only because of his odious ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty. He +periodically assured himself—for his reactions were sharp—that he +shouldn’t reach the truth of anything till he had at least got rid of +that. +</p> + +<p> +He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would probably +be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted the only reference +again made by Chad to his good friends from the south. The effect of +Strether’s talk about them with Miss Gostrey had been quite to consecrate +his reluctance to pry; something in the very air of Chad’s +silence—judged in the light of that talk—offered it to him as a +reserve he could markedly match. It shrouded them about with he scarce knew +what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence at any rate—so +far as it placed him there—of ladies; and the one thing that was definite +for him was that they themselves should be, to the extent of his +responsibility, in presence of a gentleman. Was it because they were very +beautiful, very clever, or even very good—was it for one of these reasons +that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring them, in +the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force—to confound his critic, slight +though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? +The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question +were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the sound of +their name. “Yes. That is no!” had been Chad’s reply; but he +had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so +that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he +wouldn’t in the least find one. Never in fact had Strether—in the +mood into which the place had quickly launched him—felt, for himself, +less the need of an excuse. Those he might have found would have been, at the +worst, all for the others, the people before him, in whose liberty to be as +they were he was aware that he positively rejoiced. His fellow guests were +multiplying, and these things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety, +their conditions at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the scene. +</p> + +<p> +The place itself was a great impression—a small pavilion, clear-faced and +sequestered, an effect of polished parquet, of fine white panel and spare +sallow gilt, of decoration delicate and rare, in the heart of the Faubourg +Saint-Germain and on the edge of a cluster of gardens attached to old noble +houses. Far back from streets and unsuspected by crowds, reached by a long +passage and a quiet court, it was as striking to the unprepared mind, he +immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him too, more than anything yet, +the note of the range of the immeasurable town and sweeping away, as by a last +brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. It was in the garden, a spacious +cherished remnant, out of which a dozen persons had already passed, that +Chad’s host presently met them while the tall bird-haunted trees, all of +a twitter with the spring and the weather, and the high party-walls, on the +other side of which grave <i>hôtels</i> stood off for privacy, spoke of +survival, transmission, association, a strong indifferent persistent order. The +day was so soft that the little party had practically adjourned to the open air +but the open air was in such conditions all a chamber of state. Strether had +presently the sense of a great convent, a convent of missions, famous for he +scarce knew what, a nursery of young priests, of scattered shade, of straight +alleys and chapel-bells, that spread its mass in one quarter; he had the sense +of names in the air, of ghosts at the windows, of signs and tokens, a whole +range of expression, all about him, too thick for prompt discrimination. +</p> + +<p> +This assault of images became for a moment, in the address of the distinguished +sculptor, almost formidable: Gloriani showed him, in such perfect confidence, +on Chad’s introduction of him, a fine worn handsome face, a face that was +like an open letter in a foreign tongue. With his genius in his eyes, his +manners on his lips, his long career behind him and his honours and rewards all +round, the great artist, in the course of a single sustained look and a few +words of delight at receiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of +type. Strether had seen in museums—in the Luxembourg as well as, more +reverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires—the work of his +hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he had +migrated, in mid-career, to Paris, where, with a personal lustre almost +violent, he shone in a constellation: all of which was more than enough to +crown him, for his guest, with the light, with the romance, of glory. Strether, +in contact with that element as he had never yet so intimately been, had the +consciousness of opening to it, for the happy instant, all the windows of his +mind, of letting this rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime +not marked in his old geography. He was to remember again repeatedly the +medal-like Italian face, in which every line was an artist’s own, in +which time told only as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in +especial, as the penetrating radiance, as the communication of the illustrious +spirit itself, the manner in which, while they stood briefly, in welcome and +response, face to face, he was held by the sculptor’s eyes. He +wasn’t soon to forget them, was to think of them, all unconscious, +unintending, preoccupied though they were, as the source of the deepest +intellectual sounding to which he had ever been exposed. He was in fact quite +to cherish his vision of it, to play with it in idle hours; only speaking of it +to no one and quite aware he couldn’t have spoken without appearing to +talk nonsense. Was what it had told him or what it had asked him the greater of +the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequalled, supreme, of the +æsthetic torch, lighting that wondrous world for ever, or was it above all the +long straight shaft sunk by a personal acuteness that life had seasoned to +steel? Nothing on earth could have been stranger and no one doubtless more +surprised than the artist himself, but it was for all the world to Strether +just then as if in the matter of his accepted duty he had positively been on +trial. The deep human expertness in Gloriani’s charming smile—oh +the terrible life behind it!—was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff. +</p> + +<p> +Chad meanwhile, after having easily named his companion, had still more easily +turned away and was already greeting other persons present. He was as easy, +clever Chad, with the great artist as with his obscure compatriot, and as easy +with every one else as with either: this fell into its place for Strether and +made almost a new light, giving him, as a concatenation, something more he +could enjoy. He liked Gloriani, but should never see him again; of that he was +sufficiently sure. Chad accordingly, who was wonderful with both of them, was a +kind of link for hopeless fancy, an implication of possibilities—oh if +everything had been different! Strether noted at all events that he was thus on +terms with illustrious spirits, and also that—yes, distinctly—he +hadn’t in the least swaggered about it. Our friend hadn’t come +there only for this figure of Abel Newsome’s son, but that presence +threatened to affect the observant mind as positively central. Gloriani indeed, +remembering something and excusing himself, pursued Chad to speak to him, and +Strether was left musing on many things. One of them was the question of +whether, since he had been tested, he had passed. Did the artist drop him from +having made out that he wouldn’t do? He really felt just to-day that he +might do better than usual. Hadn’t he done well enough, so far as that +went, in being exactly so dazzled? and in not having too, as he almost +believed, wholly hidden from his host that he felt the latter’s plummet? +Suddenly, across the garden, he saw little Bilham approach, and it was a part +of the fit that was on him that as their eyes met he guessed also <i>his</i> +knowledge. If he had said to him on the instant what was uppermost he would +have said: “<i>Have</i> I passed?—for of course I know one has to +pass here.” Little Bilham would have reassured him, have told him that he +exaggerated, and have adduced happily enough the argument of little +Bilham’s own very presence; which, in truth, he could see, was as easy a +one as Gloriani’s own or as Chad’s. He himself would perhaps then +after a while cease to be frightened, would get the point of view for some of +the faces—types tremendously alien, alien to Woollett—that he had +already begun to take in. Who were they all, the dispersed groups and couples, +the ladies even more unlike those of Woollett than the gentlemen?—this +was the enquiry that, when his young friend had greeted him, he did find +himself making. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh they’re every one—all sorts and sizes; of course I mean +within limits, though limits down perhaps rather more than limits up. There are +always artists—he’s beautiful and inimitable to the <i>cher +confrère</i>; and then <i>gros bonnets</i> of many kinds—ambassadors, +cabinet ministers, bankers, generals, what do I know? even Jews. Above all +always some awfully nice women—and not too many; sometimes an actress, an +artist, a great performer—but only when they’re not monsters; and +in particular the right <i>femmes du monde</i>. You can fancy his history on +that side—I believe it’s fabulous: they <i>never</i> give him up. +Yet he keeps them down: no one knows how he manages; it’s too beautiful +and bland. Never too many—and a mighty good thing too; just a perfect +choice. But there are not in any way many bores; it has always been so; he has +some secret. It’s extraordinary. And you don’t find it out. +He’s the same to every one. He doesn’t ask questions.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Ah doesn’t he?” Strether laughed. +</p> + +<p> +Bilham met it with all his candour. “How then should <i>I</i> be here? +</p> + +<p> +“Oh for what you tell me. You’re part of the perfect choice.” +</p> + +<p> +Well, the young man took in the scene. “It seems rather good +to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether followed the direction of his eyes. “Are they all, this time, +<i>femmes du monde?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham showed his competence. “Pretty well.” +</p> + +<p> +This was a category our friend had a feeling for; a light, romantic and +mysterious, on the feminine element, in which he enjoyed for a little watching +it. “Are there any Poles?” +</p> + +<p> +His companion considered. “I think I make out a ‘Portuguee.’ +But I’ve seen Turks.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered, desiring justice. “They seem—all the +women—very harmonious.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh in closer quarters they come out!” And then, while Strether was +aware of fearing closer quarters, though giving himself again to the harmonies, +“Well,” little Bilham went on, “it <i>is</i> at the worst +rather good, you know. If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows +you’re not in the least out. But you always know things,” he +handsomely added, “immediately.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so “I say, don’t lay +traps for me!” he rather helplessly murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” his companion returned, “he’s wonderfully kind +to <i>us</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“To us Americans you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—he doesn’t know anything about <i>that</i>. +That’s half the battle here—that you can never hear politics. We +don’t talk them. I mean to poor young wretches of all sorts. And yet +it’s always as charming as this; it’s as if, by something in the +air, our squalor didn’t show. It puts us all back—into the last +century.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid,” Strether said, amused, “that it puts me +rather forward: oh ever so far!” +</p> + +<p> +“Into the next? But isn’t that only,” little Bilham asked, +“because you’re really of the century before?” +</p> + +<p> +“The century before the last? Thank you!” Strether laughed. +“If I ask you about some of the ladies it can’t be then that I may +hope, as such a specimen of the rococo, to please them.” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary they adore—we all adore here—the rococo, and +where is there a better setting for it than the whole thing, the pavilion and +the garden, together? There are lots of people with collections,” little +Bilham smiled as he glanced round. “You’ll be secured!” +</p> + +<p> +It made Strether for a moment give himself again to contemplation. There were +faces he scarce knew what to make of. Were they charming or were they only +strange? He mightn’t talk politics, yet he suspected a Pole or two. The +upshot was the question at the back of his head from the moment his friend had +joined him. “Have Madame de Vionnet and her daughter arrived?” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come. She’s in +the pavilion looking at objects. One can see <i>she’s</i> a +collector,” little Bilham added without offence. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, she’s a collector, and I knew she was to come. Is Madame +de Vionnet a collector?” Strether went on. +</p> + +<p> +“Rather, I believe; almost celebrated.” The young man met, on it, a +little, his friend’s eyes. “I happen to know—from Chad, whom +I saw last night—that they’ve come back; but only yesterday. He +wasn’t sure—up to the last. This, accordingly,” little Bilham +went on, “will be—if they <i>are</i> here—their first +appearance after their return.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, very quickly, turned these things over. “Chad told you last +night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But did you ask him?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether did him the justice. “I dare say not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said little Bilham, “you’re not a person to +whom it’s easy to tell things you don’t want to know. Though it +<i>is</i> easy, I admit—it’s quite beautiful,” he +benevolently added, “when you do want to.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked at him with an indulgence that matched his intelligence. +“Is that the deep reasoning on which—about these +ladies—you’ve been yourself so silent?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham considered the depth of his reasoning. “I haven’t +been silent. I spoke of them to you the other day, the day we sat together +after Chad’s tea-party.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether came round to it. “They then are the virtuous attachment?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can only tell you that it’s what they pass for. But isn’t +that enough? What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know? I +commend you,” the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, “the +vain appearance.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked more widely round, and what he saw, from face to face, deepened +the effect of his young friend’s words. “Is it so good?” +</p> + +<p> +“Magnificent.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had a pause. “The husband’s dead?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear no. Alive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said Strether. After which, as his companion laughed: +“How then can it be so good?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll see for yourself. One does see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Chad’s in love with the daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “Then where’s the difficulty?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, aren’t you and I—with our grander bolder ideas?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh mine—!” Strether said rather strangely. But then as if to +attenuate: “You mean they won’t hear of Woollett?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham smiled. “Isn’t that just what you must see +about?” +</p> + +<p> +It had brought them, as she caught the last words, into relation with Miss +Barrace, whom Strether had already observed—as he had never before seen a +lady at a party—moving about alone. Coming within sound of them she had +already spoken, and she took again, through her long-handled glass, all her +amused and amusing possession. “How much, poor Mr. Strether, you seem to +have to see about! But you can’t say,” she gaily declared, +“that I don’t do what I can to help you. Mr. Waymarsh is placed. +I’ve left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.” +</p> + +<p> +“The way,” little Bilham exclaimed, “Mr. Strether gets the +ladies to work for him! He’s just preparing to draw in another; to +pounce—don’t you see him?—on Madame de Vionnet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame de Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!” Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful +crescendo. There was more in it, our friend made out, than met the ear. Was it +after all a joke that he should be serious about anything? He envied Miss +Barrace at any rate her power of not being. She seemed, with little cries and +protests and quick recognitions, movements like the darts of some fine +high-feathered free-pecking bird, to stand before life as before some full +shop-window. You could fairly hear, as she selected and pointed, the tap of her +tortoise-shell against the glass. “It’s certain that we do need +seeing about; only I’m glad it’s not I who have to do it. One does, +no doubt, begin that way; then suddenly one finds that one has given it up. +It’s too much, it’s too difficult. You’re wonderful, you +people,” she continued to Strether, “for not feeling those +things—by which I mean impossibilities. You never feel them. You face +them with a fortitude that makes it a lesson to watch you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but”—little Bilham put it with +discouragement—“what do we achieve after all? We see about you and +report—when we even go so far as reporting. But nothing’s +done.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you, Mr. Bilham,” she replied as with an impatient rap on the +glass, “you’re not worth sixpence! You come over to convert the +savages—for I know you verily did, I remember you—and the savages +simply convert <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not even!” the young man woefully confessed: “they +haven’t gone through that form. They’ve simply—the +cannibals!—eaten me; converted me if you like, but converted me into +food. I’m but the bleached bones of a Christian.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then there we are! Only”—and Miss Barrace appealed +again to Strether—“don’t let it discourage you. You’ll +break down soon enough, but you’ll meanwhile have had your moments. <i>Il +faut en avoir</i>. I always like to see you while you last. And I’ll tell +you who <i>will</i> last.” +</p> + +<p> +“Waymarsh?”—he had already taken her up. +</p> + +<p> +She laughed out as at the alarm of it. “He’ll resist even Miss +Gostrey: so grand is it not to understand. He’s wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is indeed,” Strether conceded. “He wouldn’t tell me +of this affair—only said he had an engagement; but with such a gloom, you +must let me insist, as if it had been an engagement to be hanged. Then silently +and secretly he turns up here with you. Do you call <i>that</i> +‘lasting’?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I hope it’s lasting!” Miss Barrace said. “But he +only, at the best, bears with me. He doesn’t understand—not one +little scrap. He’s delightful. He’s wonderful,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Michelangelesque!”—little Bilham completed her meaning. +“He <i>is</i> a success. Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the +floor; overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, if you mean by portable,” she returned, “looking +so well in one’s carriage. He’s too funny beside me in his corner; +he looks like somebody, somebody foreign and famous, <i>en exil</i>; so that +people wonder—it’s very amusing—whom I’m taking about. +I show him Paris, show him everything, and he never turns a hair. He’s +like the Indian chief one reads about, who, when he comes up to Washington to +see the Great Father, stands wrapt in his blanket and gives no sign. <i>I</i> +might be the Great Father—from the way he takes everything.” She +was delighted at this hit of her identity with that personage—it fitted +so her character; she declared it was the title she meant henceforth to adopt. +“And the way he sits, too, in the corner of my room, only looking at my +visitors very hard and as if he wanted to start something! They wonder what he +does want to start. But he’s wonderful,” Miss Barrace once more +insisted. “He has never started anything yet.” +</p> + +<p> +It presented him none the less, in truth, to her actual friends, who looked at +each other in intelligence, with frank amusement on Bilham’s part and a +shade of sadness on Strether’s. Strether’s sadness sprang—for +the image had its grandeur—from his thinking how little he himself was +wrapt in his blanket, how little, in marble halls, all too oblivious of the +Great Father, he resembled a really majestic aboriginal. But he had also +another reflexion. “You’ve all of you here so much visual sense +that you’ve somehow all ‘run’ to it. There are moments when +it strikes one that you haven’t any other.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any moral,” little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the +garden, the several <i>femmes du monde</i>. “But Miss Barrace has a moral +distinction,” he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether’s +benefit not less than for her own. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Have</i> you?” Strether, scarce knowing what he was about, +asked of her almost eagerly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh not a distinction”—she was mightily amused at his +tone—“Mr. Bilham’s too good. But I think I may say a +sufficiency. Yes, a sufficiency. Have you supposed strange things of +me?”—and she fixed him again, through all her tortoise-shell, with +the droll interest of it. “You <i>are</i> all indeed wonderful. I should +awfully disappoint you. I do take my stand on my sufficiency. But I know, I +confess,” she went on, “strange people. I don’t know how it +happens; I don’t do it on purpose; it seems to be my doom—as if I +were always one of their habits: it’s wonderful! I dare say +moreover,” she pursued with an interested gravity, “that I do, that +we all do here, run too much to mere eye. But how can it be helped? We’re +all looking at each other—and in the light of Paris one sees what things +resemble. That’s what the light of Paris seems always to show. It’s +the fault of the light of Paris—dear old light!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear old Paris!” little Bilham echoed. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything, every one shows,” Miss Barrace went on. +</p> + +<p> +“But for what they really are?” Strether asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I like your Boston ‘reallys’! But +sometimes—yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear old Paris then!” Strether resignedly sighed while for a +moment they looked at each other. Then he broke out: “Does Madame de +Vionnet do that? I mean really show for what she is?” +</p> + +<p> +Her answer was prompt. “She’s charming. She’s perfect.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why did you a minute ago say ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ at her +name?” +</p> + +<p> +She easily remembered. “Why just because—! She’s +wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah she too?”—Strether had almost a groan. +</p> + +<p> +But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief. “Why not put your +question straight to the person who can answer it best?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said little Bilham; “don’t put any question; +wait, rather—it will be much more fun—to judge for yourself. He has +come to take you to her.” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he afterwards scarce +knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then quickly occurred. The moment +concerned him, he felt, more deeply than he could have explained, and he had a +subsequent passage of speculation as to whether, on walking off with Chad, he +hadn’t looked either pale or red. The only thing he was clear about was +that, luckily, nothing indiscreet had in fact been said and that Chad himself +was more than ever, in Miss Barrace’s great sense, wonderful. It was one +of the connexions—though really why it should be, after all, was none so +apparent—in which the whole change in him came out as most striking. +Strether recalled as they approached the house that he had impressed him that +first night as knowing how to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less +now as knowing how to make a presentation. It did something for +Strether’s own quality—marked it as estimated; so that our poor +friend, conscious and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over +and delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of, given +away. As they reached the house a young woman, about to come forth, appeared, +unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with whom of a word on +Chad’s part Strether immediately perceived that, obligingly, kindly, she +was there to meet them. Chad had left her in the house, but she had afterwards +come halfway and then the next moment had joined them in the garden. Her air of +youth, for Strether, was at first almost disconcerting, while his second +impression was, not less sharply, a degree of relief at there not having just +been, with the others, any freedom used about her. It was upon him at a touch +that she was no subject for that, and meanwhile, on Chad’s introducing +him, she had spoken to him, very simply and gently, in an English clearly of +the easiest to her, yet unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn’t as +if she tried; nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes together, +was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and odd, was like a +precaution against her passing for a Pole. There were precautions, he seemed +indeed to see, only when there were really dangers. +</p> + +<p> +Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he was to feel +other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in black that struck him as +light and transparent; she was exceedingly fair, and, though she was as +markedly slim, her face had a roundness, with eyes far apart and a little +strange. Her smile was natural and dim; her hat not extravagant; he had only +perhaps a sense of the clink, beneath her fine black sleeves, of more gold +bracelets and bangles than he had ever seen a lady wear. Chad was excellently +free and light about their encounter; it was one of the occasions on which +Strether most wished he himself might have arrived at such ease and such +humour: “Here you are then, face to face at last; you’re made for +each other—<i>vous allez voir</i>; and I bless your union.” It was +indeed, after he had gone off, as if he had been partly serious too. This +latter motion had been determined by an enquiry from him about +“Jeanne”; to which her mother had replied that she was probably +still in the house with Miss Gostrey, to whom she had lately committed her. +“Ah but you know,” the young man had rejoined, “he must see +her”; with which, while Strether pricked up his ears, he had started as +if to bring her, leaving the other objects of his interest together. Strether +wondered to find Miss Gostrey already involved, feeling that he missed a link; +but feeling also, with small delay, how much he should like to talk with her of +Madame de Vionnet on this basis of evidence. +</p> + +<p> +The evidence as yet in truth was meagre; which, for that matter, was perhaps a +little why his expectation had had a drop. There was somehow not quite a wealth +in her; and a wealth was all that, in his simplicity, he had definitely +prefigured. Still, it was too much to be sure already that there was but a +poverty. They moved away from the house, and, with eyes on a bench at some +distance, he proposed that they should sit down. “I’ve heard a +great deal about you,” she said as they went; but he had an answer to it +that made her stop short. “Well, about <i>you</i>, Madame de Vionnet, +I’ve heard, I’m bound to say, almost nothing”—those +struck him as the only words he himself could utter with any lucidity; +conscious as he was, and as with more reason, of the determination to be in +respect to the rest of his business perfectly plain and go perfectly straight. +It hadn’t at any rate been in the least his idea to spy on Chad’s +proper freedom. It was possibly, however, at this very instant and under the +impression of Madame de Vionnet’s pause, that going straight began to +announce itself as a matter for care. She had only after all to smile at him +ever so gently in order to make him ask himself if he weren’t already +going crooked. It might be going crooked to find it of a sudden just only clear +that she intended very definitely to be what he would have called nice to him. +This was what passed between them while, for another instant, they stood still; +he couldn’t at least remember afterwards what else it might have been. +The thing indeed really unmistakeable was its rolling over him as a wave that +he had been, in conditions incalculable and unimaginable, a subject of +discussion. He had been, on some ground that concerned her, answered for; which +gave her an advantage he should never be able to match. +</p> + +<p> +“Hasn’t Miss Gostrey,” she asked, “said a good word for +me?” +</p> + +<p> +What had struck him first was the way he was bracketed with that lady; and he +wondered what account Chad would have given of their acquaintance. Something +not as yet traceable, at all events, had obviously happened. “I +didn’t even know of her knowing you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, now she’ll tell you all. I’m so glad you’re in +relation with her.” +</p> + +<p> +This was one of the things—the “all” Miss Gostrey would now +tell him—that, with every deference to present preoccupation, was +uppermost for Strether after they had taken their seat. One of the others was, +at the end of five minutes, that she—oh incontestably, +yes—<i>differed</i> less; differed, that is, scarcely at all—well, +superficially speaking, from Mrs. Newsome or even from Mrs. Pocock. She was +ever so much younger than the one and not so young as the other; but what +<i>was</i> there in her, if anything, that would have made it impossible he +should meet her at Woollett? And wherein was her talk during their moments on +the bench together not the same as would have been found adequate for a +Woollett garden-party?—unless perhaps truly in not being quite so bright. +She observed to him that Mr. Newsome had, to her knowledge, taken extraordinary +pleasure in his visit; but there was no good lady at Woollett who +wouldn’t have been at least up to that. Was there in Chad, by chance, +after all, deep down, a principle of aboriginal loyalty that had made him, for +sentimental ends, attach himself to elements, happily encountered, that would +remind him most of the old air and the old soil? Why accordingly be in a +flutter—Strether could even put it that way—about this unfamiliar +phenomenon of the <i>femme du monde?</i> On these terms Mrs. Newsome herself +was as much of one. Little Bilham verily had testified that they came out, the +ladies of the type, in close quarters; but it was just in these +quarters—now comparatively close—that he felt Madame de +Vionnet’s common humanity. She did come out, and certainly to his relief, +but she came out as the usual thing. There might be motives behind, but so +could there often be even at Woollett. The only thing was that if she showed +him she wished to like him—as the motives behind might conceivably +prompt—it would possibly have been more thrilling for him that she should +have shown as more vividly alien. Ah she was neither Turk nor Pole!—which +would be indeed flat once more for Mrs. Newsome and Mrs. Pocock. A lady and two +gentlemen had meanwhile, however, approached their bench, and this accident +stayed for the time further developments. +</p> + +<p> +They presently addressed his companion, the brilliant strangers; she rose to +speak to them, and Strether noted how the escorted lady, though mature and by +no means beautiful, had more of the bold high look, the range of expensive +reference, that he had, as might have been said, made his plans for. Madame de +Vionnet greeted her as “Duchesse” and was greeted in turn, while +talk started in French, as “Ma toute-belle”; little facts that had +their due, their vivid interest for Strether. Madame de Vionnet didn’t, +none the less, introduce him—a note he was conscious of as false to the +Woollett scale and the Woollett humanity; though it didn’t prevent the +Duchess, who struck him as confident and free, very much what he had obscurely +supposed duchesses, from looking at him as straight and as hard—for it +<i>was</i> hard—as if she would have liked, all the same, to know him. +“Oh yes, my dear, it’s all right, it’s <i>me</i>; and who are +<i>you</i>, with your interesting wrinkles and your most effective (is it the +handsomest, is it the ugliest?) of noses?”—some such loose handful +of bright flowers she seemed, fragrantly enough, to fling at him. Strether +almost wondered—at such a pace was he going—if some divination of +the influence of either party were what determined Madame de Vionnet’s +abstention. One of the gentlemen, in any case, succeeded in placing himself in +close relation with our friend’s companion; a gentleman rather stout and +importantly short, in a hat with a wonderful wide curl to its brim and a frock +coat buttoned with an effect of superlative decision. His French had quickly +turned to equal English, and it occurred to Strether that he might well be one +of the ambassadors. His design was evidently to assert a claim to Madame de +Vionnet’s undivided countenance, and he made it good in the course of a +minute—led her away with a trick of three words; a trick played with a +social art of which Strether, looking after them as the four, whose backs were +now all turned, moved off, felt himself no master. +</p> + +<p> +He sank again upon his bench and, while his eyes followed the party, reflected, +as he had done before, on Chad’s strange communities. He sat there alone +for five minutes, with plenty to think of; above all with his sense of having +suddenly been dropped by a charming woman overlaid now by other impressions and +in fact quite cleared and indifferent. He hadn’t yet had so quiet a +surrender; he didn’t in the least care if nobody spoke to him more. He +might have been, by his attitude, in for something of a march so broad that the +want of ceremony with which he had just been used could fall into its place as +but a minor incident of the procession. Besides, there would be incidents +enough, as he felt when this term of contemplation was closed by the +reappearance of little Bilham, who stood before him a moment with a suggestive +“Well?” in which he saw himself reflected as disorganised, as +possibly floored. He replied with a “Well!” intended to show that +he wasn’t floored in the least. No indeed; he gave it out, as the young +man sat down beside him, that if, at the worst, he had been overturned at all, +he had been overturned into the upper air, the sublimer element with which he +had an affinity and in which he might be trusted a while to float. It +wasn’t a descent to earth to say after an instant and in sustained +response to the reference: “You’re quite sure her husband’s +living?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dear, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then what?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had after all to think. “Well, I’m sorry for them.” +But it didn’t for the moment matter more than that. He assured his young +friend he was quite content. They wouldn’t stir; were all right as they +were. He didn’t want to be introduced; had been introduced already about +as far as he could go. He had seen moreover an immensity; liked Gloriani, who, +as Miss Barrace kept saying, was wonderful; had made out, he was sure, the +half-dozen other men who were distinguished, the artists, the critics and oh +the great dramatist—<i>him</i> it was easy to spot; but wanted—no, +thanks, really—to talk with none of them; having nothing at all to say +and finding it would do beautifully as it was; do beautifully because what it +was—well, was just simply too late. And when after this little Bilham, +submissive and responsive, but with an eye to the consolation nearest, easily +threw off some “Better late than never!” all he got in return for +it was a sharp “Better early than late!” This note indeed the next +thing overflowed for Strether into a quiet stream of demonstration that as soon +as he had let himself go he felt as the real relief. It had consciously +gathered to a head, but the reservoir had filled sooner than he knew, and his +companion’s touch was to make the waters spread. There were some things +that had to come in time if they were to come at all. If they didn’t come +in time they were lost for ever. It was the general sense of them that had +overwhelmed him with its long slow rush. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not too late for <i>you</i>, on any side, and you don’t +strike me as in danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in +general pretty well trusted, of course—with the clock of their freedom +ticking as loud as it seems to do here—to keep an eye on the fleeting +hour. All the same don’t forget that you’re young—blessedly +young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; +it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in +particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what +<i>have</i> you had? This place and these impressions—mild as you may +find them to wind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people +I’ve seen at <i>his</i> place—well, have had their abundant message +for me, have just dropped <i>that</i> into my mind. I see it now. I +haven’t done so enough before—and now I’m old; too old at any +rate for what I see. Oh I <i>do</i> see, at least; and more than you’d +believe or I can express. It’s too late. And it’s as if the train +had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to +know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down +the line. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. The +affair—I mean the affair of life—couldn’t, no doubt, have +been different for me; for it’s at the best a tin mould, either fluted +and embossed, with ornamental excrescences, or else smooth and dreadfully +plain, into which, a helpless jelly, one’s consciousness is +poured—so that one ‘takes’ the form as the great cook says, +and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can. Still, +one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t be, like me, without the +memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too +intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present +I’m a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction +should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that doesn’t +affect the point that the right time is now yours. The right time is <i>any</i> +time that one is still so lucky as to have. You’ve plenty; that’s +the great thing; you’re, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully +young. Don’t at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I +don’t take you for a fool, or I shouldn’t be addressing you thus +awfully. Do what you like so long as you don’t make <i>my</i> mistake. +For it was a mistake. Live!” ... Slowly and sociably, with full pauses +and straight dashes, Strether had so delivered himself; holding little Bilham +from step to step deeply and gravely attentive. The end of all was that the +young man had turned quite solemn, and that this was a contradiction of the +innocent gaiety the speaker had wished to promote. He watched for a moment the +consequence of his words, and then, laying a hand on his listener’s knee +and as if to end with the proper joke: “And now for the eye I shall keep +on you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I don’t know that I want to be, at your age, too different +from you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah prepare while you’re about it,” said Strether, “to +be more amusing.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile. “Well, you +<i>are</i> amusing—to <i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Impayable</i>, as you say, no doubt. But what am I to myself?” +Strether had risen with this, giving his attention now to an encounter that, in +the middle of the garden, was in the act of taking place between their host and +the lady at whose side Madame de Vionnet had quitted him. This lady, who +appeared within a few minutes to have left her friends, awaited +Gloriani’s eager approach with words on her lips that Strether +couldn’t catch, but of which her interesting witty face seemed to give +him the echo. He was sure she was prompt and fine, but also that she had met +her match, and he liked—in the light of what he was quite sure was the +Duchess’s latent insolence—the good humour with which the great +artist asserted equal resources. Were they, this pair, of the “great +world”?—and was he himself, for the moment and thus related to them +by his observation, <i>in</i> it? Then there was something in the great world +covertly tigerish, which came to him across the lawn and in the charming air as +a waft from the jungle. Yet it made him admire most of the two, made him envy, +the glossy male tiger, magnificently marked. These absurdities of the stirred +sense, fruits of suggestion ripening on the instant, were all reflected in his +next words to little Bilham. “I know—if we talk of that—whom +<i>I</i> should enjoy being like!” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing surprise: +“Gloriani?” +</p> + +<p> +Our friend had in fact already hesitated, though not on the hint of his +companion’s doubt, in which there were depths of critical reserve. He had +just made out, in the now full picture, something and somebody else; another +impression had been superimposed. A young girl in a white dress and a softly +plumed white hat had suddenly come into view, and what was presently clear was +that her course was toward them. What was clearer still was that the handsome +young man at her side was Chad Newsome, and what was clearest of all was that +she was therefore Mademoiselle de Vionnet, that she was unmistakeably +pretty—bright gentle shy happy wonderful—and that Chad now, with a +consummate calculation of effect, was about to present her to his old +friend’s vision. What was clearest of all indeed was something much more +than this, something at the single stroke of which—and wasn’t it +simply juxtaposition?—all vagueness vanished. It was the click of a +spring—he saw the truth. He had by this time also met Chad’s look; +there was more of it in that; and the truth, accordingly, so far as +Bilham’s enquiry was concerned, had thrust in the answer. “Oh +Chad!”—it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being +“like.” The virtuous attachment would be all there before him; the +virtuous attachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing; Jeanne +de Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely, intensely +now—the object of it. Chad brought her straight up to him, and Chad was, +oh yes, at this moment—for the glory of Woollett or whatever—better +still even than Gloriani. He had plucked this blossom; he had kept it +over-night in water; and at last as he held it up to wonder he did enjoy his +effect. That was why Strether had felt at first the breath of +calculation—and why moreover, as he now knew, his look at the girl would +be, for the young man, a sign of the latter’s success. What young man had +ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And +there was nothing in his reason at present obscure. Her type sufficiently told +of it—they wouldn’t, they couldn’t, want her to go to +Woollett. Poor Woollett, and what it might miss!—though brave Chad indeed +too, and what it might gain! Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken. +“This is a good little friend of mine who knows all about you and has +moreover a message for you. And this, my dear”—he had turned to the +child herself—“is the best man in the world, who has it in his +power to do a great deal for us and whom I want you to like and revere as +nearly as possible as much as I do.” +</p> + +<p> +She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier and not +a bit like her mother. There was in this last particular no resemblance but +that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly Strether’s sharpest +impression. It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed, back to the woman he had +just been talking with; it was a revelation in the light of which he already +saw she would become more interesting. So slim and fresh and fair, she had yet +put forth this perfection; so that for really believing it of her, for seeing +her to any such developed degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent. Well, +what was it now but fairly thrust upon him? “Mamma wishes me to tell you +before we go,” the girl said, “that she hopes very much +you’ll come to see us very soon. She has something important to say to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“She quite reproaches herself,” Chad helpfully explained: +“you were interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to +be interrupted.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah don’t mention it!” Strether murmured, looking kindly from +one to the other and wondering at many things. +</p> + +<p> +“And I’m to ask you for myself,” Jeanne continued with her +hands clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer—“I’m +to ask you for myself if you won’t positively come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Leave it to me, dear—I’ll take care of it!” Chad +genially declared in answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his +breath. What was in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct +dealing; so that one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying +one’s own hand. But with Chad he was now on ground—Chad he could +meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man +freely exhale. There was the whole of a story in his tone to his companion, and +he spoke indeed as if already of the family. It made Strether guess the more +quickly what it might be about which Madame de Vionnet was so urgent. Having +seen him then she had found him easy; she wished to have it out with him that +some way for the young people must be discovered, some way that would not +impose as a condition the transplantation of her daughter. He already saw +himself discussing with this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence +for Chad’s companion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the +affair—so that it would be after all with one of his +“lady-friends” that his mother’s missionary should be +condemned to deal? It was quite as if for an instant the two men looked at each +other on this question. But there was no mistaking at last Chad’s pride +in the display of such a connexion. This was what had made him so carry himself +while, three minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his +friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air. It was, in a +word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things straight off on him +that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little Bilham, most. The whole +exhibition however was but a matter of three or four minutes, and the author of +it had soon explained that, as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going +“on,” this could be for Jeanne but a snatch. They would all meet +again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and amuse +himself—“I’ll pick you up again in plenty of time.” He +took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet +foreignness of her “Au revoir, monsieur!” in his ears as a note +almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how, once more, +her companion’s relation to her got an accent from it. They disappeared +among the others and apparently into the house; whereupon our friend turned +round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of which he was full. But +there was no little Bilham any more; little Bilham had within the few moments, +for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a circumstance by which, in its +order, Strether was also sensibly affected. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming back; but +Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation of his failure. +There had been reasons at the last for his going off with <i>ces dames</i>; and +he had asked her with much instance to come out and take charge of their +friend. She did so, Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner +that left nothing to desire. He had dropped back on his bench, alone again for +a time, and the more conscious for little Bilham’s defection of his +unexpressed thought; in respect to which however this next converser was a +still more capacious vessel. “It’s the child!” he had +exclaimed to her almost as soon as she appeared; and though her direct response +was for some time delayed he could feel in her meanwhile the working of this +truth. It might have been simply, as she waited, that they were now in presence +altogether of truth spreading like a flood and not for the moment to be offered +her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should <i>ces dames</i> prove to be but +persons about whom—once thus face to face with them—she found she +might from the first have told him almost everything? This would have freely +come had he taken the simple precaution of giving her their name. There could +be no better example—and she appeared to note it with high +amusement—than the way, making things out already so much for himself, he +was at last throwing precautions to the winds. They were neither more nor less, +she and the child’s mother, than old school-friends—friends who had +scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had brought together +with a rush. It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer +groping; she was unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well +have seen, made straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked +up in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. “She’s +coming to see me—that’s for <i>you</i>,” Strether’s +counsellor continued; “but I don’t require it to know where I +am.” +</p> + +<p> +The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether, characteristically, was +even by this time in the immensity of space. “By which you mean that you +know where <i>she</i> is?” +</p> + +<p> +She just hesitated. “I mean that if she comes to see me I shall—now +that I’ve pulled myself round a bit after the shock—not be at +home.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hung poised. “You call it—your recognition—a +shock?” +</p> + +<p> +She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. “It was a surprise, an +emotion. Don’t be so literal. I wash my hands of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Strether’s face lengthened. “She’s +impossible—?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s even more charming than I remembered her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what’s the matter?” +</p> + +<p> +She had to think how to put it. “Well, <i>I’m</i> impossible. +It’s impossible. Everything’s impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her an instant. “I see where you’re coming out. +Everything’s possible.” Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of +some duration; after which he pursued: “Isn’t it that beautiful +child?” Then as she still said nothing: “Why don’t you mean +to receive her?” +</p> + +<p> +Her answer in an instant rang clear. “Because I wish to keep out of the +business.” +</p> + +<p> +It provoked in him a weak wail. “You’re going to abandon me +<i>now?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’m only going to abandon <i>her</i>. She’ll want me to +help her with you. And I won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll only help me with her? Well then—!” Most of the +persons previously gathered had, in the interest of tea, passed into the house, +and they had the gardens mainly to themselves. The shadows were long, the last +call of the birds, who had made a home of their own in the noble interspaced +quarter, sounded from the high trees in the other gardens as well, those of the +old convent and of the old <i>hôtels</i>; it was as if our friends had waited +for the full charm to come out. Strether’s impressions were still +present; it was as if something had happened that “nailed” them, +made them more intense; but he was to ask himself soon afterwards, that +evening, what really <i>had</i> happened—conscious as he could after all +remain that for a gentleman taken, and taken the first time, into the +“great world,” the world of ambassadors and duchesses, the items +made a meagre total. It was nothing new to him, however, as we know, that a man +might have—at all events such a man as he—an amount of experience +out of any proportion to his adventures; so that, though it was doubtless no +great adventure to sit on there with Miss Gostrey and hear about Madame de +Vionnet, the hour, the picture, the immediate, the recent, the +possible—as well as the communication itself, not a note of which failed +to reverberate—only gave the moments more of the taste of history. +</p> + +<p> +It was history, to begin with, that Jeanne’s mother had been +three-and-twenty years before, at Geneva, schoolmate and good girlfriend to +Maria Gostrey, who had moreover enjoyed since then, though interruptedly and +above all with a long recent drop, other glimpses of her. Twenty-three years +put them both on, no doubt; and Madame de Vionnet—though she had married +straight after school—couldn’t be today an hour less than +thirty-eight. This made her ten years older than Chad—though ten years, +also, if Strether liked, older than she looked; the least, at any rate, that a +prospective mother-in-law could be expected to do with. She would be of all +mothers-in-law the most charming; unless indeed, through some perversity as yet +insupposeable, she should utterly belie herself in that relation. There was +none surely in which, as Maria remembered her, she mustn’t be charming; +and this frankly in spite of the stigma of failure in the tie where failure +always most showed. It was no test there—when indeed <i>was</i> it a test +there?—for Monsieur de Vionnet had been a brute. She had lived for years +apart from him—which was of course always a horrid position; but Miss +Gostrey’s impression of the matter had been that she could scarce have +made a better thing of it had she done it on purpose to show she was amiable. +She was so amiable that nobody had had a word to say; which was luckily not the +case for her husband. He was so impossible that she had the advantage of all +her merits. +</p> + +<p> +It was still history for Strether that the Comte de Vionnet—it being also +history that the lady in question was a Countess—should now, under Miss +Gostrey’s sharp touch, rise before him as a high distinguished polished +impertinent reprobate, the product of a mysterious order; it was history, +further, that the charming girl so freely sketched by his companion should have +been married out of hand by a mother, another figure of striking outline, full +of dark personal motive; it was perhaps history most of all that this company +was, as a matter of course, governed by such considerations as put divorce out +of the question. “<i>Ces gens-là</i> don’t divorce, you know, any +more than they emigrate or abjure—they think it impious and +vulgar”; a fact in the light of which they seemed but the more richly +special. It was all special; it was all, for Strether’s imagination, more +or less rich. The girl at the Genevese school, an isolated interesting +attaching creature, then both sensitive and violent, audacious but always +forgiven, was the daughter of a French father and an English mother who, early +left a widow, had married again—tried afresh with a foreigner; in her +career with whom she had apparently given her child no example of comfort. All +these people—the people of the English mother’s side—had been +of condition more or less eminent; yet with oddities and disparities that had +often since made Maria, thinking them over, wonder what they really quite +rhymed to. It was in any case her belief that the mother, interested and prone +to adventure, had been without conscience, had only thought of ridding herself +most quickly of a possible, an actual encumbrance. The father, by her +impression, a Frenchman with a name one knew, had been a different matter, +leaving his child, she clearly recalled, a memory all fondness, as well as an +assured little fortune which was unluckily to make her more or less of a prey +later on. She had been in particular, at school, dazzlingly, though quite +booklessly, clever; as polyglot as a little Jewess (which she wasn’t, oh +no!) and chattering French, English, German, Italian, anything one would, in a +way that made a clean sweep, if not of prizes and parchments, at least of every +“part,” whether memorised or improvised, in the curtained costumed +school repertory, and in especial of all mysteries of race and vagueness of +reference, all swagger about “home,” among their variegated mates. +</p> + +<p> +It would doubtless be difficult to-day, as between French and English, to name +her and place her; she would certainly show, on knowledge, Miss Gostrey felt, +as one of those convenient types who don’t keep you +explaining—minds with doors as numerous as the many-tongued cluster of +confessionals at Saint Peter’s. You might confess to her with confidence +in Roumelian, and even Roumelian sins. Therefore—! But Strether’s +narrator covered her implication with a laugh; a laugh by which his betrayal of +a sense of the lurid in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected. He +had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be +especially Roumelian. She went on at all events to the mention of her having +met the young thing—again by some Swiss lake—in her first married +state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently +disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to <i>her</i>, full +of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders, and then +once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but differently +charming—touching and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an +encounter at a railway-station <i>en province</i>, during which it had come out +that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see, +essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she was +herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; +Strether would see if she wasn’t. She was another person +however—that had been promptly marked—from the small child of +nature at the Geneva school, a little person quite made over (as foreign women +<i>were</i>, compared with American) by marriage. Her situation too had +evidently cleared itself up; there would have been—all that was +possible—a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris, brought up her +daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat—especially +there—to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight. She +would have friends, certainly—and very good ones. There she was at all +events—and it was very interesting. Her knowing Mr. Chad didn’t in +the least prove she hadn’t friends; what it proved was what good ones +<i>he</i> had. “I saw that,” said Miss Gostrey, “that night +at the Français; it came out for me in three minutes. I saw <i>her</i>—or +somebody like her. And so,” she immediately added, “did you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—not anybody like her!” Strether laughed. “But +you mean,” he as promptly went on, “that she has had such an +influence on him?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. “She has +brought him up for her daughter.” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled glasses, +met over it long; after which Strether’s again took in the whole place. +They were quite alone there now. “Mustn’t she rather—in the +time then—have rushed it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah she won’t of course have lost an hour. But that’s just +the good mother—the good French one. You must remember that of +her—that as a mother she’s French, and that for them there’s +a special providence. It precisely however—that she mayn’t have +been able to begin as far back as she’d have liked—makes her +grateful for aid.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out. +“She counts on me then to put the thing through?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course,” Miss +Gostrey added, “on her—well, convincing you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” her friend returned, “she caught Chad young!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but there are women who are for all your ‘times of +life.’ They’re the most wonderful sort.” +</p> + +<p> +She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next thing, +to a stand. “Is what you mean that she’ll try to make a fool of +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m wondering what she <i>will</i>—with an +opportunity—make.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you call,” Strether asked, “an opportunity? My going +to see her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah you must go to see her”—Miss Gostrey was a trifle +evasive. “You can’t not do that. You’d have gone to see the +other woman. I mean if there had been one—a different sort. It’s +what you came out for.” +</p> + +<p> +It might be; but Strether distinguished. “I didn’t come out to see +<i>this</i> sort.” +</p> + +<p> +She had a wonderful look at him now. “Are you disappointed she +isn’t worse?” +</p> + +<p> +He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the frankest of +answers. “Yes. If she were worse she’d be better for our purpose. +It would be simpler.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But won’t this be +pleasanter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah you know,” he promptly replied, “I didn’t come +out—wasn’t that just what you originally reproached me +with?—for the pleasant.” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must take +things as they come. Besides,” Miss Gostrey added, “I’m not +afraid for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“For yourself—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of your seeing her. I trust her. There’s nothing she’ll say +about me. In fact there’s nothing she <i>can</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered—little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out. +“Oh you women!” +</p> + +<p> +There was something in it at which she flushed. “Yes—there we are. +We’re abysses.” At last she smiled. “But I risk her!” +</p> + +<p> +He gave himself a shake. “Well then so do I!” But he added as they +passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the morning. +</p> + +<p> +This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as it +happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether took his +coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending for this purpose +Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He +had himself as yet had nothing—they would sit down somewhere together; +and when after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their +greater privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his +companion’s move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh. It was the first time +Chad had to that extent given this personage “away”; and Strether +found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic. He made out in a moment +that the youth was in earnest as he hadn’t yet seen him; which in its +turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that +time been treating as earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that +the real thing—if this <i>was</i> at last the real thing—should +have been determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of +Strether’s importance. For this was what it quickly enough came +to—that Chad, rising with the lark, had rushed down to let him know while +his morning consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the +afternoon before a tremendous impression. Madame de Vionnet wouldn’t, +couldn’t rest till she should have some assurance from him that he +<i>would</i> consent again to see her. The announcement was made, across their +marble-topped table, while the foam of the hot milk was in their cups and its +plash still in the air, with the smile of Chad’s easiest urbanity; and +this expression of his face caused our friend’s doubts to gather on the +spot into a challenge of the lips. “See here”—that was all; +he only for the moment said again “See here.” Chad met it with all +his air of straight intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of +the first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard but oddly +indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the street-lamp tried mentally +to take. The young Pagan, while a long look passed between them, sufficiently +understood. Strether scarce needed at last to say the rest—“I want +to know where I am.” But he said it, adding before any answer something +more. “Are you engaged to be married—is that your secret?—to +the young lady?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his ways of conveying +that there was time for everything. “I have no secret—though I may +have secrets! I haven’t at any rate that one. We’re not engaged. +No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then where’s the hitch?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean why I haven’t already started with you?” Chad, +beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to explain. +“Nothing would have induced me—nothing will still induce +me—not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay. +It’s too visibly good for you.” Strether had himself plenty to say +about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad’s tone. +He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always in his company +present to our friend that one was seeing how in successive connexions a man of +the world acquitted himself. Chad kept it up beautifully. “My +idea—<i>voyons!</i>—is simply that you should let Madame de Vionnet +know you, simply that you should consent to know <i>her</i>. I don’t in +the least mind telling you that, clever and charming as she is, she’s +ever so much in my confidence. All I ask of you is to let her talk to you. +You’ve asked me about what you call my hitch, and so far as it goes +she’ll explain it to you. She’s herself my hitch, hang it—if +you must really have it all out. But in a sense,” he hastened in the most +wonderful manner to add, “that you’ll quite make out for yourself. +She’s too good a friend, confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave +without—without—” It was his first hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Without what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms of my +sacrifice.” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>will</i> be a sacrifice then?” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so much.” +</p> + +<p> +It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea was now +confessedly—oh quite flagrantly and publicly—interesting. The +moment really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed Madame de Vionnet so +much? What <i>did</i> that do then but clear up the whole mystery? He was +indebted for alterations, and she was thereby in a position to have sent in her +bill for expenses incurred in reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what +had been to be arrived at? Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched +toast and stirred his second cup. To do this with the aid of Chad’s +pleasant earnest face was also to do more besides. No, never before had he been +so ready to take him as he was. What was it that had suddenly so cleared up? It +was just everybody’s character; that is everybody’s but—in a +measure—his own. Strether felt <i>his</i> character receive for the +instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed. The +person to whom Chad owed it that he could positively turn out such a comfort to +other persons—such a person was sufficiently raised above any +“breath” by the nature of her work and the young man’s steady +light. All of which was vivid enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in +the midst of it Strether could utter a question. “Have I your word of +honour that if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you’ll surrender +yourself to <i>me?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend’s. “My dear man, you have +it.” +</p> + +<p> +There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing and +oppressive—Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open air and the +erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he wished to pay, and this +transaction took some moments, during which he thoroughly felt, while he put +down money and pretended—it was quite hollow—to estimate change, +that Chad’s higher spirit, his youth, his practice, his paganism, his +felicity, his assurance, his impudence, whatever it might be, had consciously +scored a success. Well, that was all right so far as it went; his sense of the +thing in question covered our friend for a minute like a veil through +which—as if he had been muffled—he heard his interlocutor ask him +if he mightn’t take him over about five. “Over” was over the +river, and over the river was where Madame de Vionnet lived, and five was that +very afternoon. They got at last out of the place—got out before he +answered. He lighted, in the street, a cigarette, which again gave him more +time. But it was already sharp for him that there was no use in time. +“What does she propose to do to me?” he had presently demanded. +</p> + +<p> +Chad had no delays. “Are you afraid of her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh immensely. Don’t you see it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Chad, “she won’t do anything worse to you +than make you like her.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just of that I’m afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it’s not fair to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether cast about. “It’s fair to your mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Chad, “are you afraid of <i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Scarcely less. Or perhaps even more. But is this lady against your +interests at home?” Strether went on. +</p> + +<p> +“Not directly, no doubt; but she’s greatly in favour of them +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what—‘here’—does she consider them to +be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, good relations!” +</p> + +<p> +“With herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“With herself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is it that makes them so good?” +</p> + +<p> +“What? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll make out if +you’ll only go, as I’m supplicating you, to see her.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt, that the vision +of more to “make out” could scarce help producing. “I mean +<i>how</i> good are they?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh awfully good.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very well, but there +was nothing now he wouldn’t risk. “Excuse me, but I must +really—as I began by telling you—know where I am. Is she +bad?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Bad’?”—Chad echoed it, but without a shock. +“Is that what’s implied—?” +</p> + +<p> +“When relations are good?” Strether felt a little silly, and was +even conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to have appeared +to speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His stare had relaxed; he looked +now all round him. But something in him brought him back, though he still +didn’t know quite how to turn it. The two or three ways he thought of, +and one of them in particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He +none the less at last found something. “Is her life without +reproach?” +</p> + +<p> +It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and priggish; so much so +that he was thankful to Chad for taking it only in the right spirit. The young +man spoke so immensely to the point that the effect was practically of positive +blandness. “Absolutely without reproach. A beautiful life. <i>Allez donc +voir!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so imperative +that Strether went through no form of assent; but before they separated it had +been confirmed that he should be picked up at a quarter to five. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>Book Sixth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +It was quite by half-past five—after the two men had been together in +Madame de Vionnet’s drawing-room not more than a dozen minutes—that +Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at their hostess, said +genially, gaily: “I’ve an engagement, and I know you won’t +complain if I leave him with you. He’ll interest you immensely; and as +for her,” he declared to Strether, “I assure you, if you’re +at all nervous, she’s perfectly safe.” +</p> + +<p> +He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as they could best +manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether wasn’t at first sure +Madame de Vionnet escaped. He escaped it himself, to his surprise; but he had +grown used by this time to thinking of himself as brazen. She occupied, his +hostess, in the Rue de Bellechasse, the first floor of an old house to which +our visitors had had access from an old clean court. The court was large and +open, full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit of privacy, the peace +of intervals, the dignity of distances and approaches; the house, to his +restless sense, was in the high homely style of an elder day, and the ancient +Paris that he was always looking for—sometimes intensely felt, sometimes +more acutely missed—was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed +staircase and in the fine <i>boiseries</i>, the medallions, mouldings, mirrors, +great clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he had been shown. He +seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst of possessions not vulgarly +numerous, but hereditary cherished charming. While his eyes turned after a +little from those of his hostess and Chad freely talked—not in the least +about <i>him</i>, but about other people, people he didn’t know, and +quite as if he did know them—he found himself making out, as a background +of the occupant, some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some +Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements clinging +still to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses and sphinxes’ +heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with alternate silk. +</p> + +<p> +The place itself went further back—that he guessed, and how old Paris +continued in a manner to echo there; but the post-revolutionary period, the +world he vaguely thought of as the world of Châteaubriand, of Madame de Staël, +even of the young Lamartine, had left its stamp of harps and urns and torches, +a stamp impressed on sundry small objects, ornaments and relics. He had never +before, to his knowledge, had present to him relics, of any special dignity, of +a private order—little old miniatures, medallions, pictures, books; books +in leather bindings, pinkish and greenish, with gilt garlands on the back, +ranged, together with other promiscuous properties, under the glass of +brass-mounted cabinets. His attention took them all tenderly into account. They +were among the matters that marked Madame de Vionnet’s apartment as +something quite different from Miss Gostrey’s little museum of bargains +and from Chad’s lovely home; he recognised it as founded much more on old +accumulations that had possibly from time to time shrunken than on any +contemporary method of acquisition or form of curiosity. Chad and Miss Gostrey +had rummaged and purchased and picked up and exchanged, sifting, selecting, +comparing; whereas the mistress of the scene before him, beautifully passive +under the spell of transmission—transmission from her father’s +line, he quite made up his mind—had only received, accepted and been +quiet. When she hadn’t been quiet she had been moved at the most to some +occult charity for some fallen fortune. There had been objects she or her +predecessors might even conceivably have parted with under need, but Strether +couldn’t suspect them of having sold old pieces to get +“better” ones. They would have felt no difference as to better or +worse. He could but imagine their having felt—perhaps in emigration, in +proscription, for his sketch was slight and confused—the pressure of want +or the obligation of sacrifice. +</p> + +<p> +The pressure of want—whatever might be the case with the other +force—was, however, presumably not active now, for the tokens of a +chastened ease still abounded after all, many marks of a taste whose +discriminations might perhaps have been called eccentric. He guessed at intense +little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep suspicion of the vulgar +and a personal view of the right. The general result of this was something for +which he had no name on the spot quite ready, but something he would have come +nearest to naming in speaking of it as the air of supreme respectability, the +consciousness, small, still, reserved, but none the less distinct and diffused, +of private honour. The air of supreme respectability—that was a strange +blank wall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against. It +had in fact, as he was now aware, filled all the approaches, hovered in the +court as he passed, hung on the staircase as he mounted, sounded in the grave +rumble of the old bell, as little electric as possible, of which Chad, at the +door, had pulled the ancient but neatly-kept tassel; it formed in short the +clearest medium of its particular kind that he had ever breathed. He would have +answered for it at the end of a quarter of an hour that some of the glass cases +contained swords and epaulettes of ancient colonels and generals; medals and +orders once pinned over hearts that had long since ceased to beat; snuff-boxes +bestowed on ministers and envoys; copies of works presented, with inscriptions, +by authors now classic. At bottom of it all for him was the sense of her rare +unlikeness to the women he had known. This sense had grown, since the day +before, the more he recalled her, and had been above all singularly fed by his +talk with Chad in the morning. Everything in fine made her immeasurably new, +and nothing so new as the old house and the old objects. There were books, two +or three, on a small table near his chair, but they hadn’t the +lemon-coloured covers with which his eye had begun to dally from the hour of +his arrival and to the opportunity of a further acquaintance with which he had +for a fortnight now altogether succumbed. On another table, across the room, he +made out the great <i>Revue</i>; but even that familiar face, conspicuous in +Mrs. Newsome’s parlours, scarce counted here as a modern note. He was +sure on the spot—and he afterwards knew he was right—that this was +a touch of Chad’s own hand. What would Mrs. Newsome say to the +circumstance that Chad’s interested “influence” kept her +paper-knife in the <i>Revue</i>? The interested influence at any rate had, as +we say, gone straight to the point—had in fact soon left it quite behind. +</p> + +<p> +She was seated, near the fire, on a small stuffed and fringed chair one of the +few modern articles in the room, and she leaned back in it with her hands +clasped in her lap and no movement, in all her person, but the fine prompt play +of her deep young face. The fire, under the low white marble, undraped and +academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes of light wood, one of the windows, +at a distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which, in the +short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a +plash and a clatter of <i>sabots</i> from some coach-house on the other side of +the court. Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn’t to shift +her posture by an inch. “I don’t think you seriously believe in +what you’re doing,” she said; “but all the same, you know, +I’m going to treat you quite as if I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“By which you mean,” Strether directly replied, “quite as if +you didn’t! I assure you it won’t make the least difference with me +how you treat me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said, taking that menace bravely and philosophically +enough, “the only thing that really matters is that you shall get on with +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but I don’t!” he immediately returned. +</p> + +<p> +It gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook off. +“Will you consent to go on with me a little—provisionally—as +if you did?” +</p> + +<p> +Then it was that he saw how she had decidedly come all the way; and there +accompanied it an extraordinary sense of her raising from somewhere below him +her beautiful suppliant eyes. He might have been perched at his door-step or at +his window and she standing in the road. For a moment he let her stand and +couldn’t moreover have spoken. It had been sad, of a sudden, with a +sadness that was like a cold breath in his face. “What can I do,” +he finally asked, “but listen to you as I promised Chadwick?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but what I’m asking you,” she quickly said, +“isn’t what Mr. Newsome had in mind.” She spoke at present, +he saw, as if to take courageously <i>all</i> her risk. “This is my own +idea and a different thing.” +</p> + +<p> +It gave poor Strether in truth—uneasy as it made him too—something +of the thrill of a bold perception justified. “Well,” he answered +kindly enough, “I was sure a moment since that some idea of your own had +come to you.” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed still to look up at him, but now more serenely. “I made out +you were sure—and that helped it to come. So you see,” she +continued, “we do get on.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but it appears to me I don’t at all meet your request. How can +I when I don’t understand it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite +well enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you—and for +nothing so tremendous after all. Just,” she said with a wonderful smile, +“for common civility.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they had sat, +scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the stream. She was the +poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had some trouble, and her appeal +to him could only mean that her trouble was deep. He couldn’t help it; it +wasn’t his fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had +somehow made their encounter a relation. And the relation profited by a mass of +things that were not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they +sat, by the high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash +in the court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by +matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her +hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most natural when her +eyes were most fixed. “You count upon me of course for something really +much greater than it sounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it sounds great enough too!” she laughed at this. +</p> + +<p> +He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as Miss +Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said something else +instead. “What was it Chad’s idea then that you should say to +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah his idea was simply what a man’s idea always is—to put +every effort off on the woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“The ‘woman’—?” Strether slowly echoed. +</p> + +<p> +“The woman he likes—and just in proportion as he likes her. In +proportion too—for shifting the trouble—as she likes +<i>him</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: “How much do +you like Chad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as much as <i>that</i>—to take all, with you, on +myself.” But she got at once again away from this. “I’ve been +trembling as if we were to stand or fall by what you may think of me; and +I’m even now,” she went on wonderfully, “drawing a long +breath—and, yes, truly taking a great courage—from the hope that I +don’t in fact strike you as impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s at all events, clearly,” he observed after an +instant, “the way I don’t strike <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she so far assented, “as you haven’t yet said +you <i>won’t</i> have the little patience with me I ask for—” +</p> + +<p> +“You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don’t understand +them,” Strether pursued. “You seem to me to ask for much more than +you need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I after +all do? I can use no pressure that I haven’t used. You come really late +with your request. I’ve already done all that for myself the case admits +of. I’ve said my say, and here I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, here you are, fortunately!” Madame de Vionnet laughed. +“Mrs. Newsome,” she added in another tone, “didn’t +think you can do so little.” +</p> + +<p> +He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. “Well, she thinks so +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean by that—?” But she also hung fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I mean what?” +</p> + +<p> +She still rather faltered. “Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I’m +saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn’t I? Besides, +doesn’t it properly concern us to know?” +</p> + +<p> +“To know what?” he insisted as after thus beating about the bush +she had again dropped. +</p> + +<p> +She made the effort. “Has she given you up?” +</p> + +<p> +He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it. +“Not yet.” It was almost as if he were a trifle +disappointed—had expected still more of her freedom. But he went straight +on. “Is that what Chad has told you will happen to me?” +</p> + +<p> +She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. “If you mean if +we’ve talked of it—most certainly. And the question’s not +what has had least to do with my wishing to see you.” +</p> + +<p> +“To judge if I’m the sort of man a woman <i>can</i>—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely,” she exclaimed—“you wonderful gentleman! I +do judge—I <i>have</i> judged. A woman can’t. You’re +safe—with every right to be. You’d be much happier if you’d +only believe it.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a cynicism of +confidence of which even at the moment the sources were strange to him. +“I try to believe it. But it’s a marvel,” he exclaimed, +“how <i>you</i> already get at it!” +</p> + +<p> +Oh she was able to say. “Remember how much I was on the way to it through +Mr. Newsome—before I saw you. He thinks everything of your +strength.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I can bear almost anything!” our friend briskly interrupted. +Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making +him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily enough felt that +it gave him away, but what in truth had everything done but that? It had been +all very well to think at moments that he was holding her nose down and that he +had coerced her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that +he accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover—though light +and brief enough in form as yet—but whatever she might choose to make it? +Nothing could prevent her—certainly he couldn’t—from making +it pleasant. At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she +was—there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative form—one +of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met, +whose very presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous <i>fact</i> of whom, +from the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere recognition. +That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs. Newsome, a +contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to establish herself; and at +present, confronted with Madame de Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his +original impression of Miss Gostrey. She certainly had been a fact of rapid +growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson. There +were at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations. +“Of course I suit Chad’s grand way,” he quickly added. +“He hasn’t had much difficulty in working me in.” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed to deny a little, on the young man’s behalf, by the rise of +her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. “You must +know how grieved he’d be if you were to lose anything. He believes you +can keep his mother patient.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered with his eyes on her. “I see. <i>That’s</i> then +what you really want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you’ll tell me +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Simply tell her the truth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what do you call the truth?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, <i>any</i> truth—about us all—that you see yourself. I +leave it to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you very much. I like,” Strether laughed with a slight +harshness, “the way you leave things!” +</p> + +<p> +But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn’t so bad. “Be +perfectly honest. Tell her all.” +</p> + +<p> +“All?” he oddly echoed. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell her the simple truth,” Madame de Vionnet again pleaded. +</p> + +<p> +“But what <i>is</i> the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what +I’m trying to discover.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. “Tell her, +fully and clearly, about <i>us</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether meanwhile had been staring. “You and your daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—little Jeanne and me. Tell her,” she just slightly +quavered, “you like us.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what good will that do me? Or rather”—he caught himself +up—“what good will it do <i>you?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She looked graver. “None, you believe, really?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether debated. “She didn’t send me out to ‘like’ +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she charmingly contended, “she sent you out to face the +facts.” +</p> + +<p> +He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. “But how +can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him,” he then +braced himself to ask, “to marry your daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt. “No—not +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And he really doesn’t want to himself?” +</p> + +<p> +She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face. “He +likes her too much.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “To be willing to consider, you mean, the question of +taking her to America?” +</p> + +<p> +“To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and +nice—really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You +must see her again.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether felt awkward. “Ah with pleasure—she’s so remarkably +attractive.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother’s eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was to +come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. “The dear thing +<i>did</i> please you?” Then as he met it with the largest +“Oh!” of enthusiasm: “She’s perfect. She’s my +joy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m sure that—if one were near her and saw more of +her—she’d be mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said Madame de Vionnet, “tell Mrs. Newsome +that!” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered the more. “What good will that do you?” As she appeared +unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else. “Is your +daughter in love with our friend?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” she rather startlingly answered, “I wish you’d +find out!” +</p> + +<p> +He showed his surprise. “I? A stranger?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you won’t be a stranger—presently. You shall see her +quite, I assure you, as if you weren’t.” +</p> + +<p> +It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. “It seems to +me surely that if her mother can’t—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah little girls and their mothers to-day!” she rather +inconsequently broke in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to +give out as after all more to the point. “Tell her I’ve been good +for him. Don’t you think I have?” +</p> + +<p> +It had its effect on him—more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet +he was consciously enough touched. “Oh if it’s all +<i>you</i>—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it may not be ‘all,’” she interrupted, +“but it’s to a great extent. Really and truly,” she added in +a tone that was to take its place with him among things remembered. +</p> + +<p> +“Then it’s very wonderful.” He smiled at her from a face that +he felt as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she +also got up. “Well, don’t you think that for that—” +</p> + +<p> +“I ought to save you?” So it was that the way to meet her—and +the way, as well, in a manner, to get off—came over him. He heard himself +use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his +flight. “I’ll save you if I can.” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +In Chad’s lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt +himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet’s +shy secret. He had been dining there in the company of that young lady and her +mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the <i>petit +salon</i>, at Chad’s request, on purpose to talk with her. The young man +had put this to him as a favour—“I should like so awfully to know +what you think of her. It will really be a chance for you,” he had said, +“to see the <i>jeune fille</i>—I mean the type—as she +actually is, and I don’t think that, as an observer of manners, +it’s a thing you ought to miss. It will be an impression +that—whatever else you take—you can carry home with you, where +you’ll find again so much to compare it with.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and though +he entirely assented he hadn’t yet somehow been so deeply reminded that +he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed it, used. He was as far +as ever from making out exactly to what end; but he was none the less +constantly accompanied by a sense of the service he rendered. He conceived only +that this service was highly agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was +indeed still waiting for the moment at which he should catch it in the act of +proving disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself. He failed +quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically except by some +turn of events that would give him the pretext of disgust. He was building from +day to day on the possibility of disgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile +a new and more engaging bend of the road. That possibility was now ever so much +further from sight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that, +should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent. He +struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what +service, in such a life of utility, he was after all rendering Mrs. Newsome. +When he wished to help himself to believe that he was still all right he +reflected—and in fact with wonder—on the unimpaired frequency of +their correspondence; in relation to which what was after all more natural than +that it should become more frequent just in proportion as their problem became +more complicated? +</p> + +<p> +Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the +question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday’s letter, “Well, +what can I do more than that—what can I do more than tell her +everything?” To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her, +everything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn’t told +her. When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced on one it +generally showed itself to be—to a deeper scrutiny—not quite truly +of the essence. When anything new struck him as coming up, or anything already +noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote, as if for fear that if he +didn’t he would miss something; and also that he might be able to say to +himself from time to time “She knows it <i>now</i>—even while I +worry.” It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past +things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce at so late +a stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled and attenuated, at the +moment. She knew it now: that was what he said to himself to-night in relation +to the fresh fact of Chad’s acquaintance with the two ladies—not to +speak of the fresher one of his own. Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very +night at Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had +conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably +attractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell. But she +further knew, or would know very soon, that, again conscientiously, he +hadn’t repeated his visit; and that when Chad had asked him on the +Countess’s behalf—Strether made her out vividly, with a thought at +the back of his head, a Countess—if he wouldn’t name a day for +dining with her, he had replied lucidly: “Thank you very +much—impossible.” He had begged the young man would present his +excuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn’t really strike +one as quite the straight thing. He hadn’t reported to Mrs. Newsome that +he had promised to “save” Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was +concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn’t at any rate promised to haunt +her house. What Chad had understood could only, in truth, be inferred from +Chad’s behaviour, which had been in this connexion as easy as in every +other. He was easy, always, when he understood; he was easier still, if +possible, when he didn’t; he had replied that he would make it all right; +and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present occasion—as +he was ready to substitute others—for any, for every occasion as to which +his old friend should have a funny scruple. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I’m not a little foreign girl; I’m just as English as +I can be,” Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the <i>petit +salon</i>, he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her +vacated by Madame Gloriani at his approach. Madame Gloriani, who was in black +velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty +melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, +moved away to make room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to +him which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of +his face from a couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked—making the +most of the advantage of his years—that it frightened him quite enough to +find himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There +were girls he wasn’t afraid of—he was quite bold with little +Americans. Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end—“Oh +but I’m almost American too. That’s what mamma has wanted me to +be—I mean <i>like</i> that; for she has wanted me to have lots of +freedom. She has known such good results from it.” +</p> + +<p> +She was fairly beautiful to him—a faint pastel in an oval frame: he +thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait +of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died +young. Little Jeanne wasn’t, doubtless, to die young, but one +couldn’t, all the same, bear on her lightly enough. It was bearing hard, +it was bearing as <i>he</i>, in any case, wouldn’t bear, to concern +himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man. Odious really +the question of a young man; one didn’t treat such a person as a +maid-servant suspected of a “follower.” And then young men, young +men—well, the thing was their business simply, or was at all events hers. +She was fluttered, fairly fevered—to the point of a little glitter that +came and went in her eyes and a pair of pink spots that stayed in her +cheeks—with the great adventure of dining out and with the greater one +still, possibly, of finding a gentleman whom she must think of as very, very +old, a gentleman with eye-glasses, wrinkles, a long grizzled moustache. She +spoke the prettiest English, our friend thought, that he had ever heard spoken, +just as he had believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest +French. He wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn’t +react on the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it, begun +so to stray and embroider that he finally found himself, absent and +extravagant, sitting with the child in a friendly silence. Only by this time he +felt her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she was more at her ease. +She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come back to him afterwards that she +had told him things. She had dipped into the waiting medium at last and found +neither surge nor chill—nothing but the small splash she could herself +make in the pleasant warmth, nothing but the safety of dipping and dipping +again. At the end of the ten minutes he was to spend with her his +impression—with all it had thrown off and all it had taken in—was +complete. She had been free, as she knew freedom, partly to show him that, +unlike other little persons she knew, she had imbibed that ideal. She was +delightfully quaint about herself, but the vision of what she had imbibed was +what most held him. It really consisted, he was soon enough to feel, in just +one great little matter, the fact that, whatever her nature, she was +thoroughly—he had to cast about for the word, but it came—bred. He +couldn’t of course on so short an acquaintance speak for her nature, but +the idea of breeding was what she had meanwhile dropped into his mind. He had +never yet known it so sharply presented. Her mother gave it, no doubt; but her +mother, to make that less sensible, gave so much else besides, and on neither +of the two previous occasions, extraordinary woman, Strether felt, anything +like what she was giving tonight. Little Jeanne was a case, an exquisite case +of education; whereas the Countess, whom it so amused him to think of by that +denomination, was a case, also exquisite, of—well, he didn’t know +what. +</p> + +<p> +“He has wonderful taste, <i>notre jeune homme</i>”: this was what +Gloriani said to him on turning away from the inspection of a small picture +suspended near the door of the room. The high celebrity in question had just +come in, apparently in search of Mademoiselle de Vionnet, but while Strether +had got up from beside her their fellow guest, with his eye sharply caught, had +paused for a long look. The thing was a landscape, of no size, but of the +French school, as our friend was glad to feel he knew, and also of a +quality—which he liked to think he should also have guessed; its frame +was large out of proportion to the canvas, and he had never seen a person look +at anything, he thought, just as Gloriani, with his nose very near and quick +movements of the head from side to side and bottom to top, examined this +feature of Chad’s collection. The artist used that word the next moment +smiling courteously, wiping his nippers and looking round him +further—paying the place in short by the very manner of his presence and +by something Strether fancied he could make out in this particular glance, such +a tribute as, to the latter’s sense, settled many things once for all. +Strether was conscious at this instant, for that matter, as he hadn’t yet +been, of how, round about him, quite without him, they <i>were</i> consistently +settled. Gloriani’s smile, deeply Italian, he considered, and finely +inscrutable, had had for him, during dinner, at which they were not neighbours, +an indefinite greeting; but the quality in it was gone that had appeared on the +other occasion to turn him inside out; it was as if even the momentary link +supplied by the doubt between them had snapped. He was conscious now of the +final reality, which was that there wasn’t so much a doubt as a +difference altogether; all the more that over the difference the famous +sculptor seemed to signal almost condolingly, yet oh how vacantly! as across +some great flat sheet of water. He threw out the bridge of a charming hollow +civility on which Strether wouldn’t have trusted his own full weight a +moment. That idea, even though but transient and perhaps belated, had performed +the office of putting Strether more at his ease, and the blurred picture had +already dropped—dropped with the sound of something else said and with +his becoming aware, by another quick turn, that Gloriani was now on the sofa +talking with Jeanne, while he himself had in his ears again the familiar +friendliness and the elusive meaning of the “Oh, oh, oh!” that had +made him, a fortnight before, challenge Miss Barrace in vain. She had always +the air, this picturesque and original lady, who struck him, so oddly, as both +antique and modern—she had always the air of taking up some joke that one +had already had out with her. The point itself, no doubt, was what was antique, +and the use she made of it what was modern. He felt just now that her +good-natured irony did bear on something, and it troubled him a little that she +wouldn’t be more explicit only assuring him, with the pleasure of +observation so visible in her, that she wouldn’t tell him more for the +world. He could take refuge but in asking her what she had done with Waymarsh, +though it must be added that he felt himself a little on the way to a clue +after she had answered that this personage was, in the other room, engaged in +conversation with Madame de Vionnet. He stared a moment at the image of such a +conjunction; then, for Miss Barrace’s benefit, he wondered. “Is she +too then under the charm—?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not a bit”—Miss Barrace was prompt. “She makes +nothing of him. She’s bored. She won’t help you with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Strether laughed, “she can’t do everything. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not—wonderful as she is. Besides, he makes nothing of +<i>her</i>. She won’t take him from me—though she wouldn’t, +no doubt, having other affairs in hand, even if she could. I’ve +never,” said Miss Barrace, “seen her fail with any one before. And +to-night, when she’s so magnificent, it would seem to her +strange—if she minded. So at any rate I have him all. <i>Je suis +tranquille!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Strether understood, so far as that went; but he was feeling for his clue. +“She strikes you to-night as particularly magnificent?” +</p> + +<p> +“Surely. Almost as I’ve never seen her. Doesn’t she you? Why +it’s <i>for</i> you.” +</p> + +<p> +He persisted in his candour. “‘For’ me—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Miss Barrace, who persisted in the opposite of +that quality. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he acutely admitted, “she <i>is</i> different. +She’s gay.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s gay!” Miss Barrace laughed. “And she has +beautiful shoulders—though there’s nothing different in +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Strether, “one was sure of her shoulders. It +isn’t her shoulders.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion, with renewed mirth and the finest sense, between the puffs of +her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find their conversation +highly delightful. “Yes, it isn’t her shoulders.” +</p> + +<p> +“What then is it?” Strether earnestly enquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s <i>she</i>—simply. It’s her mood. It’s +her charm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it’s her charm, but we’re speaking of the +difference.” “Well,” Miss Barrace explained, +“she’s just brilliant, as we used to say. That’s all. +She’s various. She’s fifty women.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but only one”—Strether kept it clear—“at a +time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps. But in fifty times—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh we shan’t come to that,” our friend declared; and the +next moment he had moved in another direction. “Will you answer me a +plain question? Will she ever divorce?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Barrace looked at him through all her tortoise-shell. “Why should +she?” +</p> + +<p> +It wasn’t what he had asked for, he signified; but he met it well enough. +“To marry Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should she marry Chad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I’m convinced she’s very fond of him. She has done +wonders for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then, how could she do more? Marrying a man, or woman +either,” Miss Barrace sagely went on, “is never the wonder for any +Jack and Jill can bring <i>that</i> off. The wonder is their doing such things +without marrying.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether considered a moment this proposition. “You mean it’s so +beautiful for our friends simply to go on so?” +</p> + +<p> +But whatever he said made her laugh. “Beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +He nevertheless insisted. “And <i>that</i> because it’s +disinterested?” +</p> + +<p> +She was now, however, suddenly tired of the question. “Yes +then—call it that. Besides, she’ll never divorce. Don’t, +moreover,” she added, “believe everything you hear about her +husband.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s not then,” Strether asked, “a wretch?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes. But charming.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve met him. He’s <i>bien aimable</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“To every one but his wife?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh for all I know, to her too—to any, to every woman. I hope you +at any rate,” she pursued with a quick change, “appreciate the care +I take of Mr. Waymarsh.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh immensely.” But Strether was not yet in line. “At all +events,” he roundly brought out, “the attachment’s an +innocent one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mine and his? Ah,” she laughed, “don’t rob it of +<i>all</i> interest!” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean our friend’s here—to the lady we’ve been +speaking of.” That was what he had settled to as an indirect but none the +less closely involved consequence of his impression of Jeanne. That was where +he meant to stay. “It’s innocent,” he repeated—“I +see the whole thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Mystified by his abrupt declaration, she had glanced over at Gloriani as at the +unnamed subject of his allusion, but the next moment she had understood; though +indeed not before Strether had noticed her momentary mistake and wondered what +might possibly be behind that too. He already knew that the sculptor admired +Madame de Vionnet; but did this admiration also represent an attachment of +which the innocence was discussable? He was moving verily in a strange air and +on ground not of the firmest. He looked hard for an instant at Miss Barrace, +but she had already gone on. “All right with Mr. Newsome? Why of course +she is!”—and she got gaily back to the question of her own good +friend. “I dare say you’re surprised that I’m not worn out +with all I see—it being so much!—of Sitting Bull. But I’m +not, you know—I don’t mind him; I bear up, and we get on +beautifully. I’m very strange; I’m like that; and often I +can’t explain. There are people who are supposed interesting or +remarkable or whatever, and who bore me to death; and then there are others as +to whom nobody can understand what anybody sees in them—in whom I see no +end of things.” Then after she had smoked a moment, “He’s +touching, you know,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Know’?” Strether echoed—“don’t I, +indeed? We must move you almost to tears.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I don’t mean <i>you!</i>” she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to then, for the worst sign of all—as I must have it for +you—is that you can’t help me. That’s when a woman +pities.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but I do help you!” she cheerfully insisted. +</p> + +<p> +Again he looked at her hard, and then after a pause: “No you +don’t!” +</p> + +<p> +Her tortoise-shell, on its long chain, rattled down. “I help you with +Sitting Bull. That’s a good deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh that, yes.” But Strether hesitated. “Do you mean he talks +of me?” +</p> + +<p> +“So that I have to defend you? No, never.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” Strether mused. “It’s too deep.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s his only fault,” she returned—“that +everything, with him, is too deep. He has depths of silence—which he +breaks only at the longest intervals by a remark. And when the remark comes +it’s always something he has seen or felt for himself—never a bit +banal. <i>That</i> would be what one might have feared and what would kill me. +But never.” She smoked again as she thus, with amused complacency, +appreciated her acquisition. “And never about you. We keep clear of you. +We’re wonderful. But I’ll tell you what he does do,” she +continued: “he tries to make me presents.” +</p> + +<p> +“Presents?” poor Strether echoed, conscious with a pang that +<i>he</i> hadn’t yet tried that in any quarter. +</p> + +<p> +“Why you see,” she explained, “he’s as fine as ever in +the victoria; so that when I leave him, as I often do almost for hours—he +likes it so—at the doors of shops, the sight of him there helps me, when +I come out, to know my carriage away off in the rank. But sometimes, for a +change, he goes with me into the shops, and then I’ve all I can do to +prevent his buying me things.” +</p> + +<p> +“He wants to ‘treat’ you?” Strether almost gasped at +all he himself hadn’t thought of. He had a sense of admiration. “Oh +he’s much more in the real tradition than I. Yes,” he mused, +“it’s the sacred rage.” +</p> + +<p> +“The sacred rage, exactly!”—and Miss Barrace, who +hadn’t before heard this term applied, recognised its bearing with a clap +of her gemmed hands. “Now I do know why he’s not banal. But I do +prevent him all the same—and if you saw what he sometimes +selects—from buying. I save him hundreds and hundreds. I only take +flowers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Flowers?” Strether echoed again with a rueful reflexion. How many +nosegays had her present converser sent? +</p> + +<p> +“Innocent flowers,” she pursued, “as much as he likes. And he +sends me splendours; he knows all the best places—he has found them for +himself; he’s wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“He hasn’t told them to <i>me</i>,” her friend smiled, +“he has a life of his own.” But Strether had swung back to the +consciousness that for himself after all it never would have done. Waymarsh +hadn’t Mrs. Waymarsh in the least to consider, whereas Lambert Strether +had constantly, in the inmost honour of his thoughts, to consider Mrs. Newsome. +He liked moreover to feel how much his friend was in the real tradition. Yet he +had his conclusion. “<i>What</i> a rage it is!” He had worked it +out. “It’s an opposition.” +</p> + +<p> +She followed, but at a distance. “That’s what I feel. Yet to +what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he thinks, you know, that <i>I’ve</i> a life of my own. And +I haven’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t?” She showed doubt, and her laugh confirmed it. +“Oh, oh, oh!” +</p> + +<p> +“No—not for myself. I seem to have a life only for other +people.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah for them and <i>with</i> them! Just now for instance +with—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, with whom?” he asked before she had had time to say. +</p> + +<p> +His tone had the effect of making her hesitate and even, as he guessed, speak +with a difference. “Say with Miss Gostrey. What do you do for +<i>her?</i>” It really made him wonder. “Nothing at all!” +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet, having meanwhile come in, was at present close to them, and +Miss Barrace hereupon, instead of risking a rejoinder, became again with a look +that measured her from top to toe all mere long-handled appreciative +tortoise-shell. She had struck our friend, from the first of her appearing, as +dressed for a great occasion, and she met still more than on either of the +others the conception reawakened in him at their garden-party, the idea of the +<i>femme du monde</i> in her habit as she lived. Her bare shoulders and arms +were white and beautiful; the materials of her dress, a mixture, as he +supposed, of silk and crape, were of a silvery grey so artfully composed as to +give an impression of warm splendour; and round her neck she wore a collar of +large old emeralds, the green note of which was more dimly repeated, at other +points of her apparel, in embroidery, in enamel, in satin, in substances and +textures vaguely rich. Her head, extremely fair and exquisitely festal, was +like a happy fancy, a notion of the antique, on an old precious medal, some +silver coin of the Renaissance; while her slim lightness and brightness, her +gaiety, her expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that might have +been felt by a poet as half mythological and half conventional. He could have +compared her to a goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a +sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge. Above all she suggested to him the +reflexion that the <i>femme du monde</i>—in these finest developments of +the type—was, like Cleopatra in the play, indeed various and multifold. +She had aspects, characters, days, nights—or had them at least, showed +them by a mysterious law of her own, when in addition to everything she +happened also to be a woman of genius. She was an obscure person, a muffled +person one day, and a showy person, an uncovered person the next. He thought of +Madame de Vionnet to-night as showy and uncovered, though he felt the formula +rough, because, thanks to one of the short-cuts of genius she had taken all his +categories by surprise. Twice during dinner he had met Chad’s eyes in a +longish look; but these communications had in truth only stirred up again old +ambiguities—so little was it clear from them whether they were an appeal +or an admonition. “You see how I’m fixed,” was what they +appeared to convey; yet how he was fixed was exactly what Strether didn’t +see. However, perhaps he should see now. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you capable of the very great kindness of going to relieve Newsome, +for a few minutes, of the rather crushing responsibility of Madame Gloriani, +while I say a word, if he’ll allow me, to Mr. Strether, of whom +I’ve a question to ask? Our host ought to talk a bit to those other +ladies, and I’ll come back in a minute to your rescue.” She made +this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a special duty had +just flickered-up, but that lady’s recognition of Strether’s little +start at it—as at a betrayal on the speaker’s part of a +domesticated state—was as mute as his own comment; and after an instant, +when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had been given +something else to think of. “Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you +know?” That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I’ve no reason to give you but the simple reason +I’ve had from her in a note—the sudden obligation to join in the +south a sick friend who has got worse.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then she has been writing you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not since she went—I had only a brief explanatory word before she +started. I went to see her,” Strether explained—“it was the +day after I called on you—but she was already on her way, and her +concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had +written to me. I found her note when I got home.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether’s +face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion. +“She didn’t write to <i>me</i>. I went to see her,” she +added, “almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I assured her I +would do when I met her at Gloriani’s. She hadn’t then told me she +was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She’s +absent—with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she has +plenty—so that I may not see her. She doesn’t want to meet me +again. Well,” she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, “I +liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew +it—perhaps that’s precisely what has made her go—and I dare +say I haven’t lost her for ever.” Strether still said nothing; he +had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between +women—was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there was +moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these allusions and +professions that, should he take it in, would square but ill with his present +resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all the same, her softness and +sadness were sincere. He felt that not less when she soon went on: +“I’m extremely glad of her happiness.” But it also left him +mute—sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed. What it conveyed +was that <i>he</i> was Maria Gostrey’s happiness, and for the least +little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought. He could have done +so however only by saying “What then do you suppose to be between +us?” and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have spoken. He +would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew back as well, with a +smothered inward shudder, from the consideration of what women—of +highly-developed type in particular—might think of each other. Whatever +he had come out for he hadn’t come to go into that; so that he absolutely +took up nothing his interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he had kept +away from her for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting +again, she hadn’t a gleam of irritation to show him. “Well, about +Jeanne now?” she smiled—it had the gaiety with which she had +originally come in. He felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real +errand. But he had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to +his little. “<i>Do</i> you make out that she has a sentiment? I mean for +Mr. Newsome.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. “How can I make out +such things?” +</p> + +<p> +She remained perfectly good-natured. “Ah but they’re beautiful +little things, and you make out—don’t pretend—everything in +the world. Haven’t you,” she asked, “been talking with +her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you don’t require ‘much’!” she reassuringly +declared. But she immediately changed her ground. “I hope you remember +your promise of the other day.” +</p> + +<p> +“To ‘save’ you, as you called it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I call it so still. You <i>will?</i>” she insisted. “You +haven’t repented?” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered. “No—but I’ve been thinking what I meant.” +</p> + +<p> +She kept it up. “And not, a little, what <i>I</i> did?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—that’s not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I +meant myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And don’t you know,” she asked, “by this time?” +</p> + +<p> +Again he had a pause. “I think you ought to leave it to me. But how +long,” he added, “do you give me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me much more a question of how long you give <i>me</i>. +Doesn’t our friend here himself, at any rate,” she went on, +“perpetually make me present to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not,” Strether replied, “by ever speaking of you to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“He never does that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never.” +</p> + +<p> +She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her, effectually +concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered. “No, he +wouldn’t. But do you <i>need</i> that?” +</p> + +<p> +Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been wandering he looked at +her longer now. “I see what you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you see what I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice weep. +“I’ve before me what he owes you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Admit then that that’s something,” she said, yet still with +the same discretion in her pride. +</p> + +<p> +He took in this note but went straight on. “You’ve made of him what +I see, but what I don’t see is how in the world you’ve done +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s another question!” she smiled. “The point is +of what use is your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome—as you +do me the honour to find him—<i>is</i> just to know me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see,” he mused, still with his eyes on her. “I +shouldn’t have met you to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +She raised and dropped her linked hands. “It doesn’t matter. If I +trust you why can’t you a little trust me too? And why can’t you +also,” she asked in another tone, “trust yourself?” But she +gave him no time to reply. “Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I’m +glad at any rate you’ve seen my child.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad too,” he said; “but she does you no +good.” +</p> + +<p> +“No good?”—Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. “Why +she’s an angel of light.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don’t try to +find out. I mean,” he explained, “about what you spoke to me +of—the way she feels.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion wondered. “Because one really won’t?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She’s the +most charming creature I’ve ever seen. Therefore don’t touch her. +Don’t know—don’t want to know. And +moreover—yes—you <i>won’t</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. “As a favour to +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—since you ask me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything, everything you ask,” she smiled. “I shan’t +know then—never. Thank you,” she added with peculiar gentleness as +she turned away. +</p> + +<p> +The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been +tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his +independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception, +inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety +sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a +little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He +hadn’t detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as +he considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had +just come within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of +what he had done. He recognised them at the same moment as those of little +Bilham, who had apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little +Bilham wasn’t, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be +most closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room +obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne +de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention had been +benevolently given. “I can’t see for my life,” Strether had +then observed, “how a young fellow of any spirit—such a one as you +for instance—can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without +being hard hit. Why don’t you go in, little Bilham?” He remembered +the tone into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the +sculptor’s reception, and this might make up for that by being much more +the right sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. +“There <i>would</i> be some reason.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some reason for what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why for hanging on here.” +</p> + +<p> +“To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Strether asked, “to what lovelier apparition +<i>could</i> you offer them? She’s the sweetest little thing I’ve +ever seen.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s certainly immense. I mean she’s the real thing. I +believe the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous +efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun. +<i>I’m</i> unfortunately but a small farthing candle. What chance in such +a field for a poor little painter-man?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you’re good enough,” Strether threw out. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly I’m good enough. We’re good enough, I consider, +<i>nous autres</i>, for anything. But she’s <i>too</i> good. +There’s the difference. They wouldn’t look at me.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl, whose eyes +had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague smile—Strether, +enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at last awake and in spite +of new material thrust upon him, thought over his companion’s words. +“Whom do you mean by ‘they’? She and her mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever else he may +be, certainly can’t be indifferent to the possibilities she represents. +Besides, there’s Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether was silent a little. “Ah but he doesn’t care for +her—not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I’m speaking +of. He’s <i>not</i> in love with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—but he’s her best friend; after her mother. He’s +very fond of her. He has his ideas about what can be done for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s very strange!” Strether presently remarked with a +sighing sense of fulness. +</p> + +<p> +“Very strange indeed. That’s just the beauty of it. Isn’t it +very much the kind of beauty you had in mind,” little Bilham went on, +“when you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? +Didn’t you adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while +I’ve a chance, everything I can?—and <i>really</i> to see, for it +must have been that only you meant. Well, you did me no end of good, and +I’m doing my best. I <i>do</i> make it out a situation.” +</p> + +<p> +“So do I!” Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next +minute an inconsequent question. “How comes Chad so mixed up, +anyway?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, ah, ah!”—and little Bilham fell back on his cushions. +</p> + +<p> +It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of his +sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions. Yet he kept hold of his +thread. “Of course I understand really; only the general transformation +makes me occasionally gasp. Chad with such a voice in the settlement of the +future of a little countess—no,” he declared, “it takes more +time! You say moreover,” he resumed, “that we’re inevitably, +people like you and me, out of the running. The curious fact remains that Chad +himself isn’t. The situation doesn’t make for it, but in a +different one he could have her if he would.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but that’s only because he’s rich and because +there’s a possibility of his being richer. They won’t think of +anything but a great name or a great fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “he’ll have no great fortune on +<i>these</i> lines. He must stir his stumps.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that,” little Bilham enquired, “what you were saying to +Madame de Vionnet?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I don’t say much to her. Of course, however,” +Strether continued, “he can make sacrifices if he likes.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham had a pause. “Oh he’s not keen for sacrifices; or +thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it <i>is</i> virtuous,” his companion observed with some +decision. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s exactly,” the young man dropped after a moment, +“what I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +It kept Strether himself silent a little. “I’ve made it out for +myself,” he then went on; “I’ve really, within the last +half-hour, got hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at +first—when you originally spoke to me—I didn’t. Nor when Chad +originally spoke to me either.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said little Bilham, “I don’t think that at that +time you believed me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious and +unmannerly—as well as quite perverse—if I hadn’t. What +interest have you in deceiving me?” +</p> + +<p> +The young man cast about. “What interest have I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Chad <i>might</i> have. But you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, ah, ah!” little Bilham exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend a +little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and his being +proof against everything was only another attestation that he meant to stay +there. “I couldn’t, without my own impression, realise. She’s +a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm +on top of it all—the charm we surely all of us this evening know what to +think of. It isn’t every clever brilliant capable woman that has it. In +fact it’s rare with any woman. So there you are,” Strether +proceeded as if not for little Bilham’s benefit alone. “I +understand what a relation with such a woman—what such a high fine +friendship—may be. It can’t be vulgar or coarse, anyway—and +that’s the point.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that’s the point,” said little Bilham. “It +can’t be vulgar or coarse. And, bless us and save us, it +<i>isn’t!</i> It’s, upon my word, the very finest thing I ever saw +in my life, and the most distinguished.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned, dropped on +him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of which he took no +notice. He only gazed before him with intent participation. “Of course +what it has done for him,” Strether at all events presently pursued, +“of course what it has done for him—that is as to <i>how</i> it has +so wonderfully worked—isn’t a thing I pretend to understand. +I’ve to take it as I find it. There he is.” +</p> + +<p> +“There he is!” little Bilham echoed. “And it’s really +and truly she. I don’t understand either, even with my longer and closer +opportunity. But I’m like you,” he added; “I can admire and +rejoice even when I’m a little in the dark. You see I’ve watched it +for some three years, and especially for this last. He wasn’t so bad +before it as I seem to have made out that you think—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I don’t think anything now!” Strether impatiently broke +in: “that is but what I <i>do</i> think! I mean that originally, for her +to have cared for him—” +</p> + +<p> +“There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and +much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you know,” +the young man in all fairness developed, “there was room for her, and +that’s where she came in. She saw her chance and took it. That’s +what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course,” he wound up, +“he liked her first.” +</p> + +<p> +“Naturally,” said Strether. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere—I believe in some +American house—and she, without in the least then intending it, made her +impression. Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after <i>that</i> +she was as bad as he.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether vaguely took it up. “As ‘bad’?” +</p> + +<p> +“She began, that is, to care—to care very much. Alone, and in her +horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest. It was, +it is, an interest, and it did—it continues to do—a lot for herself +as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact,” said little Bilham +thoughtfully “more.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s theory that it was none of his business was somehow not +damaged by the way he took this. “More, you mean, than he?” On +which his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes met. +“More than he?” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. “Will you never tell any +one?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought. “Whom should I tell?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why I supposed you reported regularly—” +</p> + +<p> +“To people at home?”—Strether took him up. “Well, I +won’t tell them this.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man at last looked away. “Then she does now care more than +he.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” Strether oddly exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +But his companion immediately met it. “Haven’t you after all had +your impression of it? That’s how you’ve got hold of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but I haven’t got hold of him!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I say!” But it was all little Bilham said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s at any rate none of my business. I mean,” Strether +explained, “nothing else than getting hold of him is.” It appeared, +however, to strike him as his business to add: “The fact remains +nevertheless that she has saved him.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham just waited. “I thought that was what <i>you</i> were to +do.” +</p> + +<p> +But Strether had his answer ready. “I’m speaking—in connexion +with her—of his manners and morals, his character and life. I’m +speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live +with—speaking of him as a social animal.” +</p> + +<p> +“And isn’t it as a social animal that you also want him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly; so that it’s as if she had saved him <i>for</i> +us.” +</p> + +<p> +“It strikes you accordingly then,” the young man threw out, +“as for you all to save <i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh for us ‘all’—!” Strether could but laugh at +that. It brought him back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. +“They’ve accepted their situation—hard as it is. +They’re not free—at least she’s not; but they take +what’s left to them. It’s a friendship, of a beautiful sort; and +that’s what makes them so strong. They’re straight, they feel; and +they keep each other up. It’s doubtless she, however, who, as you +yourself have hinted, feels it most.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. “Feels most that +they’re straight?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, feels that <i>she</i> is, and the strength that comes from it. She +keeps <i>him</i> up—she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to +it’s fine. She’s wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he +is, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and not +feel that he finds his account in it. She has simply given him an immense moral +lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That’s why I speak of it +as a situation. It <i>is</i> one, if there ever was.” And Strether, with +his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to lose himself in the vision +of it. +</p> + +<p> +His companion attended deeply. “You state it much better than I +could.” “Oh you see it doesn’t concern you.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham considered. “I thought you said just now that it +doesn’t concern you either.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it doesn’t a bit as Madame de Vionnet’s affair. But as +we were again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—to remove him.” +</p> + +<p> +“To save him <i>by</i> removal; to win him over to <i>himself</i> +thinking it best he shall take up business—thinking he must immediately +do therefore what’s necessary to that end.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said little Bilham after a moment, “you <i>have</i> +won him over. He does think it best. He has within a day or two again said to +me as much.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that,” Strether asked, “is why you consider that he +cares less than she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cares less for her than she for him? Yes, that’s one of the +reasons. But other things too have given me the impression. A man, don’t +you think?” little Bilham presently pursued, “<i>Can’t</i>, +in such conditions, care so much as a woman. It takes different conditions to +make him, and then perhaps he cares more. Chad,” he wound up, “has +his possible future before him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you speaking of his business future?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly +call their situation. M. de Vionnet may live for ever.” +</p> + +<p> +“So that they can’t marry?” +</p> + +<p> +The young man waited a moment. “Not being able to marry is all +they’ve with any confidence to look forward to. A woman—a +particular woman—may stand that strain. But can a man?” he +propounded. +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself, worked +it out. “Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that’s just +what we’re attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter,” he +mused, “does his going to America diminish the particular strain? +Wouldn’t it seem rather to add to it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Out of sight out of mind!” his companion laughed. Then more +bravely: “Wouldn’t distance lessen the torment?” But before +Strether could reply, “The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!” +he wound up. +</p> + +<p> +Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it. “If you talk of torments +you don’t diminish mine!” he then broke out. The next moment he was +on his feet with a question. “He ought to marry whom?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham rose more slowly. “Well, some one he <i>can</i>—some +thoroughly nice girl.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. +“Do you mean <i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +His friend made a sudden strange face. “After being in love with her +mother? No.” +</p> + +<p> +“But isn’t it exactly your idea that he <i>isn’t</i> in love +with her mother?” +</p> + +<p> +His friend once more had a pause. “Well, he isn’t at any rate in +love with Jeanne.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say not.” +</p> + +<p> +“How <i>can</i> he be with any other woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh that I admit. But being in love isn’t, you know, +here”—little Bilham spoke in friendly reminder—“thought +necessary, in strictness, for marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what torment—to call a torment—can there ever possibly +be with a woman like that?” As if from the interest of his own question +Strether had gone on without hearing. “Is it for her to have turned a man +out so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?” He appeared to make a +point of this, and little Bilham looked at him now. “When it’s for +each other that people give things up they don’t miss them.” Then +he threw off as with an extravagance of which he was conscious: “Let them +face the future together!” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham looked at him indeed. “You mean that after all he +shouldn’t go back?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that if he gives her up—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.” But Strether spoke with +a sound that might have passed for a laugh. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="volume02"></a>Volume II</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Book Seventh</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +It wasn’t the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim +church—still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as +conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had been to +Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey, he had been +there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in company, such a +refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with renewed pressure from that +source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the +moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly. He was conscious enough +that it was only for the moment, but good moments—if he could call them +good—still had their value for a man who by this time struck himself as +living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way, +he had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself—had quite +stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the +adventure when restored to his friends. +</p> + +<p> +His great friend, for that matter, was still absent, as well as remarkably +silent; even at the end of three weeks Miss Gostrey hadn’t come back. She +wrote to him from Mentone, admitting that he must judge her grossly +inconsequent—perhaps in fact for the time odiously faithless; but asking +for patience, for a deferred sentence, throwing herself in short on his +generosity. For her too, she could assure him, life was complicated—more +complicated than he could have guessed; she had moreover made certain of +him—certain of not wholly missing him on her return—before her +disappearance. If furthermore she didn’t burden him with letters it was +frankly because of her sense of the other great commerce he had to carry on. He +himself, at the end of a fortnight, had written twice, to show how his +generosity could be trusted; but he reminded himself in each case of Mrs. +Newsome’s epistolary manner at the times when Mrs. Newsome kept off +delicate ground. He sank his problem, he talked of Waymarsh and Miss Barrace, +of little Bilham and the set over the river, with whom he had again had tea, +and he was easy, for convenience, about Chad and Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne. +He admitted that he continued to see them, he was decidedly so confirmed a +haunter of Chad’s premises and that young man’s practical intimacy +with them was so undeniably great; but he had his reason for not attempting to +render for Miss Gostrey’s benefit the impression of these last days. That +would be to tell her too much about himself—it being at present just from +himself he was trying to escape. +</p> + +<p> +This small struggle sprang not a little, in its way, from the same impulse that +had now carried him across to Notre Dame; the impulse to let things be, to give +them time to justify themselves or at least to pass. He was aware of having no +errand in such a place but the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain other +places; a sense of safety, of simplification, which each time he yielded to it +he amused himself by thinking of as a private concession to cowardice. The +great church had no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it +was none the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while there what +he couldn’t elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday +he had earned. He was tired, but he wasn’t plain—that was the pity +and the trouble of it; he was able, however, to drop his problem at the door +very much as if it had been the copper piece that he deposited, on the +threshold, in the receptacle of the inveterate blind beggar. He trod the long +dim nave, sat in the splendid choir, paused before the cluttered chapels of the +east end, and the mighty monument laid upon him its spell. He might have been a +student under the charm of a museum—which was exactly what, in a foreign +town, in the afternoon of life, he would have liked to be free to be. This form +of sacrifice did at any rate for the occasion as well as another; it made him +quite sufficiently understand how, within the precinct, for the real refugee, +the things of the world could fall into abeyance. That was the cowardice, +probably—to dodge them, to beg the question, not to deal with it in the +hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief, too vain, to hurt any +one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful kindness for certain persons +whom he met, figures of mystery and anxiety, and whom, with observation for his +pastime, he ranked as those who were fleeing from justice. Justice was outside, +in the hard light, and injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from +the air of the long aisles and the brightness of the many altars. +</p> + +<p> +Thus it was at all events that, one morning some dozen days after the dinner in +the Boulevard Malesherbes at which Madame de Vionnet had been present with her +daughter, he was called upon to play his part in an encounter that deeply +stirred his imagination. He had the habit, in these contemplations, of watching +a fellow visitant, here and there, from a respectable distance, remarking some +note of behaviour, of penitence, of prostration, of the absolved, relieved +state; this was the manner in which his vague tenderness took its course, the +degree of demonstration to which it naturally had to confine itself. It +hadn’t indeed so felt its responsibility as when on this occasion he +suddenly measured the suggestive effect of a lady whose supreme stillness, in +the shade of one of the chapels, he had two or three times noticed as he made, +and made once more, his slow circuit. She wasn’t prostrate—not in +any degree bowed, but she was strangely fixed, and her prolonged immobility +showed her, while he passed and paused, as wholly given up to the need, +whatever it was, that had brought her there. She only sat and gazed before her, +as he himself often sat; but she had placed herself, as he never did, within +the focus of the shrine, and she had lost herself, he could easily see, as he +would only have liked to do. She was not a wandering alien, keeping back more +than she gave, but one of the familiar, the intimate, the fortunate, for whom +these dealings had a method and a meaning. She reminded our friend—since +it was the way of nine tenths of his current impressions to act as recalls of +things imagined—of some fine firm concentrated heroine of an old story, +something he had heard, read, something that, had he had a hand for drama, he +might himself have written, renewing her courage, renewing her clearness, in +splendidly-protected meditation. Her back, as she sat, was turned to him, but +his impression absolutely required that she should be young and interesting, +and she carried her head moreover, even in the sacred shade, with a discernible +faith in herself, a kind of implied conviction of consistency, security, +impunity. But what had such a woman come for if she hadn’t come to pray? +Strether’s reading of such matters was, it must be owned, confused; but +he wondered if her attitude were some congruous fruit of absolution, of +“indulgence.” He knew but dimly what indulgence, in such a place, +might mean; yet he had, as with a soft sweep, a vision of how it might indeed +add to the zest of active rites. All this was a good deal to have been denoted +by a mere lurking figure who was nothing to him; but, the last thing before +leaving the church, he had the surprise of a still deeper quickening. +</p> + +<p> +He had dropped upon a seat halfway down the nave and, again in the museum mood, +was trying with head thrown back and eyes aloft, to reconstitute a past, to +reduce it in fact to the convenient terms of Victor Hugo, whom, a few days +before, giving the rein for once in a way to the joy of life, he had purchased +in seventy bound volumes, a miracle of cheapness, parted with, he was assured +by the shopman, at the price of the red-and-gold alone. He looked, doubtless, +while he played his eternal nippers over Gothic glooms, sufficiently rapt in +reverence; but what his thought had finally bumped against was the question of +where, among packed accumulations, so multiform a wedge would be able to enter. +Were seventy volumes in red-and-gold to be perhaps what he should most +substantially have to show at Woollett as the fruit of his mission? It was a +possibility that held him a minute—held him till he happened to feel that +some one, unnoticed, had approached him and paused. Turning, he saw that a lady +stood there as for a greeting, and he sprang up as he next took her, securely, +for Madame de Vionnet, who appeared to have recognised him as she passed near +him on her way to the door. She checked, quickly and gaily, a certain confusion +in him, came to meet it, turned it back, by an art of her own; the confusion +having threatened him as he knew her for the person he had lately been +observing. She was the lurking figure of the dim chapel; she had occupied him +more than she guessed; but it came to him in time, luckily, that he +needn’t tell her and that no harm, after all, had been done. She herself, +for that matter, straightway showing she felt their encounter as the happiest +of accidents, had for him a “You come here too?” that despoiled +surprise of every awkwardness. +</p> + +<p> +“I come often,” she said. “I love this place, but I’m +terrible, in general, for churches. The old women who live in them all know me; +in fact I’m already myself one of the old women. It’s like that, at +all events, that I foresee I shall end.” Looking about for a chair, so +that he instantly pulled one nearer, she sat down with him again to the sound +of an “Oh, I like so much your also being fond—!” +</p> + +<p> +He confessed the extent of his feeling, though she left the object vague; and +he was struck with the tact, the taste of her vagueness, which simply took for +granted in him a sense of beautiful things. He was conscious of how much it was +affected, this sense, by something subdued and discreet in the way she had +arranged herself for her special object and her morning walk—he believed +her to have come on foot; the way her slightly thicker veil was drawn—a +mere touch, but everything; the composed gravity of her dress, in which, here +and there, a dull wine-colour seemed to gleam faintly through black; the +charming discretion of her small compact head; the quiet note, as she sat, of +her folded, grey-gloved hands. It was, to Strether’s mind, as if she sat +on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open gate, she thus easily +did him, while all the vastness and mystery of the domain stretched off behind. +When people were so completely in possession they could be extraordinarily +civil; and our friend had indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her +heritage. She was romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and +again he found his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was, +his impression must remain a secret from her. The thing that, once more, made +him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular patience she could have +with his own want of colour; albeit that on the other hand his uneasiness +pretty well dropped after he had been for ten minutes as colourless as possible +and at the same time as responsive. +</p> + +<p> +The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge from the +special interest excited in him by his vision of his companion’s identity +with the person whose attitude before the glimmering altar had so impressed +him. This attitude fitted admirably into the stand he had privately taken about +her connexion with Chad on the last occasion of his seeing them together. It +helped him to stick fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had +resolved that he <i>would</i> stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as +easy to do so. Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the +parties to it so carry herself. If it wasn’t innocent why did she haunt +the churches?—into which, given the woman he could believe he made out, +she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt. She haunted them for +continued help, for strength, for peace—sublime support which, if one +were able to look at it so, she found from day to day. They talked, in low easy +tones and with lifted lingering looks, about the great monument and its history +and its beauty—all of which, Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her +most in the other, the outer view. “We’ll presently, after we +go,” she said, “walk round it again if you like. I’m not in a +particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to look at it well with you.” +He had spoken of the great romancer and the great romance, and of what, to his +imagination, they had done for the whole, mentioning to her moreover the +exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy blazing volumes that were so out of +proportion. +</p> + +<p> +“Out of proportion to what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, to any other plunge.” Yet he felt even as he spoke how at +that instant he was plunging. He had made up his mind and was impatient to get +into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a +fear that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her +time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their +meeting, and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her +mystery. While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor +Hugo, her voice itself, the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity +about them, seemed to make her words mean something that they didn’t mean +openly. Help, strength, peace, a sublime support—she hadn’t found +so much of these things as that the amount wouldn’t be sensibly greater +for any scrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her +hand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her +as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn’t jerk himself out of +her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was +perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was +as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a +sign. The sign would be that—though it was her own affair—he +understood; the sign would be that—though it was her own affair—she +was free to clutch. Since she took him for a firm object—much as he might +to his own sense appear at times to rock—he would do his best to +<i>be</i> one. +</p> + +<p> +The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for an +early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment on the left +bank—a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both aware, the +knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of restless days, from the +other end of the town. Strether had already been there three times—first +with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and +little Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained; and his +pleasure was deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn’t yet been +initiated. When he had said as they strolled round the church, by the river, +acting at last on what, within, he had made up his mind to, “Will you, if +you have time, come to déjeuner with me somewhere? For instance, if you know +it, over there on the other side, which is so easy a walk”—and then +had named the place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick +intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response. She took in the proposal as if +it were almost too charming to be true; and there had perhaps never yet been +for her companion so unexpected a moment of pride—so fine, so odd a case, +at any rate, as his finding himself thus able to offer to a person in such +universal possession a new, a rare amusement. She had heard of the happy spot, +but she asked him in reply to a further question how in the world he could +suppose her to have been there. He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad +might have taken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small +discomfort. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, let me explain,” she smiled, “that I don’t go +about with him in public; I never have such chances—not having them +otherwise—and it’s just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature +living in my hole, I adore.” It was more than kind of him to have thought +of it—though, frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn’t +a single minute. That however made no difference—she’d throw +everything over. Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; +but it was a case for a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but +hadn’t one a right to one’s snatch of scandal when one was prepared +to pay? It was on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that +they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window +adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an +hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel +he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of +the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London, +before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded +candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time +gathered them in, the explanations—he had stored them up; but it was at +present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them—he +couldn’t tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn’t +seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than +lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, +for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered +water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de +Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their <i>omelette +aux tomates</i>, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for +everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and +out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early +summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their +human questions. +</p> + +<p> +Their human questions became many before they had done—many more, as one +after the other came up, than our friend’s free fancy had at all +foreseen. The sense he had had before, the sense he had had repeatedly, the +sense that the situation was running away with him, had never been so sharp as +now; and all the more that he could perfectly put his finger on the moment it +had taken the bit in its teeth. That accident had definitely occurred, the +other evening, after Chad’s dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at +the moment when he interposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered +himself so to discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own +subtlety, marked by its significant “Thank you!” instantly sealed +the occasion in her favour. Again he had held off for ten days, but the +situation had continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it was +running so fast being indeed just <i>why</i> he had held off. What had come +over him as he recognised her in the nave of the church was that holding off +could be but a losing game from the instant she was worked for not only by her +subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself. If all the accidents were to fight on +her side—and by the actual showing they loomed large—he could only +give himself up. This was what he had done in privately deciding then and there +to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the success of his proposal +in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular runaway properly ends? The +smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, +the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it—to say +nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing less, +accordingly, was his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at least +the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone +of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and the +plash of the river. It <i>was</i> clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a +lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine. +</p> + +<p> +“Maria’s still away?”—that was the first thing she had +asked him; and when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite +of the meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey’s absence, she had +gone on to enquire if he didn’t tremendously miss her. There were reasons +that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered +“Tremendously”; which she took in as if it were all she had wished +to prove. Then, “A man in trouble <i>must</i> be possessed somehow of a +woman,” she said; “if she doesn’t come in one way she comes +in another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you call me a man in trouble?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah because that’s the way you strike me.” She spoke ever so +gently and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his +bounty. “<i>Aren’t</i> you in trouble?” +</p> + +<p> +He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that—hated to pass +for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad’s lady, in +respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference—was he +already at that point? Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a strange air +of truth to her supposition; and what was he in fact but disconcerted at having +struck her just in the way he had most dreamed of not doing? “I’m +not in trouble yet,” he at last smiled. “I’m not in trouble +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m always so. But that you sufficiently know.” She +was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the +table. It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a <i>femme +du monde</i>. “Yes—I am ‘now’!” +</p> + +<p> +“There was a question you put to me,” he presently returned, +“the night of Chad’s dinner. I didn’t answer it then, and it +has been very handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me +about it since.” +</p> + +<p> +She was instantly all there. “Of course I know what you allude to. I +asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me, just before +you left me, that you’d save me. And you then said—at our +friend’s—that you’d have really to wait to see, for yourself, +what you did mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I asked for time,” said Strether. “And it sounds now, +as you put it, like a very ridiculous speech.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” she murmured—she was full of attenuation. But she had +another thought. “If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that +you’re in trouble?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah if I were,” he replied, “it wouldn’t be the trouble +of fearing ridicule. I don’t fear it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What then do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing—now.” And he leaned back in his chair. +</p> + +<p> +“I like your ‘now’!” she laughed across at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s precisely that it fully comes to me at present that +I’ve kept you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant +by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad’s dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why didn’t you tell me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that moment +done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went to see +you; but I wasn’t then sure of the importance I might represent this as +having.” +</p> + +<p> +She was all eagerness. “And you’re sure now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I see that, practically, I’ve done for you—had done for +you when you put me your question—all that it’s as yet possible to +me to do. I feel now,” he went on, “that it may go further than I +thought. What I did after my visit to you,” he explained, “was to +write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and I’m at last, from one +day to the other, expecting her answer. It’s this answer that will +represent, as I believe, the consequences.” +</p> + +<p> +Patient and beautiful was her interest. “I see—the consequences of +your speaking for me.” And she waited as if not to hustle him. +</p> + +<p> +He acknowledged it by immediately going on. “The question, you +understand, was <i>how</i> I should save you. Well, I’m trying it by thus +letting her know that I consider you worth saving.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see—I see.” Her eagerness broke through. +</p> + +<p> +“How can I thank you enough?” He couldn’t tell her that, +however, and she quickly pursued. “You do really, for yourself, consider +it?” +</p> + +<p> +His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been freshly put +before them. “I’ve written to her again since then—I’ve +left her in no doubt of what I think. I’ve told her all about you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks—not so much. ‘All about’ me,” she went +on—“yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“All it seems to me you’ve done for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah and you might have added all it seems to <i>me!</i>” She +laughed again, while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these +assurances. “But you’re not sure how she’ll take it.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’ll not pretend I’m sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Voilà.” And she waited a moment. “I wish you’d tell me +about her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Strether with a slightly strained smile, “all that +need concern you about her is that she’s really a grand person.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. “Is that all that need concern me +about her?” +</p> + +<p> +But Strether neglected the question. “Hasn’t Chad talked to +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of his mother? Yes, a great deal—immensely. But not from your +point of view.” +</p> + +<p> +“He can’t,” our friend returned, “have said any ill of +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that +she’s really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what +hasn’t seemed to simplify our case. Nothing,” she continued, +“is further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course +I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman +ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.” +</p> + +<p> +This was a proposition Strether couldn’t contradict. “And yet what +other way could I have expressed to her what I felt? It’s what there was +most to say about you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean then that she <i>will</i> be good to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what I’m waiting to see. But I’ve little doubt +she would,” he added, “if she could comfortably see you.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. “Oh then +couldn’t that be managed? Wouldn’t she come out? Wouldn’t she +if you so put it to her? <i>Did</i> you by any possibility?” she faintly +quavered. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no”—he was prompt. “Not that. It would be, much +more, to give an account of you that—since there’s no question of +<i>your</i> paying the visit—I should go home first.” +</p> + +<p> +It instantly made her graver. “And are you thinking of that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh all the while, naturally.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stay with us—stay with us!” she exclaimed on this. +“That’s your only way to make sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“To make sure of what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why that he doesn’t break up. You didn’t come out to do that +to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doesn’t it depend,” Strether returned after a moment, +“on what you mean by breaking up?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you know well enough what I mean!” +</p> + +<p> +His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. “You +take for granted remarkable things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do—to the extent that I don’t take for granted vulgar +ones. You’re perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for +wasn’t really at all to do what you’d now have to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah it’s perfectly simple,” Strether good-humouredly pleaded. +“I’ve had but one thing to do—to put our case before him. To +put it as it could only be put here on the spot—by personal pressure. My +dear lady,” he lucidly pursued, “my work, you see, is really done, +and my reasons for staying on even another day are none of the best. +Chad’s in possession of our case and professes to do it full justice. +What remains is with himself. I’ve had my rest, my amusement and +refreshment; I’ve had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time. Nothing in +it has been more lovely than this happy meeting with you—in these +fantastic conditions to which you’ve so delightfully consented. +I’ve a sense of success. It’s what I wanted. My getting all this +good is what Chad has waited for, and I gather that if I’m ready to go +he’s the same.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. “You’re not ready. +If you’re ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense +you’ve mentioned to me?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether considered. “I shan’t go before I hear from her. +You’re too much afraid of her,” he added. +</p> + +<p> +It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. “I +don’t think you believe that—believe I’ve not really reason +to fear her.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s capable of great generosity,” Strether presently +stated. +</p> + +<p> +“Well then let her trust me a little. That’s all I ask. Let her +recognise in spite of everything what I’ve done.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah remember,” our friend replied, “that she can’t +effectually recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and +show her what you’ve done, and let him plead with her there for it and, +as it were, for <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +She measured the depth of this suggestion. “Do you give me your word of +honour that if she once has him there she won’t do her best to marry +him?” +</p> + +<p> +It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the view; after +which he spoke without sharpness. “When she sees for herself what he +is—” +</p> + +<p> +But she had already broken in. “It’s when she sees for herself what +he is that she’ll want to marry him most.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted +him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. “I doubt if that will come +off. It won’t be easy to make it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be easy if he remains there—and he’ll remain for the +money. The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Strether presently concluded, “nothing <i>could</i> +really hurt you but his marrying.” +</p> + +<p> +She gave a strange light laugh. “Putting aside what may really hurt +<i>him</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. “The +question will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer +him.” +</p> + +<p> +She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. “Well, let it come +up!” +</p> + +<p> +“The point is that it’s for Chad to make of it what he can. His +being proof against marriage will show what he does make.” +</p> + +<p> +“If he <i>is</i> proof, yes”—she accepted the proposition. +“But for myself,” she added, “the question is what <i>you</i> +make.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah I make nothing. It’s not my affair.” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon. It’s just there that, since you’ve taken +it up and are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You’re +not saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your interest in +our friend. The one’s at any rate wholly dependent on the other. You +can’t in honour not see me through,” she wound up, “because +you can’t in honour not see <i>him</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing that most +moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had none of the +portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact, it struck him, with a +force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome, goodness knew, was serious; but +it was nothing to this. He took it all in, he saw it all together. +“No,” he mused, “I can’t in honour not see him.” +</p> + +<p> +Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. “You <i>will</i> +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will.” +</p> + +<p> +At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet. +“Thank you!” she said with her hand held out to him across the +table and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so particularly +given them after Chad’s dinner. The golden nail she had then driven in +pierced a good inch deeper. Yet he reflected that he himself had only meanwhile +done what he had made up his mind to on the same occasion. So far as the +essence of the matter went he had simply stood fast on the spot on which he had +then planted his feet. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +He received three days after this a communication from America, in the form of +a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him through his bankers, +but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in uniform, who, under instructions +from the concierge, approached him as he slowly paced the little court. It was +the evening hour, but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever +penetrating. The scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of +violets perpetually in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and +suggestions, vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they +were not in other places, that came out for him more and more as the mild +afternoons deepened—a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt, a +voice calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor’s in a +play. He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh—they had settled to +that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his friend came +down. +</p> + +<p> +He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he had +opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study of it. At +last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the way; in spite of +which, however, he kept it there—still kept it when, at the end of +another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a small table. Here, with +his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding +his arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so straight +that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching his eye. The latter +in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant +and then, as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it, +dropped back into the <i>salon de lecture</i> without addressing him. But the +pilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind +the clear glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh +scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully again as he +placed it on his table. There it remained for some minutes, until, at last +looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him from within. It was on this that their +eyes met—met for a moment during which neither moved. But Strether then +got up, folding his telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat +pocket. +</p> + +<p> +A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but Strether +had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually parted, after coffee +in the court, with nothing said on either side. Our friend had moreover the +consciousness that even less than usual was on this occasion said between them, +so that it was almost as if each had been waiting for something from the other. +Waymarsh had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, +and silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert. +This note indeed, to Strether’s sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, +and it was his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out. Yet it +befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when his companion +finally asked him if there were anything particular the matter with him. +“Nothing,” he replied, “more than usual.” +</p> + +<p> +On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an answer +more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter had continued to be so +all the previous evening, the first hours of which, after dinner, in his room, +he had devoted to the copious composition of a letter. He had quitted Waymarsh +for this purpose, leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony than +their wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and going +forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade. He had taken a long +vague walk, and one o’clock had struck before his return and his +re-ascent to his room by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on +the shelf outside the porter’s lodge. He had possessed himself, on +closing his door, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, +and then, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces. He had +thereupon slept—as if it had been in some measure thanks to that +sacrifice—the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest considerably +beyond his custom. Thus it was that when, between nine and ten, the tap of the +knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had not yet made himself +altogether presentable. Chad Newsome’s bright deep voice determined +quickly enough none the less the admission of the visitor. The little blue +paper of the evening before, plainly an object the more precious for its escape +from premature destruction, now lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed +out afresh and kept from blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his +watch. Chad, looking about with careless and competent criticism, as he looked +wherever he went immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a +moment rather hard. After which he turned his eyes to his host. “It has +come then at last?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. “Then you know—? +You’ve had one too?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’ve had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing +and I guess. Well,” he added, “it comes as pat as in a play, for +I’ve precisely turned up this morning—as I would have done +yesterday, but it was impossible—to take you.” +</p> + +<p> +“To take me?” Strether had turned again to his glass. +</p> + +<p> +“Back, at last, as I promised. I’m ready—I’ve really +been ready this month. I’ve only been waiting for you—as was +perfectly right. But you’re better now; you’re safe—I see +that for myself; you’ve got all your good. You’re looking, this +morning, as fit as a flea.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness moreover on +this last opinion. <i>Was</i> he looking preternaturally fit? There was +something in it perhaps for Chad’s wonderful eye, but he had felt himself +for hours rather in pieces. Such a judgement, however, was after all but a +contribution to his resolve; it testified unwittingly to his wisdom. He was +still firmer, apparently—since it shone in him as a light—than he +had flattered himself. His firmness indeed was slightly compromised, as he +faced about to his friend, by the way this very personage looked—though +the case would of course have been worse hadn’t the secret of personal +magnificence been at every hour Chad’s unfailing possession. There he was +in all the pleasant morning freshness of it—strong and sleek and gay, +easy and fragrant and fathomless, with happy health in his colour, and pleasant +silver in his thick young hair, and the right word for everything on the lips +that his clear brownness caused to show as red. He had never struck Strether as +personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite surrender, he had +gathered himself vividly together. This, sharply and rather strangely, was the +form in which he was to be presented to Woollett. Our friend took him in +again—he was always taking him in and yet finding that parts of him still +remained out; though even thus his image showed through a mist of other things. +“I’ve had a cable,” Strether said, “from your +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say, my dear man. I hope she’s well.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “No—she’s not well, I’m sorry to +have to tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Chad, “I must have had the instinct of it. All the +more reason then that we should start straight off.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had dropped on +the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his point. He kept observing his +companion’s things; he might have been judging how quickly they could be +packed. He might even have wished to hint that he’d send his own servant +to assist. “What do you mean,” Strether enquired, “by +‘straight off’?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh by one of next week’s boats. Everything at this season goes out +so light that berths will be easy anywhere.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there after attaching +his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who, however, with an odd movement, +declined to take it. “Thanks, I’d rather not. Your correspondence +with Mother’s your own affair. I’m only <i>with</i> you both on it, +whatever it is.” Strether, at this, while their eyes met, slowly folded +the missive and put it in his pocket; after which, before he had spoken again, +Chad broke fresh ground. “Has Miss Gostrey come back?” +</p> + +<p> +But when Strether presently spoke it wasn’t in answer. “It’s +not, I gather, that your mother’s physically ill; her health, on the +whole, this spring, seems to have been better than usual. But she’s +worried, she’s anxious, and it appears to have risen within the last few +days to a climax. We’ve tired out, between us, her patience.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it isn’t <i>you!</i>” Chad generously protested. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon—it <i>is</i> me.” Strether was mild and +melancholy, but firm. He saw it far away and over his companion’s head. +“It’s very particularly me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then all the more reason. <i>Marchons, marchons!</i>” said +the young man gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze; +and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before. “Has +Miss Gostrey come back?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, two days ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you’ve seen her?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I’m to see her to-day.” But Strether wouldn’t +linger now on Miss Gostrey. “Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I +can’t bring you I’m to leave you; I’m to come at any rate +myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but you <i>can</i> bring me now,” Chad, from his sofa, +reassuringly replied. +</p> + +<p> +Strether had a pause. “I don’t think I understand you. Why was it +that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de +Vionnet speak for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Why’?” Chad considered, but he had it at his +fingers’ ends. “Why but because I knew how well she’d do it? +It was the way to keep you quiet and, to that extent, do you good. +Besides,” he happily and comfortably explained, “I wanted you +really to know her and to get the impression of her—and you see the good +that <i>has</i> done you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “the way she has spoken for you, all +the same—so far as I’ve given her a chance—has only made me +feel how much she wishes to keep you. If you make nothing of that I don’t +see why you wanted me to listen to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why my dear man,” Chad exclaimed, “I make everything of it! +How can you doubt—?” +</p> + +<p> +“I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to +start.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad stared, then gave a laugh. “And isn’t my signal to start just +what you’ve been waiting for?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether debated; he took another turn. “This last month I’ve been +awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you’ve been afraid of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your present +announcement,” Strether went on, “isn’t merely the result of +your sense of what I’ve expected. Otherwise you wouldn’t have put +me in relation—” But he paused, pulling up. +</p> + +<p> +At this Chad rose. “Ah <i>her</i> wanting me not to go has nothing to do +with it! It’s only because she’s afraid—afraid of the way +that, over there, I may get caught. But her fear’s groundless.” +</p> + +<p> +He had met again his companion’s sufficiently searching look. “Are +you tired of her?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the strangest slow +smile he had ever had from him. “Never.” +</p> + +<p> +It had immediately, on Strether’s imagination, so deep and soft an effect +that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him. +“Never?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never,” Chad obligingly and serenely repeated. +</p> + +<p> +It made his companion take several more steps. “Then <i>you’re</i> +not afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Afraid to go?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether pulled up again. “Afraid to stay.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man looked brightly amazed. “You want me now to +‘stay’?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I don’t immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out. +That’s what I mean,” said Strether, “by your mother’s +ultimatum.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. “She has +turned on Sarah and Jim?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. “Oh and you may be sure +Mamie. <i>That’s</i> whom she’s turning on.” +</p> + +<p> +This also Chad saw—he laughed out. “Mamie—to corrupt +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Strether, “she’s very charming.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you’ve already more than once told me. I should like to see +her.” +</p> + +<p> +Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way he said +this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and the +enviability of his state. “See her then by all means. And consider +too,” Strether went on, “that you really give your sister a lift in +letting her come to you. You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she +hasn’t seen, if I’m not mistaken, since just after she was married, +and which I’m sure she wants but the pretext to visit.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. “She has had +it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean <i>you?</i>” Strether after an instant enquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly—the lone exile. And whom do you mean?” said Chad. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I mean <i>me</i>. I’m her pretext. That is—for it comes +to the same thing—I’m your mother’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why,” Chad asked, “doesn’t Mother come +herself?” +</p> + +<p> +His friend gave him a long look. “Should you like her to?” And as +he for the moment said nothing: “It’s perfectly open to you to +cable for her.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad continued to think. “Will she come if I do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite possibly. But try, and you’ll see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t <i>you</i> try?” Chad after a moment asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I don’t want to.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad thought. “Don’t desire her presence here?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic. +“Don’t put it off, my dear boy, on <i>me!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—I see what you mean. I’m sure you’d behave +beautifully but you <i>don’t</i> want to see her. So I won’t play +you that trick.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” Strether declared, “I shouldn’t call it a trick. +You’ve a perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.” +Then he added in a different tone: “You’d have moreover, in the +person of Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for +her.” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad’s pleasant +and bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last and he said something +with which Strether was struck. “She wouldn’t understand her, but +that makes no difference. Madame de Vionnet would like to see her. She’d +like to be charming to her. She believes she could work it.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away. +“She couldn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re quite sure?” Chad asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, risk it if you like!” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their now +getting into the air; but the young man still waited. “Have you sent your +answer?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I’ve done nothing yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Were you waiting to see me?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only waiting”—and Chad, with this, had a smile for +him—“to see Miss Gostrey?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—not even Miss Gostrey. I wasn’t waiting to see any one. I +had only waited, till now, to make up my mind—in complete solitude; and, +since I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point of going +out with it quite made up. Have therefore a little more patience with me. +Remember,” Strether went on, “that that’s what you originally +asked <i>me</i> to have. I’ve had it, you see, and you see what has come +of it. Stay on with me.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad looked grave. “How much longer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, till I make you a sign. I can’t myself, you know, at the +best, or at the worst, stay for ever. Let the Pococks come,” Strether +repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“Because it gains you time?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—it gains me time.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute. “You don’t want +to get back to Mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not just yet. I’m not ready.” +</p> + +<p> +“You feel,” Chad asked in a tone of his own, “the charm of +life over here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Immensely.” Strether faced it. “You’ve helped me so to +feel it that that surely needn’t surprise you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, it doesn’t surprise me, and I’m delighted. But what, my +dear man,” Chad went on with conscious queerness, “does it all lead +to for you?” +</p> + +<p> +The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed in the +question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered it—which made +Strether also laugh. “Well, to my having a certitude that has been +tested—that has passed through the fire. But oh,” he couldn’t +help breaking out, “if within my first month here you had been willing to +move with me—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we should have been over there by now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but you wouldn’t have had your fun!” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have had a month of it; and I’m having now, if you want +to know,” Strether continued, “enough to last me for the rest of my +days.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark; partly +perhaps because Strether’s estimate of fun had required of him from the +first a good deal of elucidation. “It wouldn’t do if I left +you—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Left me?”—Strether remained blank. +</p> + +<p> +“Only for a month or two—time to go and come. Madame de +Vionnet,” Chad smiled, “would look after you in the +interval.” +</p> + +<p> +“To go back by yourself, I remaining here?” Again for an instant +their eyes had the question out; after which Strether said: +“Grotesque!” +</p> + +<p> +“But I want to see Mother,” Chad presently returned. +“Remember how long it is since I’ve seen Mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Long indeed; and that’s exactly why I was originally so keen for +moving you. Hadn’t you shown us enough how beautifully you could do +without it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but,” said Chad wonderfully, “I’m better +now.” +</p> + +<p> +There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again. “Oh +if you were worse I <i>should</i> know what to do with you. In that case I +believe I’d have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board +resisting, kicking. How <i>much</i>,” Strether asked, “do you want +to see Mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“How much?”—Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say. +</p> + +<p> +“How much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why as much as you’ve made me. I’d give anything to see her. +And you’ve left me,” Chad went on, “in little enough doubt as +to how much <i>she</i> wants it.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought a minute. “Well then if those things are really your +motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow. Of course, when it comes to +that, you’re absolutely free to do as you choose. From the moment you +can’t hold yourself I can only accept your flight.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll fly in a minute then,” said Chad, “if +you’ll stay here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll stay here till the next steamer—then I’ll follow +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you call that,” Chad asked, “accepting my +flight?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly—it’s the only thing to call it. The only way to +keep me here, accordingly,” Strether explained, “is by staying +yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad took it in. “All the more that I’ve really dished you, +eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Dished me?” Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible. +</p> + +<p> +“Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn’t trust +you, and if she doesn’t trust you, that bears upon—well, you know +what.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in consonance with +this he spoke. “You see then all the more what you owe me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if I do see, how can I pay?” +</p> + +<p> +“By not deserting me. By standing by me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I say—!” But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a +firm hand, in the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder. They descended slowly +together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of which the +upshot was that they presently separated. Chad Newsome departed, and Strether, +left alone, looked about, superficially, for Waymarsh. But Waymarsh +hadn’t yet, it appeared, come down, and our friend finally went forth +without sight of him. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +At four o’clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was +then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss Gostrey. +Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to the town and to +his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless and absorbed—and +all with the present climax of a rich little welcome in the Quartier Marbœuf. +“Waymarsh has been, ‘unbeknown’ to me, I’m +convinced”—for Miss Gostrey had enquired—“in +communication with Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the +loudest possible call for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean a letter to bring you home?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a +‘Come back by the first ship.’” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing +colour. Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional serenity. +It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with duplicity: “And +you’re going—?” +</p> + +<p> +“You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. “My absence has +helped you—as I’ve only to look at you to see. It was my +calculation, and I’m justified. You’re not where you were. And the +thing,” she smiled, “was for me not to be there either. You can go +of yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but I feel to-day,” he comfortably declared, “that I +shall want you yet.” +</p> + +<p> +She took him all in again. “Well, I promise you not again to leave you, +but it will only be to follow you. You’ve got your momentum and can +toddle alone.” +</p> + +<p> +He intelligently accepted it. “Yes—I suppose I can toddle. +It’s the sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear +it—the way I strike him as going—no longer. That’s only the +climax of his original feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written +to Woollett that I’m in peril of perdition.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah good!” she murmured. “But is it only your +supposition?” +</p> + +<p> +“I make it out—it explains.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then he denies?—or you haven’t asked him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve not had time,” Strether said; “I made it out but +last night, putting various things together, and I’ve not been since then +face to face with him.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Because you’re too disgusted? You can’t trust +yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +He settled his glasses on his nose. “Do I look in a great rage?” +</p> + +<p> +“You look divine!” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing,” he went on, “to be angry about. He +has done me on the contrary a service.” +</p> + +<p> +She made it out. “By bringing things to a head?” +</p> + +<p> +“How well you understand!” he almost groaned. “Waymarsh +won’t in the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or +extenuate. He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience +and after wakeful nights. He’ll recognise that he’s fully +responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any +discussion we may have will bring us quite together again—bridge the dark +stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall have at last, in the +consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk about.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent a little. “How wonderfully you take it! But you’re +always wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a +complete admission. “It’s quite true. I’m extremely wonderful +just now. I dare say in fact I’m quite fantastic, and I shouldn’t +be at all surprised if I were mad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then tell me!” she earnestly pressed. As he, however, for the time +answered nothing, only returning the look with which she watched him, she +presented herself where it was easier to meet her. “What will Mr. +Waymarsh exactly have done?” +</p> + +<p> +“Simply have written a letter. One will have been quite enough. He has +told them I want looking after.” +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>do</i> you?”—she was all interest. +</p> + +<p> +“Immensely. And I shall get it.” +</p> + +<p> +“By which you mean you don’t budge?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t budge.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve cabled?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I’ve made Chad do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That you decline to come?” +</p> + +<p> +“That <i>he</i> declines. We had it out this morning and I brought him +round. He had come in, before I was down, to tell me he was ready—ready, +I mean, to return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he +wouldn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. “Then you’ve <i>stopped</i> +him?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. “I’ve stopped him. +That is for the time. That”—he gave it to her more +vividly—“is where I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see. But where’s Mr. Newsome? He was ready,” she +asked, “to go?” +</p> + +<p> +“All ready.” +</p> + +<p> +“And sincerely—believing <i>you’d</i> be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly, I think; so that he was amazed to find the hand I had laid on +him to pull him over suddenly converted into an engine for keeping him +still.” +</p> + +<p> +It was an account of the matter Miss Gostrey could weigh. “Does he think +the conversion sudden?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “I’m not altogether sure what he +thinks. I’m not sure of anything that concerns him, except that the more +I’ve seen of him the less I’ve found him what I originally +expected. He’s obscure, and that’s why I’m waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “But for what in particular?” +</p> + +<p> +“For the answer to his cable.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what was his cable?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” Strether replied; “it was to be, when +he left me, according to his own taste. I simply said to him: ‘I want to +stay, and the only way for me to do so is for <i>you</i> to.’ That I +wanted to stay seemed to interest him, and he acted on that.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey turned it over. “He wants then himself to stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“He half wants it. That is he half wants to go. My original appeal has to +that extent worked in him. Nevertheless,” Strether pursued, “he +won’t go. Not, at least, so long as I’m here.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you can’t,” his companion suggested, “stay here +always. I wish you could.” +</p> + +<p> +“By no means. Still, I want to see him a little further. He’s not +in the least the case I supposed, he’s quite another case. And it’s +as such that he interests me.” It was almost as if for his own +intelligence that, deliberate and lucid, our friend thus expressed the matter. +“I don’t want to give him up.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey but desired to help his lucidity. She had however to be light and +tactful. “Up, you mean—a—to his mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m not thinking of his mother now. I’m thinking of +the plan of which I was the mouthpiece, which, as soon as we met, I put before +him as persuasively as I knew how, and which was drawn up, as it were, in +complete ignorance of all that, in this last long period, has been happening to +him. It took no account whatever of the impression I was here on the spot +immediately to begin to receive from him—impressions of which I feel sure +I’m far from having had the last.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey had a smile of the most genial criticism. “So your idea +is—more or less—to stay out of curiosity?” +</p> + +<p> +“Call it what you like! I don’t care what it’s +called—” +</p> + +<p> +“So long as you do stay? Certainly not then. I call it, all the same, +immense fun,” Maria Gostrey declared; “and to see you work it out +will be one of the sensations of my life. It <i>is</i> clear you can toddle +alone!” +</p> + +<p> +He received this tribute without elation. “I shan’t be alone when +the Pococks have come.” +</p> + +<p> +Her eyebrows went up. “The Pococks are coming?” +</p> + +<p> +“That, I mean, is what will happen—and happen as quickly as +possible—in consequence of Chad’s cable. They’ll simply +embark. Sarah will come to speak for her mother—with an effect different +from <i>my</i> muddle.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. “<i>She</i> then will take him +back?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very possibly—and we shall see. She must at any rate have the +chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you <i>want</i> that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Strether, “I want it. I want to play +fair.” +</p> + +<p> +But she had lost for a moment the thread. “If it devolves on the Pococks +why do you stay?” +</p> + +<p> +“Just to see that I <i>do</i> play fair—and a little also, no +doubt, that they do.” Strether was luminous as he had never been. +“I came out to find myself in presence of new facts—facts that have +kept striking me as less and less met by our old reasons. The matter’s +perfectly simple. New reasons—reasons as new as the facts +themselves—are wanted; and of this our friends at +Woollett—Chad’s and mine—were at the earliest moment +definitely notified. If any are producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them; +she’ll bring over the whole collection. They’ll be,” he added +with a pensive smile “a part of the ‘fun’ you speak +of.” +</p> + +<p> +She was quite in the current now and floating by his side. “It’s +Mamie—so far as I’ve had it from you—who’ll be their +great card.” And then as his contemplative silence wasn’t a denial +she significantly added: “I think I’m sorry for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think <i>I</i> am!”—and Strether sprang up, moving about a +little as her eyes followed him. “But it can’t be helped.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean her coming out can’t be?” +</p> + +<p> +He explained after another turn what he meant. “The only way for her not +to come is for me to go home—as I believe that on the spot I could +prevent it. But the difficulty as to that is that if I do go home—” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see”—she had easily understood. “Mr. Newsome +will do the same, and that’s not”—she laughed out +now—“to be thought of.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had no laugh; he had only a quiet comparatively placid look that might +have shown him as proof against ridicule. “Strange, isn’t +it?” +</p> + +<p> +They had, in the matter that so much interested them, come so far as this +without sounding another name—to which however their present momentary +silence was full of a conscious reference. Strether’s question was a +sufficient implication of the weight it had gained with him during the absence +of his hostess; and just for that reason a single gesture from her could pass +for him as a vivid answer. Yet he was answered still better when she said in a +moment: “Will Mr. Newsome introduce his sister—?” +</p> + +<p> +“To Madame de Vionnet?” Strether spoke the name at last. “I +shall be greatly surprised if he doesn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed to gaze at the possibility. “You mean you’ve thought of +it and you’re prepared.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve thought of it and I’m prepared.” +</p> + +<p> +It was to her visitor now that she applied her consideration. “Bon! You +<i>are</i> magnificent!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” he answered after a pause and a little wearily, but still +standing there before her—“well, that’s what, just once in +all my dull days, I think I shall like to have been!” +</p> + +<p> +Two days later he had news from Chad of a communication from Woollett in +response to their determinant telegram, this missive being addressed to Chad +himself and announcing the immediate departure for France of Sarah and Jim and +Mamie. Strether had meanwhile on his own side cabled; he had but delayed that +act till after his visit to Miss Gostrey, an interview by which, as so often +before, he felt his sense of things cleared up and settled. His message to Mrs. +Newsome, in answer to her own, had consisted of the words: “Judge best to +take another month, but with full appreciation of all re-enforcements.” +He had added that he was writing, but he was of course always writing; it was a +practice that continued, oddly enough, to relieve him, to make him come nearer +than anything else to the consciousness of doing something: so that he often +wondered if he hadn’t really, under his recent stress, acquired some +hollow trick, one of the specious arts of make-believe. Wouldn’t the +pages he still so freely dispatched by the American post have been worthy of a +showy journalist, some master of the great new science of beating the sense out +of words? Wasn’t he writing against time, and mainly to show he was +kind?—since it had become quite his habit not to like to read himself +over. On those lines he could still be liberal, yet it was at best a sort of +whistling in the dark. It was unmistakeable moreover that the sense of being in +the dark now pressed on him more sharply—creating thereby the need for a +louder and livelier whistle. He whistled long and hard after sending his +message; he whistled again and again in celebration of Chad’s news; there +was an interval of a fortnight in which this exercise helped him. He had no +great notion of what, on the spot, Sarah Pocock would have to say, though he +had indeed confused premonitions; but it shouldn’t be in her power to +say—it shouldn’t be in any one’s anywhere to say—that +he was neglecting her mother. He might have written before more freely, but he +had never written more copiously; and he frankly gave for a reason at Woollett +that he wished to fill the void created there by Sarah’s departure. +</p> + +<p> +The increase of his darkness, however, and the quickening, as I have called it, +of his tune, resided in the fact that he was hearing almost nothing. He had for +some time been aware that he was hearing less than before, and he was now +clearly following a process by which Mrs. Newsome’s letters could but +logically stop. He hadn’t had a line for many days, and he needed no +proof—though he was, in time, to have plenty—that she +wouldn’t have put pen to paper after receiving the hint that had +determined her telegram. She wouldn’t write till Sarah should have seen +him and reported on him. It was strange, though it might well be less so than +his own behaviour appeared at Woollett. It was at any rate significant, and +what <i>was</i> remarkable was the way his friend’s nature and manner put +on for him, through this very drop of demonstration, a greater intensity. It +struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of +her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which +her idiosyncrasies showed. He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with +her and dined face-to-face with her—a rare treat “in his +life,” as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had +never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so +highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate +“cold,” but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble. Her vividness in +these respects became for him, in the special conditions, almost an obsession; +and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding really to the excitement +of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the stretch, he directly +sought forgetfulness. He knew it for the queerest of adventures—a +circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert +Strether—that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this ghost +of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other presence. +</p> + +<p> +When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something else. And +yet after all the change scarcely operated for he talked to her of Mrs. Newsome +in these days as he had never talked before. He had hitherto observed in that +particular a discretion and a law; considerations that at present broke down +quite as if relations had altered. They hadn’t <i>really</i> altered, he +said to himself, so much as that came to; for if what had occurred was of +course that Mrs. Newsome had ceased to trust him, there was nothing on the +other hand to prove that he shouldn’t win back her confidence. It was +quite his present theory that he would leave no stone unturned to do so; and in +fact if he now told Maria things about her that he had never told before this +was largely because it kept before him the idea of the honour of such a +woman’s esteem. His relation with Maria as well was, strangely enough, no +longer quite the same; this truth—though not too +disconcertingly—had come up between them on the renewal of their +meetings. It was all contained in what she had then almost immediately said to +him; it was represented by the remark she had needed but ten minutes to make +and that he hadn’t been disposed to gainsay. He could toddle alone, and +the difference that showed was extraordinary. The turn taken by their talk had +promptly confirmed this difference; his larger confidence on the score of Mrs. +Newsome did the rest; and the time seemed already far off when he had held out +his small thirsty cup to the spout of her pail. Her pail was scarce touched +now, and other fountains had flowed for him; she fell into her place as but one +of his tributaries; and there was a strange sweetness—a melancholy +mildness that touched him—in her acceptance of the altered order. +</p> + +<p> +It marked for himself the flight of time, or at any rate what he was pleased to +think of with irony and pity as the rush of experience; it having been but the +day before yesterday that he sat at her feet and held on by her garment and was +fed by her hand. It was the proportions that were changed, and the proportions +were at all times, he philosophised, the very conditions of perception, the +terms of thought. It was as if, with her effective little <i>entresol</i> and +and her wide acquaintance, her activities, varieties, promiscuities, the duties +and devotions that took up nine tenths of her time and of which he got, +guardedly, but the side-wind—it was as if she had shrunk to a secondary +element and had consented to the shrinkage with the perfection of tact. This +perfection had never failed her; it had originally been greater than his prime +measure for it; it had kept him quite apart, kept him out of the shop, as she +called her huge general acquaintance, made their commerce as quiet, as much a +thing of the home alone—the opposite of the shop—as if she had +never another customer. She had been wonderful to him at first, with the memory +of her little <i>entresol</i>, the image to which, on most mornings at that +time, his eyes directly opened; but now she mainly figured for him as but part +of the bristling total—though of course always as a person to whom he +should never cease to be indebted. It would never be given to him certainly to +inspire a greater kindness. She had decked him out for others, and he saw at +this point at least nothing she would ever ask for. She only wondered and +questioned and listened, rendering him the homage of a wistful speculation. She +expressed it repeatedly; he was already far beyond her, and she must prepare +herself to lose him. There was but one little chance for her. +</p> + +<p> +Often as she had said it he met it—for it was a touch he liked—each +time the same way. “My coming to grief?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—then I might patch you up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh for my real smash, if it takes place, there will be no +patching.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you surely don’t mean it will kill you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—worse. It will make me old.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is +that you <i>are</i>, at this time of day, youth.” Then she always made, +further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn with +hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in spite of their +extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the least embarrassment. +She made him believe them, and they became thereby as impersonal as truth +itself. “It’s just your particular charm.” +</p> + +<p> +His answer too was always the same. “Of course I’m +youth—youth for the trip to Europe. I began to be young, or at least to +get the benefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that’s what +has been taking place ever since. I never had the benefit at the proper +time—which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself. I’m +having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said to Chad +‘Wait’; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives. +It’s a benefit that would make a poor show for many people; and I +don’t know who else but you and I, frankly, could begin to see in it what +I feel. I don’t get drunk; I don’t pursue the ladies; I don’t +spend money; I don’t even write sonnets. But nevertheless I’m +making up late for what I didn’t have early. I cultivate my little +benefit in my own little way. It amuses me more than anything that has happened +to me in all my life. They may say what they like—it’s my +surrender, it’s my tribute, to youth. One puts that in where one +can—it has to come in somewhere, if only out of the lives, the +conditions, the feelings of other persons. Chad gives me the sense of it, for +all his grey hairs, which merely make it solid in him and safe and serene; and +<i>she</i> does the same, for all her being older than he, for all her +marriageable daughter, her separated husband, her agitated history. Though +they’re young enough, my pair, I don’t say they’re, in the +freshest way, their <i>own</i> absolutely prime adolescence; for that has +nothing to do with it. The point is that they’re mine. Yes, they’re +my youth; since somehow at the right time nothing else ever was. What I meant +just now therefore is that it would all go—go before doing its +work—if they were to fail me.” +</p> + +<p> +On which, just here, Miss Gostrey inveterately questioned. “What do you, +in particular, call its work?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, to see me through.” +</p> + +<p> +“But through what?”—she liked to get it all out of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why through this experience.” That was all that would come. +</p> + +<p> +It regularly gave her none the less the last word. “Don’t you +remember how in those first days of our meeting it was <i>I</i> who was to see +you through?” +</p> + +<p> +“Remember? Tenderly, deeply”—he always rose to it. +“You’re just doing your part in letting me maunder to you +thus.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah don’t speak as if my part were small; since whatever else fails +you—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> won’t, ever, ever, ever?”—he thus took her +up. “Oh I beg your pardon; you necessarily, you inevitably <i>will</i>. +Your conditions—that’s what I mean—won’t allow me +anything to do for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let alone—I see what you mean—that I’m drearily +dreadfully old. I <i>am</i>, but there’s a service—possible for you +to render—that I know, all the same, I shall think of.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what will it be?” +</p> + +<p> +This, in fine, however, she would never tell him. “You shall hear only if +your smash takes place. As that’s really out of the question, I +won’t expose myself”—a point at which, for reasons of his +own, Strether ceased to press. +</p> + +<p> +He came round, for publicity—it was the easiest thing—to the idea +that his smash <i>was</i> out of the question, and this rendered idle the +discussion of what might follow it. He attached an added importance, as the +days elapsed, to the arrival of the Pococks; he had even a shameful sense of +waiting for it insincerely and incorrectly. He accused himself of making +believe to his own mind that Sarah’s presence, her impression, her +judgement would simplify and harmonise, he accused himself of being so afraid +of what they <i>might</i> do that he sought refuge, to beg the whole question, +in a vain fury. He had abundantly seen at home what they were in the habit of +doing, and he had not at present the smallest ground. His clearest vision was +when he made out that what he most desired was an account more full and free of +Mrs. Newsome’s state of mind than any he felt he could now expect from +herself; that calculation at least went hand in hand with the sharp +consciousness of wishing to prove to himself that he was not afraid to look his +behaviour in the face. If he was by an inexorable logic to pay for it he was +literally impatient to know the cost, and he held himself ready to pay in +instalments. The first instalment would be precisely this entertainment of +Sarah; as a consequence of which moreover, he should know vastly better how he +stood. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>Book Eighth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the incident of the +previous week having been to simplify in a marked fashion his mixed relations +with Waymarsh. Nothing had passed between them in reference to Mrs. +Newsome’s summons but that our friend had mentioned to his own the +departure of the deputation actually at sea—giving him thus an +opportunity to confess to the occult intervention he imputed to him. Waymarsh +however in the event confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some +degree Strether’s forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same depth +of good conscience out of which the dear man’s impertinence had +originally sprung. He was patient with the dear man now and delighted to +observe how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt his own holiday so +successfully large and free that he was full of allowances and charities in +respect to those cabined and confined: his instinct toward a spirit so strapped +down as Waymarsh’s was to walk round it on tiptoe for fear of waking it +up to a sense of losses by this time irretrievable. It was all very funny he +knew, and but the difference, as he often said to himself, of tweedledum and +tweedledee—an emancipation so purely comparative that it was like the +advance of the door-mat on the scraper; yet the present crisis was happily to +profit by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to know himself more than ever in the +right. +</p> + +<p> +Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the impulse of +pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of triumph. That was exactly why +Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes in which the heat of justice was measured +and shaded. He had looked very hard, as if affectionately sorry for the +friend—the friend of fifty-five—whose frivolity had had thus to be +recorded; becoming, however, but obscurely sententious and leaving his +companion to formulate a charge. It was in this general attitude that he had of +late altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were solemnly +sadly superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere portentous rumination to +which Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly described herself as assigning a +corner of her salon. It was quite as if he knew his surreptitious step had been +divined, and it was also as if he missed the chance to explain the purity of +his motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely his small penance: +it was not amiss for Strether that he should find himself to that degree +uneasy. If he had been challenged or accused, rebuked for meddling or otherwise +pulled up, he would probably have shown, on his own system, all the height of +his consistency, all the depth of his good faith. Explicit resentment of his +course would have made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on the +table would have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible. Had what now really +prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that thump—a dread of wincing +a little painfully at what it might invidiously demonstrate? However this might +be, at any rate, one of the marks of the crisis was a visible, a studied lapse, +in Waymarsh, of betrayed concern. As if to make up to his comrade for the +stroke by which he had played providence he now conspicuously ignored his +movements, withdrew himself from the pretension to share them, stiffened up his +sensibility to neglect, and, clasping his large empty hands and swinging his +large restless foot, clearly looked to another quarter for justice. +</p> + +<p> +This made for independence on Strether’s part, and he had in truth at no +moment of his stay been so free to go and come. The early summer brushed the +picture over and blurred everything but the near; it made a vast warm fragrant +medium in which the elements floated together on the best of terms, in which +rewards were immediate and reckonings postponed. Chad was out of town again, +for the first time since his visitor’s first view of him; he had +explained this necessity—without detail, yet also without embarrassment, +the circumstance was one of those which, in the young man’s life, +testified to the variety of his ties. Strether wasn’t otherwise concerned +with it than for its so testifying—a pleasant multitudinous image in +which he took comfort. He took comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of +Chad’s pendulum back from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards +Woollett, so stayed by his own hand. He had the entertainment of thinking that +if he had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next minute +this still livelier motion. He himself did what he hadn’t done before; he +took two or three times whole days off—irrespective of others, of two or +three taken with Miss Gostrey, two or three taken with little Bilham: he went +to Chartres and cultivated, before the front of the cathedral, a general easy +beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way to Italy; +he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately spent the night. +</p> + +<p> +One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in the +neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed under the great +arch of its doorway and asked at the porter’s lodge for Madame de +Vionnet. He had already hovered more than once about that possibility, been +aware of it, in the course of ostensible strolls, as lurking but round the +corner. Only it had perversely happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that +his consistency, as he considered and intended it, had come back to him; +whereby he had reflected that the encounter in question had been none of his +making; clinging again intensely to the strength of his position, which was +precisely that there was nothing in it for himself. From the moment he actively +pursued the charming associate of his adventure, from that moment his position +weakened, for he was then acting in an interested way. It was only within a few +days that he had fixed himself a limit: he promised himself his consistency +should end with Sarah’s arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel the +title to a free hand conferred on him by this event. If he wasn’t to be +let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with delicacy. If he wasn’t +to be trusted he could at least take his ease. If he was to be placed under +control he gained leave to try what his position <i>might</i> agreeably give +him. An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks +had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite +promised himself to conform. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear under +which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was afraid of +himself—and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities of +another hour of Madame de Vionnet. What he dreaded was the effect of a single +hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in troubled nights, with +fantastic waking dreams. She loomed at him larger than life; she increased in +volume as she drew nearer; she so met his eyes that, his imagination taking, +after the first step, all, and more than all, the strides, he already felt her +come down on him, already burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of +guilt, already consented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of +everything. He saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as +juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories. It wasn’t of course +that Woollett was really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance that +Sarah’s salon at the hotel would be. His danger, at any rate, in such +moods of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve a sharp +rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave of that actual he +might wholly miss his chance. It was represented with supreme vividness by +Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a word, he waited no longer. He had seen +in a flash that he must anticipate Mrs. Pocock. He was accordingly much +disappointed on now learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was +not in Paris. She had gone for some days to the country. There was nothing in +this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor Strether a drop of +all confidence. It was suddenly as if he should never see her again, and as if +moreover he had brought it on himself by not having been quite kind to her. +</p> + +<p> +It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a little in +the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really to brighten from the +moment the deputation from Woollett alighted on the platform of the station. +They had come straight from Havre, having sailed from New York to that port, +and having also, thanks to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that +left Chad Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated. He had +received their telegram, with the announcement of their immediate further +advance, just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that nothing had +remained for him but to await them in Paris. He hastily picked up Strether, at +the hotel, for this purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry, suggested the +attendance of Waymarsh as well—Waymarsh, at the moment his cab rattled +up, being engaged, under Strether’s contemplative range, in a grave +perambulation of the familiar court. Waymarsh had learned from his companion, +who had already had a note, delivered by hand, from Chad, that the Pococks were +due, and had ambiguously, though, as always, impressively, glowered at him over +the circumstance; carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert +enough to recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the best tone. The +only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full tone—which was +necessarily difficult in the absence of a full knowledge. The Pococks were a +quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought them over, so +this witness had to that extent exposed himself. He wanted to feel right about +it, but could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague. “I shall look +to you, you know, immensely,” our friend had said, “to help me with +them,” and he had been quite conscious of the effect of the remark, and +of others of the same sort, on his comrade’s sombre sensibility. He had +insisted on the fact that Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock—one could +be certain he would: he would be with her about everything, and she would also +be with <i>him</i>, and Miss Barrace’s nose, in short, would find itself +out of joint. +</p> + +<p> +Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the court for +Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and +leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was +doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition +at this particular hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came +with him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face +half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as they +drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of +things. He had already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was +convinced their friend had pulled—a confidence that had made on the young +man’s part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion. The action of the +matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is, how +Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a +determinant—an impression just now quickened again; with the whole +bearing of such a fact on the youth’s view of his relatives. As it came +up between them that they might now take their friend for a feature of the +control of these latter now sought to be exerted from Woollett, Strether felt +indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an hour later for Sarah +Pocock’s eyes, that he was as much on Chad’s “side” as +Waymarsh had probably described him. He was letting himself at present, go; +there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be confidence; he +should offer himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity +he had cultivated. +</p> + +<p> +He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh; how there +was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a kindred spirit, +no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of views, that the pair would +successfully strike up. They would become as thick as thieves—which +moreover was but a development of what Strether remembered to have said in one +of his first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been with +the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself. +“I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she +was a person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a +special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now +feel—this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For +it’s your mother’s own boat that she’s pulling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Chad, “Mother’s worth fifty of Sally!” +</p> + +<p> +“A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you’ll +be meeting your mother’s representative—just as I shall. I feel +like the outgoing ambassador,” said Strether, “doing honour to his +appointed successor.” A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt +he had inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression +audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad’s prompt protest. He had +recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man’s attitude and +temper—remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the worst, +he wasted, and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed interest. Chad +had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight previous—had +accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was waiting cheerfully +and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a slight increase perhaps of the +hardness originally involved in his acquired high polish. He was neither +excited nor depressed; was easy and acute and deliberate—unhurried +unflurried unworried, only at most a little less amused than usual. Strether +felt him more than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of which +his own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, +knew as he hadn’t even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had +done and had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him, +these things, what he was, and the business hadn’t been easy; it had +taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate +was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, +was glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or take it +in, the result, or would she in the least care for it if she did? He scratched +his chin as he asked himself by what name, when challenged—as he was sure +he should be—he could call it for her. Oh those were determinations she +must herself arrive at; since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and +welcome. She had come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in +Strether’s inner sense that she practically wouldn’t see. +</p> + +<p> +That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word that +next dropped from him. “They’re children; they play at +life!”—and the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It +implied that he hadn’t then, for his companion’s sensibility, +appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend’s +presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet +should become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon, +with Chad’s lucidity. “Why, isn’t that exactly—to get a +sight of the company I keep—what she has come out for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I’m afraid it is,” Strether unguardedly replied. +</p> + +<p> +Chad’s quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. “Why do you say +you’re afraid?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It’s my testimony, +I imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock’s curiosity. +My letters, as I’ve supposed you to understand from the beginning, have +spoken freely. I’ve certainly said my little say about Madame de +Vionnet.” +</p> + +<p> +All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. “Yes, but you’ve only +spoken handsomely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never more handsomely of any woman. But it’s just that +tone—!” +</p> + +<p> +“That tone,” said Chad, “that has fetched her? I dare say; +but I’ve no quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet. +Don’t you know by this time how she likes you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!”—and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of +melancholy. “For all I’ve done for her!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah you’ve done a great deal.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad’s urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely +impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of thing, as he +synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate forecast of which, +despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive. “I’ve done +<i>this!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, this is all right. She likes,” Chad comfortably remarked, +“to be liked.”<br /> +</p> + +<p> +It gave his companion a moment’s thought. “And she’s sure +Mrs. Pocock <i>will</i>—?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it’s so much, +as it were,” Chad laughed, “to the good. However, she doesn’t +despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all +lengths.” +</p> + +<p> +“In the way of appreciation?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability, +hospitality and welcome. She’s under arms,” Chad laughed again; +“she’s prepared.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the air: +“She’s wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t begin to know <i>how</i> wonderful!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a depth in it, to Strether’s ear, of confirmed +luxury—almost a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the +effect of the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was +something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance. It was in +fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many minutes another +consequence. “Well, I shall see her oftener now. I shall see her as much +as I like—by your leave; which is what I hitherto haven’t +done.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has been,” said Chad, but without reproach, “only your +own fault. I tried to bring you together, and <i>she</i>, my dear +fellow—I never saw her more charming to any man. But you’ve got +your extraordinary ideas.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I <i>did</i> have,” Strether murmured, while he felt both +how they had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He +couldn’t have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of +Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was still +to be proved. What came over him was the sense of having stupidly failed to +profit where profit would have been precious. It had been open to him to see so +much more of her, and he had but let the good days pass. Fierce in him almost +was the resolve to lose no more of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at +Chad’s side he drew nearer to his destination, that it was after all +Sarah who would have quickened his chance. What her visit of inquisition might +achieve in other directions was as yet all obscure—only not obscure that +it would do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had but to +listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of remarking +to him that they of course both counted on him—he himself and the other +earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear +him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things +ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed <i>that</i>, +compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious. +It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question +of Sarah’s being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped +Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct +that her character would rather make for every possible difference. This idea +of his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further mark in +fact that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert +Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was +not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The +only difficulty was that he couldn’t quite have said with what. It was as +if he had sold himself, but hadn’t somehow got the cash. That, however, +was what, characteristically, <i>would</i> happen to him. It would naturally be +his kind of traffic. While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of the +truth they mustn’t lose sight of—the truth that, with all deference +to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high +firm definite purpose. “She hasn’t come out, you know, to be +bamboozled. We may all be ravishing—nothing perhaps can be more easy for +us; but she hasn’t come out to be ravished. She has come out just simply +to take you home.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well, with <i>her</i> I’ll go,” said Chad +good-humouredly. “I suppose you’ll allow <i>that</i>.” And +then as for a minute Strether said nothing: “Or is your idea that when +I’ve seen her I shan’t want to go?” As this question, +however, again left his friend silent he presently went on: “My own idea +at any rate is that they shall have while they’re here the best sort of +time.” +</p> + +<p> +It was at this that Strether spoke. “Ah there you are! I think if you +really wanted to go—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” said Chad to bring it out. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you wouldn’t trouble about our good time. You wouldn’t +care what sort of a time we have.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious +suggestion. “I see. But can I help it? I’m too decent.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you’re too decent!” Strether heavily sighed. And he +felt for the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission. +</p> + +<p> +It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no +rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. “Do +you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?” +</p> + +<p> +As to this Strether was ready. “No.” +</p> + +<p> +“But haven’t you told me they know about her?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I’ve told you your mother knows.” +</p> + +<p> +“And won’t she have told Sally?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s one of the things I want to see.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if you find she <i>has</i>—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Will I then, you mean, bring them together?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Chad with his pleasant promptness: “to show her +there’s nothing in it.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “I don’t know that I care very much what she +may think there’s in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if it represents what Mother thinks?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah what <i>does</i> your mother think?” There was in this some +sound of bewilderment. +</p> + +<p> +But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be quite at +hand. “Isn’t that, my dear man, what we’re both just going to +make out?” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company. Chad had +taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie, the maid and the +luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it was only after the four +had rolled away that his companion got into a cab with Jim. A strange new +feeling had come over Strether, in consequence of which his spirits had risen; +it was as if what had occurred on the alighting of his critics had been +something other than his fear, though his fear had yet not been of an instant +scene of violence. His impression had been nothing but what was +inevitable—he said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly +dropped upon him. Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to +the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as +he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how uneasy he had +felt; that was brought home to him by his present sense of a respite. It had +come moreover in the flash of an eye, it had come in the smile with which +Sarah, whom, at the window of her compartment, they had effusively greeted from +the platform, rustled down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her +cool June progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough: +she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the larger +game—which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from +Chad’s arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family. +</p> + +<p> +Strether <i>was</i> then as much as ever the valued friend of her family, it +was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his response +to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the prospect of +ceasing to figure in that likeness. He had always seen Sarah gracious—had +in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked thin-lipped smile, intense +without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the +protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented +invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; +the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and +approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him +familiar, but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new +acquaintance. This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to +her resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome while +she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station. It was an impression +that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and while Sarah inclined +to the massive her mother had, at an age, still the girdle of a maid; also the +latter’s chin was rather short, than long, and her smile, by good +fortune, much more, oh ever so much more, mercifully vague. Strether had seen +Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had literally heard her silent, though he had never +known her unpleasant. It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known +<i>her</i> unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable. She had +forms of affability that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance +had ever been more striking than that she was affable to Jim. +</p> + +<p> +What had told in any case at the window of the train was her high clear +forehead, that forehead which her friends, for some reason, always thought of +as a “brow”; the long reach of her eyes—it came out at this +juncture in such a manner as to remind him, oddly enough, also of that of +Waymarsh’s; and the unusual gloss of her dark hair, dressed and hatted, +after her mother’s refined example, with such an avoidance of extremes +that it was always spoken of at Woollett as “their own.” Though +this analogy dropped as soon as she was on the platform it had lasted long +enough to make him feel all the advantage, as it were, of his relief. The woman +at home, the woman to whom he was attached, was before him just long enough to +give him again the measure of the wretchedness, in fact really of the shame, of +their having to recognise the formation, between them, of a +“split.” He had taken this measure in solitude and meditation: but +the catastrophe, as Sarah steamed up, looked for its seconds unprecedentedly +dreadful—or proved, more exactly, altogether unthinkable; so that his +finding something free and familiar to respond to brought with it an instant +renewal of his loyalty. He had suddenly sounded the whole depth, had gasped at +what he might have lost. +</p> + +<p> +Well, he could now, for the quarter of an hour of their detention hover about +the travellers as soothingly as if their direct message to him was that he had +lost nothing. He wasn’t going to have Sarah write to her mother that +night that he was in any way altered or strange. There had been times enough +for a month when it had seemed to him that he was strange, that he was altered, +in every way; but that was a matter for himself; he knew at least whose +business it was <i>not</i>; it was not at all events such a circumstance as +Sarah’s own unaided lights would help her to. Even if she had come out to +flash those lights more than yet appeared she wouldn’t make much headway +against mere pleasantness. He counted on being able to be merely pleasant to +the end, and if only from incapacity moreover to formulate anything different. +He couldn’t even formulate to himself his being changed and queer; it had +taken place, the process, somewhere deep down; Maria Gostrey had caught +glimpses of it; but how was he to fish it up, even if he desired, for Mrs. +Pocock? This was then the spirit in which he hovered, and with the easier throb +in it much indebted furthermore to the impression of high and established +adequacy as a pretty girl promptly produced in him by Mamie. He had wondered +vaguely—turning over many things in the fidget of his thoughts—if +Mamie <i>were</i> as pretty as Woollett published her; as to which issue seeing +her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett’s opinion that this +consequence really let loose for the imagination an avalanche of others. There +were positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of necessity to +abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the +place itself would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point +to her with triumph; it would take its stand on her with assurance; it would be +conscious of no requirements she didn’t meet, of no question she +couldn’t answer. +</p> + +<p> +Well, it was right, Strether slipped smoothly enough into the cheerfulness of +saying: granted that a community <i>might</i> be best represented by a young +lady of twenty-two, Mamie perfectly played the part, played it as if she were +used to it, and looked and spoke and dressed the character. He wondered if she +mightn’t, in the high light of Paris, a cool full studio-light, becoming +yet treacherous, show as too conscious of these matters; but the next moment he +felt satisfied that her consciousness was after all empty for its size, rather +too simple than too mixed, and that the kind way with her would be not to take +many things out of it, but to put as many as possible in. She was robust and +conveniently tall; just a trifle too bloodlessly fair perhaps, but with a +pleasant public familiar radiance that affirmed her vitality. She might have +been “receiving” for Woollett, wherever she found herself, and +there was something in her manner, her tone, her motion, her pretty blue eyes, +her pretty perfect teeth and her very small, too small, nose, that immediately +placed her, to the fancy, between the windows of a hot bright room in which +voices were high—up at that end to which people were brought to be +“presented.” They were there to congratulate, these images, and +Strether’s renewed vision, on this hint, completed the idea. What Mamie +was like was the happy bride, the bride after the church and just before going +away. She wasn’t the mere maiden, and yet was only as much married as +that quantity came to. She was in the brilliant acclaimed festal stage. Well, +might it last her long! +</p> + +<p> +Strether rejoiced in these things for Chad, who was all genial attention to the +needs of his friends, besides having arranged that his servant should reinforce +him; the ladies were certainly pleasant to see, and Mamie would be at any time +and anywhere pleasant to exhibit. She would look extraordinarily like his young +wife—the wife of a honeymoon, should he go about with her; but that was +his own affair—or perhaps it was hers; it was at any rate something she +couldn’t help. Strether remembered how he had seen him come up with +Jeanne de Vionnet in Gloriani’s garden, and the fancy he had had about +that—the fancy obscured now, thickly overlaid with others; the +recollection was during these minutes his only note of trouble. He had often, +in spite of himself, wondered if Chad but too probably were not with Jeanne the +object of a still and shaded flame. It was on the cards that the child +<i>might</i> be tremulously in love, and this conviction now flickered up not a +bit the less for his disliking to think of it, for its being, in a complicated +situation, a complication the more, and for something indescribable in Mamie, +something at all events straightway lent her by his own mind, something that +gave her value, gave her intensity and purpose, as the symbol of an opposition. +Little Jeanne wasn’t really at all in question—how <i>could</i> she +be?—yet from the moment Miss Pocock had shaken her skirts on the +platform, touched up the immense bows of her hat and settled properly over her +shoulder the strap of her morocco-and-gilt travelling-satchel, from that moment +little Jeanne was opposed. +</p> + +<p> +It was in the cab with Jim that impressions really crowded on Strether, giving +him the strangest sense of length of absence from people among whom he had +lived for years. Having them thus come out to him was as if he had returned to +find them: and the droll promptitude of Jim’s mental reaction threw his +own initiation far back into the past. Whoever might or mightn’t be +suited by what was going on among them, Jim, for one, would certainly be: his +instant recognition—frank and whimsical—of what the affair was for +<i>him</i> gave Strether a glow of pleasure. “I say, you know, this +<i>is</i> about my shape, and if it hadn’t been for +<i>you</i>—!” so he broke out as the charming streets met his +healthy appetite; and he wound up, after an expressive nudge, with a clap of +his companion’s knee and an “Oh you, you—you <i>are</i> doing +it!” that was charged with rich meaning. Strether felt in it the +intention of homage, but, with a curiosity otherwise occupied, postponed taking +it up. What he was asking himself for the time was how Sarah Pocock, in the +opportunity already given her, had judged her brother—from whom he +himself, as they finally, at the station, separated for their different +conveyances, had had a look into which he could read more than one message. +However Sarah was judging her brother, Chad’s conclusion about his +sister, and about her husband and her husband’s sister, was at the least +on the way not to fail of confidence. Strether felt the confidence, and that, +as the look between them was an exchange, what he himself gave back was +relatively vague. This comparison of notes however could wait; everything +struck him as depending on the effect produced by Chad. Neither Sarah nor Mamie +had in any way, at the station—where they had had after all ample +time—broken out about it; which, to make up for this, was what our friend +had expected of Jim as soon as they should find themselves together. +</p> + +<p> +It was queer to him that he had that noiseless brush with Chad; an ironic +intelligence with this youth on the subject of his relatives, an intelligence +carried on under their nose and, as might be said, at their expense—such +a matter marked again for him strongly the number of stages he had come; albeit +that if the number seemed great the time taken for the final one was but the +turn of a hand. He had before this had many moments of wondering if he himself +weren’t perhaps changed even as Chad was changed. Only what in Chad was +conspicuous improvement—well, he had no name ready for the working, in +his own organism, of his own more timid dose. He should have to see first what +this action would amount to. And for his occult passage with the young man, +after all, the directness of it had no greater oddity than the fact that the +young man’s way with the three travellers should have been so happy a +manifestation. Strether liked him for it, on the spot, as he hadn’t yet +liked him; it affected him while it lasted as he might have been affected by +some light pleasant perfect work of art: to that degree that he wondered if +they were really worthy of it, took it in and did it justice; to that degree +that it would have been scarce a miracle if, there in the luggage-room, while +they waited for their things, Sarah had pulled his sleeve and drawn him aside. +“You’re right; we haven’t quite known what you mean, Mother +and I, but now we see. Chad’s magnificent; what can one want more? If +<i>this</i> is the kind of thing—!” On which they might, as it +were, have embraced and begun to work together. +</p> + +<p> +Ah how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness—which was merely +general and noticed nothing—<i>would</i> they work together? Strether +knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous: people +couldn’t notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an +hour. Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad’s display. Yet, +none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim Pocock had +said nothing either—hadn’t said, that is, what Strether wanted, +though he had said much else—it all suddenly bounced back to their being +either stupid or wilful. It was more probably on the whole the former; so that +that would be the drawback of the bridling brightness. Yes, they would bridle +and be bright; they would make the best of what was before them, but their +observation would fail; it would be beyond them; they simply wouldn’t +understand. Of what use would it be then that they had come?—if they +weren’t to be intelligent up to <i>that</i> point: unless indeed he +himself were utterly deluded and extravagant? Was he, on this question of +Chad’s improvement, fantastic and away from the truth? Did he live in a +false world, a world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present +slight irritation—in the face now of Jim’s silence in +particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the +real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the +Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as <i>he</i> had +practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms +in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane +where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly? +</p> + +<p> +He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when once he +had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with Maria Gostrey +and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little Jeanne, with Lambert +Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome himself. Wouldn’t it +be found to have made more for reality to be silly with these persons than sane +with Sarah and Jim? Jim in fact, he presently made up his mind, was +individually out of it; Jim didn’t care; Jim hadn’t come out either +for Chad or for him; Jim in short left the moral side to Sally and indeed +simply availed himself now, for the sense of recreation, of the fact that he +left almost everything to Sally. He was nothing compared to Sally, and not so +much by reason of Sally’s temper and will as by that of her more +developed type and greater acquaintance with the world. He quite frankly and +serenely confessed, as he sat there with Strether, that he felt his type hang +far in the rear of his wife’s and still further, if possible, in the rear +of his sister’s. Their types, he well knew, were recognised and +acclaimed; whereas the most a leading Woollett business-man could hope to +achieve socially, and for that matter industrially, was a certain freedom to +play into this general glamour. +</p> + +<p> +The impression he made on our friend was another of the things that marked our +friend’s road. It was a strange impression, especially as so soon +produced; Strether had received it, he judged, all in the twenty minutes; it +struck him at least as but in a minor degree the work of the long Woollett +years. Pocock was normally and consentingly though not quite wittingly out of +the question. It was despite his being normal; it was despite his being +cheerful; it was despite his being a leading Woollett business-man; and the +determination of his fate left him thus perfectly usual—as everything +else about it was clearly, to his sense, not less so. He seemed to say that +there was a whole side of life on which the perfectly usual <i>was</i> for +leading Woollett business-men to be out of the question. He made no more of it +than that, and Strether, so far as Jim was concerned, desired to make no more. +Only Strether’s imagination, as always, worked, and he asked himself if +this side of life were not somehow connected, for those who figured on it with +the fact of marriage. Would <i>his</i> relation to it, had he married ten years +before, have become now the same as Pocock’s? Might it even become the +same should he marry in a few months? Should he ever know himself as much out +of the question for Mrs. Newsome as Jim knew himself—in a dim +way—for Mrs. Jim? +</p> + +<p> +To turn his eyes in that direction was to be personally reassured; he was +different from Pocock; he had affirmed himself differently and was held after +all in higher esteem. What none the less came home to him, however, at this +hour, was that the society over there, that of which Sarah and Mamie—and, +in a more eminent way, Mrs. Newsome herself—were specimens, was +essentially a society of women, and that poor Jim wasn’t in it. He +himself Lambert Strether, <i>was</i> as yet in some degree—which was an +odd situation for a man; but it kept coming back to him in a whimsical way that +he should perhaps find his marriage had cost him his place. This occasion +indeed, whatever that fancy represented, was not a time of sensible exclusion +for Jim, who was in a state of manifest response to the charm of his adventure. +Small and fat and constantly facetious, straw-coloured and destitute of marks, +he would have been practically indistinguishable hadn’t his constant +preference for light-grey clothes, for white hats, for very big cigars and very +little stories, done what it could for his identity. There were signs in him, +though none of them plaintive, of always paying for others; and the principal +one perhaps was just this failure of type. It was with this that he paid, +rather than with fatigue or waste; and also doubtless a little with the effort +of humour—never irrelevant to the conditions, to the relations, with +which he was acquainted. +</p> + +<p> +He gurgled his joy as they rolled through the happy streets; he declared that +his trip was a regular windfall, and that he wasn’t there, he was eager +to remark, to hang back from anything: he didn’t know quite what Sally +had come for, but <i>he</i> had come for a good time. Strether indulged him +even while wondering if what Sally wanted her brother to go back for was to +become like her husband. He trusted that a good time was to be, out and out, +the programme for all of them; and he assented liberally to Jim’s +proposal that, disencumbered and irresponsible—his things were in the +omnibus with those of the others—they should take a further turn round +before going to the hotel. It wasn’t for <i>him</i> to tackle +Chad—it was Sally’s job; and as it would be like her, he felt, to +open fire on the spot, it wouldn’t be amiss of them to hold off and give +her time. Strether, on his side, only asked to give her time; so he jogged with +his companion along boulevards and avenues, trying to extract from meagre +material some forecast of his catastrophe. He was quick enough to see that Jim +Pocock declined judgement, had hovered quite round the outer edge of discussion +and anxiety, leaving all analysis of their question to the ladies alone and now +only feeling his way toward some small droll cynicism. It broke out afresh, the +cynicism—it had already shown a flicker—in a but slightly deferred: +“Well, hanged if I would if <i>I</i> were he!” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you wouldn’t in Chad’s place—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Give up this to go back and boss the advertising!” Poor Jim, with +his arms folded and his little legs out in the open fiacre, drank in the +sparkling Paris noon and carried his eyes from one side of their vista to the +other. “Why I want to come right out and live here myself. And I want to +live while I <i>am</i> here too. I feel with <i>you</i>—oh you’ve +been grand, old man, and I’ve twigged—that it ain’t right to +worry Chad. <i>I</i> don’t mean to persecute him; I couldn’t in +conscience. It’s thanks to you at any rate that I’m here, and +I’m sure I’m much obliged. You’re a lovely pair.” +</p> + +<p> +There were things in this speech that Strether let pass for the time. +“Don’t you then think it important the advertising should be +thoroughly taken in hand? Chad <i>will</i> be, so far as capacity is +concerned,” he went on, “the man to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where did he get his capacity,” Jim asked, “over +here?” +</p> + +<p> +“He didn’t get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over +here he hasn’t inevitably lost it. He has a natural turn for business, an +extraordinary head. He comes by that,” Strether explained, +“honestly enough. He’s in that respect his father’s son, and +also—for she’s wonderful in her way too—his mother’s. +He has other tastes and other tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are +quite right about his having that. He’s very remarkable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I guess he is!” Jim Pocock comfortably sighed. “But if +you’ve believed so in his making us hum, why have you so prolonged the +discussion? Don’t you know we’ve been quite anxious about +you?” +</p> + +<p> +These questions were not informed with earnestness, but Strether saw he must +none the less make a choice and take a line. “Because, you see, +I’ve greatly liked it. I’ve liked my Paris, I dare say I’ve +liked it too much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you old wretch!” Jim gaily exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +“But nothing’s concluded,” Strether went on. “The case +is more complex than it looks from Woollett.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well, it looks bad enough from Woollett!” Jim declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Even after all I’ve written?” +</p> + +<p> +Jim bethought himself. “Isn’t it what you’ve written that has +made Mrs. Newsome pack us off? That at least and Chad’s not turning +up?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether made a reflexion of his own. “I see. That she should do +something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore of course come +out to act.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” Jim concurred—“to act. But Sally comes out to +act, you know,” he lucidly added, “every time she leaves the house. +She never comes out but she <i>does</i> act. She’s acting moreover now +for her mother, and that fixes the scale.” Then he wound up, opening all +his senses to it, with a renewed embrace of pleasant Paris. “We +haven’t all the same at Woollett got anything like this.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether continued to consider. “I’m bound to say for you all that +you strike me as having arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of mind. +You don’t show your claws. I felt just now in Mrs. Pocock no symptom of +that. She isn’t fierce,” he went on. “I’m such a +nervous idiot that I thought she might be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh don’t you know her well enough,” Pocock asked, “to +have noticed that she never gives herself away, any more than her mother ever +does? They ain’t fierce, either of ‘em; they let you come quite +close. They wear their fur the smooth side out—the warm side in. Do you +know what they are?” Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the +question, as Strether felt, but half his care—“do you know what +they are? They’re about as intense as they can live.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes”—and Strether’s concurrence had a positive +precipitation; “they’re about as intense as they can live.” +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t lash about and shake the cage,” said Jim, who +seemed pleased with his analogy; “and it’s at feeding-time that +they’re quietest. But they always get there.” +</p> + +<p> +“They do indeed—they always get there!” Strether replied with +a laugh that justified his confession of nervousness. He disliked to be talking +sincerely of Mrs. Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked insincerely. But +there was something he wanted to know, a need created in him by her recent +intermission, by his having given from the first so much, as now more than ever +appeared to him, and got so little. It was as if a queer truth in his +companion’s metaphor had rolled over him with a rush. She <i>had</i> been +quiet at feeding-time; she had fed, and Sarah had fed with her, out of the big +bowl of all his recent free communication, his vividness and pleasantness, his +ingenuity and even his eloquence, while the current of her response had +steadily run thin. Jim meanwhile however, it was true, slipped +characteristically into shallowness from the moment he ceased to speak out of +the experience of a husband. +</p> + +<p> +“But of course Chad has now the advantage of being there before her. If +he doesn’t work that for all it’s worth—!” He sighed +with contingent pity at his brother-in-law’s possible want of resource. +“He has worked it on <i>you</i>, pretty well, eh?” and he asked the +next moment if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in +the American manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing +to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock’s part a play of innuendo +as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and +they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited +to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as +different; and he could scarce have explained the discouragement he drew from +the absence of this testimony. It was what he had taken his own stand on, so +far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all only going to see nothing he +had only wasted his time. He gave his friend till the very last moment, till +they had come into sight of the hotel; and when poor Pocock only continued +cheerful and envious and funny he fairly grew to dislike him, to feel him +extravagantly common. If they were <i>all</i> going to see +nothing!—Strether knew, as this came back to him, that he was also +letting Pocock represent for him what Mrs. Newsome wouldn’t see. He went +on disliking, in the light of Jim’s commonness, to talk to him about that +lady; yet just before the cab pulled up he knew the extent of his desire for +the real word from Woollett. +</p> + +<p> +“Has Mrs. Newsome at all given way—?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Given way’?”—Jim echoed it with the practical +derision of his sense of a long past. +</p> + +<p> +“Under the strain, I mean, of hope deferred, of disappointment repeated +and thereby intensified.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh is she prostrate, you mean?”—he had his categories in +hand. “Why yes, she’s prostrate—just as Sally is. But +they’re never so lively, you know, as when they’re +prostrate.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah Sarah’s prostrate?” Strether vaguely murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s when they’re prostrate that they most sit up.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Mrs. Newsome’s sitting up?” +</p> + +<p> +“All night, my boy—for <i>you!</i>” And Jim fetched him, with +a vulgar little guffaw, a thrust that gave relief to the picture. But he had +got what he wanted. He felt on the spot that this <i>was</i> the real word from +Woollett. “So don’t you go home!” Jim added while he alighted +and while his friend, letting him profusely pay the cabman, sat on in a +momentary muse. Strether wondered if that were the real word too. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +As the door of Mrs. Pocock’s salon was pushed open for him, the next day, +well before noon, he was reached by a voice with a charming sound that made him +just falter before crossing the threshold. Madame de Vionnet was already on the +field, and this gave the drama a quicker pace than he felt it as +yet—though his suspense had increased—in the power of any act of +his own to do. He had spent the previous evening with all his old friends +together yet he would still have described himself as quite in the dark in +respect to a forecast of their influence on his situation. It was strange now, +none the less, that in the light of this unexpected note of her presence he +felt Madame de Vionnet a part of that situation as she hadn’t even yet +been. She was alone, he found himself assuming, with Sarah, and there was a +bearing in that—somehow beyond his control—on his personal fate. +Yet she was only saying something quite easy and independent—the thing +she had come, as a good friend of Chad’s, on purpose to say. “There +isn’t anything at all—? I should be so delighted.” +</p> + +<p> +It was clear enough, when they were there before him, how she had been +received. He saw this, as Sarah got up to greet him, from something fairly +hectic in Sarah’s face. He saw furthermore that they weren’t, as +had first come to him, alone together; he was at no loss as to the identity of +the broad high back presented to him in the embrasure of the window furthest +from the door. Waymarsh, whom he had to-day not yet seen, whom he only knew to +have left the hotel before him, and who had taken part, the night previous, on +Mrs. Pocock’s kind invitation, conveyed by Chad, in the entertainment, +informal but cordial, promptly offered by that lady—Waymarsh had +anticipated him even as Madame de Vionnet had done, and, with his hands in his +pockets and his attitude unaffected by Strether’s entrance, was looking +out, in marked detachment, at the Rue de Rivoli. The latter felt it in the +air—it was immense how Waymarsh could mark things—-that he had +remained deeply dissociated from the overture to their hostess that we have +recorded on Madame de Vionnet’s side. He had, conspicuously, tact, +besides a stiff general view; and this was why he had left Mrs. Pocock to +struggle alone. He would outstay the visitor; he would unmistakeably wait; to +what had he been doomed for months past but waiting? Therefore she was to feel +that she had him in reserve. What support she drew from this was still to be +seen, for, although Sarah was vividly bright, she had given herself up for the +moment to an ambiguous flushed formalism. She had had to reckon more quickly +than she expected; but it concerned her first of all to signify that she was +not to be taken unawares. Strether arrived precisely in time for her showing +it. “Oh you’re too good; but I don’t think I feel quite +helpless. I have my brother—and these American friends. And then you know +I’ve been to Paris. I <i>know</i> Paris,” said Sally Pocock in a +tone that breathed a certain chill on Strether’s heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything’s always +changing, a woman of good will,” Madame de Vionnet threw off, “can +always help a woman. I’m sure you ‘know’—but we know +perhaps different things.” She too, visibly, wished to make no mistake; +but it was a fear of a different order and more kept out of sight. She smiled +in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more familiarly than Mrs. Pocock; she +put out her hand to him without moving from her place; and it came to him in +the course of a minute and in the oddest way that—yes, +positively—she was giving him over to ruin. She was all kindness and +ease, but she couldn’t help so giving him; she was exquisite, and her +being just as she was poured for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into his own +equivocations. How could she know how she was hurting him? She wanted to show +as simple and humble—in the degree compatible with operative charm; but +it was just this that seemed to put him on her side. She struck him as dressed, +as arranged, as prepared infinitely to conciliate—with the very poetry of +good taste in her view of the conditions of her early call. She was ready to +advise about dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the disposition +of Chad’s family. Strether noticed her card on the table—her +coronet and her “Comtesse”—and the imagination was sharp in +him of certain private adjustments in Sarah’s mind. She had never, he was +sure, sat with a “Comtesse” before, and such was the specimen of +that class he had been keeping to play on her. She had crossed the sea very +particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de Vionnet’s own +eyes that this curiosity hadn’t been so successfully met as that she +herself wouldn’t now have more than ever need of him. She looked much as +she had looked to him that morning at Notre Dame; he noted in fact the +suggestive sameness of her discreet and delicate dress. It seemed to +speak—perhaps a little prematurely or too finely—of the sense in +which she would help Mrs. Pocock with the shops. The way that lady took her in, +moreover, added depth to his impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common +wisdom, had escaped. He winced as he saw himself but for that timely prudence +ushering in Maria as a guide and an example. There was however a touch of +relief for him in his glimpse, so far as he had got it, of Sarah’s line. +She “knew Paris.” Madame de Vionnet had, for that matter, lightly +taken this up. “Ah then you’ve a turn for that, an affinity that +belongs to your family. Your brother, though his long experience makes a +difference, I admit, has become one of us in a marvellous way.” And she +appealed to Strether in the manner of a woman who could always glide off with +smoothness into another subject. Wasn’t <i>he</i> struck with the way Mr. +Newsome had made the place his own, and hadn’t he been in a position to +profit by his friend’s wondrous expertness? +</p> + +<p> +Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting herself so promptly +to sound that note, and yet asked himself what other note, after all, she +<i>could</i> strike from the moment she presented herself at all. She could +meet Mrs. Pocock only on the ground of the obvious, and what feature of +Chad’s situation was more eminent than the fact that he had created for +himself a new set of circumstances? Unless she hid herself altogether she could +show but as one of these, an illustration of his domiciled and indeed of his +confirmed condition. And the consciousness of all this in her charming eyes was +so clear and fine that as she thus publicly drew him into her boat she produced +in him such a silent agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as +pusillanimous. “Ah don’t be so charming to me!—for it makes +us intimate, and after all what <i>is</i> between us when I’ve been so +tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?” He +recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately governed his poor +personal aspects: it would be exactly <i>like</i> the way things always turned +out for him that he should affect Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh as launched in a +relation in which he had really never been launched at all. They were at this +very moment—they could only be—attributing to him the full licence +of it, and all by the operation of her own tone with him; whereas his sole +licence had been to cling with intensity to the brink, not to dip so much as a +toe into the flood. But the flicker of his fear on this occasion was not, as +may be added, to repeat itself; it sprang up, for its moment, only to die down +and then go out for ever. To meet his fellow visitor’s invocation and, +with Sarah’s brilliant eyes on him, answer, <i>was</i> quite sufficiently +to step into her boat. During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt +himself proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to +keep the adventurous skiff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he settled +himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was to have the credit of +pulling, pulled. +</p> + +<p> +“That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we <i>do</i> +meet,” Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to Mrs. +Pocock’s mention of her initiated state; and she had immediately added +that, after all, her hostess couldn’t be in need with the good offices of +Mr. Strether so close at hand. “It’s he, I gather, who has learnt +to know his Paris, and to love it, better than any one ever before in so short +a time; so that between him and your brother, when it comes to the point, how +can you possibly want for good guidance? The great thing, Mr. Strether will +show you,” she smiled, “is just to let one’s self go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I’ve not let myself go very far,” Strether answered, +feeling quite as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how +Parisians could talk. “I’m only afraid of showing I haven’t +let myself go far enough. I’ve taken a good deal of time, but I must +quite have had the air of not budging from one spot.” He looked at Sarah +in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and he made, under +Madame de Vionnet’s protection, as it were, his first personal point. +“What has really happened has been that, all the while, I’ve done +what I came out for.” +</p> + +<p> +Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately to take him +up. “You’ve renewed acquaintance with your +friend—you’ve learnt to know him again.” She spoke with such +cheerful helpfulness that they might, in a common cause, have been calling +together and pledged to mutual aid. +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned from the +window. “Oh yes, Countess—he has renewed acquaintance with +<i>me</i>, and he <i>has</i>, I guess, learnt something about me, though I +don’t know how much he has liked it. It’s for Strether himself to +say whether he has felt it justifies his course.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but <i>you</i>,” said the Countess gaily, “are not in the +least what he came out for—is he really, Strether? and I hadn’t you +at all in my mind. I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so much and +with whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the opportunity to take up +threads. What a pleasure for you both!” Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes +on Sarah, bravely continued. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she meant to accept no +version of her movements or plans from any other lips. She required no +patronage and no support, which were but other names for a false position; she +would show in her own way what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a +dry glitter that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning. +“I’ve never wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We’ve +many things to think of at home, and great responsibilities and occupations, +and our home’s not an impossible place. We’ve plenty of +reasons,” Sarah continued a little piercingly, “for everything we +do”—and in short she wouldn’t give herself the least little +scrap away. But she added as one who was always bland and who could afford a +concession: “I’ve come because—well, because we do +come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then fortunately!”—Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the +air. Five minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave, standing +together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving a further exchange of +remarks; only with the emphasised appearance on Waymarsh’s part of a +tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner and as with an instinctive or a +precautionary lightening of his tread, to an open window and his point of +vantage. The glazed and gilded room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, +looked south, and the shutters were bowed upon the summer morning; but the +Tuileries garden and what was beyond it, over which the whole place hung, were +things visible through gaps; so that the far-spreading presence of Paris came +up in coolness, dimness and invitation, in the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, +the crunch of gravel, the click of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that +suggested some parade of the circus. “I think it probable,” said +Mrs. Pocock, “that I shall have the opportunity of going to my +brother’s. I’ve no doubt it’s very pleasant indeed.” +She spoke as to Strether, but her face was turned with an intensity of +brightness to Madame de Vionnet, and there was a moment during which, while she +thus fronted her, our friend expected to hear her add: “I’m much +obliged to you, I’m sure, for inviting me there.” He guessed that +for five seconds these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as +clearly as if they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just +failed—knew it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet, which +told him that she too had felt them in the air, but that the point had luckily +not been made in any manner requiring notice. This left her free to reply only +to what had been said. +</p> + +<p> +“That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me the +best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I shall come to see you, since you’ve been so good”: and +Mrs. Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes. The flush in Sarah’s +cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson spot that was not +without its own bravery; she held her head a good deal up, and it came to +Strether that of the two, at this moment, she was the one who most carried out +the idea of a Countess. He quite took in, however, that she would really return +her visitor’s civility: she wouldn’t report again at Woollett +without at least so much producible history as that in her pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter.” +Madame de Vionnet went on; “and I should have brought her with me if I +hadn’t wished first to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should perhaps +find Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I’ve heard from Mr. Newsome and +whose acquaintance I should so much like my child to make. If I have the +pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it I shall venture to ask her to be +kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will tell you”—she beautifully kept it +up—“that my poor girl is gentle and good and rather lonely. +They’ve made friends, he and she, ever so happily, and he doesn’t, +I believe, think ill of her. As for Jeanne herself he has had the same success +with her that I know he has had here wherever he has turned.” She seemed +to ask him for permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it, +softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had quite +the consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more than halfway would +be odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was <i>with</i> her, and, opposed +even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion to those who were not, he felt, +strangely and confusedly, but excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It +was as if he had positively waited in suspense for something from her that +would let him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it. And +what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served sufficiently +the purpose. “As his success is a matter that I’m sure he’ll +never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple; which it’s +very good of me to say, you know, by the way,” she added as she addressed +herself to him; “considering how little direct advantage I’ve +gained from your triumphs with <i>me</i>. When does one ever see you? I wait at +home and I languish. You’ll have rendered me the service, Mrs. Pocock, at +least,” she wound up, “of giving me one of my much-too-rare +glimpses of this gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that seems so +much, as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether and I are very old +friends,” Sarah allowed, “but the privilege of his society +isn’t a thing I shall quarrel about with any one.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet, dear Sarah,” he freely broke in, “I feel, when I +hear you say that, that you don’t quite do justice to the important truth +of the extent to which—as you’re also mine—I’m +<i>your</i> natural due. I should like much better,” he laughed, +“to see you fight for me.” +</p> + +<p> +She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech—with a +certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score of a freedom +for which she wasn’t quite prepared. It had flared up—for all the +harm he had intended by it—because, confoundedly, he didn’t want +any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be afraid about Madame de +Vionnet. He had never, naturally, called her anything but Sarah at home, and +though he had perhaps never quite so markedly invoked her as his +“dear,” that was somehow partly because no occasion had hitherto +laid so effective a trap for it. But something admonished him now that it was +too late—unless indeed it were possibly too early; and that he at any +rate shouldn’t have pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by it. “Well, Mr. +Strether—!” she murmured with vagueness, yet with sharpness, while +her crimson spot burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that this must be +for the present the limit of her response. Madame de Vionnet had already, +however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh, as if for further participation, moved +again back to them. It was true that the aid rendered by Madame de Vionnet was +questionable; it was a sign that, for all one might confess to with her, and +for all she might complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show +how much of the material of conversation had accumulated between them. +</p> + +<p> +“The real truth is, you know, that you sacrifice one without mercy to +dear old Maria. She leaves no room in your life for anybody else. Do you +know,” she enquired of Mrs. Pocock, “about dear old Maria? The +worst is that Miss Gostrey is really a wonderful woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes indeed,” Strether answered for her, “Mrs. Pocock +knows about Miss Gostrey. Your mother, Sarah, must have told you about her; +your mother knows everything,” he sturdily pursued. “And I +cordially admit,” he added with his conscious gaiety of courage, +“that she’s as wonderful a woman as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah it isn’t <i>I</i> who ‘like,’ dear Mr. Strether, +anything to do with the matter!” Sarah Pocock promptly protested; +“and I’m by no means sure I have—from my mother or from any +one else—a notion of whom you’re talking about.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he won’t let you see her, you know,” Madame de Vionnet +sympathetically threw in. “He never lets <i>me</i>—old friends as +we are: I mean as I am with Maria. He reserves her for his best hours; keeps +her consummately to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the +feast.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Countess, <i>I’ve</i> had some of the crumbs,” +Waymarsh observed with weight and covering her with his large look; which led +her to break in before he could go on. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Comment donc</i>, he shares her with <i>you?</i>” she exclaimed +in droll stupefaction. “Take care you don’t have, before you go +much further, rather more of all <i>ces dames</i> than you may know what to do +with!” +</p> + +<p> +But he only continued in his massive way. “I can post you about the lady, +Mrs. Pocock, so far as you may care to hear. I’ve seen her quite a number +of times, and I was practically present when they made acquaintance. I’ve +kept my eye on her right along, but I don’t know as there’s any +real harm in her.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Harm’?” Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed. “Why +she’s the dearest and cleverest of all the clever and dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you run her pretty close, Countess,” Waymarsh returned with +spirit; “though there’s no doubt she’s pretty well up in +things. She knows her way round Europe. Above all there’s no doubt she +does love Strether.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but we all do that—we all love Strether: it isn’t a +merit!” their fellow visitor laughed, keeping to her idea with a good +conscience at which our friend was aware that he marvelled, though he trusted +also for it, as he met her exquisitely expressive eyes, to some later light. +</p> + +<p> +The prime effect of her tone, however—and it was a truth which his own +eyes gave back to her in sad ironic play—could only be to make him feel +that, to say such things to a man in public, a woman must practically think of +him as ninety years old. He had turned awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at +her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah Pocock’s presence—the +particular quality of it—had made this inevitable; and then he had grown +still redder in proportion as he hated to have shown anything at all. He felt +indeed that he was showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he +offered up his redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be +looking at him with a certain explanatory yearning. Something +deep—something built on their old old relation—passed, in this +complexity, between them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind +all actual queer questions. Waymarsh’s dry bare humour—as it gave +itself to be taken—gloomed out to demand justice. “Well, if you +talk of Miss Barrace I’ve <i>my</i> chance too,” it appeared +stiffly to nod, and it granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to +add that it did so only to save him. The sombre glow stared it at him till it +fairly sounded out—“to save you, poor old man, to save you; to save +you in spite of yourself.” Yet it was somehow just this communication +that showed him to himself as more than ever lost. Still another result of it +was to put before him as never yet that between his comrade and the interest +represented by Sarah there was already a basis. Beyond all question now, yes: +Waymarsh had been in occult relation with Mrs. Newsome—out, out it all +came in the very effort of his face. “Yes, you’re feeling my +hand”—he as good as proclaimed it; “but only because this at +least I <i>shall</i> have got out of the damned Old World: that I shall have +picked up the pieces into which it has caused you to crumble.” It was as +if in short, after an instant, Strether had not only had it from him, but had +recognised that so far as this went the instant had cleared the air. Our friend +understood and approved; he had the sense that they wouldn’t otherwise +speak of it. This would be all, and it would mark in himself a kind of +intelligent generosity. It was with grim Sarah then—Sarah grim for all +her grace—that Waymarsh had begun at ten o’clock in the morning to +save him. Well—if he <i>could</i>, poor dear man, with his big bleak +kindness! The upshot of which crowded perception was that Strether, on his own +side, still showed no more than he absolutely had to. He showed the least +possible by saying to Mrs. Pocock after an interval much briefer than our +glance at the picture reflected in him: “Oh it’s as true as they +please!—There’s no Miss Gostrey for any one but me—not the +least little peep. I keep her to myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s very good of you to notify me,” Sarah replied +without looking at him and thrown for a moment by this discrimination, as the +direction of her eyes showed, upon a dimly desperate little community with +Madame de Vionnet. “But I hope I shan’t miss her too much.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet instantly rallied. “And you know—though it might +occur to one—it isn’t in the least that he’s ashamed of her. +She’s really—in a way—extremely good-looking.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but extremely!” Strether laughed while he wondered at the odd +part he found thus imposed on him. +</p> + +<p> +It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet. “Well, as I +say, you know, I wish you would keep <i>me</i> a little more to yourself. +Couldn’t you name some day for me, some hour—and better soon than +late? I’ll be at home whenever it best suits you. There—I +can’t say fairer.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought a moment while Waymarsh and Mrs. Pocock affected him as +standing attentive. “I did lately call on you. Last week—while Chad +was out of town.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and I was away, as it happened, too. You choose your moments +well. But don’t wait for my next absence, for I shan’t make +another,” Madame de Vionnet declared, “while Mrs. Pocock’s +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“That vow needn’t keep you long, fortunately,” Sarah observed +with reasserted suavity. “I shall be at present but a short time in +Paris. I have my plans for other countries. I meet a number of charming +friends”—and her voice seemed to caress that description of these +persons. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then,” her visitor cheerfully replied, “all the more +reason! To-morrow, for instance, or next day?” she continued to Strether. +“Tuesday would do for me beautifully.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tuesday then with pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“And at half-past five?—or at six?” +</p> + +<p> +It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly waiting +for his answer. It was indeed as if they were arranged, gathered for a +performance, the performance of “Europe” by his confederate and +himself. Well, the performance could only go on. “Say five +forty-five.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five forty-five—good.” And now at last Madame de Vionnet +must leave them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little +further. “I <i>did</i> hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn’t +I still?” +</p> + +<p> +Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. “She’ll return your visit with +me. She’s at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see—of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them. He has +told me so much about her. My great desire’s to give my daughter the +opportunity of making her acquaintance. I’m always on the lookout for +such chances for her. If I didn’t bring her to-day it was only to make +sure first that you’d let me.” After which the charming woman +risked a more intense appeal. “It wouldn’t suit <i>you</i> also to +mention some near time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?” +Strether on his side waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and +it occupied him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at +home—and on her first morning of Paris—while Chad led the others +forth. Oh she was up to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by +an understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come and +find her alone. This was beginning well—for a first day in Paris; and the +thing might be amusing yet. But Madame de Vionnet’s earnestness was +meanwhile beautiful. “You may think me indiscreet, but I’ve +<i>such</i> a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really +delightful kind. You see I throw myself for it on your charity.” +</p> + +<p> +The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it and +behind it as he hadn’t yet had—ministered in a way that almost +frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still, in spite +of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of sympathy with her +petitioner. “Let me say then, dear lady, to back your plea, that Miss +Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all—is charming among the +charming.” +</p> + +<p> +Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get into +motion in time. “Yes, Countess, the American girl’s a thing that +your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we <i>can</i> show +you. But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then,” smiled Madame de Vionnet, “that’s exactly +what I want to do. I’m sure she has much to teach us.” +</p> + +<p> +It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found himself, +by the quick effect of it, moved another way. “Oh that may be! But +don’t speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she +weren’t pure perfection. <i>I</i> at least won’t take that from +you. Mademoiselle de Vionnet,” he explained, in considerable form, to +Mrs. Pocock, “<i>is</i> pure perfection. Mademoiselle de Vionnet +<i>is</i> exquisite.” +</p> + +<p> +It had been perhaps a little portentous, but “Ah?” Sarah simply +glittered. +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to the +facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an inclination to +Sarah. “Miss Jane’s strikingly handsome—in the regular French +style.” +</p> + +<p> +It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though at the +very moment he caught in Sarah’s eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a +vague but unmistakeable “You too?” It made Waymarsh in fact look +consciously over her head. Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however, made her point +in her own way. “I wish indeed I could offer you my poor child as a +dazzling attraction: it would make one’s position simple enough! +She’s as good as she can be, but of course she’s different, and the +question is now—in the light of the way things seem to go—if she +isn’t after all <i>too</i> different: too different I mean from the +splendid type every one is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On +the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good +friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can—to keep us from +fatal benightedness—for my small shy creature. Well,” she wound up +after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff, that she +would speak to her own young charge on the question—“well, we shall +sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and wait for you.” But her last +fine turn was for Strether. “Do speak of us in such a way—!” +</p> + +<p> +“As that something can’t but come of it? Oh something <i>shall</i> +come of it! I take a great interest!” he further declared; and in proof +of it, the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Book Ninth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +“The difficulty is,” Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of +days later, “that I can’t surprise them into the smallest sign of +his not being the same old Chad they’ve been for the last three years +glowering at across the sea. They simply won’t give any, and as a policy, +you know—what you call a <i>parti pris</i>, a deep +game—that’s positively remarkable.” +</p> + +<p> +It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess with the +vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten minutes and begun, +as a help not to worry, to move about before her quite as he moved before +Maria. He had kept his appointment with her to the minute and had been +intensely impatient, though divided in truth between the sense of having +everything to tell her and the sense of having nothing at all. The short +interval had, in the face of their complication, multiplied his +impressions—it being meanwhile to be noted, moreover, that he already +frankly, already almost publicly, viewed the complication as common to them. If +Madame de Vionnet, under Sarah’s eyes, had pulled him into her boat, +there was by this time no doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that +what he had really most been conscious of for many hours together was the +movement of the vessel itself. They were in it together this moment as they +hadn’t yet been, and he hadn’t at present uttered the least of the +words of alarm or remonstrance that had died on his lips at the hotel. He had +other things to say to her than that she had put him in a position; so quickly +had his position grown to affect him as quite excitingly, altogether richly, +inevitable. That the outlook, however—given the point of +exposure—hadn’t cleared up half so much as he had reckoned was the +first warning she received from him on his arrival. She had replied with +indulgence that he was in too great a hurry, and had remarked soothingly that +if she knew how to be patient surely <i>he</i> might be. He felt her presence, +on the spot, he felt her tone and everything about her, as an aid to that +effort; and it was perhaps one of the proofs of her success with him that he +seemed so much to take his ease while they talked. By the time he had explained +to her why his impressions, though multiplied, still baffled him, it was as if +he had been familiarly talking for hours. They baffled him because +Sarah—well, Sarah was deep, deeper than she had ever yet had a chance to +show herself. He didn’t say that this was partly the effect of her +opening so straight down, as it were, into her mother, and that, given Mrs. +Newsome’s profundity, the shaft thus sunk might well have a reach; but he +wasn’t without a resigned apprehension that, at such a rate of confidence +between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved to show how already, at +moments, it had been for him as if he were dealing directly with Mrs. Newsome. +Sarah, to a certainty, would have begun herself to feel it in him—and +this naturally put it in her power to torment him the more. From the moment she +knew he <i>could</i> be tormented—! +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>why</i> can you be?”—his companion was surprised at +his use of the word. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I’m made so—I think of everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah one must never do that,” she smiled. “One must think of +as few things as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” he answered, “one must pick them out right. But all I +mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she’s in a +position to watch me. There’s an element of suspense for me, and she can +see me wriggle. But my wriggling doesn’t matter,” he pursued. +“I can bear it. Besides, I shall wriggle out.” +</p> + +<p> +The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt to be +sincere. “I don’t see how a man can be kinder to a woman than you +are to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming eyes rested on +him with the truth of this he none the less had his humour of honesty. +“When I say suspense I mean, you know,” he laughed, “suspense +about my own case too!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—about your own case too!” It diminished his +magnanimity, but she only looked at him the more tenderly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not, however,” he went on, “that I want to talk to you about +that. It’s my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of +Mrs. Pocock’s advantage.” No, no; though there was a queer present +temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a relief, he +wouldn’t talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn’t work off on her +the anxiety produced in him by Sarah’s calculated omissions of reference. +The effect she produced of representing her mother had been produced—and +that was just the immense, the uncanny part of it—without her having so +much as mentioned that lady. She had brought no message, had alluded to no +question, had only answered his enquiries with hopeless limited propriety. She +had invented a way of meeting them—as if he had been a polite perfunctory +poor relation, of distant degree—that made them almost ridiculous in him. +He couldn’t moreover on his own side ask much without appearing to +publish how he had lately lacked news; a circumstance of which it was +Sarah’s profound policy not to betray a suspicion. These things, all the +same, he wouldn’t breathe to Madame de Vionnet—much as they might +make him walk up and down. And what he didn’t say—as well as what +<i>she</i> didn’t, for she had also her high decencies—enhanced the +effect of his being there with her at the end of ten minutes more intimately on +the basis of saving her than he had yet had occasion to be. It ended in fact by +being quite beautiful between them, the number of things they had a manifest +consciousness of not saying. He would have liked to turn her, critically, to +the subject of Mrs. Pocock, but he so stuck to the line he felt to be the point +of honour and of delicacy that he scarce even asked her what her personal +impression had been. He knew it, for that matter, without putting her to +trouble: that she wondered how, with such elements, Sarah could still have no +charm, was one of the principal things she held her tongue about. Strether +would have been interested in her estimate of the elements—indubitably +there, some of them, and to be appraised according to taste—but he denied +himself even the luxury of this diversion. The way Madame de Vionnet affected +him to-day was in itself a kind of demonstration of the happy employment of +gifts. How could a woman think Sarah had charm who struck one as having arrived +at it herself by such different roads? On the other hand of course Sarah +wasn’t obliged to have it. He felt as if somehow Madame de Vionnet +<i>was</i>. The great question meanwhile was what Chad thought of his sister; +which was naturally ushered in by that of Sarah’s apprehension of Chad. +<i>That</i> they could talk of, and with a freedom purchased by their +discretion in other senses. The difficulty however was that they were reduced +as yet to conjecture. He had given them in the day or two as little of a lead +as Sarah, and Madame de Vionnet mentioned that she hadn’t seen him since +his sister’s arrival. +</p> + +<p> +“And does that strike you as such an age?” +</p> + +<p> +She met it in all honesty. “Oh I won’t pretend I don’t miss +him. Sometimes I see him every day. Our friendship’s like that. Make what +you will of it!” she whimsically smiled; a little flicker of the kind, +occasional in her, that had more than once moved him to wonder what he might +best make of <i>her</i>. “But he’s perfectly right,” she +hastened to add, “and I wouldn’t have him fail in any way at +present for the world. I’d sooner not see him for three months. I begged +him to be beautiful to them, and he fully feels it for himself.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a mixture of +lucidity and mystery. She fell in at moments with the theory about her he most +cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it into air. She spoke now as if +her art were all an innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an +art. “Oh he’s giving himself up, and he’ll do so to the end. +How can he but want, now that it’s within reach, his full +impression?—which is much more important, you know, than either yours or +mine. But he’s just soaking,” Strether said as he came back; +“he’s going in conscientiously for a saturation. I’m bound to +say he <i>is</i> very good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” she quietly replied, “to whom do you say it?” And +then more quietly still: “He’s capable of anything.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether more than reaffirmed—“Oh he’s excellent. I more and +more like,” he insisted, “to see him with them;” though the +oddity of this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It +placed the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the +product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and made the +phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been on the very +point of asking her for some more detailed account of the whole business than +he had yet received from her. The occasion almost forced upon him some question +as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such miracles presented from +her own singularly close place of survey. The moment in fact however passed, +giving way to more present history, and he continued simply to mark his +appreciation of the happy truth. “It’s a tremendous comfort to feel +how one can trust him.” And then again while for a little she said +nothing—as if after all to <i>her</i> trust there might be a special +limit: “I mean for making a good show to them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she thoughtfully returned—“but if they shut +their eyes to it!” +</p> + +<p> +Strether for an instant had his own thought. “Well perhaps that +won’t matter!” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean because he probably—do what they will—won’t +like them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh ‘do what they will’—! They won’t do much; +especially if Sarah hasn’t more—well, more than one has yet made +out—to give.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet weighed it. “Ah she has all her grace!” It was a +statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently +straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether the effect was +somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. “She may be persuasive and +caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of +him,” she wound up—“well, as neither you nor I have.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she <i>may</i>”—and now Strether smiled. “But he +has spent all his time each day with Jim. He’s still showing Jim +round.” +</p> + +<p> +She visibly wondered. “Then how about Jim?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took a turn before he answered. “Hasn’t he given you Jim? +Hasn’t he before this ‘done’ him for you?” He was a +little at a loss. “Doesn’t he tell you things?” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated. “No”—and their eyes once more gave and took. +“Not as you do. You somehow make me see them—or at least feel them. +And I haven’t asked too much,” she added; “I’ve of late +wanted so not to worry him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah for that, so have I,” he said with encouraging assent; so +that—as if she had answered everything—they were briefly sociable +on it. It threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn; +stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. “You see +Jim’s really immense. I think it will be Jim who’ll do it.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Get hold of him?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—just the other thing. Counteract Sarah’s spell.” +And he showed now, our friend, how far he had worked it out. “Jim’s +intensely cynical.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dear Jim!” Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, literally—dear Jim! He’s awful. What <i>he</i> wants, +heaven forgive him, is to help us.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean”—she was eager—“help <i>me?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though +without as yet seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you—if you +don’t mind—he sees you as awful.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Awful’?”—she wanted it all. +</p> + +<p> +“A regular bad one—though of course of a tremendously superior +kind. Dreadful, delightful, irresistible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I <i>must</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know,” Strether +suggested, “disappoint him.” +</p> + +<p> +She was droll and humble about it. “I can but try. But my wickedness +then,” she went on, “is my recommendation for him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours, he +associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above all wanted +to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp. Nothing will persuade +him—in the light, that is, of my behaviour—that I really +didn’t, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it was too +late. He wouldn’t have expected it of me; but men of my age, at +Woollett—and especially the least likely ones—have been noted as +liable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual, the +ideal. It’s an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been observed +as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim’s view, for what it’s +worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law,” Strether continued to +explain, “have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena, late +or early—which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other side. +Besides,” he added, “I don’t think he really wants Chad back. +If Chad doesn’t come—” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll have”—Madame de Vionnet quite +apprehended—“more of the free hand?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Chad’s the bigger man.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he’ll work now, <i>en dessous</i>, to keep him quiet?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—he won’t ‘work’ at all, and he won’t do +anything <i>en dessous</i>. He’s very decent and won’t be a traitor +in the camp. But he’ll be amused with his own little view of our +duplicity, he’ll sniff up what he supposes to be Paris from morning till +night, and he’ll be, as to the rest, for Chad—well, just what he +is.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought it over. “A warning?” +</p> + +<p> +He met it almost with glee. “You <i>are</i> as wonderful as everybody +says!” And then to explain all he meant: “I drove him about for his +first hour, and do you know what—all beautifully unconscious—he +most put before me? Why that something like <i>that</i> is at bottom, as an +improvement to his present state, as in fact the real redemption of it, what +they think it may not be too late to make of our friend.” With which, as, +taking it in, she seemed, in her recurrent alarm, bravely to gaze at the +possibility, he completed his statement. “But it <i>is</i> too late. +Thanks to you!” +</p> + +<p> +It drew from her again one of her indefinite reflexions. “Oh +‘me’—after all!” +</p> + +<p> +He stood before her so exhilarated by his demonstration that he could fairly be +jocular. “Everything’s comparative. You’re better than +<i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“You”—she could but answer him—“are better than +anything.” But she had another thought. “<i>Will</i> Mrs. Pocock +come to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—she’ll do that. As soon, that is, as my friend +Waymarsh—<i>her</i> friend now—leaves her leisure.” +</p> + +<p> +She showed an interest. “Is he so much her friend as that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, didn’t you see it all at the hotel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh”—she was amused—“‘all’ is a good +deal to say. I don’t know—I forget. I lost myself in +<i>her</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“You were splendid,” Strether returned—“but +‘all’ isn’t a good deal to say: it’s only a little. Yet +it’s charming so far as it goes. She wants a man to herself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And hasn’t she got <i>you?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think she looked at me—or even at you—as if she +had?” Strether easily dismissed that irony. “Every one, you see, +must strike her as having somebody. You’ve got Chad—and Chad has +got you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see”—she made of it what she could. “And +you’ve got Maria.” +</p> + +<p> +Well, he on his side accepted that. “I’ve got Maria. And Maria has +got me. So it goes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But Mr. Jim—whom has he got?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh he has got—or it’s as <i>if</i> he had—the whole +place.” +</p> + +<p> +“But for Mr. Waymarsh”—she recalled—“isn’t +Miss Barrace before any one else?” +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head. “Miss Barrace is a <i>raffinée</i>, and her amusement +won’t lose by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather—especially if Sarah +triumphs and she comes in for a view of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“How well you know us!” Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“No—it seems to me it’s we that I know. I know +Sarah—it’s perhaps on that ground only that my feet are firm. +Waymarsh will take her round while Chad takes Jim—and I shall be, I +assure you, delighted for both of them. Sarah will have had what she +requires—she will have paid her tribute to the ideal; and he will have +done about the same. In Paris it’s in the air—so what can one do +less? If there’s a point that, beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, +it’s that she didn’t come out to be narrow. We shall feel at least +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she sighed, “the quantity we seem likely to +‘feel’! But what becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of Mamie—if we’re all provided? Ah for that,” said +Strether, “you can trust Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +“To be, you mean, all right to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He wants +what Jim can give him—and what Jim really won’t—though he has +had it all, and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own personal +impression, and he’ll get it—strong. But as soon as he has got it +Mamie won’t suffer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh Mamie mustn’t <i>suffer!</i>” Madame de Vionnet +soothingly emphasised. +</p> + +<p> +But Strether could reassure her. “Don’t fear. As soon as he has +done with Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you’ll see.” +</p> + +<p> +It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then “Is +she really quite charming?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves. “I +don’t know; I’m watching. I’m studying the case, as it +were—and I dare say I shall be able to tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Is it a case?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I think so. At any rate I shall see.’ +</p> + +<p> +“But haven’t you known her before?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he smiled—“but somehow at home she wasn’t +a case. She has become one since.” It was as if he made it out for +himself. “She has become one here.” +</p> + +<p> +“So very very soon?” +</p> + +<p> +He measured it, laughing. “Not sooner than I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you became one—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very very soon. The day I arrived.” +</p> + +<p> +Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. “Ah but the day you +arrived you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?” +</p> + +<p> +He paused again, but he brought it out. “Hasn’t she met +Chad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly—but not for the first time. He’s an old +friend.” At which Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that +made her go on: “You mean that for <i>her</i> at least he’s a new +person—that she sees him as different?” +</p> + +<p> +“She sees him as different.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how does she see him?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether gave it up. “How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep +young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is every one so deep? Is she too?” +</p> + +<p> +“So it strikes me deeper than I thought. But wait a little—between +us we’ll make it out. You’ll judge for that matter yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. “Then +she <i>will</i> come with her?—I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that. +But leave it all to Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, +“the things I leave to Chad!” +</p> + +<p> +The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his vision of +her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. “Oh well—trust +him. Trust him all the way.” He had indeed no sooner so spoken than the +queer displacement of his point of view appeared again to come up for him in +the very sound, which drew from him a short laugh, immediately checked. He +became still more advisory. “When they do come give them plenty of Miss +Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. “For Mamie to +hate her?” +</p> + +<p> +He had another of his corrective headshakes. “Mamie won’t. Trust +<i>them</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always come back +to: “It’s <i>you</i> I trust. But I was sincere,” she said, +“at the hotel. I did, I do, want my child—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?”—Strether waited with deference while she appeared to +hesitate as to how to put it. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, to do what she can for me.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether for a little met her eyes on it; after which something that might have +been unexpected to her came from him. “Poor little duck!” +</p> + +<p> +Not more expected for himself indeed might well have been her echo of it. +“Poor little duck! But she immensely wants herself,” she said, +“to see our friend’s cousin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that what she thinks her?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what we call the young lady.” +</p> + +<p> +He thought again; then with a laugh: “Well, your daughter will help +you.” +</p> + +<p> +And now at last he took leave of her, as he had been intending for five +minutes. But she went part of the way with him, accompanying him out of the +room and into the next and the next. Her noble old apartment offered a +succession of three, the first two of which indeed, on entering, smaller than +the last, but each with its faded and formal air, enlarged the office of the +antechamber and enriched the sense of approach. Strether fancied them, liked +them, and, passing through them with her more slowly now, met a sharp renewal +of his original impression. He stopped, he looked back; the whole thing made a +vista, which he found high melancholy and sweet—full, once more, of dim +historic shades, of the faint faraway cannon-roar of the great Empire. It was +doubtless half the projection of his mind, but his mind was a thing that, among +old waxed parquets, pale shades of pink and green, pseudo-classic candelabra, +he had always needfully to reckon with. They could easily make him irrelevant. +The oddity, the originality, the poetry—he didn’t know what to call +it—of Chad’s connexion reaffirmed for him its romantic side. +“They ought to see this, you know. They <i>must</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Pococks?”—she looked about in deprecation; she seemed to +see gaps he didn’t. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamie and Sarah—Mamie in particular.” +</p> + +<p> +“My shabby old place? But <i>their</i> things—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh their things! You were talking of what will do something for +you—” +</p> + +<p> +“So that it strikes you,” she broke in, “that my poor place +may? Oh,” she ruefully mused, “that <i>would</i> be +desperate!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know what I wish?” he went on. “I wish Mrs. Newsome +herself could have a look.” +</p> + +<p> +She stared, missing a little his logic. “It would make a +difference?” +</p> + +<p> +Her tone was so earnest that as he continued to look about he laughed. +“It might!” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ve told her, you tell me—” +</p> + +<p> +“All about you? Yes, a wonderful story. But there’s all the +indescribable—what one gets only on the spot.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you!” she charmingly and sadly smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all about me here,” he freely continued. “Mrs. +Newsome feels things.” +</p> + +<p> +But she seemed doomed always to come back to doubt. “No one feels so much +as <i>you</i>. No—not any one.” +</p> + +<p> +“So much the worse then for every one. It’s very easy.” +</p> + +<p> +They were by this time in the antechamber, still alone together, as she +hadn’t rung for a servant. The antechamber was high and square, grave and +suggestive too, a little cold and slippery even in summer, and with a few old +prints that were precious, Strether divined, on the walls. He stood in the +middle, slightly lingering, vaguely directing his glasses, while, leaning +against the door-post of the room, she gently pressed her cheek to the side of +the recess. “<i>You</i> would have been a friend.” +</p> + +<p> +“I?”—it startled him a little. +</p> + +<p> +“For the reason you say. You’re not stupid.” And then +abruptly, as if bringing it out were somehow founded on that fact: +“We’re marrying Jeanne.” +</p> + +<p> +It affected him on the spot as a move in a game, and he was even then not +without the sense that that wasn’t the way Jeanne should be married. But +he quickly showed his interest, though—as quickly afterwards struck +him—with an absurd confusion of mind. “‘You’? You +and—a—not Chad?” Of course it was the child’s father +who made the ‘we,’ but to the child’s father it would have +cost him an effort to allude. Yet didn’t it seem the next minute that +Monsieur de Vionnet was after all not in question?—since she had gone on +to say that it was indeed to Chad she referred and that he had been in the +whole matter kindness itself. +</p> + +<p> +“If I must tell you all, it is he himself who has put us in the way. I +mean in the way of an opportunity that, so far as I can yet see, is all I could +possibly have dreamed of. For all the trouble Monsieur de Vionnet will ever +take!” It was the first time she had spoken to him of her husband, and he +couldn’t have expressed how much more intimate with her it suddenly made +him feel. It wasn’t much, in truth—there were other things in what +she was saying that were far more; but it was as if, while they stood there +together so easily in these cold chambers of the past, the single touch had +shown the reach of her confidence. “But our friend,” she asked, +“hasn’t then told you?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has told me nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it has come with rather a rush—all in a very few days; and +hasn’t moreover yet taken a form that permits an announcement. It’s +only for you—absolutely you alone—that I speak; I so want you to +know.” The sense he had so often had, since the first hour of his +disembarkment, of being further and further “in,” treated him again +at this moment to another twinge; but in this wonderful way of her putting him +in there continued to be something exquisitely remorseless. “Monsieur de +Vionnet will accept what he <i>must</i> accept. He has proposed half a dozen +things—each one more impossible than the other; and he wouldn’t +have found this if he lives to a hundred. Chad found it,” she continued +with her lighted, faintly flushed, her conscious confidential face, “in +the quietest way in the world. Or rather it found <i>him</i>—for +everything finds him; I mean finds him right. You’ll think we do such +things strangely—but at my age,” she smiled, “one has to +accept one’s conditions. Our young man’s people had seen her; one +of his sisters, a charming woman—we know all about them—had +observed her somewhere with me. She had spoken to her brother—turned him +on; and we were again observed, poor Jeanne and I, without our in the least +knowing it. It was at the beginning of the winter; it went on for some time; it +outlasted our absence; it began again on our return; and it luckily seems all +right. The young man had met Chad, and he got a friend to approach him—as +having a decent interest in us. Mr. Newsome looked well before he leaped; he +kept beautifully quiet and satisfied himself fully; then only he spoke. +It’s what has for some time past occupied us. It seems as if it were what +would do; really, really all one could wish. There are only two or three points +to be settled—they depend on her father. But this time I think +we’re safe.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, consciously gaping a little, had fairly hung upon her lips. “I +hope so with all my heart.” And then he permitted himself: “Does +nothing depend on <i>her?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah naturally; everything did. But she’s pleased <i>comme tout</i>. +She has been perfectly free; and he—our young friend—is really a +combination. I quite adore him.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether just made sure. “You mean your future son-in-law?” +</p> + +<p> +“Future if we all bring it off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah well,” said Strether decorously, “I heartily hope you +may.” There seemed little else for him to say, though her communication +had the oddest effect on him. Vaguely and confusedly he was troubled by it; +feeling as if he had even himself been concerned in something deep and dim. He +had allowed for depths, but these were greater: and it was as if, +oppressively—indeed absurdly—he was responsible for what they had +now thrown up to the surface. It was—through something ancient and cold +in it—what he would have called the real thing. In short his +hostess’s news, though he couldn’t have explained why, was a +sensible shock, and his oppression a weight he felt he must somehow or other +immediately get rid of. There were too many connexions missing to make it +tolerable he should do anything else. He was prepared to suffer—before +his own inner tribunal—for Chad; he was prepared to suffer even for +Madame de Vionnet. But he wasn’t prepared to suffer for the little girl. +So now having said the proper thing, he wanted to get away. She held him an +instant, however, with another appeal. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I seem to you very awful?” +</p> + +<p> +“Awful? Why so?” But he called it to himself, even as he spoke, his +biggest insincerity yet. +</p> + +<p> +“Our arrangements are so different from yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mine?” Oh he could dismiss that too! “I haven’t any +arrangements.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you must accept mine; all the more that they’re excellent. +They’re founded on a <i>vieille sagesse</i>. There will be much more, if +all goes well, for you to hear and to know, and everything, believe me, for you +to like. Don’t be afraid; you’ll be satisfied.” Thus she +could talk to him of what, of her innermost life—for that was what it +came to—he must “accept”; thus she could extraordinarily +speak as if in such an affair his being satisfied had an importance. It was all +a wonder and made the whole case larger. He had struck himself at the hotel, +before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on earth was he now? +This question was in the air till her own lips quenched it with another. +“And do you suppose <i>he</i>—who loves her so—would do +anything reckless or cruel?” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered what he supposed. “Do you mean your young man—?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome.” It flashed for Strether the +next moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. “He +takes, thank God, the truest tenderest interest in her.” +</p> + +<p> +It deepened indeed. “Oh I’m sure of that!” +</p> + +<p> +“You were talking,” she said, “about one’s trusting +him. You see then how I do.” +</p> + +<p> +He waited a moment—it all came. “I see—I see.” He felt +he really did see. +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t hurt her for the world, nor—assuming she marries +at all—risk anything that might make against her happiness. +And—willingly, at least—he would never hurt <i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her words; +whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her whole +story—what at least he then took for such—reached out to him from +it. With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and +this sense—a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him. He +wanted, once more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a +servant having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come +forward. All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and +impersonally waited, summed up in his last word. “I don’t think, +you know, Chad will tell me anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—perhaps not yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I won’t as yet speak to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s as you’ll think best. You must judge.” +</p> + +<p> +She had finally given him her hand, which he held a moment. “How +<i>much</i> I have to judge!” +</p> + +<p> +“Everything,” said Madame de Vionnet: a remark that was +indeed—with the refined disguised suppressed passion of her +face—what he most carried away. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected him, for the week +now about to end, with a civil consistency of chill that, giving him a higher +idea of her social resource, threw him back on the general reflexion that a +woman could always be amazing. It indeed helped a little to console him that he +felt sure she had for the same period also left Chad’s curiosity hanging; +though on the other hand, for his personal relief, Chad could at least go +through the various motions—and he made them extraordinarily +numerous—of seeing she had a good time. There wasn’t a motion on +which, in her presence, poor Strether could so much as venture, and all he +could do when he was out of it was to walk over for a talk with Maria. He +walked over of course much less than usual, but he found a special compensation +in a certain half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty +expensive day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of as to give +his forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in the morning and had +nevertheless called on the Pococks in the afternoon; but their whole group, he +then found, had dispersed after a fashion of which it would amuse Miss Gostrey +to hear. He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she was so out of it—she +who had really put him in; but she had fortunately always her appetite for +news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a +lamp in a Byzantine vault. It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a +sense as hers a near view would have begun to pay. Within three days, +precisely, the situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an +equilibrium; the effect of his look in at the hotel was to confirm this +appearance. If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh, +Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he himself was +booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the Varieties—which +Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced them. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey drank it in. “What then to-night do the others do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at +Bignon’s.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “And what do they do after? They can’t come straight +home.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, they can’t come straight home—at least Sarah +can’t. It’s their secret, but I think I’ve guessed it.” +Then as she waited: “The circus.” +</p> + +<p> +It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to extravagance. +“There’s no one like you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Like <i>me?</i>”—he only wanted to understand. +</p> + +<p> +“Like all of you together—like all of us: Woollett, Milrose and +their products. We’re abysmal—but may we never be less so! Mr. +Newsome,” she continued, “meanwhile takes Miss +Pocock—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely—to the Français: to see what <i>you</i> took Waymarsh +and me to, a family-bill.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as <i>I</i> did!” But she saw so +much in things. “Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like +that, alone together?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, they’re young people—but they’re old +friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see. And do <i>they</i> dine—for a difference—at +Brébant’s?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh where they dine is their secret too. But I’ve my idea that it +will be, very quietly, at Chad’s own place.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’ll come to him there alone?” +</p> + +<p> +They looked at each other a moment. “He has known her from a child. +Besides,” said Strether with emphasis, “Mamie’s remarkable. +She’s splendid.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Do you mean she expects to bring it off?” +</p> + +<p> +“Getting hold of him? No—I think not.” +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t want him enough?—or doesn’t believe in her +power?” On which as he said nothing she continued: “She finds she +doesn’t care for him?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I think she finds she does. But that’s what I mean by so +describing her. It’s <i>if</i> she does that she’s splendid. But +we’ll see,” he wound up, “where she comes out.” +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to show me sufficiently,” Miss Gostrey laughed, +“where she goes in! But is her childhood’s friend,” she +asked, “permitting himself recklessly to flirt with her?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—not that. Chad’s also splendid. They’re <i>all</i> +splendid!” he declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and +envy. “They’re at least <i>happy</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Happy?”—it appeared, with their various difficulties, to +surprise her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—I seem to myself among them the only one who +isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +She demurred. “With your constant tribute to the ideal?” +</p> + +<p> +He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a moment his +impression. “I mean they’re living. They’re rushing about. +I’ve already had my rushing. I’m waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“But aren’t you,” she asked by way of cheer, “waiting +with <i>me?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her in all kindness. “Yes—if it weren’t for +that!” +</p> + +<p> +“And you help me to wait,” she said. “However,” she +went on, “I’ve really something for you that will help you to wait +and which you shall have in a minute. Only there’s something more I want +from you first. I revel in Sarah.” +</p> + +<p> +“So do I. If it weren’t,” he again amusedly sighed, +“for <i>that</i>—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem to keep +you going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great.” +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>is</i>” Strether fully assented: “great! Whatever +happens, she won’t, with these unforgettable days, have lived in +vain.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey had a pause. “You mean she has fallen in love?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean she wonders if she hasn’t—and it serves all her +purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has indeed,” Maria laughed, “served women’s +purposes before!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—for giving in. But I doubt if the idea—as an +idea—has ever up to now answered so well for holding out. That’s +<i>her</i> tribute to the ideal—we each have our own. It’s her +romance—and it seems to me better on the whole than mine. To have it in +Paris too,” he explained—“on this classic ground, in this +charged infectious air, with so sudden an intensity: well, it’s more than +she expected. She has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a +real affinity—and with everything to enhance the drama.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey followed. “Jim for instance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr. +Waymarsh. It’s the crowning touch—it supplies the colour. +He’s positively separated.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she herself unfortunately isn’t—that supplies the colour +too.” Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow—! “Is <i>he</i> +in love?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the room; then came a +little nearer. “Will you never tell any one in the world as long as ever +you live?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never.” It was charming. +</p> + +<p> +“He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear,” Strether hastened +to add. +</p> + +<p> +“Of her being affected by it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of <i>his</i> being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. +He’s helping her, he’s floating her over, by kindness.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria rather funnily considered it. “Floating her over in champagne? The +kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour when all Paris is crowding to +profane delights, and in the—well, in the great temple, as one hears of +it, of pleasure?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s just <i>it</i>, for both of them,” Strether +insisted—“and all of a supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the +feverish hour, the putting before her of a hundred francs’ worth of food +and drink, which they’ll scarcely touch—all that’s the dear +man’s own romance; the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, +in which he abounds. And the circus afterwards—which is cheaper, but +which he’ll find some means of making as dear as +possible—that’s also <i>his</i> tribute to the ideal. It does for +him. He’ll see her through. They won’t talk of anything worse than +you and me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we’re bad enough perhaps, thank heaven,” she laughed, +“to upset them! Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old +coquette.” And the next moment she had dropped everything for a different +pursuit. “What you don’t appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet +has become engaged. She’s to marry—it has been definitely +arranged—young Monsieur de Montbron.” +</p> + +<p> +He fairly blushed. “Then—if you know it—it’s +‘out’?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I often know things that are <i>not</i> out? However,” +she said, “this will be out to-morrow. But I see I’ve counted too +much on your possible ignorance. You’ve been before me, and I don’t +make you jump as I hoped.” +</p> + +<p> +He gave a gasp at her insight. “You never fail! I’ve <i>had</i> my +jump. I had it when I first heard.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then if you knew why didn’t you tell me as soon as you came +in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken of.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey wondered. “From Madame de Vionnet herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“As a probability—not quite a certainty: a good cause in which Chad +has been working. So I’ve waited.” +</p> + +<p> +“You need wait no longer,” she returned. “It reached me +yesterday—roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from +one of the young man’s own people—as a thing quite settled. I was +only keeping it for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You thought Chad wouldn’t have told me?” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated. “Well, if he hasn’t—” +</p> + +<p> +“He hasn’t. And yet the thing appears to have been practically his +doing. So there we are.” +</p> + +<p> +“There we are!” Maria candidly echoed. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s why I jumped. I jumped,” he continued to explain, +“because it means, this disposition of the daughter, that there’s +now nothing else: nothing else but him and the mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Still—it simplifies.” +</p> + +<p> +“It simplifies”—he fully concurred. “But that’s +precisely where we are. It marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer +to Mrs. Newsome’s demonstration.” +</p> + +<p> +“It tells,” Maria asked, “the worst?” +</p> + +<p> +“The worst.” +</p> + +<p> +“But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?” +</p> + +<p> +“He doesn’t care for Sarah.” +</p> + +<p> +At which Miss Gostrey’s eyebrows went up. “You mean she has already +dished herself?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and again before this, +to the end; but the vista seemed each time longer. “He wants his good +friend to know the best. I mean the measure of his attachment. She asked for a +sign, and he thought of that one. There it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“A concession to her jealousy?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether pulled up. “Yes—call it that. Make it lurid—for that +makes my problem richer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, let us have it lurid—for I quite agree with you that we +want none of our problems poor. But let us also have it clear. Can he, in the +midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of it, have seriously cared for +Jeanne?—cared, I mean, as a young man at liberty would have cared?” +</p> + +<p> +Well, Strether had mastered it. “I think he can have thought it would be +charming if he <i>could</i> care. It would be nicer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nicer than being tied up to Marie?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can never +hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite right,” said +Strether. “It would certainly have been nicer. Even when a thing’s +already nice there mostly <i>is</i> some other thing that would have been +nicer—or as to which we wonder if it wouldn’t. But his question was +all the same a dream. He <i>couldn’t</i> care in that way. He <i>is</i> +tied up to Marie. The relation is too special and has gone too far. It’s +the very basis, and his recent lively contribution toward establishing Jeanne +in life has been his definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de Vionnet +that he has ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile,” he went on, “if +Sarah has at all directly attacked him.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion brooded. “But won’t he wish for his own satisfaction +to make his ground good to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—he’ll leave it to me, he’ll leave everything to me. +I ‘sort of’ feel”—he worked it out—“that +the whole thing will come upon me. Yes, I shall have every inch and every ounce +of it. I shall be <i>used</i> for it—!” And Strether lost himself +in the prospect. Then he fancifully expressed the issue. “To the last +drop of my blood.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria, however, roundly protested. “Ah you’ll please keep a drop +for <i>me</i>. I shall have a use for it!”—which she didn’t +however follow up. She had come back the next moment to another matter. +“Mrs. Pocock, with her brother, is trusting only to her general +charm?” +</p> + +<p> +“So it would seem.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the charm’s not working?” +</p> + +<p> +Well, Strether put it otherwise, “She’s sounding the note of +home—which is the very best thing she can do.” +</p> + +<p> +“The best for Madame de Vionnet?” +</p> + +<p> +“The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Right,” Maria asked, “when it fails?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had a pause. “The difficulty’s Jim. Jim’s the note +of home.” +</p> + +<p> +She debated. “Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.” +</p> + +<p> +But he had it all. “The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants +him—the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart, at +the door of <i>that</i> tent; and Jim <i>is</i>, frankly speaking, extremely +awful.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria stared. “And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with +him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh he’s all right for <i>me!</i>” Strether laughed. +“Any one’s good enough for <i>me</i>. But Sarah shouldn’t, +all the same, have brought him. She doesn’t appreciate him.” +</p> + +<p> +His friend was amused with this statement of it. “Doesn’t know, you +mean, how bad he is?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether shook his head with decision. “Not really.” +</p> + +<p> +She wondered. “Then doesn’t Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +It made him frankly do the same. “Well, no—since you ask me.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria rubbed it in. “Not really either?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all. She rates him rather high.” With which indeed, +immediately, he took himself up. “Well, he <i>is</i> good too, in his +way. It depends on what you want him for.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn’t let it depend on +anything—wouldn’t have it, and wouldn’t want him, at any +price. “It suits my book,” she said, “that he should be +impossible; and it suits it still better,” she more imaginatively added, +“that Mrs. Newsome doesn’t know he is.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back on +something else. “I’ll tell you who does really know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Waymarsh? Never!” +</p> + +<p> +“Never indeed. I’m not <i>always</i> thinking of Mr. Waymarsh; in +fact I find now I never am.” Then he mentioned the person as if there +were a good deal in it. “Mamie.” +</p> + +<p> +“His own sister?” Oddly enough it but let her down. “What +good will that do?” +</p> + +<p> +“None perhaps. But there—as usual—we are!” +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +There they were yet again, accordingly, for two days more; when Strether, on +being, at Mrs. Pocock’s hotel, ushered into that lady’s salon, +found himself at first assuming a mistake on the part of the servant who had +introduced him and retired. The occupants hadn’t come in, for the room +looked empty as only a room can look in Paris, of a fine afternoon when the +faint murmur of the huge collective life, carried on out of doors, strays among +scattered objects even as a summer air idles in a lonely garden. Our friend +looked about and hesitated; observed, on the evidence of a table charged with +purchases and other matters, that Sarah had become possessed—by no aid +from <i>him</i>—of the last number of the salmon-coloured Revue; noted +further that Mamie appeared to have received a present of Fromentin’s +“Maîtres d’Autrefois” from Chad, who had written her name on +the cover; and pulled up at the sight of a heavy letter addressed in a hand he +knew. This letter, forwarded by a banker and arriving in Mrs. Pocock’s +absence, had been placed in evidence, and it drew from the fact of its being +unopened a sudden queer power to intensify the reach of its author. It brought +home to him the scale on which Mrs. Newsome—for she had been copious +indeed this time—was writing to her daughter while she kept <i>him</i> in +durance; and it had altogether such an effect upon him as made him for a few +minutes stand still and breathe low. In his own room, at his own hotel, he had +dozens of well-filled envelopes superscribed in that character; and there was +actually something in the renewal of his interrupted vision of the character +that played straight into the so frequent question of whether he weren’t +already disinherited beyond appeal. It was such an assurance as the sharp +downstrokes of her pen hadn’t yet had occasion to give him; but they +somehow at the present crisis stood for a probable absoluteness in any decree +of the writer. He looked at Sarah’s name and address, in short, as if he +had been looking hard into her mother’s face, and then turned from it as +if the face had declined to relax. But since it was in a manner as if Mrs. +Newsome were thereby all the more, instead of the less, in the room, and were +conscious, sharply and sorely conscious, of himself, so he felt both held and +hushed, summoned to stay at least and take his punishment. By staying, +accordingly, he took it—creeping softly and vaguely about and waiting for +Sarah to come in. She <i>would</i> come in if he stayed long enough, and he had +now more than ever the sense of her success in leaving him a prey to anxiety. +It wasn’t to be denied that she had had a happy instinct, from the point +of view of Woollett, in placing him thus at the mercy of her own initiative. It +was very well to try to say he didn’t care—that she might break +ground when she would, might never break it at all if she wouldn’t, and +that he had no confession whatever to wait upon her with: he breathed from day +to day an air that damnably required clearing, and there were moments when he +quite ached to precipitate that process. He couldn’t doubt that, should +she only oblige him by surprising him just as he then was, a clarifying scene +of some sort would result from the concussion. +</p> + +<p> +He humbly circulated in this spirit till he suddenly had a fresh arrest. Both +the windows of the room stood open to the balcony, but it was only now that, in +the glass of the leaf of one of them, folded back, he caught a reflexion +quickly recognised as the colour of a lady’s dress. Somebody had been +then all the while on the balcony, and the person, whoever it might be, was so +placed between the windows as to be hidden from him; while on the other hand +the many sounds of the street had covered his own entrance and movements. If +the person were Sarah he might on the spot therefore be served to his taste. He +might lead her by a move or two up to the remedy for his vain tension; as to +which, should he get nothing else from it, he would at least have the relief of +pulling down the roof on their heads. There was fortunately no one at hand to +observe—in respect to his valour—that even on this completed +reasoning he still hung fire. He had been waiting for Mrs. Pocock and the sound +of the oracle; but he had to gird himself afresh—which he did in the +embrasure of the window, neither advancing nor retreating—before +provoking the revelation. It was apparently for Sarah to come more into view; +he was in that case there at her service. She did however, as meanwhile +happened, come more into view; only she luckily came at the last minute as a +contradiction of Sarah. The occupant of the balcony was after all quite another +person, a person presented, on a second look, by a charming back and a slight +shift of her position, as beautiful brilliant unconscious Mamie—Mamie +alone at home, Mamie passing her time in her own innocent way, Mamie in short +rather shabbily used, but Mamie absorbed interested and interesting. With her +arms on the balustrade and her attention dropped to the street she allowed +Strether to watch her, to consider several things, without her turning round. +</p> + +<p> +But the oddity was that when he <i>had</i> so watched and considered he simply +stepped back into the room without following up his advantage. He revolved +there again for several minutes, quite as with something new to think of and as +if the bearings of the possibility of Sarah had been superseded. For frankly, +yes, it <i>had</i> bearings thus to find the girl in solitary possession. There +was something in it that touched him to a point not to have been reckoned +beforehand, something that softly but quite pressingly spoke to him, and that +spoke the more each time he paused again at the edge of the balcony and saw her +still unaware. Her companions were plainly scattered; Sarah would be off +somewhere with Waymarsh and Chad off somewhere with Jim. Strether didn’t +at all mentally impute to Chad that he was with his “good friend”; +he gave him the benefit of supposing him involved in appearances that, had he +had to describe them—for instance to Maria—he would have +conveniently qualified as more subtle. It came to him indeed the next thing +that there was perhaps almost an excess of refinement in having left Mamie in +such weather up there alone; however she might in fact have extemporised, under +the charm of the Rue de Rivoli, a little makeshift Paris of wonder and fancy. +Our friend in any case now recognised—and it was as if at the recognition +Mrs. Newsome’s fixed intensity had suddenly, with a deep audible gasp, +grown thin and vague—that day after day he had been conscious in respect +to his young lady of something odd and ambiguous, yet something into which he +could at last read a meaning. It had been at the most, this mystery, an +obsession—oh an obsession agreeable; and it had just now fallen into its +place as at the touch of a spring. It had represented the possibility between +them of some communication baffled by accident and delay—the possibility +even of some relation as yet unacknowledged. +</p> + +<p> +There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years; but +that—and it was what was strangest—had nothing whatever in common +with what was now in the air. As a child, as a “bud,” and then +again as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the +almost incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as first very +forward, as then very backward—for he had carried on at one period, in +Mrs. Newsome’s parlours (oh Mrs. Newsome’s phases and his own!) a +course of English Literature re-enforced by exams and teas—and once more, +finally, as very much in advance. But he had kept no great sense of points of +contact; it not being in the nature of things at Woollett that the freshest of +the buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of the +winter apples. The child had given sharpness, above all, to his sense of the +flight of time; it was but the day before yesterday that he had tripped up on +her hoop, yet his experience of remarkable women—destined, it would seem, +remarkably to grow—felt itself ready this afternoon, quite braced itself, +to include her. She had in fine more to say to him than he had ever dreamed the +pretty girl of the moment <i>could</i> have; and the proof of the circumstance +was that, visibly, unmistakeably, she had been able to say it to no one else. +It was something she could mention neither to her brother, to her sister-in-law +nor to Chad; though he could just imagine that had she still been at home she +might have brought it out, as a supreme tribute to age, authority and attitude, +for Mrs. Newsome. It was moreover something in which they all took an interest; +the strength of their interest was in truth just the reason of her prudence. +All this then, for five minutes, was vivid to Strether, and it put before him +that, poor child, she had now but her prudence to amuse her. That, for a pretty +girl in Paris, struck him, with a rush, as a sorry state; so that under the +impression he went out to her with a step as hypocritically alert, he was well +aware, as if he had just come into the room. She turned with a start at his +voice; preoccupied with him though she might be, she was just a scrap +disappointed. “Oh I thought you were Mr. Bilham!” +</p> + +<p> +The remark had been at first surprising and our friend’s private thought, +under the influence of it, temporarily blighted; yet we are able to add that he +presently recovered his inward tone and that many a fresh flower of fancy was +to bloom in the same air. Little Bilham—since little Bilham was, somewhat +incongruously, expected—appeared behindhand; a circumstance by which +Strether was to profit. They came back into the room together after a little, +the couple on the balcony, and amid its crimson-and-gold elegance, with the +others still absent, Strether passed forty minutes that he appraised even at +the time as far, in the whole queer connexion, from his idlest. Yes indeed, +since he had the other day so agreed with Maria about the inspiration of the +lurid, here was something for his problem that surely didn’t make it +shrink and that was floated in upon him as part of a sudden flood. He was +doubtless not to know till afterwards, on turning them over in thought, of how +many elements his impression was composed; but he none the less felt, as he sat +with the charming girl, the signal growth of a confidence. For she <i>was</i> +charming, when all was said—and none the less so for the visible habit +and practice of freedom and fluency. She was charming, he was aware, in spite +of the fact that if he hadn’t found her so he would have found her +something he should have been in peril of expressing as “funny.” +Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, +she was bridal—with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to +support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet and +almost disconcertingly reassuring. She was dressed, if we might so far +discriminate, less as a young lady than as an old one—had an old one been +supposable to Strether as so committed to vanity; the complexities of her hair +missed moreover also the looseness of youth; and she had a mature manner of +bending a little, as to encourage and reward, while she held neatly together in +front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands: the combination of all of +which kept up about her the glamour of her “receiving,” placed her +again perpetually between the windows and within sound of the ice-cream plates, +suggested the enumeration of all the names, all the Mr. Brookses and Mr. +Snookses, gregarious specimens of a single type, she was happy to +“meet.” But if all this was where she was funny, and if what was +funnier than the rest was the contrast between her beautiful benevolent +patronage—such a hint of the polysyllabic as might make her something of +a bore toward middle age—and her rather flat little voice, the voice, +naturally, unaffectedly yet, of a girl of fifteen; so Strether, none the less, +at the end of ten minutes, felt in her a quiet dignity that pulled things +bravely together. If quiet dignity, almost more than matronly, with voluminous, +too voluminous clothes, was the effect she proposed to produce, that was an +ideal one could like in her when once one had got into relation. The great +thing now for her visitor was that this was exactly what he had done; it made +so extraordinary a mixture of the brief and crowded hour. It was the mark of a +relation that he had begun so quickly to find himself sure she was, of all +people, as might have been said, on the side and of the party of Mrs. +Newsome’s original ambassador. She was in <i>his</i> interest and not in +Sarah’s, and some sign of that was precisely what he had been feeling in +her, these last days, as imminent. Finally placed, in Paris, in immediate +presence of the situation and of the hero of it—by whom Strether was +incapable of meaning any one but Chad—she had accomplished, and really in +a manner all unexpected to herself, a change of base; deep still things had +come to pass within her, and by the time she had grown sure of them Strether +had become aware of the little drama. When she knew where she was, in short, he +had made it out; and he made it out at present still better; though with never +a direct word passing between them all the while on the subject of his own +predicament. There had been at first, as he sat there with her, a moment during +which he wondered if she meant to break ground in respect to his prime +undertaking. That door stood so strangely ajar that he was half-prepared to be +conscious, at any juncture, of her having, of any one’s having, quite +bounced in. But, friendly, familiar, light of touch and happy of tact, she +exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she +could deal with him without being reduced to—well, scarcely anything. +</p> + +<p> +It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything +<i>but</i> Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had +become of him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last fraction of an +inch the measure of the change in him, and that she wanted Strether to know +what a secret she proposed to make of it. They talked most +conveniently—as if they had had no chance yet—about Woollett; and +that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret more close. The hour +took on for Strether, little by little, a queer sad sweetness of quality, he +had such a revulsion in Mamie’s favour and on behalf of her social value +as might have come from remorse at some early injustice. She made him, as under +the breath of some vague western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could +really for the time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, +during an ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck. Their little +interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other, with +melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of water as +they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the conviction that +his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she had come out. It was at +a very particular place—only <i>that</i> she would never tell him; it +would be above all what he should have to puzzle for himself. This was what he +hoped for, because his interest in the girl wouldn’t be complete without +it. No more would the appreciation to which she was entitled—so assured +was he that the more he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. +She saw, herself, everything; but she knew what she didn’t want, and that +it was that had helped her. What didn’t she want?—there was a +pleasure lost for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless +be a thrill in getting a glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to +him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for +it. She came out with her impression of Madame de Vionnet—of whom she had +“heard so much”; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom +she had been “dying to see”: she brought it out with a blandness by +which her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early that +very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts of things, +mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes—clothes that unfortunately +wouldn’t be themselves eternal—to call in the Rue de Bellechasse. +</p> + +<p> +At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he +couldn’t have sounded them first—and yet couldn’t either have +justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn’t have +begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have +had to spend. It was as friends of Chad’s, friends special, +distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she beautifully +carried it off that much as she had heard of them—though she didn’t +say how or where, which was a touch of her own—she had found them beyond +her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after the manner of +Woollett—which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to +Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming +companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too +fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, +a real little monster of charm. “Nothing,” she said of Jeanne, +“ought ever to happen to her—she’s so awfully right as she +is. Another touch will spoil her—so she oughtn’t to <i>be</i> +touched.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but things, here in Paris,” Strether observed, “do happen +to little girls.” And then for the joke’s and the occasion’s +sake: “Haven’t you found that yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“That things happen—? Oh I’m not a little girl. I’m a +big battered blowsy one. <i>I</i> don’t care,” Mamie laughed, +“<i>what</i> happens.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn’t happen that he +should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than he had +really dreamed—a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so +far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this +out. He risked accordingly a different question—though conscious, as soon +as he had spoken, that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. +“But that Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married—I suppose +you’ve heard of <i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +For all, he then found, he need fear! “Dear, yes; the gentleman was +there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“And was he nice?” +</p> + +<p> +Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “Any +man’s nice when he’s in love.” +</p> + +<p> +It made Strether laugh. “But is Monsieur de Montbron in +love—already—with <i>you?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh that’s not necessary—it’s so much better he should +be so with <i>her</i>: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for +myself. He’s perfectly gone—and I couldn’t have borne it for +her if he hadn’t been. She’s just too sweet.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “And through being in love too?” +</p> + +<p> +On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful +answer. “She doesn’t know if she is or not.” +</p> + +<p> +It made him again laugh out. “Oh but <i>you</i> do!” +</p> + +<p> +She was willing to take it that way. “Oh yes, I know everything.” +And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of +it—only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out—the +momentary effect for Strether was that every one else, in all their affair, +seemed stupid. +</p> + +<p> +“Know that poor little Jeanne doesn’t know what’s the matter +with her?” +</p> + +<p> +It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love with Chad; +but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which was to be +confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she appealed to +something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie would be fat, too fat, +at thirty; but she would always be the person who, at the present sharp hour, +had been disinterestedly tender. “If I see a little more of her, as I +hope I shall, I think she’ll like me enough—for she seemed to like +me to-day—to want me to tell her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>shall</i> you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants only +too much to do right. To do right for her, naturally,” said Mamie, +“is to please.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her mother, do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her mother first.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether waited. “And then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ‘then’—Mr. Newsome.” +</p> + +<p> +There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this reference. +“And last only Monsieur de Montbron?” +</p> + +<p> +“Last only”—she good-humouredly kept it up. +</p> + +<p> +Strether considered. “So that every one after all then will be +suited?” +</p> + +<p> +She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a moment; and +it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him about what was between +them. “I think I can speak for myself. <i>I</i> shall be.” +</p> + +<p> +It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help him, so +committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might make of it +toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and trustfully, she had +nothing to do—it so fully achieved all this that he appeared to himself +simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last frankness of admiration. +Admiration was of itself almost accusatory, but nothing less would serve to +show her how nearly he understood. He put out his hand for good-bye with a +“Splendid, splendid, splendid!” And he left her, in her splendour, +still waiting for little Bilham. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Book Tenth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Strether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his interview with +Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed together on the first +occasion of our friend’s meeting Madame de Vionnet and her daughter in +the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes, where his position affirmed itself +again as ministering to an easy exchange of impressions. The present evening +had a different stamp; if the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, +were the ideas set in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly +marked that the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a +protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them to-night, +and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it. Only a few of +Chad’s guests had dined—that is fifteen or twenty, a few compared +with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven o’clock; but number +and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the overflow of +hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from the first pressed +upon Strether’s consciousness, and he felt himself somehow part and +parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in which he had ever in his +life been engaged. He had perhaps seen, on Fourths of July and on dear old +domestic Commencements, more people assembled, but he had never seen so many in +proportion to the space, or had at all events never known so great a +promiscuity to show so markedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had +still been made so by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was +that, by no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had +worked. He hadn’t enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put him +a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadn’t +answered the questions, he had replied that they were the young man’s own +affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latter’s direction was +already settled. +</p> + +<p> +Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew what to do; +and he had clearly never known it better than in now presenting to his sister +the whole circle of his society. This was all in the sense and the spirit of +the note struck by him on that lady’s arrival; he had taken at the +station itself a line that led him without a break, and that enabled him to +lead the Pococks—though dazed a little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, +and bewildered—to the uttermost end of the passage accepted by them +perforce as pleasant. He had made it for them violently pleasant and +mercilessly full; the upshot of which was, to Strether’s vision, that +they had come all the way without discovering it to be really no passage at +all. It was a brave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless +they stuck fast, they would have—which was always awkward—publicly +to back out. They were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene +represented the terminus of the <i>cul-de-sac</i>. So could things go when +there was a hand to keep them consistent—a hand that pulled the wire with +a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled. The elder man felt +responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken place was simply +the issue of his own contention, six weeks before, that they properly should +wait to see what their friends would have really to say. He had determined Chad +to wait, he had determined him to see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the +time given up to the business. As much as ever, accordingly, now that a +fortnight had elapsed, the situation created for Sarah, and against which she +had raised no protest, was that of her having accommodated herself to her +adventure as to a pleasure-party surrendered perhaps even somewhat in excess to +bustle and to “pace.” If her brother had been at any point the +least bit open to criticism it might have been on the ground of his spicing the +draught too highly and pouring the cup too full. Frankly treating the whole +occasion of the presence of his relatives as an opportunity for amusement, he +left it, no doubt, but scant margin as an opportunity for anything else. He +suggested, invented, abounded—yet all the while with the loosest easiest +rein. Strether, during his own weeks, had gained a sense of knowing Paris; but +he saw it afresh, and with fresh emotion, in the form of the knowledge offered +to his colleague. +</p> + +<p> +A thousand unuttered thoughts hummed for him in the air of these observations; +not the least frequent of which was that Sarah might well of a truth not quite +know whither she was drifting. She was in no position not to appear to expect +that Chad should treat her handsomely; yet she struck our friend as privately +stiffening a little each time she missed the chance of marking the great +<i>nuance</i>. The great <i>nuance</i> was in brief that of course her brother +must treat her handsomely—she should like to see him not; but that +treating her handsomely, none the less, wasn’t all in all—treating +her handsomely buttered no parsnips; and that in fine there were moments when +she felt the fixed eyes of their admirable absent mother fairly screw into the +flat of her back. Strether, watching, after his habit, and overscoring with +thought, positively had moments of his own in which he found himself sorry for +her—occasions on which she affected him as a person seated in a runaway +vehicle and turning over the question of a possible jump. <i>Would</i> she +jump, could she, would <i>that</i> be a safe place?—this question, at +such instants, sat for him in her lapse into pallor, her tight lips, her +conscious eyes. It came back to the main point at issue: would she be, after +all, to be squared? He believed on the whole she would jump; yet his +alternations on this subject were the more especial stuff of his suspense. One +thing remained well before him—a conviction that was in fact to gain +sharpness from the impressions of this evening: that if she <i>should</i> +gather in her skirts, close her eyes and quit the carriage while in motion, he +would promptly enough become aware. She would alight from her headlong course +more or less directly upon him; it would be appointed to him, unquestionably, +to receive her entire weight. Signs and portents of the experience thus in +reserve for him had as it happened, multiplied even through the dazzle of +Chad’s party. It was partly under the nervous consciousness of such a +prospect that, leaving almost every one in the two other rooms, leaving those +of the guests already known to him as well as a mass of brilliant strangers of +both sexes and of several varieties of speech, he had desired five quiet +minutes with little Bilham, whom he always found soothing and even a little +inspiring, and to whom he had actually moreover something distinct and +important to say. +</p> + +<p> +He had felt of old—for it already seemed long ago—rather humiliated +at discovering he could learn in talk with a personage so much his junior the +lesson of a certain moral ease; but he had now got used to that—whether +or no the mixture of the fact with other humiliations had made it indistinct, +whether or no directly from little Bilham’s example, the example of his +being contentedly just the obscure and acute little Bilham he was. It worked so +for him, Strether seemed to see; and our friend had at private hours a wan +smile over the fact that he himself, after so many more years, was still in +search of something that would work. However, as we have said, it worked just +now for them equally to have found a corner a little apart. What particularly +kept it apart was the circumstance that the music in the salon was admirable, +with two or three such singers as it was a privilege to hear in private. Their +presence gave a distinction to Chad’s entertainment, and the interest of +calculating their effect on Sarah was actually so sharp as to be almost +painful. Unmistakeably, in her single person, the motive of the composition and +dressed in a splendour of crimson which affected Strether as the sound of a +fall through a skylight, she would now be in the forefront of the listening +circle and committed by it up to her eyes. Those eyes during the wonderful +dinner itself he hadn’t once met; having confessedly—perhaps a +little pusillanimously—arranged with Chad that he should be on the same +side of the table. But there was no use in having arrived now with little +Bilham at an unprecedented point of intimacy unless he could pitch everything +into the pot. “You who sat where you could see her, what does she make of +it all? By which I mean on what terms does she take it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh she takes it, I judge, as proving that the claim of his family is +more than ever justified.” +</p> + +<p> +“She isn’t then pleased with what he has to show?” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary; she’s pleased with it as with his capacity to do +this kind of thing—more than she has been pleased with anything for a +long time. But she wants him to show it <i>there</i>. He has no right to waste +it on the likes of us.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “She wants him to move the whole thing over?” +</p> + +<p> +“The whole thing—with an important exception. Everything he has +‘picked up’—and the way he knows how. She sees no difficulty +in that. She’d run the show herself, and she’ll make the handsome +concession that Woollett would be on the whole in some ways the better for it. +Not that it wouldn’t be also in some ways the better for Woollett. The +people there are just as good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just as good as you and these others? Ah that may be. But such an +occasion as this, whether or no,” Strether said, “isn’t the +people. It’s what has made the people possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then,” his friend replied, “there you are; I give you +my impression for what it’s worth. Mrs. Pocock has <i>seen</i>, and +that’s to-night how she sits there. If you were to have a glimpse of her +face you’d understand me. She has made up her mind—to the sound of +expensive music.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took it freely in. “Ah then I shall have news of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to frighten you, but I think that likely. +However,” little Bilham continued, “if I’m of the least use +to you to hold on by—!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not of the least!”—and Strether laid an +appreciative hand on him to say it. “No one’s of the least.” +With which, to mark how gaily he could take it, he patted his companion’s +knee. “I must meet my fate alone, and I <i>shall</i>—oh +you’ll see! And yet,” he pursued the next moment, “you +<i>can</i> help me too. You once said to me”—he followed this +further—“that you held Chad should marry. I didn’t see then +so well as I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Pocock. Do you still +consider that he should? Because if you do”—he kept it +up—“I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me +that way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Help you by thinking he should <i>not</i> marry?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not marry at all events Mamie.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” Strether returned, “that I’m not obliged to say. +But Madame de Vionnet—I suggest—when he can.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said little Bilham with some sharpness. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh precisely! But he needn’t marry at all—I’m at any +rate not obliged to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I +<i>am</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham was amused. “Obliged to provide for my marrying?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—after all I’ve done to you!” +</p> + +<p> +The young man weighed it. “Have you done as much as that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, thus challenged, “of course I must +remember what you’ve also done to <i>me</i>. We may perhaps call it +square. But all the same,” he went on, “I wish awfully you’d +marry Mamie Pocock yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham laughed out. “Why it was only the other night, in this very +place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mademoiselle de Vionnet?” Well, Strether easily confessed it. +“That, I admit, was a vain image. <i>This</i> is practical politics. I +want to do something good for both of you—I wish you each so well; and +you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the +same stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she’s +splendid.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham stared as a delicate appetite stares at an overheaped plate. +“What do I console her for?” +</p> + +<p> +It just made his friend impatient. “Oh come, you know!” +</p> + +<p> +“And what proves for you that she likes me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone all +the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you’d come to her, and +hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don’t +know what you want more.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham after a moment found it. “Only just to know what proves to +you that I like <i>her</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh if what I’ve just mentioned isn’t enough to make you do +it, you’re a stony-hearted little fiend. Besides”—Strether +encouraged his fancy’s flight—“you showed your inclination in +the way you kept her waiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough +for you.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause. “I +didn’t keep her waiting. I came at the hour. I wouldn’t have kept +her waiting for the world,” the young man honourably declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Better still—then there you are!” And Strether, charmed, +held him the faster. “Even if you didn’t do her justice, +moreover,” he continued, “I should insist on your immediately +coming round to it. I want awfully to have worked it. I want”—and +our friend spoke now with a yearning that was really earnest—“at +least to have done <i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“To have married me off—without a penny?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I shan’t live long; and I give you my word, now and here, +that I’ll leave you every penny of my own. I haven’t many, +unfortunately, but you shall have them all. And Miss Pocock, I think, has a +few. I want,” Strether went on, “to have been at least to that +extent constructive even expiatory. I’ve been sacrificing so to strange +gods that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my +fidelity—fundamentally unchanged after all—to our own. I feel as if +my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars—of another +faith altogether. There it is—it’s done.” And then he further +explained. “It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite out +of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face in +admitted amusement. “You want me to marry as a convenience to +Chad?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” Strether debated—“<i>he</i> doesn’t care +whether you marry or not. It’s as a convenience simply to my own plan +<i>for</i> him.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Simply’!”—and little Bilham’s concurrence +was in itself a lively comment. “Thank you. But I thought,” he +continued, “you had exactly <i>no</i> plan ‘for’ him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then call it my plan for myself—which may be well, as you +say, to have none. His situation, don’t you see? is reduced now to the +bare facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn’t want him, and he +doesn’t want Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear. +It’s a thread we can wind up and tuck in.” +</p> + +<p> +But little Bilham still questioned. “<i>You</i> can—since you seem +so much to want to. But why should I?” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that his +demonstration did superficially fail. “Seriously, there <i>is</i> no +reason. It’s my affair—I must do it alone. I’ve only my +fantastic need of making my dose stiff.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham wondered. “What do you call your dose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated.” +</p> + +<p> +He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk’s sake, and yet with an +obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circumstance presently not without +its effect on his young friend. Little Bilham’s eyes rested on him a +moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had cleared up, he +gave a happy laugh. It seemed to say that if pretending, or even trying, or +still even hoping, to be able to care for Mamie would be of use, he was all +there for the job. “I’ll do anything in the world for you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Strether smiled, “anything in the world is all I +want. I don’t know anything that pleased me in her more,” he went +on, “than the way that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on +her unawares and feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down +my tall house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young +man. It was somehow so the note I needed—her staying at home to receive +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was Chad of course,” said little Bilham, “who asked the +next young man—I like your name for me!—to call.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I supposed—all of which, thank God, is in our innocent and +natural manners. But do you know,” Strether asked, “if Chad +knows—?” And then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: “Why +where she has come out.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look—it was as if, +more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. “Do you know +yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether lightly shook his head. “There I stop. Oh, odd as it may appear +to you, there <i>are</i> things I don’t know. I only got the sense from +her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was keeping all +to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she <i>had</i> kept it to +herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out that there was a +person with whom she would have shared it. I had thought she possibly might +with <i>me</i>—but I saw then that I was only half in her confidence. +When, turning to me to greet me—for she was on the balcony and I had come +in without her knowing it—she showed me she had been expecting <i>you</i> +and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail of my conviction. +Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest of it. You know what has +happened.” He looked at his young friend hard—then he felt sure. +“For all you say, you’re up to your eyes. So there you are.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. “I assure you she +hasn’t told me anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course she hasn’t. For what do you suggest that I suppose her +to take you? But you’ve been with her every day, you’ve seen her +freely, you’ve liked her greatly—I stick to that—and +you’ve made your profit of it. You know what she has been through as well +as you know that she has dined here to-night—which must have put her, by +the way, through a good deal more.” +</p> + +<p> +The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of the +way. “I haven’t in the least said she hasn’t been nice to me. +But she’s proud.” +</p> + +<p> +“And quite properly. But not too proud for that.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just her pride that has made her. Chad,” little Bilham +loyally went on, “has really been as kind to her as possible. It’s +awkward for a man when a girl’s in love with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but she isn’t—now.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his +friend’s penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after all +too nervous. “No—she isn’t now. It isn’t in the +least,” he went on, “Chad’s fault. He’s really all +right. I mean he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas. Those +she had got at home. They had been her motive and support in joining her +brother and his wife. She was to <i>save</i> our friend.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah like me, poor thing?” Strether also got to his feet. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly—she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her, to +pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he <i>is</i>, saved. +There’s nothing left for her to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not even to love him?” +</p> + +<p> +“She would have loved him better as she originally believed him.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “Of course one asks one’s self what notion a +little girl forms, where a young man’s in question, of such a history and +such a state.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, this little girl saw them, no doubt, as obscure, but she saw them +practically as wrong. The wrong for her <i>was</i> the obscure. Chad turns out +at any rate right and good and disconcerting, while what she was all prepared +for, primed and girded and wound up for, was to deal with him as the general +opposite.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet wasn’t her whole point”—Strether weighed +it—“that he was to be, that he <i>could</i> be, made better, +redeemed?” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake that +diffused a tenderness: “She’s too late. Too late for the +miracle.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes”—his companion saw enough. “Still, if the worst +fault of his condition is that it may be all there for her to profit +by—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh she doesn’t want to ‘profit,’ in that flat way. She +doesn’t want to profit by another woman’s work—she wants the +miracle to have been her own miracle. <i>That’s</i> what she’s too +late for.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether quite felt how it all fitted, yet there seemed one loose piece. +“I’m bound to say, you know, that she strikes one, on these lines, +as fastidious—what you call here <i>difficile</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Little Bilham tossed up his chin. “Of course she’s +<i>difficile</i>—on any lines! What else in the world <i>are</i> our +Mamies—the real, the right ones?” +</p> + +<p> +“I see, I see,” our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive +wisdom he had ended by so richly extracting. “Mamie is one of the real +and the right.” +</p> + +<p> +“The very thing itself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what it comes to then,” Strether went on, “is that poor +awful Chad is simply too good for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she herself, and +she herself only, who was to have made him so.” +</p> + +<p> +It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end. “Wouldn’t +he do for her even if he should after all break—” +</p> + +<p> +“With his actual influence?” Oh little Bilham had for this enquiry +the sharpest of all his controls. “How can he ‘do’—on +any terms whatever—when he’s flagrantly spoiled?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his receptive pleasure. +“Well, thank goodness, <i>you’re</i> not! <i>You</i> remain for her +to save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a demonstration, to my +contention of just now—that of your showing distinct signs of her having +already begun.” +</p> + +<p> +The most he could further say to himself—as his young friend turned +away—was that the charge encountered for the moment no renewed denial. +Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music, only shook his good-natured +ears an instant, in the manner of a terrier who has got wet; while Strether +relapsed into the sense—which had for him in these days most of +comfort—that he was free to believe in anything that from hour to hour +kept him going. He had positively motions and flutters of this conscious +hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to fancy, frequent +instinctive snatches at the growing rose of observation, constantly stronger +for him, as he felt, in scent and colour, and in which he could bury his nose +even to wantonness. This last resource was offered him, for that matter, in the +very form of his next clear perception—the vision of a prompt meeting, in +the doorway of the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss Barrace, who +was entering as Bilham withdrew. She had apparently put him a question, to +which he had replied by turning to indicate his late interlocutor; toward whom, +after an interrogation further aided by a resort to that optical machinery +which seemed, like her other ornaments, curious and archaic, the genial lady, +suggesting more than ever for her fellow guest the old French print, the +historic portrait, directed herself with an intention that Strether instantly +met. He knew in advance the first note she would sound, and took in as she +approached all her need of sounding it. Nothing yet had been so +“wonderful” between them as the present occasion; and it was her +special sense of this quality in occasions that she was there, as she was in +most places, to feed. That sense had already been so well fed by the situation +about them that she had quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out +of the play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand a +minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as one of the +famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink of the other. Seated +near him presently where little Bilham had sat, she replied in truth to many +things; beginning as soon as he had said to her—what he hoped he said +without fatuity—“All you ladies are extraordinarily kind to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she saw in an +instant all the absences that left them free. “How can we be anything +else? But isn’t that exactly your plight? ‘We +ladies’—oh we’re nice, and you must be having enough of us! +As one of us, you know, I don’t pretend I’m crazy about us. But +Miss Gostrey at least to-night has left you alone, hasn’t she?” +With which she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” said Strether; “she’s only sitting up for me +at home.” And then as this elicited from his companion her gay “Oh, +oh, oh!” he explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. +“We thought it on the whole better she shouldn’t be present; and +either way of course it’s a terrible worry for her.” He abounded in +the sense of his appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice of his +doing so from humility or from pride. “Yet she inclines to believe I +shall come out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I incline to believe too you’ll come out!”—Miss +Barrace, with her laugh, was not to be behind. “Only the question’s +about <i>where</i>, isn’t it? However,” she happily continued, +“if it’s anywhere at all it must be very far on, mustn’t it? +To do us justice, I think, you know,” she laughed, “we do, among us +all, want you rather far on. Yes, yes,” she repeated in her quick droll +way; “we want you very, <i>very</i> far on!” After which she wished +to know why he had thought it better Maria shouldn’t be present. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he replied, “it was really her own idea. I should have +wished it. But she dreads responsibility.” +</p> + +<p> +“And isn’t that a new thing for her?” +</p> + +<p> +“To dread it? No doubt—no doubt. But her nerve has given +way.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. “She has too much at stake.” +Then less gravely: “Mine, luckily for me, holds out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Luckily for me too”—Strether came back to that. “My +own isn’t so firm, <i>my</i> appetite for responsibility isn’t so +sharp, as that I haven’t felt the very principle of this occasion to be +‘the more the merrier.’ If we <i>are</i> so merry it’s +because Chad has understood so well.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has understood amazingly,” said Miss Barrace. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s wonderful—Strether anticipated for her. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s wonderful!” she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face +to face over it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she presently added: +“Oh I see the principle. If one didn’t one would be lost. But when +once one has got hold of it—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do +something—” +</p> + +<p> +“A crowd”—she took him straight up—“was the only +thing? Rather, rather: a rumpus of sound,” she laughed, “or +nothing. Mrs. Pocock’s built in, or built out—whichever you call +it; she’s packed so tight she can’t move. She’s in splendid +isolation”—Miss Barrace embroidered the theme. +</p> + +<p> +Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. “Yet with every one in the +place successively introduced to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wonderfully—but just so that it does build her out. She’s +bricked up, she’s buried alive!” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh. +“Oh but she’s not dead! It will take more than this to kill +her.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. “No, I +can’t pretend I think she’s finished—or that it’s for +more than to-night.” She remained pensive as if with the same +compunction. “It’s only up to her chin.” Then again for the +fun of it: “She can breathe.” +</p> + +<p> +“She can breathe!”—he echoed it in the same spirit. +“And do you know,” he went on, “what’s really all this +time happening to me?—through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, +the uproar in short of our revel and the felicity of your wit? The sound of +Mrs. Pocock’s respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other. +It’s literally all I hear.” +</p> + +<p> +She focussed him with her clink of chains. “Well—!” she +breathed ever so kindly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what?” +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>is</i> free from her chin up,” she mused; “and that +<i>will</i> be enough for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be enough for me!” Strether ruefully laughed. +“Waymarsh has really,” he then asked, “brought her to see +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—but that’s the worst of it. I could do you no good. And +yet I tried hard.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “And how did you try?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why I didn’t speak of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. That was better.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent,” she +lightly wailed, “I somehow ‘compromise.’ And it has never +been any one but you.” +</p> + +<p> +“That shows”—he was magnanimous—“that it’s +something not in you, but in one’s self. It’s <i>my</i> +fault.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent a little. “No, it’s Mr. Waymarsh’s. It’s +the fault of his having brought her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then,” said Strether good-naturedly, “why <i>did</i> he +bring her?” +</p> + +<p> +“He couldn’t afford not to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you were a trophy—one of the spoils of conquest? But why in +that case, since you do ‘compromise’—” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I compromise <i>him</i> as well? I do compromise him as +well,” Miss Barrace smiled. “I compromise him as hard as I can. But +for Mr. Waymarsh it isn’t fatal. It’s—so far as his wonderful +relation with Mrs. Pocock is concerned—favourable.” And then, as he +still seemed slightly at sea: “The man who had succeeded with <i>me</i>, +don’t you see? For her to get him from me was such an added +incentive.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with surprises. +“It’s ‘from’ you then that she has got him?” +</p> + +<p> +She was amused at his momentary muddle. “You can fancy my fight! She +believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her joy. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh her joy!” Strether sceptically murmured. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what’s to-night for +her but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock’s really good.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,” +Strether went on, “there’s nothing <i>but</i> heaven. For Sarah +there’s only to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you mean that she won’t find to-morrow heavenly?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night—on her behalf—too +good to be true. She has had her cake; that is she’s in the act now of +having it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There won’t be +another left for her. Certainly <i>I</i> haven’t one. It can only, at the +best, be Chad.” He continued to make it out as for their common +entertainment. “He may have one, as it were, up his sleeve; yet +it’s borne in upon me that if he had—” +</p> + +<p> +“He wouldn’t”—she quite understood—“have +taken all <i>this</i> trouble? I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and +dreadful, I very much hope he won’t take any more. Of course I +won’t pretend now,” she added, “not to know what it’s a +question of.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh every one must know now,” poor Strether thoughtfully admitted; +“and it’s strange enough and funny enough that one should feel +everybody here at this very moment to be knowing and watching and +waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—isn’t it indeed funny?” Miss Barrace quite rose to +it. “That’s the way we <i>are</i> in Paris.” She was always +pleased with a new contribution to that queerness. “It’s wonderful! +But, you know,” she declared, “it all depends on you. I don’t +want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that’s naturally what you just +now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the drama, +and we’re gathered to see what you’ll do.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly obscured. +“I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in this corner. +He’s scared at his heroism—he shrinks from his part.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but we nevertheless believe he’ll play it. That’s +why,” Miss Barrace kindly went on, “we take such an interest in +you. We feel you’ll come up to the scratch.” And then as he seemed +perhaps not quite to take fire: “Don’t let him do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t let Chad go?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, keep hold of him. With all this”—and she indicated the +general tribute—“he has done enough. We love him +here—he’s charming.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s beautiful,” said Strether, “the way you all can +simplify when you will.” +</p> + +<p> +But she gave it to him back. “It’s nothing to the way <i>you</i> +will when you must.” +</p> + +<p> +He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept him a moment +quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing about to leave him alone in +the rather cold clearance their talk had made. “There positively +isn’t a sign of a hero to-night; the hero’s dodging and shirking, +the hero’s ashamed. Therefore, you know, I think, what you must all +<i>really</i> be occupied with is the heroine.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Barrace took a minute. “The heroine?” +</p> + +<p> +“The heroine. I’ve treated her,” said Strether, “not a +bit like a hero. Oh,” he sighed, “I don’t do it well!” +</p> + +<p> +She eased him off. “You do it as you can.” And then after another +hesitation: “I think she’s satisfied.” +</p> + +<p> +But he remained compunctious. “I haven’t been near her. I +haven’t looked at her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then you’ve lost a good deal!” +</p> + +<p> +He showed he knew it. “She’s more wonderful than ever?” +</p> + +<p> +“Than ever. With Mr. Pocock.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “Madame de Vionnet—with Jim?” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame de Vionnet—with ‘Jim.’” Miss Barrace was +historic. +</p> + +<p> +“And what’s she doing with him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah you must ask <i>him!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s face lighted again at the prospect. “It <i>will</i> be +amusing to do so.” Yet he continued to wonder. “But she must have +some idea.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course she has—she has twenty ideas. She has in the first +place,” said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell, +“that of doing her part. Her part is to help <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and connexions unnamed, +but it was suddenly as if they were at the heart of their subject. “Yes; +how much more she does it,” Strether gravely reflected, “than I +help <i>her!</i>” It all came over him as with the near presence of the +beauty, the grace, the intense, dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he +said, been putting off contact. “<i>She</i> has courage.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah she has courage!” Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as if +for a moment they saw the quantity in each other’s face. +</p> + +<p> +But indeed the whole thing was present. “How much she must care!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn’t, is it,” Miss +Barrace considerately added, “as if you had ever had any doubt of +that?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never had. “Why +of course it’s the whole point.” +</p> + +<p> +“Voilà!” Miss Barrace smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s why one came out,” Strether went on. “And +it’s why one has stayed so long. And it’s also”—he +abounded—“why one’s going home. It’s why, it’s +why—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s why everything!” she concurred. “It’s why +she might be to-night—for all she looks and shows, and for all your +friend ‘Jim’ does—about twenty years old. That’s +another of her ideas; to be for him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as +young as a little girl.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether assisted at his distance. “‘For him’? For +Chad—?” +</p> + +<p> +“For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular to-night for +Mr. Pocock.” And then as her friend still stared: “Yes, it +<i>is</i> of a bravery! But that’s what she has: her high sense of +duty.” It was more than sufficiently before them. “When Mr. Newsome +has his hands so embarrassed with his sister—” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s quite the least”—Strether filled it +out—“that she should take his sister’s husband? +Certainly—quite the least. So she has taken him.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has taken him.” It was all Miss Barrace had meant. +</p> + +<p> +Still it remained enough. “It must be funny.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh it <i>is</i> funny.” That of course essentially went with it. +</p> + +<p> +But it brought them back. “How indeed then she must care!” In +answer to which Strether’s entertainer dropped a comprehensive +“Ah!” expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to +get used to it. She herself had got used to it long before. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to be really at +last upon him Strether’s immediate feeling was all relief. He had known +this morning that something was about to happen—known it, in a moment, by +Waymarsh’s manner when Waymarsh appeared before him during his brief +consumption of coffee and a roll in the small slippery <i>salle-à-manger</i> so +associated with rich rumination. Strether had taken there of late various +lonely and absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June, +with a suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old savours, the air +in which so many of his impressions had perversely matured; the place meanwhile +renewing its message to him by the very circumstance of his single state. He +now sat there, for the most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his +carafe, over the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That was +really his success by the common measure—to have led this companion so on +and on. He remembered how at first there had been scarce a squatting-place he +could beguile him into passing; the actual outcome of which at last was that +there was scarce one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush—as +Strether vividly and amusedly figured it—continued to be all with Sarah, +and contained perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its +fine full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, +of Strether’s destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they +had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, that +<i>had</i> to be the spring of action. Strether was glad at all events, in +connexion with the case, that the saving he required was not more scant; so +constituted a luxury was it in certain lights just to lurk there out of the +full glare. He had moments of quite seriously wondering whether Waymarsh +wouldn’t in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable indulgence, +make about as good terms for him as he might make for himself. They +wouldn’t be the same terms of course; but they might have the advantage +that he himself probably should be able to make none at all. +</p> + +<p> +He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already been out, and, +after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented himself with much less than +usual of his large looseness. He had made sure, through the expanse of glass +exposed to the court, that they would be alone; and there was now in fact that +about him that pretty well took up the room. He was dressed in the garments of +summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging these +things favoured, they determined, his expression. He wore a straw hat such as +his friend hadn’t yet seen in Paris, and he showed a buttonhole freshly +adorned with a magnificent rose. Strether read on the instant his +story—how, astir for the previous hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, +so pleasant at that season in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of +adventure and had been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the Marché aux +Fleurs. Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy that was akin to envy; +so reversed as he stood there did their old positions seem; so comparatively +doleful now showed, by the sharp turn of the wheel, the posture of the pilgrim +from Woollett. He wondered, this pilgrim, if he had originally looked to +Waymarsh so brave and well, so remarkably launched, as it was at present the +latter’s privilege to appear. He recalled that his friend had remarked to +him even at Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but there +certainly couldn’t have been, for an issue, an aspect less concerned than +Waymarsh’s with the menace of decay. Strether had at any rate never +resembled a Southern planter of the great days—which was the image +picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between the fuliginous face and +the wide panama of his visitor. This type, it further amused him to guess, had +been, on Waymarsh’s part, the object of Sarah’s care; he was +convinced that her taste had not been a stranger to the conception and purchase +of the hat, any more than her fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal +of the rose. It came to him in the current of thought, as things so oddly did +come, that <i>he</i> had never risen with the lark to attend a brilliant woman +to the Marché aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on him in connexion neither +with Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de Vionnet; the practice of getting up early +for adventures could indeed in no manner be fastened on him. It came to him in +fact that just here was his usual case: he was for ever missing things through +his general genius for missing them, while others were for ever picking them up +through a contrary bent. And it was others who looked abstemious and he who +looked greedy; it was he somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly +partook. Yes, he should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn’t know quite +whom. He almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite +enjoying it. It worked out as <i>because</i> he was anxious there—it +worked out as for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming. It was <i>his</i> +trip for health, for a change, that proved the success—which was just +what Strether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be. That +truth already sat full-blown on his companion’s lips; benevolence +breathed from them as with the warmth of active exercise, and also a little as +with the bustle of haste. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel, has +asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at home here in +about another hour. She wants to see you; she has something to say—or +considers, I believe, that you may have: so that I asked her myself why she +shouldn’t come right round. She hasn’t <i>been</i> round +yet—to see our place; and I took upon myself to say that I was sure +you’d be glad to have her. The thing’s therefore, you see, to keep +right here till she comes.” +</p> + +<p> +The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh’s wont, +somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other things in it than these +light features. It was the first approach, from that quarter, to admitted +consciousness; it quickened his pulse; it simply meant at last that he should +have but himself to thank if he didn’t know where he was. He had finished +his breakfast; he pushed it away and was on his feet. There were plenty of +elements of surprise, but only one of doubt. “The thing’s for +<i>you</i> to keep here too?” Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous. +</p> + +<p> +He wasn’t ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether’s +understanding had probably never before opened so wide and effective a mouth as +it was to open during the next five minutes. It was no part of his +friend’s wish, as appeared, to help to receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite +understood the spirit in which she was to present herself, but his connexion +with her visit was limited to his having—well, as he might +say—perhaps a little promoted it. He had thought, and had let her know +it, that Strether possibly would think she might have been round before. At any +rate, as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite a while, to come. +“I told her,” said Waymarsh, “that it would have been a +bright idea if she had only carried it out before.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling. “But why +<i>hasn’t</i> she carried it out before? She has seen me every +day—she had only to name her hour. I’ve been waiting and +waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I told her you had. And she has been waiting too.” It was, +in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a genial new +pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness +from any he had yet betrayed, and actually rendered by it almost insinuating. +He lacked only time for full persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment +why. Meantime, however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some +magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock’s part, so that he could deprecate a sharp +question. It was his own high purpose in fact to have smoothed sharp questions +to rest. He looked his old comrade very straight in the eyes, and he had never +conveyed to him in so mute a manner so much kind confidence and so much good +advice. Everything that was between them was again in his face, but matured and +shelved and finally disposed of. “At any rate,” he added, +“she’s coming now.” +</p> + +<p> +Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in +Strether’s brain, into a close rapid order. He saw on the spot what had +happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough. It was +perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that wound him up to his flare of +high spirits. “What is she coming <i>for?</i>—to kill me?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s coming to be very <i>very</i> kind to you, and you must let +me say that I greatly hope you’ll not be less so to herself.” +</p> + +<p> +This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and as Strether +stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to take the attitude of a man +gracefully receiving a present. The present was that of the opportunity dear +old Waymarsh had flattered himself he had divined in him the slight soreness of +not having yet thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a +little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately—without +oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was to take and +use and be grateful. He was not—that was the beauty of it—to be +asked to deflect too much from his dignity. No wonder the old boy bloomed in +this bland air of his own distillation. Strether felt for a moment as if Sarah +were actually walking up and down outside. Wasn’t she hanging about the +<i>porte-cochère</i> while her friend thus summarily opened a way? Strether +would meet her but to take it, and everything would be for the best in the best +of possible worlds. He had never so much known what any one meant as, in the +light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did. It had reached +Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from her mother, and there was no +break in the chain by which it reached <i>him</i>. “Has anything +particular happened,” he asked after a minute—“so suddenly to +determine her? Has she heard anything unexpected from home?” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than ever. +“‘Unexpected’?” He had a brief hesitation; then, +however, he was firm. “We’re leaving Paris.” +</p> + +<p> +“Leaving? That <i>is</i> sudden.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh showed a different opinion. “Less so than it may seem. The +purpose of Mrs. Pocock’s visit is to explain to you in fact that +it’s <i>not</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether didn’t at all know if he had really an advantage—anything +that would practically count as one; but he enjoyed for the moment—as for +the first time in his life—the sense of so carrying it off. He +wondered—it was amusing—if he felt as the impudent feel. “I +shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any explanation. I shall be +delighted to receive Sarah.” +</p> + +<p> +The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade’s eyes; but he was struck +with the way it died out again. It was too mixed with another +consciousness—it was too smothered, as might be said, in flowers. He +really for the time regretted it—poor dear old sombre glow! Something +straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had been eclipsed in its +company; something by which he had best known his friend. Waymarsh +wouldn’t <i>be</i> his friend, somehow, without the occasional ornament +of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred rage—inestimably precious +for Strether’s charity—he also seemed in a manner, and at Mrs. +Pocock’s elbow, to have forfeited. Strether remembered the occasion early +in their stay when on that very spot he had come out with his earnest, his +ominous “Quit it!”—and, so remembering, felt it hang by a +hair that he didn’t himself now utter the same note. Waymarsh was having +a good time—this was the truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was +having it then and there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it under +the very protection of circumstances of which he didn’t in the least +approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no issue +possible—none at least by the grand manner. It was practically in the +manner of any one—it was all but in poor Strether’s own—that +instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to be himself +explanatory. “I’m not leaving for the United States direct. Mr. and +Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little trip before their own +return, and we’ve been talking for some days past of our joining forces. +We’ve settled it that we do join and that we sail together the end of +next month. But we start to-morrow for Switzerland. Mrs. Pocock wants some +scenery. She hasn’t had much yet.” +</p> + +<p> +He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing all there was, +and only leaving Strether to make certain connexions. “Is what Mrs. +Newsome had cabled her daughter an injunction to break off short?” +</p> + +<p> +The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little. “I know +nothing about Mrs. Newsome’s cables.” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met on it with some intensity—during the few seconds of which +something happened quite out of proportion to the time. It happened that +Strether, looking thus at his friend, didn’t take his answer for +truth—and that something more again occurred in consequence of +<i>that</i>. Yes—Waymarsh just <i>did</i> know about Mrs. Newsome’s +cables: to what other end than that had they dined together at Bignon’s? +Strether almost felt for the instant that it was to Mrs. Newsome herself the +dinner had been given; and, for that matter, quite felt how she must have known +about it and, as he might think, protected and consecrated it. He had a quick +blurred view of daily cables, questions, answers, signals: clear enough was his +vision of the expense that, when so wound up, the lady at home was prepared to +incur. Vivid not less was his memory of what, during his long observation of +her, some of her attainments of that high pitch had cost her. Distinctly she +was at the highest now, and Waymarsh, who imagined himself an independent +performer, was really, forcing his fine old natural voice, an overstrained +accompanist. The whole reference of his errand seemed to mark her for Strether +as by this time consentingly familiar to him, and nothing yet had so despoiled +her of a special shade of consideration. “You don’t know,” he +asked, “whether Sarah has been directed from home to try me on the matter +of my also going to Switzerland?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” said Waymarsh as manfully as possible, “nothing +whatever about her private affairs; though I believe her to be acting in +conformity with things that have my highest respect.” It was as manful as +possible, but it was still the false note—as it had to be to convey so +sorry a statement. He knew everything, Strether more and more felt, that he +thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this doom to a second +fib. What falser position—given the man—could the most vindictive +mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in which three months +before he would certainly have stuck fast. “Mrs Pocock will probably be +ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put to her. But,” he +continued, “<i>but</i>—!” He faltered on it. +</p> + +<p> +“But what? Don’t put her too many?” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh looked large, but the harm was done; he couldn’t, do what he +would, help looking rosy. “Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry +for.” +</p> + +<p> +It was an attenuation, Strether guessed, of something else that had been on his +lips; it was a sudden drop to directness, and was thereby the voice of +sincerity. He had fallen to the supplicating note, and that immediately, for +our friend, made a difference and reinstated him. They were in communication as +they had been, that first morning, in Sarah’s salon and in her presence +and Madame de Vionnet’s; and the same recognition of a great good will +was again, after all, possible. Only the amount of response Waymarsh had then +taken for granted was doubled, decupled now. This came out when he presently +said: “Of course I needn’t assure you <i>I</i> hope you’ll +come with us.” Then it was that his implications and expectations loomed +up for Strether as almost pathetically gross. +</p> + +<p> +The latter patted his shoulder while he thanked him, giving the go-by to the +question of joining the Pococks; he expressed the joy he felt at seeing him go +forth again so brave and free, and he in fact almost took leave of him on the +spot. “I shall see you again of course before you go; but I’m +meanwhile much obliged to you for arranging so conveniently for what +you’ve told me. I shall walk up and down in the court there—dear +little old court which we’ve each bepaced so, this last couple of months, +to the tune of our flights and our drops, our hesitations and our plunges: I +shall hang about there, all impatience and excitement, please let Sarah know, +till she graciously presents herself. Leave me with her without fear,” he +laughed; “I assure you I shan’t hurt her. I don’t think +either she’ll hurt <i>me</i>: I’m in a situation in which damage +was some time ago discounted. Besides, <i>that</i> isn’t what worries +you—but don’t, don’t explain! We’re all right as we +are: which was the degree of success our adventure was pledged to for each of +us. We weren’t, it seemed, all right as we were before; and we’ve +got over the ground, all things considered, quickly. I hope you’ll have a +lovely time in the Alps.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh fairly looked up at him as from the foot of them. “I don’t +know as I <i>ought</i> really to go.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the conscience of Milrose in the very voice of Milrose, but, oh it was +feeble and flat! Strether suddenly felt quite ashamed for him; he breathed a +greater boldness. “<i>Let</i> yourself, on the contrary, go—in all +agreeable directions. These are precious hours—at our age they +mayn’t recur. Don’t have it to say to yourself at Milrose, next +winter, that you hadn’t courage for them.” And then as his comrade +queerly stared: “Live up to Mrs. Pocock.” +</p> + +<p> +“Live up to her?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a great help to her.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh looked at it as at one of the uncomfortable things that were certainly +true and that it was yet ironical to say. “It’s more then than you +are.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s exactly your own chance and advantage. Besides,” said +Strether, “I do in my way contribute. I know what I’m about.” +</p> + +<p> +Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer the door, +his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to darkness and warning. +“So do I! See here, Strether.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know what you’re going to say. ‘Quit this’?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quit this!” But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it +remained; it went out of the room with him. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour later, Strether +found himself doing in Sarah’s presence was to remark articulately on +this failure, in their friend, of what had been superficially his great +distinction. It was as if—he alluded of course to the grand +manner—the dear man had sacrificed it to some other advantage; which +would be of course only for himself to measure. It might be simply that he was +physically so much more sound than on his first coming out; this was all +prosaic, comparatively cheerful and vulgar. And fortunately, if one came to +that, his improvement in health was really itself grander than any manner it +could be conceived as having cost him. “You yourself alone, dear +Sarah”—Strether took the plunge—“have done him, it +strikes me, in these three weeks, as much good as all the rest of his time +together.” +</p> + +<p> +It was a plunge because somehow the range of reference was, in the conditions, +“funny,” and made funnier still by Sarah’s attitude, by the +turn the occasion had, with her appearance, so sensibly taken. Her appearance +was really indeed funnier than anything else—the spirit in which he felt +her to be there as soon as she was there, the shade of obscurity that cleared +up for him as soon as he was seated with her in the small <i>salon de +lecture</i> that had, for the most part, in all the weeks, witnessed the wane +of his early vivacity of discussion with Waymarsh. It was an immense thing, +quite a tremendous thing, for her to have come: this truth opened out to him in +spite of his having already arrived for himself at a fairly vivid view of it. +He had done exactly what he had given Waymarsh his word for—had walked +and re-walked the court while he awaited her advent; acquiring in this exercise +an amount of light that affected him at the time as flooding the scene. She had +decided upon the step in order to give him the benefit of a doubt, in order to +be able to say to her mother that she had, even to abjectness, smoothed the way +for him. The doubt had been as to whether he mightn’t take her as not +having smoothed it—and the admonition had possibly come from +Waymarsh’s more detached spirit. Waymarsh had at any rate, certainly, +thrown his weight into the scale—he had pointed to the importance of +depriving their friend of a grievance. She had done justice to the plea, and it +was to set herself right with a high ideal that she actually sat there in her +state. Her calculation was sharp in the immobility with which she held her tall +parasol-stick upright and at arm’s length, quite as if she had struck the +place to plant her flag; in the separate precautions she took not to show as +nervous; in the aggressive repose in which she did quite nothing but wait for +him. Doubt ceased to be possible from the moment he had taken in that she had +arrived with no proposal whatever; that her concern was simply to show what she +had come to receive. She had come to receive his submission, and Waymarsh was +to have made it plain to him that she would expect nothing less. He saw fifty +things, her host, at this convenient stage; but one of those he most saw was +that their anxious friend hadn’t quite had the hand required of him. +Waymarsh <i>had</i>, however, uttered the request that she might find him mild, +and while hanging about the court before her arrival he had turned over with +zeal the different ways in which he could be so. The difficulty was that if he +was mild he wasn’t, for her purpose, conscious. If she wished him +conscious—as everything about her cried aloud that she did—she must +accordingly be at costs to make him so. Conscious he <i>was</i>, for +himself—but only of too many things; so she must choose the one she +required. +</p> + +<p> +Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that had +happened they were quite at the centre of their situation. One thing had really +done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of Waymarsh’s leaving +him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference to Mrs. Pocock’s +similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme lucidity. Light became +indeed after that so intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made +out, in the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact +precipitated. It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them +as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the +floor. The form of his submission was to be an engagement to acquit himself +within the twenty-four hours. “He’ll go in a moment if you give him +the word—he assures me on his honour he’ll do that”: this +came in its order, out of its order, in respect to Chad, after the crash had +occurred. It came repeatedly during the time taken by Strether to feel that he +was even more fixed in his rigour than he had supposed—the time he was +not above adding to a little by telling her that such a way of putting it on +her brother’s part left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn’t at +all funny at last—she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was +strong—strong for herself. It hadn’t yet so come home to him that +she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in interests grander +and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian +equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother’s moral pressure +profited by this proof of its sustaining force. She would be held up; she would +be strengthened; he needn’t in the least be anxious for her. What would +once more have been distinct to him had he tried to make it so was that, as +Mrs. Newsome was essentially all moral pressure, the presence of this element +was almost identical with her own presence. It wasn’t perhaps that he +felt he was dealing with her straight, but it was certainly as if she had been +dealing straight with <i>him</i>. She was reaching him somehow by the +lengthened arm of the spirit, and he was having to that extent to take her into +account; but he wasn’t reaching her in turn, not making her take +<i>him</i>; he was only reaching Sarah, who appeared to take so little of him. +“Something has clearly passed between you and Chad,” he presently +said, “that I think I ought to know something more about. Does he put it +all,” he smiled, “on me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you come out,” she asked, “to put it all on +<i>him?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +But he replied to this no further than, after an instant, by saying: “Oh +it’s all right. Chad I mean’s all right in having said to +you—well anything he may have said. I’ll <i>take</i> it +all—what he does put on me. Only I must see him before I see you +again.” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated, but she brought it out. “Is it absolutely necessary you +should see me again?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, if I’m to give you any definite word about +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it your idea then,” she returned, “that I shall keep on +meeting you only to be exposed to fresh humiliation?” +</p> + +<p> +He fixed her a longer time. “Are your instructions from Mrs. Newsome that +you shall, even at the worst, absolutely and irretrievably break with +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“My instructions from Mrs. Newsome are, if you please, my affair. You +know perfectly what your own were, and you can judge for yourself of what it +can do for you to have made what you have of them. You can perfectly see, at +any rate, I’ll go so far as to say, that if I wish not to expose myself I +must wish still less to expose <i>her</i>.” She had already said more +than she had quite expected; but, though she had also pulled up, the colour in +her face showed him he should from one moment to the other have it all. He now +indeed felt the high importance of his having it. “What is your +conduct,” she broke out as if to explain—“what is your +conduct but an outrage to women like <i>us?</i> I mean your acting as if there +can be a doubt—as between us and such another—of his duty?” +</p> + +<p> +He thought a moment. It was rather much to deal with at once; not only the +question itself, but the sore abysses it revealed. “Of course +they’re totally different kinds of duty.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you pretend that he has any at all—to such another?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to Madame de Vionnet?” He uttered the name not to +affront her, but yet again to gain time—time that he needed for taking in +something still other and larger than her demand of a moment before. It +wasn’t at once that he could see all that was in her actual challenge; +but when he did he found himself just checking a low vague sound, a sound which +was perhaps the nearest approach his vocal chords had ever known to a growl. +Everything Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of recognising in Chad as a +particular part of a transformation—everything that had lent intention to +this particular failure—affected him as gathered into a large loose +bundle and thrown, in her words, into his face. The missile made him to that +extent catch his breath; which however he presently recovered. “Why when +a woman’s at once so charming and so beneficent—” +</p> + +<p> +“You can sacrifice mothers and sisters to her without a blush and can +make them cross the ocean on purpose to feel the more and take from you the +straighter, <i>how</i> you do it?” +</p> + +<p> +Yes, she had taken him up as short and as sharply as that, but he tried not to +flounder in her grasp. “I don’t think there’s anything +I’ve done in any such calculated way as you describe. Everything has come +as a sort of indistinguishable part of everything else. Your coming out +belonged closely to my having come before you, and my having come was a result +of our general state of mind. Our general state of mind had proceeded, on its +side, from our queer ignorance, our queer misconceptions and +confusions—from which, since then, an inexorable tide of light seems to +have floated us into our perhaps still queerer knowledge. Don’t you +<i>like</i> your brother as he is,” he went on, “and haven’t +you given your mother an intelligible account of all that that comes to?” +</p> + +<p> +It put to her also, doubtless, his own tone, too many things, this at least +would have been the case hadn’t his final challenge directly helped her. +Everything, at the stage they had reached, directly helped her, because +everything betrayed in him such a basis of intention. He saw—the odd way +things came out!—that he would have been held less monstrous had he only +been a little wilder. What exposed him was just his poor old trick of quiet +inwardness, what exposed him was his <i>thinking</i> such offence. He +hadn’t in the least however the desire to irritate that Sarah imputed to +him, and he could only at last temporise, for the moment, with her indignant +view. She was altogether more inflamed than he had expected, and he would +probably understand this better when he should learn what had occurred for her +with Chad. Till then her view of his particular blackness, her clear surprise +at his not clutching the pole she held out, must pass as extravagant. “I +leave you to flatter yourself,” she returned, “that what you speak +of is what <i>you’ve</i> beautifully done. When a thing has been already +described in such a lovely way—!” But she caught herself up, and +her comment on his description rang out sufficiently loud. “Do you +consider her even an apology for a decent woman?” +</p> + +<p> +Ah there it was at last! She put the matter more crudely than, for his own +mixed purposes, he had yet had to do; but essentially it was all one matter. It +was so much—so much; and she treated it, poor lady, as so little. He grew +conscious, as he was now apt to do, of a strange smile, and the next moment he +found himself talking like Miss Barrace. “She has struck me from the +first as wonderful. I’ve been thinking too moreover that, after all, she +would probably have represented even for yourself something rather new and +rather good.” +</p> + +<p> +He was to have given Mrs. Pocock with this, however, but her best opportunity +for a sound of derision. “Rather new? I hope so with all my heart!” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean,” he explained, “that she might have affected you by +her exquisite amiability—a real revelation, it has seemed to myself; her +high rarity, her distinction of every sort.” +</p> + +<p> +He had been, with these words, consciously a little “precious”; but +he had had to be—he couldn’t give her the truth of the case without +them; and it seemed to him moreover now that he didn’t care. He had at +all events not served his cause, for she sprang at its exposed side. “A +‘revelation’—to <i>me</i>: I’ve come to such a woman +for a revelation? You talk to me about +‘distinction’—<i>you</i>, you who’ve had your +privilege?—when the most distinguished woman we shall either of us have +seen in this world sits there insulted, in her loneliness, by your incredible +comparison!” +</p> + +<p> +Strether forbore, with an effort, from straying; but he looked all about him. +“Does your mother herself make the point that she sits insulted?” +</p> + +<p> +Sarah’s answer came so straight, so “pat,” as might have been +said, that he felt on the instant its origin. “She has confided to my +judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of everything, +and the assertion of her personal dignity.” +</p> + +<p> +They were the very words of the lady of Woollett—he would have known them +in a thousand; her parting charge to her child. Mrs. Pocock accordingly spoke +to this extent by book, and the fact immensely moved him. “If she does +really feel as you say it’s of course very very dreadful. I’ve +given sufficient proof, one would have thought,” he added, “of my +deep admiration for Mrs. Newsome.” +</p> + +<p> +“And pray what proof would one have thought you’d <i>call</i> +sufficient? That of thinking this person here so far superior to her?” +</p> + +<p> +He wondered again; he waited. “Ah dear Sarah, you must <i>leave</i> me +this person here!” +</p> + +<p> +In his desire to avoid all vulgar retorts, to show how, even perversely, he +clung to his rag of reason, he had softly almost wailed this plea. Yet he knew +it to be perhaps the most positive declaration he had ever made in his life, +and his visitor’s reception of it virtually gave it that importance. +“That’s exactly what I’m delighted to do. God knows <i>we</i> +don’t want her! You take good care not to meet,” she observed in a +still higher key, “my question about their life. If you do consider it a +thing one can even <i>speak</i> of, I congratulate you on your taste!” +</p> + +<p> +The life she alluded to was of course Chad’s and Madame de +Vionnet’s, which she thus bracketed together in a way that made him wince +a little; there being nothing for him but to take home her full intention. It +was none the less his inconsequence that while he had himself been enjoying for +weeks the view of the brilliant woman’s specific action, he just suffered +from any characterisation of it by other lips. “I think tremendously well +of her, at the same time that I seem to feel her ‘life’ to be +really none of my business. It’s my business, that is, only so far as +Chad’s own life is affected by it; and what has happened, don’t you +see? is that Chad’s has been affected so beautifully. The proof of the +pudding’s in the eating”—he tried, with no great success, to +help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while she let him go on as if to sink +and sink. He went on however well enough, as well as he could do without fresh +counsel; he indeed shouldn’t stand quite firm, he felt, till he should +have re-established his communications with Chad. Still, he could always speak +for the woman he had so definitely promised to “save.” This +wasn’t quite for her the air of salvation; but as that chill fairly +deepened what did it become but a reminder that one might at the worst perish +<i>with</i> her? And it was simple enough—it was rudimentary: not, not to +give her away. “I find in her more merits than you would probably have +patience with my counting over. And do you know,” he enquired, “the +effect you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It’s as if you +had some motive in not recognising all she has done for your brother, and so +shut your eyes to each side of the matter, in order, whichever side comes up, +to get rid of the other. I don’t, you must allow me to say, see how you +can with any pretence to candour get rid of the side nearest you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Near me—<i>that</i> sort of thing?” And Sarah gave a jerk +back of her head that well might have nullified any active proximity. +</p> + +<p> +It kept her friend himself at his distance, and he respected for a moment the +interval. Then with a last persuasive effort he bridged it. “You +don’t, on your honour, appreciate Chad’s fortunate +development?” +</p> + +<p> +“Fortunate?” she echoed again. And indeed she was prepared. +“I call it hideous.” +</p> + +<p> +Her departure had been for some minutes marked as imminent, and she was already +at the door that stood open to the court, from the threshold of which she +delivered herself of this judgement. It rang out so loud as to produce for the +time the hush of everything else. Strether quite, as an effect of it, breathed +less bravely; he could acknowledge it, but simply enough. “Oh if you +think <i>that</i>—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then all’s at an end? So much the better. I do think that!” +She passed out as she spoke and took her way straight across the court, beyond +which, separated from them by the deep arch of the <i>porte-cochère</i> the low +victoria that had conveyed her from her own hotel was drawn up. She made for it +with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder, +had an intensity by which Strether was at first kept in arrest. She had let fly +at him as from a stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the +sense of being pierced. It was not the penetration of surprise; it was that, +much more, of certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put +it to himself. She was away at any rate; she had distanced him—with +rather a grand spring, an effect of pride and ease, after all; she had got into +her carriage before he could overtake her, and the vehicle was already in +motion. He stopped halfway; he stood there in the court only seeing her go and +noting that she gave him no other look. The way he had put it to himself was +that all quite <i>might</i> be at an end. Each of her movements, in this +resolute rupture, reaffirmed, re-enforced that idea. Sarah passed out of sight +in the sunny street while, planted there in the centre of the comparatively +grey court, he continued merely to look before him. It probably <i>was</i> all +at an end. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>Book Eleventh</h2> + +<p class="footnote"> [Note: In the 1909 New York Edition the following two +chapters were placed in the reverse of the order appearing below. Since 1950, +most scholars have agreed, because of the internal evidence of the two +chapters, that an editorial error caused them to be printed in reverse order. +This Etext, like other editions of the past four decades, corrects the apparent +error.—Richard D. Hathaway, preparer of this electronic text] +</p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his impression +that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more than once in the +course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge. Chad hadn’t come in +and had left no intimation; he had affairs, apparently, at this +juncture—as it occurred to Strether he so well might have—that kept +him long abroad. Our friend asked once for him at the hotel in the Rue de +Rivoli, but the only contribution offered there was the fact that every one was +out. It was with the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that +Strether went up to his rooms, from which however he was still absent, though, +from the balcony, a few moments later, his visitor heard eleven o’clock +strike. Chad’s servant had by this time answered for his reappearance; he +<i>had</i>, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish +again. Strether spent an hour in waiting for him—an hour full of strange +suggestions, persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at +the end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted. The +mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by +Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel lemon-coloured +and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a +contadina’s hair, had been pushed within the soft circle—a circle +which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer still after the same +Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need of anything by +Monsieur he would betake himself to bed. The night was hot and heavy and the +single lamp sufficient; the great flare of the lighted city, rising high, +spending itself afar, played up from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista +of the successive rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. +Strether found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been +there alone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad’s +absence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and never with +a relish quite so like a pang. +</p> + +<p> +He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen little +Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie hang over her +own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her from below; he passed +back into the rooms, the three that occupied the front and that communicated by +wide doors; and, while he circulated and rested, tried to recover the +impression that they had made on him three months before, to catch again the +voice in which they had seemed then to speak to him. That voice, he had to +note, failed audibly to sound; which he took as the proof of all the change in +himself. He had heard, of old, only what he <i>could</i> then hear; what he +could do now was to think of three months ago as a point in the far past. All +voices had grown thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved +about—it was the way they sounded together that wouldn’t let him be +still. He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as +excited as if he had come for some freedom. But the freedom was what was most +in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that most brought him round again +to the youth of his own that he had long ago missed. He could have explained +little enough to-day either why he had missed it or why, after years and years, +he should care that he had; the main truth of the actual appeal of everything +was none the less that everything represented the substance of his loss put it +within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an affair +of the senses. That was what it became for him at this singular time, the youth +he had long ago missed—a queer concrete presence, full of mystery, yet +full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell, the deep breathing of +which he could positively hear. It was in the outside air as well as within; it +was in the long watch, from the balcony, in the summer night, of the wide late +life of Paris, the unceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted +carriages that, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old +at Monte Carlo pushing up to the tables. This image was before him when he at +last became aware that Chad was behind. +</p> + +<p> +“She tells me you put it all on <i>me</i>”—he had arrived +after this promptly enough at that information; which expressed the case +however quite as the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it. +Other things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before +them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the +occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest and +easiest to which Strether’s whole adventure was to have treated him. He +had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken him only now; but +now the delay was repaired by their being so exceptionally confronted. They had +foregathered enough of course in all the various times; they had again and +again, since that first night at the theatre, been face to face over their +question; but they had never been so alone together as they were actually +alone—their talk hadn’t yet been so supremely for themselves. And +if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for +Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often +moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to his +knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile—a smile that +pleased exactly in the right degree—as his visitor turned round, on the +balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that there +was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that facility. He +surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was the meaning +of the facility but that others <i>did</i> surrender themselves? He +didn’t want, luckily, to prevent Chad from living; but he was quite aware +that even if he had he would himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in +truth essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all +subsidiary to the young man’s own that he held together. And the great +point, above all, the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in +question, was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but +with wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream. Their talk had accordingly +not lasted three minutes without Strether’s feeling basis enough for the +excitement in which he had waited. This overflow fairly deepened, wastefully +abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything corresponding to it on the +part of his friend. That was exactly this friend’s happy case; he +“put out” his excitement, or whatever other emotion the matter +involved, as he put out his washing; than which no arrangement could make more +for domestic order. It was quite for Strether himself in short to feel a +personal analogy with the laundress bringing home the triumphs of the mangle. +</p> + +<p> +When he had reported on Sarah’s visit, which he did very fully, Chad +answered his question with perfect candour. “I positively referred her to +you—told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and it all +took place in ten minutes. It was our first free talk—really the first +time she had tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had been with +yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to make anything +difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly—assured her you were all at +her service. I assured her <i>I</i> was too,” the young man continued; +“and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time, have got at me. +Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her difficulty,” Strether returned, “has been simply that +she finds she’s afraid of you. She’s not afraid of <i>me</i>, +Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget +when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to +be in making me as uneasy as possible. I think she’s at bottom as pleased +to <i>have</i> you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what in the world, my dear man,” Chad enquired in objection to +this luminosity, “have I done to make Sally afraid?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve been ‘wonderful, wonderful,’ as we say—we +poor people who watch the play from the pit; and that’s what has, +admirably, made her. Made her all the more effectually that she could see you +didn’t set about it on purpose—I mean set about affecting her as +with fear.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive. +“I’ve only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and +attentive—and I still only want to be.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. “Well, there can certainly +be no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal +friction and your personal offence to almost nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn’t +quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of +great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back +in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the +flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. “The onus isn’t +<i>really</i> yours—after our agreeing so to wait together and judge +together. That was all my answer to Sally,” Chad +pursued—“that we have been, that we are, just judging +together.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not afraid of the burden,” Strether explained; “I +haven’t come in the least that you should take it off me. I’ve come +very much, it seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel +when he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I’ve +supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and private +judging—about which I haven’t troubled you; and I’ve only +wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don’t ask more than +that; I’m quite ready to take it as it has come.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke. “Well, +I’ve seen.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether waited a little. “I’ve left you wholly alone; +haven’t, I think I may say, since the first hour or two—when I +merely preached patience—so much as breathed on you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you’ve been awfully good!” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve both been good then—we’ve played the game. +We’ve given them the most liberal conditions.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Chad, “splendid conditions! It was open to them, +open to them”—he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes +still on the stars. He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope. +Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally let him +have it. “It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have made up +their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could go on well enough +as I was.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his companion’s +plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no +ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; +and this added to our friend’s sense of Chad’s knowing what he +thought. “But they’ve made up their minds to the +opposite—that you <i>can’t</i> go on as you are.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” Chad continued in the same way; “they won’t have +it for a minute.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high place +really represented some moral elevation from which they could look down on +their recent past. “There never was the smallest chance, do you know, +that they <i>would</i> have it for a moment.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not—no real chance. But if they were willing to think +there was—!” +</p> + +<p> +“They weren’t willing.” Strether had worked it all out. +“It wasn’t for you they came out, but for me. It wasn’t to +see for themselves what you’re doing, but what I’m doing. The first +branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to +give way to the second; and it’s on the second that, if I may use the +expression and you don’t mind my marking the invidious fact, +they’ve been of late exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in +other words, they were after.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. “It <i>is</i> +rather a business then—what I’ve let you in for!” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to dispose +once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat it, at any rate, +so far as they were again together, as having done so. “I was +‘in’ when you found me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but it was you,” the young man laughed, “who found +<i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the +day’s work for them, at all events, that they should come. And +they’ve greatly enjoyed it,” Strether declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ve tried to make them,” said Chad. +</p> + +<p> +His companion did himself presently the same justice. “So have I. I tried +even this very morning—while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys for +instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I’ve said, +afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad took a deeper interest. “Was she very very nasty?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether debated. “Well, she was the most important thing—she was +definite. She was—at last—crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw +that they must have come.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for +<i>that</i>—!” Chad’s own remorse was as small. +</p> + +<p> +This appeared almost all Strether wanted. “Isn’t your having seen +them for yourself then <i>the</i> thing, beyond all others, that has come of +their visit?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so. +“Don’t you count it as anything that you’re dished—if +you <i>are</i> dished? Are you, my dear man, dished?” +</p> + +<p> +It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and +Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked. “I want to see her again. I +must see her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you must.” Then Chad hesitated. “Do you +mean—a—Mother herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh your mother—that will depend.” +</p> + +<p> +It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off. +Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place. “What do +you mean it will depend on?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. “I was speaking of +Sarah. I must positively—though she quite cast me off—see +<i>her</i> again. I can’t part with her that way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then she was awfully unpleasant?” +</p> + +<p> +Again Strether exhaled. “She was what she had to be. I mean that from the +moment they’re not delighted they can only be—well what I admit she +was. We gave them,” he went on, “their chance to be delighted, and +they’ve walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can bring a horse to water—!” Chad suggested. +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn’t +delighted—the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to +drink—leaves us on that side nothing more to hope.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: “It was never of course +really the least on the cards that they would be +‘delighted.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I don’t know, after all,” Strether mused. +“I’ve had to come as far round. However”—he shook it +off—“it’s doubtless <i>my</i> performance that’s +absurd.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are certainly moments,” said Chad, “when you seem to +me too good to be true. Yet if you are true,” he added, “that seems +to be all that need concern me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m true, but I’m incredible. I’m fantastic and +ridiculous—I don’t explain myself even <i>to</i> myself. How can +they then,” Strether asked, “understand me? So I don’t +quarrel with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see. They quarrel,” said Chad rather comfortably, “with +<i>us</i>.” Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend +had already gone on. “I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I +didn’t put it before you again that you ought to think, after all, +tremendously well. I mean before giving up beyond recall—” With +which insistence, as from a certain delicacy, dropped. +</p> + +<p> +Ah but Strether wanted it. “Say it all, say it all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, at your age, and with what—when all’s said and +done—Mother might do for you and be for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so that +Strether after an instant himself took a hand. “My absence of an assured +future. The little I have to show toward the power to take care of myself. The +way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take care of me. Her fortune, her +kindness, and the constant miracle of her having been disposed to go even so +far. Of course, of course”—he summed it up. “There are those +sharp facts.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. “And don’t you really +care—?” +</p> + +<p> +His friend slowly turned round to him. “Will you go?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll go if you’ll say you now consider I should. You +know,” he went on, “I was ready six weeks ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Strether, “that was when you didn’t know +<i>I</i> wasn’t! You’re ready at present because you do know +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That may be,” Chad returned; “but all the same I’m +sincere. You talk about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what +light do you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?” +Strether patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet, +reassuringly—seeming to wish to contend that he <i>had</i> the +wherewithal; but it was again round this question of purchase and price that +the young man’s sense of fairness continued to hover. “What it +literally comes to for you, if you’ll pardon my putting it so, is that +you give up money. Possibly a good deal of money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Strether laughed, “if it were only just enough +you’d still be justified in putting it so! But I’ve on my side to +remind you too that <i>you</i> give up money; and more than +‘possibly’—quite certainly, as I should suppose—a good +deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“True enough; but I’ve got a certain quantity,” Chad returned +after a moment. “Whereas you, my dear man, you—” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t be at all said”—Strether took him +up—“to have a ‘quantity’ certain or uncertain? Very +true. Still, I shan’t starve.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you mustn’t <i>starve!</i>” Chad pacifically emphasised; +and so, in the pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, +for that matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken +as weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder some +provision against the possibility just mentioned. This, however, he presumably +thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute they had moved in +quite a different direction. Strether had broken in by returning to the subject +of Chad’s passage with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the +event, at anything in the nature of a “scene.” To this Chad replied +that they had on the contrary kept tremendously polite; adding moreover that +Sally was after all not the woman to have made the mistake of not being. +“Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I got so, from the +first,” he sagaciously observed, “the start of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean she has taken so much from you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I couldn’t of course in common decency give less: only she +hadn’t expected, I think, that I’d give her nearly so much. And she +began to take it before she knew it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she began to like it,” said Strether, “as soon as she +began to take it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she has liked it—also more than she expected.” After +which Chad observed: “But she doesn’t like <i>me</i>. In fact she +hates me.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s interest grew. “Then why does she want you at +home?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me +neatly stuck there she <i>would</i> triumph.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. “Certainly—in a +manner. But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled, +feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of +your own, you should on the spot make yourself unpleasant to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Chad, “she can bear <i>me</i>—could bear me +at least at home. It’s my being there that would be her triumph. She +hates me in Paris.” +</p> + +<p> +“She hates in other words—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, <i>that’s</i> it!”—Chad had quickly understood +this understanding; which formed on the part of each as near an approach as +they had yet made to naming Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their +distinctness didn’t, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air +that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated. It added one more touch moreover to +their established recognition of the rare intimacy of Chad’s association +with her. He had never yet more twitched away the last light veil from this +phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded and submerged in the +feeling she had created at Woollett. “And I’ll tell you who hates +me too,” he immediately went on. +</p> + +<p> +Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a protest. +“Ah no! Mamie doesn’t hate—well,” he caught himself in +time—“anybody at all. Mamie’s beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad shook his head. “That’s just why I mind it. She certainly +doesn’t like me.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much do you mind it? What would you do for her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’d like her if she’d like me. Really, really,” +Chad declared. +</p> + +<p> +It gave his companion a moment’s pause. “You asked me just now if I +don’t, as you said, ‘care’ about a certain person. You rather +tempt me therefore to put the question in my turn. Don’t <i>you</i> care +about a certain other person?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window. “The difference +is that I don’t want to.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wondered. “‘Don’t want’ to?” +</p> + +<p> +“I try not to—that is I <i>have</i> tried. I’ve done my best. +You can’t be surprised,” the young man easily went on, “when +you yourself set me on it. I was indeed,” he added, “already on it +a little; but you set me harder. It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come +out.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether took it well in. “But you haven’t come out!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—it’s what I <i>want</i> to know,” +said Chad. “And if I could have sufficiently wanted—by +myself—to go back, I think I might have found out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly”—Strether considered. “But all you were able +to achieve was to want to want to! And even then,” he pursued, +“only till our friends there came. Do you want to want to still?” +As with a sound half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad +buried his face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that +amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply: “<i>Do</i> +you?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then abruptly, +“Jim <i>is</i> a damned dose!” he declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh I don’t ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on +your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you’re +<i>now</i> ready. You say you’ve ‘seen.’ Is what you’ve +seen that you can’t resist?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad gave him a strange smile—the nearest approach he had ever shown to a +troubled one. “Can’t you make me <i>not</i> resist?” +</p> + +<p> +“What it comes to,” Strether went on very gravely now and as if he +hadn’t heard him, “what it comes to is that more has been done for +you, I think, than I’ve ever seen done—attempted perhaps, but never +so successfully done—by one human being for another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh an immense deal certainly”—Chad did it full justice. +“And you yourself are adding to it.” +</p> + +<p> +It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. “And our +friends there won’t have it.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, they simply won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and +ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me,” Strether went on, +“is that I haven’t seen my way to working with you for +repudiation.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad appreciated this. “Then as you haven’t seen yours you +naturally haven’t seen mine. There it is.” After which he +proceeded, with a certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation. +“<i>Now</i> do you say she doesn’t hate me?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “‘She’—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same +thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” Strether objected, “not to the same thing as her hating +<i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +On which—though as if for an instant it had hung fire—Chad +remarkably replied: “Well, if they hate my good friend, <i>that</i> comes +to the same thing.” It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether +take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for +his “good friend” more than he had ever yet directly spoken, +confessed to such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea +of working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him down +like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. “Their hating you too +moreover—that also comes to a good deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Strether, “your mother doesn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad, however, loyally stuck to it—loyally, that is, to Strether. +“She will if you don’t look out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That’s just +why,” our friend explained, “I want to see her again.” +</p> + +<p> +It drew from Chad again the same question. “To see Mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“To see—for the present—Sarah.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then there you are! And what I don’t for the life of me make +out,” Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, “is what you +<i>gain</i> by it.” +</p> + +<p> +Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! “That’s +because you have, I verily believe, no imagination. You’ve other +qualities. But no imagination, don’t you see? at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say. I do see.” It was an idea in which Chad showed +interest. “But haven’t you yourself rather too much?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh <i>rather</i>—!” So that after an instant, under this +reproach and as if it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made +his move for departure. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +One of the features of the restless afternoon passed by him after Mrs. +Pocock’s visit was an hour spent, shortly before dinner, with Maria +Gostrey, whom of late, in spite of so sustained a call on his attention from +other quarters, he had by no means neglected. And that he was still not +neglecting her will appear from the fact that he was with her again at the same +hour on the very morrow—with no less fine a consciousness moreover of +being able to hold her ear. It continued inveterately to occur, for that +matter, that whenever he had taken one of his greater turns he came back to +where she so faithfully awaited him. None of these excursions had on the whole +been livelier than the pair of incidents—the fruit of the short interval +since his previous visit—on which he had now to report to her. He had +seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a +sequel to this conversation, a second interview with Sarah. “But +they’re all off,” he said, “at last.” +</p> + +<p> +It puzzled her a moment. “All?—Mr. Newsome with them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them—for +Sarah. It’s too beautiful,” Strether continued; “I find I +don’t get over that—it’s always a fresh joy. But it’s a +fresh joy too,” he added, “that—well, what do you think? +Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey wondered. “‘For’ her? Do you mean they’re +already engaged?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “say then for <i>me</i>. He’ll +do anything for me; just as I will, for that matter—anything I +can—for him. Or for Mamie either. <i>She’ll</i> do anything for +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey gave a comprehensive sigh. “The way you reduce people to +subjection!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s certainly, on one side, wonderful. But it’s quite +equalled, on another, by the way I don’t. I haven’t reduced Sarah, +since yesterday; though I’ve succeeded in seeing her again, as I’ll +presently tell you. The others however are really all right. Mamie, by that +blessed law of ours, absolutely must have a young man.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what must poor Mr. Bilham have? Do you mean they’ll +<i>marry</i> for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that, by the same blessed law, it won’t matter a grain if +they don’t—I shan’t have in the least to worry.” +</p> + +<p> +She saw as usual what he meant. “And Mr. Jim?—who goes for +him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Strether had to admit, “I couldn’t manage +<i>that</i>. He’s thrown, as usual, on the world; the world which, after +all, by his account—for he has prodigious adventures—seems very +good to him. He fortunately—‘over here,’ as he +says—finds the world everywhere; and his most prodigious adventure of +all,” he went on, “has been of course of the last few days.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey, already knowing, instantly made the connexion. “He has seen +Marie de Vionnet again?” +</p> + +<p> +“He went, all by himself, the day after Chad’s +party—didn’t I tell you?—to tea with her. By her +invitation—all alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite like yourself!” Maria smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but he’s more wonderful about her than I am!” And then as +his friend showed how she could believe it, filling it out, fitting it on to +old memories of the wonderful woman: “What I should have liked to manage +would have been <i>her</i> going.” +</p> + +<p> +“To Switzerland with the party?” +</p> + +<p> +“For Jim—and for symmetry. If it had been workable moreover for a +fortnight she’d have gone. She’s ready”—he followed up +his renewed vision of her—“for anything.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey went with him a minute. “She’s too perfect!” +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>will</i>, I think,” he pursued, “go to-night to the +station.” +</p> + +<p> +“To see him off?” +</p> + +<p> +“With Chad—marvellously—as part of their general attention. +And she does it”—it kept before him—“with a light, +light grace, a free, free gaiety, that may well softly bewilder Mr. +Pocock.” +</p> + +<p> +It kept her so before him that his companion had after an instant a friendly +comment. “As in short it has softly bewildered a saner man. Are you +really in love with her?” Maria threw off. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s of no importance I should know,” he replied. “It +matters so little—has nothing to do, practically, with either of +us.” +</p> + +<p> +“All the same”—Maria continued to smile—“they go, +the five, as I understand you, and you and Madame de Vionnet stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh and Chad.” To which Strether added: “And you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah ‘me’!”—she gave a small impatient wail again, +in which something of the unreconciled seemed suddenly to break out. +“<i>I</i> don’t stay, it somehow seems to me, much to my advantage. +In the presence of all you cause to pass before me I’ve a tremendous +sense of privation.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether hesitated. “But your privation, your keeping out of everything, +has been—hasn’t it?—by your own choice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes; it has been necessary—that is it has been better for you. +What I mean is only that I seem to have ceased to serve you.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you tell that?” he asked. “You don’t know how +you serve me. When you cease—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” she said as he dropped. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’ll <i>let</i> you know. Be quiet till then.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought a moment. “Then you positively like me to stay?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t I treat you as if I did?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re certainly very kind to me. But that,” said Maria, +“is for myself. It’s getting late, as you see, and Paris turning +rather hot and dusty. People are scattering, and some of them, in other places +want me. But if you want me here—!” +</p> + +<p> +She had spoken as resigned to his word, but he had of a sudden a still sharper +sense than he would have expected of desiring not to lose her. “I want +you here.” +</p> + +<p> +She took it as if the words were all she had wished; as if they brought her, +gave her something that was the compensation of her case. “Thank +you,” she simply answered. And then as he looked at her a little harder, +“Thank you very much,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +It had broken as with a slight arrest into the current of their talk, and it +held him a moment longer. “Why, two months, or whatever the time was, +ago, did you so suddenly dash off? The reason you afterwards gave me for having +kept away three weeks wasn’t the real one.” +</p> + +<p> +She recalled. “I never supposed you believed it was. Yet,” she +continued, “if you didn’t guess it that was just what helped +you.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked away from her on this; he indulged, so far as space permitted, in one +of his slow absences. “I’ve often thought of it, but never to feel +that I could guess it. And you see the consideration with which I’ve +treated you in never asking till now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now then why <i>do</i> you ask?” +</p> + +<p> +“To show you how I miss you when you’re not here, and what it does +for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t seem to have done,” she laughed, “all it +might! However,” she added, “if you’ve really never guessed +the truth I’ll tell it you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve never guessed it,” Strether declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Never?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then I dashed off, as you say, so as not to have the confusion of +being there if Marie de Vionnet should tell you anything to my +detriment.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked as if he considerably doubted. “You even then would have had to +face it on your return.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh if I had found reason to believe it something very bad I’d have +left you altogether.” +</p> + +<p> +“So then,” he continued, “it was only on guessing she had +been on the whole merciful that you ventured back?” +</p> + +<p> +Maria kept it together. “I owe her thanks. Whatever her temptation she +didn’t separate us. That’s one of my reasons,” she went on +“for admiring her so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let it pass then,” said Strether, “for one of mine as well. +But what would have been her temptation?” +</p> + +<p> +“What are ever the temptations of women?” +</p> + +<p> +He thought—but hadn’t, naturally, to think too long. +“Men?” +</p> + +<p> +“She would have had you, with it, more for herself. But she saw she could +have you without it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh ‘have’ me!” Strether a trifle ambiguously sighed. +“<i>You</i>,” he handsomely declared, “would have had me at +any rate <i>with</i> it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh ‘have’ you!”—she echoed it as he had done. +“I do have you, however,” she less ironically said, “from the +moment you express a wish.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped before her, full of the disposition. “I’ll express +fifty.” +</p> + +<p> +Which indeed begot in her, with a certain inconsequence, a return of her small +wail. “Ah there you are!” +</p> + +<p> +There, if it were so, he continued for the rest of the time to be, and it was +as if to show her how she could still serve him that, coming back to the +departure of the Pococks, he gave her the view, vivid with a hundred more +touches than we can reproduce, of what had happened for him that morning. He +had had ten minutes with Sarah at her hotel, ten minutes reconquered, by +irresistible pressure, from the time over which he had already described her to +Miss Gostrey as having, at the end of their interview on his own premises, +passed the great sponge of the future. He had caught her by not announcing +himself, had found her in her sitting-room with a dressmaker and a +<i>lingère</i> whose accounts she appeared to have been more or less +ingenuously settling and who soon withdrew. Then he had explained to her how he +had succeeded, late the night before, in keeping his promise of seeing Chad. +“I told her I’d take it all.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d ‘take’ it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why if he doesn’t go.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria waited. “And who takes it if he does?” she enquired with a +certain grimness of gaiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “I think I take, in any event, +everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“By which I suppose you mean,” his companion brought out after a +moment, “that you definitely understand you now lose everything.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood before her again. “It does come perhaps to the same thing. But +Chad, now that he has seen, doesn’t really want it.” +</p> + +<p> +She could believe that, but she made, as always, for clearness. “Still, +what, after all, <i>has</i> he seen?” +</p> + +<p> +“What they want of him. And it’s enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“It contrasts so unfavourably with what Madame de Vionnet wants?” +</p> + +<p> +“It contrasts—just so; all round, and tremendously.” +</p> + +<p> +“Therefore, perhaps, most of all with what <i>you</i> want?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Strether, “what I want is a thing I’ve +ceased to measure or even to understand.” +</p> + +<p> +But his friend none the less went on. “Do you want Mrs. +Newsome—after such a way of treating you?” +</p> + +<p> +It was a straighter mode of dealing with this lady than they had as +yet—such was their high form—permitted themselves; but it seemed +not wholly for this that he delayed a moment. “I dare say it has been, +after all, the only way she could have imagined.” +</p> + +<p> +“And does that make you want her any more?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve tremendously disappointed her,” Strether thought it +worth while to mention. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course you have. That’s rudimentary; that was plain to us long +ago. But isn’t it almost as plain,” Maria went on, “that +you’ve even yet your straight remedy? Really drag him away, as I believe +you still can, and you’d cease to have to count with her +disappointment.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah then,” he laughed, “I should have to count with +yours!” +</p> + +<p> +But this barely struck her now. “What, in that case, should you call +counting? You haven’t come out where you are, I think, to please +<i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” he insisted, “that too, you know, has been part of it. +I can’t separate—it’s all one; and that’s perhaps why, +as I say, I don’t understand.” But he was ready to declare again +that this didn’t in the least matter; all the more that, as he affirmed, +he <i>hadn’t</i> really as yet “come out.” “She gives +me after all, on its coming to the pinch, a last mercy, another chance. They +don’t sail, you see, for five or six weeks more, and they +haven’t—she admits that—expected Chad would take part in +their tour. It’s still open to him to join them, at the last, at +Liverpool.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey considered. “How in the world is it ‘open’ +unless you open it? How can he join them at Liverpool if he but sinks deeper +into his situation here?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has given her—as I explained to you that she let me know +yesterday—his word of honour to do as I say.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria stared. “But if you say nothing!” +</p> + +<p> +Well, he as usual walked about on it. “I did say something this morning. +I gave her my answer—the word I had promised her after hearing from +himself what <i>he</i> had promised. What she demanded of me yesterday, +you’ll remember, was the engagement then and there to make him take up +this vow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then,” Miss Gostrey enquired, “was the purpose of your +visit to her only to decline?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; it was to ask, odd as that may seem to you, for another +delay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s weak!” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely!” She had spoken with impatience, but, so far as that at +least, he knew where he was. “If I <i>am</i> weak I want to find it out. +If I don’t find it out I shall have the comfort, the little glory, of +thinking I’m strong.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all the comfort, I judge,” she returned, “that +you <i>will</i> have!” +</p> + +<p> +“At any rate,” he said, “it will have been a month more. +Paris may grow, from day to day, hot and dusty, as you say; but there are other +things that are hotter and dustier. I’m not afraid to stay on; the summer +here must be amusing in a wild—if it isn’t a tame—way of its +own; the place at no time more picturesque. I think I shall like it. And +then,” he benevolently smiled for her, “there will be always +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she objected, “it won’t be as a part of the +picturesqueness that I shall stay, for I shall be the plainest thing about you. +You may, you see, at any rate,” she pursued, “have nobody else. +Madame de Vionnet may very well be going off, mayn’t she?—and Mr. +Newsome by the same stroke: unless indeed you’ve had an assurance from +them to the contrary. So that if your idea’s to stay for +them”—it was her duty to suggest it—“you may be left in +the lurch. Of course if they do stay”—she kept it +up—“they would be part of the picturesqueness. Or else indeed you +might join them somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed to face it as if it were a happy thought; but the next moment +he spoke more critically. “Do you mean that they’ll probably go off +together?” +</p> + +<p> +She just considered. “I think it will be treating you quite without +ceremony if they do; though after all,” she added, “it would be +difficult to see now quite what degree of ceremony properly meets your +case.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” Strether conceded, “my attitude toward them is +extraordinary.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just so; so that one may ask one’s self what style of proceeding +on their own part can altogether match it. The attitude of their own that +won’t pale in its light they’ve doubtless still to work out. The +really handsome thing perhaps,” she presently threw off, +“<i>would</i> be for them to withdraw into more secluded conditions, +offering at the same time to share them with you.” He looked at her, on +this, as if some generous irritation—all in his interest—had +suddenly again flickered in her; and what she next said indeed half-explained +it. “Don’t really be afraid to tell me if what now holds you +<i>is</i> the pleasant prospect of the empty town, with plenty of seats in the +shade, cool drinks, deserted museums, drives to the Bois in the evening, and +our wonderful woman all to yourself.” And she kept it up still more. +“The handsomest thing of <i>all</i>, when one makes it out, would, I dare +say, be that Mr. Chad should for a while go off by himself. It’s a pity, +from that point of view,” she wound up, “that he doesn’t pay +his mother a visit. It would at least occupy your interval.” The thought +in fact held her a moment. “Why doesn’t he pay his mother a visit? +Even a week, at this good moment, would do.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear lady,” Strether replied—and he had it even to +himself surprisingly ready—“my dear lady, his mother has paid +<i>him</i> a visit. Mrs. Newsome has been with him, this month, with an +intensity that I’m sure he has thoroughly felt; he has lavishly +entertained her, and she has let him have her thanks. Do you suggest he shall +go back for more of them?” +</p> + +<p> +Well, she succeeded after a little in shaking it off. “I see. It’s +what you don’t suggest—what you haven’t suggested. And you +know.” +</p> + +<p> +“So would you, my dear,” he kindly said, “if you had so much +as seen her.” +</p> + +<p> +“As seen Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Sarah—which, both for Chad and for myself, has served all the +purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +“And served it in a manner,” she responsively mused, “so +extraordinary!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you see,” he partly explained, “what it comes to is +that she’s all cold thought—which Sarah could serve to us cold +without its really losing anything. So it is that we know what she thinks of +us.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria had followed, but she had an arrest. “What I’ve never made +out, if you come to that, is what you think—I mean you +personally—of <i>her</i>. Don’t you so much, when all’s said, +as care a little?” +</p> + +<p> +“That,” he answered with no loss of promptness, “is what even +Chad himself asked me last night. He asked me if I don’t mind the +loss—well, the loss of an opulent future. Which moreover,” he +hastened to add, “was a perfectly natural question.” +</p> + +<p> +“I call your attention, all the same,” said Miss Gostrey, “to +the fact that I don’t ask it. What I venture to ask is whether it’s +to Mrs. Newsome herself that you’re indifferent.” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t been so”—he spoke with all assurance. +“I’ve been the very opposite. I’ve been, from the first +moment, preoccupied with the impression everything might be making on +her—quite oppressed, haunted, tormented by it. I’ve been interested +<i>only</i> in her seeing what I’ve seen. And I’ve been as +disappointed in her refusal to see it as she has been in what has appeared to +her the perversity of my insistence.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean that she has shocked you as you’ve shocked her?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether weighed it. “I’m probably not so shockable. But on the +other hand I’ve gone much further to meet her. She, on her side, +hasn’t budged an inch.” +</p> + +<p> +“So that you’re now at last”—Maria pointed the +moral—“in the sad stage of recriminations.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—it’s only to you I speak. I’ve been like a lamb to +Sarah. I’ve only put my back to the wall. It’s to <i>that</i> one +naturally staggers when one has been violently pushed there.” +</p> + +<p> +She watched him a moment. “Thrown over?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, as I feel I’ve landed somewhere I think I must have been +thrown.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned it over, but as hoping to clarify much rather than to harmonise. +“The thing is that I suppose you’ve been +disappointing—” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite from the very first of my arrival? I dare say. I admit I was +surprising even to myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then of course,” Maria went on, “I had much to do with +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“With my being surprising—?” +</p> + +<p> +“That will do,” she laughed, “if you’re too delicate to +call it <i>my</i> being! Naturally,” she added, “you came over more +or less for surprises.” +</p> + +<p> +“Naturally!”—he valued the reminder. +</p> + +<p> +“But they were to have been all for you”—she continued to +piece it out—“and none of them for <i>her</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point. +“That’s just her difficulty—that she doesn’t admit +surprises. It’s a fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and +it falls in with what I tell you—that she’s all, as I’ve +called it, fine cold thought. She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing +out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for herself. Whenever she +has done that, you see, there’s no room left; no margin, as it were, for +any alteration. She’s filled as full, packed as tight, as she’ll +hold and if you wish to get anything more or different either out or +in—” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to make over altogether the woman herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“What it comes to,” said Strether, “is that you’ve got +morally and intellectually to get rid of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which would appear,” Maria returned, “to be practically what +you’ve done.” +</p> + +<p> +But her friend threw back his head. “I haven’t touched her. She +won’t <i>be</i> touched. I see it now as I’ve never done; and she +hangs together with a perfection of her own,” he went on, “that +does suggest a kind of wrong in <i>any</i> change of her composition. It was at +any rate,” he wound up, “the woman herself, as you call her the +whole moral and intellectual being or block, that Sarah brought me over to take +or to leave.” +</p> + +<p> +It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought. “Fancy having to take at the +point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!” +</p> + +<p> +“It was in fact,” said Strether, “what, at home, I <i>had</i> +done. But somehow over there I didn’t quite know it.” +</p> + +<p> +“One never does, I suppose,” Miss Gostrey concurred, “realise +in advance, in such a case, the size, as you may say, of the block. Little by +little it looms up. It has been looming for you more and more till at last you +see it all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see it all,” he absently echoed, while his eyes might have been +fixing some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea. +“It’s magnificent!” he then rather oddly exclaimed. +</p> + +<p> +But his friend, who was used to this kind of inconsequence in him, kept the +thread. “There’s nothing so magnificent—for making others +feel you—as to have no imagination.” +</p> + +<p> +It brought him straight round. “Ah there you are! It’s what I said +last night to Chad. That he himself, I mean, has none.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it would appear,” Maria suggested, “that he has, after +all, something in common with his mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has in common that he makes one, as you say, ‘feel’ him. +And yet,” he added, as if the question were interesting, “one feels +others too, even when they have plenty.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Gostrey continued suggestive. “Madame de Vionnet?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She</i> has plenty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly—she had quantities of old. But there are different ways +of making one’s self felt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that. You now—” +</p> + +<p> +He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn’t have it. “Oh I +<i>don’t</i> make myself felt; so my quantity needn’t be settled. +Yours, you know,” she said, “is monstrous. No one has ever had so +much.” +</p> + +<p> +It struck him for a moment. “That’s what Chad also thinks.” +</p> + +<p> +“There <i>you</i> are then—though it isn’t for him to +complain of it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh he doesn’t complain of it,” said Strether. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,” +Maria went on, “did the question come up?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.” +</p> + +<p> +She had a pause. “Then as I’ve asked you too it settles <i>my</i> +case. Oh you <i>have</i>,” she repeated, “treasures of +imagination.” +</p> + +<p> +But he had been for an instant thinking away from this, and he came up in +another place. “And yet Mrs. Newsome—it’s a thing to +remember—<i>has</i> imagined, did, that is, imagine, and apparently still +does, horrors about what I should have found. I was booked, by her +vision—extraordinarily intense, after all—to find them; and that I +didn’t, that I couldn’t, that, as she evidently felt, I +wouldn’t—this evidently didn’t at all, as they say, +‘suit’ her book. It was more than she could bear. That was her +disappointment.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean you were to have found Chad himself horrible?” +</p> + +<p> +“I was to have found the woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Horrible?” +</p> + +<p> +“Found her as she imagined her.” And Strether paused as if for his +own expression of it he could add no touch to that picture. +</p> + +<p> +His companion had meanwhile thought. “She imagined stupidly—so it +comes to the same thing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stupidly? Oh!” said Strether. +</p> + +<p> +But she insisted. “She imagined meanly.” +</p> + +<p> +He had it, however, better. “It couldn’t but be ignorantly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, intensity with ignorance—what do you want worse?” +</p> + +<p> +This question might have held him, but he let it pass. “Sarah isn’t +ignorant—now; she keeps up the theory of the horrible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but she’s intense—and that by itself will do sometimes as +well. If it doesn’t do, in this case, at any rate, to deny that +Marie’s charming, it will do at least to deny that she’s +good.” +</p> + +<p> +“What I claim is that she’s good for Chad.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t claim”—she seemed to like it +clear—“that she’s good for <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +But he continued without heeding. “That’s what I wanted them to +come out for—to see for themselves if she’s bad for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now that they’ve done so they won’t admit that +she’s good even for anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“They do think,” Strether presently admitted, “that +she’s on the whole about as bad for me. But they’re consistent of +course, inasmuch as they’ve their clear view of what’s good for +both of us.” +</p> + +<p> +“For you, to begin with”—Maria, all responsive, confined the +question for the moment—“to eliminate from your existence and if +possible even from your memory the dreadful creature that <i>I</i> must +gruesomely shadow forth for them, even more than to eliminate the distincter +evil—thereby a little less portentous—of the person whose +confederate you’ve suffered yourself to become. However, that’s +comparatively simple. You can easily, at the worst, after all, give me +up.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can easily at the worst, after all, give you up.” The irony was +so obvious that it needed no care. “I can easily at the worst, after all, +even forget you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Call that then workable. But Mr. Newsome has much more to forget. How +can <i>he</i> do it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah there again we are! That’s just what I was to have made him do; +just where I was to have worked with him and helped.” +</p> + +<p> +She took it in silence and without attenuation—as if perhaps from very +familiarity with the facts; and her thought made a connexion without showing +the links. “Do you remember how we used to talk at Chester and in London +about my seeing you through?” She spoke as of far-off things and as if +they had spent weeks at the places she named. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s just what you <i>are</i> doing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but the worst—since you’ve left such a margin—may +be still to come. You may yet break down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I may yet break down. But will you take me—?” +</p> + +<p> +He had hesitated, and she waited. “Take you?” +</p> + +<p> +“For as long as I can bear it.” +</p> + +<p> +She also debated “Mr. Newsome and Madame de Vionnet may, as we were +saying, leave town. How long do you think you can bear it without them?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s reply to this was at first another question. “Do you +mean in order to get away from me?” +</p> + +<p> +Her answer had an abruptness. “Don’t find me rude if I say I should +think they’d want to!” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at her hard again—seemed even for an instant to have an +intensity of thought under which his colour changed. But he smiled. “You +mean after what they’ve done to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“After what <i>she</i> has.” +</p> + +<p> +At this, however, with a laugh, he was all right again. “Ah but she +hasn’t done it yet!” +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +He had taken the train a few days after this from a station—as well as +<i>to</i> a station—selected almost at random; such days, whatever should +happen, were numbered, and he had gone forth under the impulse—artless +enough, no doubt—to give the whole of one of them to that French +ruralism, with its cool special green, into which he had hitherto looked only +through the little oblong window of the picture-frame. It had been as yet for +the most part but a land of fancy for him—the background of fiction, the +medium of art, the nursery of letters; practically as distant as Greece, but +practically also well-nigh as consecrated. Romance could weave itself, for +Strether’s sense, out of elements mild enough; and even after what he +had, as he felt, lately “been through,” he could thrill a little at +the chance of seeing something somewhere that would remind him of a certain +small Lambinet that had charmed him, long years before, at a Boston +dealer’s and that he had quite absurdly never forgotten. It had been +offered, he remembered, at a price he had been instructed to believe the lowest +ever named for a Lambinet, a price he had never felt so poor as on having to +recognise, all the same, as beyond a dream of possibility. He had +dreamed—had turned and twisted possibilities for an hour: it had been the +only adventure of his life in connexion with the purchase of a work of art. The +adventure, it will be perceived, was modest; but the memory, beyond all reason +and by some accident of association, was sweet. The little Lambinet abode with +him as the picture he <i>would</i> have bought—the particular production +that had made him for the moment overstep the modesty of nature. He was quite +aware that if he were to see it again he should perhaps have a drop or a shock, +and he never found himself wishing that the wheel of time would turn it up +again, just as he had seen it in the maroon-coloured, sky-lighted inner shrine +of Tremont Street. It would be a different thing, however, to see the +remembered mixture resolved back into its elements—to assist at the +restoration to nature of the whole far-away hour: the dusty day in Boston, the +background of the Fitchburg Depot, of the maroon-coloured sanctum, the +special-green vision, the ridiculous price, the poplars, the willows, the +rushes, the river, the sunny silvery sky, the shady woody horizon. +</p> + +<p> +He observed in respect to his train almost no condition save that it should +stop a few times after getting out of the <i>banlieue</i>; he threw himself on +the general amiability of the day for the hint of where to alight. His theory +of his excursion was that he could alight anywhere—not nearer Paris than +an hour’s run—on catching a suggestion of the particular note +required. It made its sign, the suggestion—weather, air, light, colour +and his mood all favouring—at the end of some eighty minutes; the train +pulled up just at the right spot, and he found himself getting out as securely +as if to keep an appointment. It will be felt of him that he could amuse +himself, at his age, with very small things if it be again noted that his +appointment was only with a superseded Boston fashion. He hadn’t gone far +without the quick confidence that it would be quite sufficiently kept. The +oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars and willows, the +reeds and river—a river of which he didn’t know, and didn’t +want to know, the name—fell into a composition, full of felicity, within +them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish; the village on the left was +white and the church on the right was grey; it was all there, in short—it +was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. +Moreover he was freely walking about in it. He did this last, for an hour, to +his heart’s content, making for the shady woody horizon and boring so +deep into his impression and his idleness that he might fairly have got through +them again and reached the maroon-coloured wall. It was a wonder, no doubt, +that the taste of idleness for him shouldn’t need more time to sweeten; +but it had in fact taken the few previous days; it had been sweetening in truth +ever since the retreat of the Pococks. He walked and walked as if to show +himself how little he had now to do; he had nothing to do but turn off to some +hillside where he might stretch himself and hear the poplars rustle, and +whence—in the course of an afternoon so spent, an afternoon richly +suffused too with the sense of a book in his pocket—he should +sufficiently command the scene to be able to pick out just the right little +rustic inn for an experiment in respect to dinner. There was a train back to +Paris at 9.20, and he saw himself partaking, at the close of the day, with the +enhancements of a coarse white cloth and a sanded door, of something fried and +felicitous, washed down with authentic wine; after which he might, as he liked, +either stroll back to his station in the gloaming or propose for the local +<i>carriole</i> and converse with his driver, a driver who naturally +wouldn’t fail of a stiff clean blouse, of a knitted nightcap and of the +genius of response—who, in fine, would sit on the shafts, tell him what +the French people were thinking, and remind him, as indeed the whole episode +would incidentally do, of Maupassant. Strether heard his lips, for the first +time in French air, as this vision assumed consistency, emit sounds of +expressive intention without fear of his company. He had been afraid of Chad +and of Maria and of Madame de Vionnet; he had been most of all afraid of +Waymarsh, in whose presence, so far as they had mixed together in the light of +the town, he had never without somehow paying for it aired either his +vocabulary or his accent. He usually paid for it by meeting immediately +afterwards Waymarsh’s eye. +</p> + +<p> +Such were the liberties with which his fancy played after he had turned off to +the hillside that did really and truly, as well as most amiably, await him +beneath the poplars, the hillside that made him feel, for a murmurous couple of +hours, how happy had been his thought. He had the sense of success, of a finer +harmony in things; nothing but what had turned out as yet according to his +plan. It most of all came home to him, as he lay on his back on the grass, that +Sarah had really gone, that his tension was really relaxed; the peace diffused +in these ideas might be delusive, but it hung about him none the less for the +time. It fairly, for half an hour, sent him to sleep; he pulled his straw hat +over his eyes—he had bought it the day before with a reminiscence of +Waymarsh’s—and lost himself anew in Lambinet. It was as if he had +found out he was tired—tired not from his walk, but from that inward +exercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little +intermission. That was it—when once they were off he had dropped; this +moreover was what he had dropped to, and now he was touching bottom. He was +kept luxuriously quiet, soothed and amused by the consciousness of what he had +found at the end of his descent. It was very much what he had told Maria +Gostrey he should like to stay on for, the hugely-distributed Paris of summer, +alternately dazzling and dusky, with a weight lifted for him off its columns +and cornices and with shade and air in the flutter of awnings as wide as +avenues. It was present to him without attenuation that, reaching out, the day +after making the remark, for some proof of his freedom, he had gone that very +afternoon to see Madame de Vionnet. He had gone again the next day but one, and +the effect of the two visits, the after-sense of the couple of hours spent with +her, was almost that of fulness and frequency. The brave intention of +frequency, so great with him from the moment of his finding himself unjustly +suspected at Woollett, had remained rather theoretic, and one of the things he +could muse about under his poplars was the source of the special shyness that +had still made him careful. He had surely got rid of it now, this special +shyness; what had become of it if it hadn’t precisely, within the week, +rubbed off? +</p> + +<p> +It struck him now in fact as sufficiently plain that if he had still been +careful he had been so for a reason. He had really feared, in his behaviour, a +lapse from good faith; if there was a danger of one’s liking such a woman +too much one’s best safety was in waiting at least till one had the right +to do so. In the light of the last few days the danger was fairly vivid; so +that it was proportionately fortunate that the right was likewise established. +It seemed to our friend that he had on each occasion profited to the utmost by +the latter: how could he have done so more, he at all events asked himself, +than in having immediately let her know that, if it was all the same to her, he +preferred not to talk about anything tiresome? He had never in his life so +sacrificed an armful of high interests as in that remark; he had never so +prepared the way for the comparatively frivolous as in addressing it to Madame +de Vionnet’s intelligence. It hadn’t been till later that he quite +recalled how in conjuring away everything but the pleasant he had conjured away +almost all they had hitherto talked about; it was not till later even that he +remembered how, with their new tone, they hadn’t so much as mentioned the +name of Chad himself. One of the things that most lingered with him on his +hillside was this delightful facility, with such a woman, of arriving at a new +tone; he thought, as he lay on his back, of all the tones she might make +possible if one were to try her, and at any rate of the probability that one +could trust her to fit them to occasions. He had wanted her to feel that, as he +was disinterested now, so she herself should be, and she had showed she felt +it, and he had showed he was grateful, and it had been for all the world as if +he were calling for the first time. They had had other, but irrelevant, +meetings; it was quite as if, had they sooner known how much they <i>really</i> +had in common, there were quantities of comparatively dull matters they might +have skipped. Well, they were skipping them now, even to graceful gratitude, +even to handsome “Don’t mention it!”—and it was amazing +what could still come up without reference to what had been going on between +them. It might have been, on analysis, nothing more than Shakespeare and the +musical glasses; but it had served all the purpose of his appearing to have +said to her: “Don’t like me, if it’s a question of liking me, +for anything obvious and clumsy that I’ve, as they call it, +‘done’ for you: like me—well, like me, hang it, for anything +else you choose. So, by the same propriety, don’t be for me simply the +person I’ve come to know through my awkward connexion with Chad—was +ever anything, by the way, <i>more</i> awkward? Be for me, please, with all +your admirable tact and trust, just whatever I may show you it’s a +present pleasure to me to think you.” It had been a large indication to +meet; but if she hadn’t met it what <i>had</i> she done, and how had +their time together slipped along so smoothly, mild but not slow, and melting, +liquefying, into his happy illusion of idleness? He could recognise on the +other hand that he had probably not been without reason, in his prior, his +restricted state, for keeping an eye on his liability to lapse from good faith. +</p> + +<p> +He really continued in the picture—that being for himself his +situation—all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was still, +was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o’clock he found +himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced woman at the +door of the <i>auberge</i> of the biggest village, a village that affected him +as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness, set in coppery green, and +that had the river flowing behind or before it—one couldn’t say +which; at the bottom, in particular, of the inn-garden. He had had other +adventures before this; had kept along the height, after shaking off slumber; +had admired, had almost coveted, another small old church, all steep roof and +dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paper flowers within; had lost +his way and had found it again; had conversed with rustics who struck him +perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had expected; had acquired at +a bound a fearless facility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a +watery <i>bock</i>, all pale and Parisian, in the café of the furthest village, +which was not the biggest; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong +gilt frame. The frame had drawn itself out for him, as much as you please; but +that was just his luck. He had finally come down again to the valley, to keep +within touch of stations and trains, turning his face to the quarter from which +he had started; and thus it was that he had at last pulled up before the +hostess of the Cheval Blanc, who met him, with a rough readiness that was like +the clatter of sabots over stones, on their common ground of a <i>côtelette de +veau à l’oseille</i> and a subsequent lift. He had walked many miles and +didn’t know he was tired; but he still knew he was amused, and even that, +though he had been alone all day, he had never yet so struck himself as engaged +with others and in midstream of his drama. It might have passed for finished +his drama, with its catastrophe all but reached: it had, however, none the less +been vivid again for him as he thus gave it its fuller chance. He had only had +to be at last well out of it to feel it, oddly enough, still going on. +</p> + +<p> +For this had been all day at bottom the spell of the picture—that it was +essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage, that the very air of +the play was in the rustle of the willows and the tone of the sky. The play and +the characters had, without his knowing it till now, peopled all his space for +him, and it seemed somehow quite happy that they should offer themselves, in +the conditions so supplied, with a kind of inevitability. It was as if the +conditions made them not only inevitable, but so much more nearly natural and +right as that they were at least easier, pleasanter, to put up with. The +conditions had nowhere so asserted their difference from those of Woollett as +they appeared to him to assert it in the little court of the Cheval Blanc while +he arranged with his hostess for a comfortable climax. They were few and +simple, scant and humble, but they were <i>the thing</i>, as he would have +called it, even to a greater degree than Madame de Vionnet’s old high +salon where the ghost of the Empire walked. “The” thing was the +thing that implied the greatest number of other things of the sort he had had +to tackle; and it was queer of course, but so it was—the implication here +was complete. Not a single one of his observations but somehow fell into a +place in it; not a breath of the cooler evening that wasn’t somehow a +syllable of the text. The text was simply, when condensed, that in <i>these</i> +places such things were, and that if it was in them one elected to move about +one had to make one’s account with what one lighted on. Meanwhile at all +events it was enough that they did affect one—so far as the village +aspect was concerned—as whiteness, crookedness and blueness set in +coppery green; there being positively, for that matter, an outer wall of the +White Horse that was painted the most improbable shade. That was part of the +amusement—as if to show that the fun was harmless; just as it was enough, +further, that the picture and the play seemed supremely to melt together in the +good woman’s broad sketch of what she could do for her visitor’s +appetite. He felt in short a confidence, and it was general, and it was all he +wanted to feel. It suffered no shock even on her mentioning that she had in +fact just laid the cloth for two persons who, unlike Monsieur, had arrived by +the river—in a boat of their own; who had asked her, half an hour before, +what she could do for them, and had then paddled away to look at something a +little further up—from which promenade they would presently return. +Monsieur might meanwhile, if he liked, pass into the garden, such as it was, +where she would serve him, should he wish it—for there were tables and +benches in plenty—a “bitter” before his repast. Here she +would also report to him on the possibility of a conveyance to his station, and +here at any rate he would have the <i>agrément</i> of the river. +</p> + +<p> +It may be mentioned without delay that Monsieur had the <i>agrément</i> of +everything, and in particular, for the next twenty minutes, of a small and +primitive pavilion that, at the garden’s edge, almost overhung the water, +testifying, in its somewhat battered state, to much fond frequentation. It +consisted of little more than a platform, slightly raised, with a couple of +benches and a table, a protecting rail and a projecting roof; but it raked the +full grey-blue stream, which, taking a turn a short distance above, passed out +of sight to reappear much higher up; and it was clearly in esteemed requisition +for Sundays and other feasts. Strether sat there and, though hungry, felt at +peace; the confidence that had so gathered for him deepened with the lap of the +water, the ripple of the surface, the rustle of the reeds on the opposite bank, +the faint diffused coolness and the slight rock of a couple of small boats +attached to a rough landing-place hard by. The valley on the further side was +all copper-green level and glazed pearly sky, a sky hatched across with screens +of trimmed trees, which looked flat, like espaliers; and though the rest of the +village straggled away in the near quarter the view had an emptiness that made +one of the boats suggestive. Such a river set one afloat almost before one +could take up the oars—the idle play of which would be moreover the aid +to the full impression. This perception went so far as to bring him to his +feet; but that movement, in turn, made him feel afresh that he was tired, and +while he leaned against a post and continued to look out he saw something that +gave him a sharper arrest. +</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p> +What he saw was exactly the right thing—a boat advancing round the bend +and containing a man who held the paddles and a lady, at the stern, with a pink +parasol. It was suddenly as if these figures, or something like them, had been +wanted in the picture, had been wanted more or less all day, and had now +drifted into sight, with the slow current, on purpose to fill up the measure. +They came slowly, floating down, evidently directed to the landing-place near +their spectator and presenting themselves to him not less clearly as the two +persons for whom his hostess was already preparing a meal. For two very happy +persons he found himself straightway taking them—a young man in +shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from +some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood, had known what +this particular retreat could offer them. The air quite thickened, at their +approach, with further intimations; the intimation that they were expert, +familiar, frequent—that this wouldn’t at all events be the first +time. They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt—and it made them but the +more idyllic, though at the very moment of the impression, as happened, their +boat seemed to have begun to drift wide, the oarsman letting it go. It had by +this time none the less come much nearer—near enough for Strether to +dream the lady in the stern had for some reason taken account of his being +there to watch them. She had remarked on it sharply, yet her companion +hadn’t turned round; it was in fact almost as if our friend had felt her +bid him keep still. She had taken in something as a result of which their +course had wavered, and it continued to waver while they just stood off. This +little effect was sudden and rapid, so rapid that Strether’s sense of it +was separate only for an instant from a sharp start of his own. He too had +within the minute taken in something, taken in that he knew the lady whose +parasol, shifting as if to hide her face, made so fine a pink point in the +shining scene. It was too prodigious, a chance in a million, but, if he knew +the lady, the gentleman, who still presented his back and kept off, the +gentleman, the coatless hero of the idyll, who had responded to her start, was, +to match the marvel, none other than Chad. +</p> + +<p> +Chad and Madame de Vionnet were then like himself taking a day in the +country—though it was as queer as fiction, as farce, that their country +could happen to be exactly his; and she had been the first at recognition, the +first to feel, across the water, the shock—for it appeared to come to +that—of their wonderful accident. Strether became aware, with this, of +what was taking place—that her recognition had been even stranger for the +pair in the boat, that her immediate impulse had been to control it, and that +she was quickly and intensely debating with Chad the risk of betrayal. He saw +they would show nothing if they could feel sure he hadn’t made them out; +so that he had before him for a few seconds his own hesitation. It was a sharp +fantastic crisis that had popped up as if in a dream, and it had had only to +last the few seconds to make him feel it as quite horrible. They were thus, on +either side, <i>trying</i> the other side, and all for some reason that broke +the stillness like some unprovoked harsh note. It seemed to him again, within +the limit, that he had but one thing to do—to settle their common +question by some sign of surprise and joy. He hereupon gave large play to these +things, agitating his hat and his stick and loudly calling out—a +demonstration that brought him relief as soon as he had seen it answered. The +boat, in mid-stream, still went a little wild—which seemed natural, +however, while Chad turned round, half springing up; and his good friend, after +blankness and wonder, began gaily to wave her parasol. Chad dropped afresh to +his paddles and the boat headed round, amazement and pleasantry filling the air +meanwhile, and relief, as Strether continued to fancy, superseding mere +violence. Our friend went down to the water under this odd impression as of +violence averted—the violence of their having “cut” him, out +there in the eye of nature, on the assumption that he wouldn’t know it. +He awaited them with a face from which he was conscious of not being able quite +to banish this idea that they would have gone on, not seeing and not knowing, +missing their dinner and disappointing their hostess, had he himself taken a +line to match. That at least was what darkened his vision for the moment. +Afterwards, after they had bumped at the landing-place and he had assisted +their getting ashore, everything found itself sponged over by the mere miracle +of the encounter. +</p> + +<p> +They could so much better at last, on either side, treat it as a wild +extravagance of hazard, that the situation was made elastic by the amount of +explanation called into play. Why indeed—apart from oddity—the +situation should have been really stiff was a question naturally not practical +at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are concerned, a question tackled, +later on and in private, only by Strether himself. He was to reflect later on +and in private that it was mainly <i>he</i> who had explained—as he had +had moreover comparatively little difficulty in doing. He was to have at all +events meanwhile the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him +of having plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it +the semblance of an accident. That possibility—as their +imputation—didn’t of course bear looking into for an instant; yet +the whole incident was so manifestly, arrange it as they would, an awkward one, +that he could scarce keep disclaimers in respect to his own presence from +rising to his lips. Disclaimers of intention would have been as tactless as his +presence was practically gross; and the narrowest escape they either of them +had was his lucky escape, in the event, from making any. Nothing of the sort, +so far as surface and sound were involved, was even in question; surface and +sound all made for their common ridiculous good fortune, for the general +<i>invraisemblance</i> of the occasion, for the charming chance that they had, +the others, in passing, ordered some food to be ready, the charming chance that +he had himself not eaten, the charming chance, even more, that their little +plans, their hours, their train, in short, from <i>là-bas</i>, would all match +for their return together to Paris. The chance that was most charming of all, +the chance that drew from Madame de Vionnet her clearest, gayest +“<i>Comme cela se trouve!</i>” was the announcement made to +Strether after they were seated at table, the word given him by their hostess +in respect to his carriage for the station, on which he might now count. It +settled the matter for his friends as well; the conveyance—it <i>was</i> +all too lucky!—would serve for them; and nothing was more delightful than +his being in a position to make the train so definite. It might have been, for +themselves—to hear Madame de Vionnet—almost unnaturally vague, a +detail left to be fixed; though Strether indeed was afterwards to remember that +Chad had promptly enough intervened to forestall this appearance, laughing at +his companion’s flightiness and making the point that he had after all, +in spite of the bedazzlement of a day out with her, known what he was about. +</p> + +<p> +Strether was to remember afterwards further that this had had for him the +effect of forming Chad’s almost sole intervention; and indeed he was to +remember further still, in subsequent meditation, many things that, as it were, +fitted together. Another of them was for instance that the wonderful +woman’s overflow of surprise and amusement was wholly into French, which +she struck him as speaking with an unprecedented command of idiomatic turns, +but in which she got, as he might have said, somewhat away from him, taking all +at once little brilliant jumps that he could but lamely match. The question of +his own French had never come up for them; it was the one thing she +wouldn’t have permitted—it belonged, for a person who had been +through much, to mere boredom; but the present result was odd, fairly veiling +her identity, shifting her back into a mere voluble class or race to the +intense audibility of which he was by this time inured. When she spoke the +charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he seemed to feel her as +a creature, among all the millions, with a language quite to herself, the real +monopoly of a special shade of speech, beautifully easy for her, yet of a +colour and a cadence that were both inimitable and matters of accident. She +came back to these things after they had shaken down in the inn-parlour and +knew, as it were, what was to become of them; it was inevitable that loud +ejaculation over the prodigy of their convergence should at last wear itself +out. Then it was that his impression took fuller form—the impression, +destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had something to put a +face upon, to carry off and make the best of, and that it was she who, +admirably on the whole, was doing this. It was familiar to him of course that +they had something to put a face upon; their friendship, their connexion, took +any amount of explaining—that would have been made familiar by his twenty +minutes with Mrs. Pocock if it hadn’t already been so. Yet his theory, as +we know, had bountifully been that the facts were specifically none of his +business, and were, over and above, so far as one had to do with them, +intrinsically beautiful; and this might have prepared him for anything, as well +as rendered him proof against mystification. When he reached home that night, +however, he knew he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor proof; and since +we have spoken of what he was, after his return, to recall and interpret, it +may as well immediately be said that his real experience of these few hours put +on, in that belated vision—for he scarce went to bed till +morning—the aspect that is most to our purpose. +</p> + +<p> +He then knew more or less how he had been affected—he but half knew at +the time. There had been plenty to affect him even after, as has been said, +they had shaken down; for his consciousness, though muffled, had its sharpest +moments during this passage, a marked drop into innocent friendly Bohemia. They +then had put their elbows on the table, deploring the premature end of their +two or three dishes; which they had tried to make up with another bottle while +Chad joked a little spasmodically, perhaps even a little irrelevantly, with the +hostess. What it all came to had been that fiction and fable <i>were</i>, +inevitably, in the air, and not as a simple term of comparison, but as a result +of things said; also that they were blinking it, all round, and that they yet +needn’t, so much as that, have blinked it—though indeed if they +hadn’t Strether didn’t quite see what else they could have done. +Strether didn’t quite see <i>that</i> even at an hour or two past +midnight, even when he had, at his hotel, for a long time, without a light and +without undressing, sat back on his bedroom sofa and stared straight before +him. He was, at that point of vantage, in full possession, to make of it all +what he could. He kept making of it that there had been simply a <i>lie</i> in +the charming affair—a lie on which one could now, detached and +deliberate, perfectly put one’s finger. It was with the lie that they had +eaten and drunk and talked and laughed, that they had waited for their +<i>carriole</i> rather impatiently, and had then got into the vehicle and, +sensibly subsiding, driven their three or four miles through the darkening +summer night. The eating and drinking, which had been a resource, had had the +effect of having served its turn; the talk and laughter had done as much; and +it was during their somewhat tedious progress to the station, during the waits +there, the further delays, their submission to fatigue, their silences in the +dim compartment of the much-stopping train, that he prepared himself for +reflexions to come. It had been a performance, Madame de Vionnet’s +manner, and though it had to that degree faltered toward the end, as through +her ceasing to believe in it, as if she had asked herself, or Chad had found a +moment surreptitiously to ask her, what after all was the use, a performance it +had none the less quite handsomely remained, with the final fact about it that +it was on the whole easier to keep up than to abandon. +</p> + +<p> +From the point of view of presence of mind it had been very wonderful indeed, +wonderful for readiness, for beautiful assurance, for the way her decision was +taken on the spot, without time to confer with Chad, without time for anything. +Their only conference could have been the brief instants in the boat before +they confessed to recognising the spectator on the bank, for they hadn’t +been alone together a moment since and must have communicated all in silence. +It was a part of the deep impression for Strether, and not the least of the +deep interest, that they <i>could</i> so communicate—that Chad in +particular could let her know he left it to her. He habitually left things to +others, as Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in +these meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration of his +famous knowing how to live. It was as if he had humoured her to the extent of +letting her lie without correction—almost as if, really, he would be +coming round in the morning to set the matter, as between Strether and himself, +right. Of course he couldn’t quite come; it was a case in which a man was +obliged to accept the woman’s version, even when fantastic; if she had, +with more flurry than she cared to show, elected, as the phrase was, to +represent that they had left Paris that morning, and with no design but of +getting back within the day—if she had so sized-up, in the Woollett +phrase, their necessity, she knew best her own measure. There were things, all +the same, it was impossible to blink and which made this measure an odd +one—the too evident fact for instance that she hadn’t started out +for the day dressed and hatted and shod, and even, for that matter, pink +parasol’d, as she had been in the boat. From what did the drop in her +assurance proceed as the tension increased—from what did this slightly +baffled ingenuity spring but from her consciousness of not presenting, as night +closed in, with not so much as a shawl to wrap her round, an appearance that +matched her story? She admitted that she was cold, but only to blame her +imprudence which Chad suffered her to give such account of as she might. Her +shawl and Chad’s overcoat and her other garments, and his, those they had +each worn the day before, were at the place, best known to themselves—a +quiet retreat enough, no doubt—at which they had been spending the +twenty-four hours, to which they had fully meant to return that evening, from +which they had so remarkably swum into Strether’s ken, and the tacit +repudiation of which had been thus the essence of her comedy. Strether saw how +she had perceived in a flash that they couldn’t quite look to going back +there under his nose; though, honestly, as he gouged deeper into the matter, he +was somewhat surprised, as Chad likewise had perhaps been, at the uprising of +this scruple. He seemed even to divine that she had entertained it rather for +Chad than for herself, and that, as the young man had lacked the chance to +enlighten her, she had had to go on with it, he meanwhile mistaking her motive. +</p> + +<p> +He was rather glad, none the less, that they had in point of fact not parted at +the Cheval Blanc, that he hadn’t been reduced to giving them his blessing +for an idyllic retreat down the river. He had had in the actual case to +make-believe more than he liked, but this was nothing, it struck him, to what +the other event would have required. Could he, literally, quite have faced the +other event? Would he have been capable of making the best of it with them? +This was what he was trying to do now; but with the advantage of his being able +to give more time to it a good deal counteracted by his sense of what, over and +above the central fact itself, he had to swallow. It was the quantity of +make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagreed with his +spiritual stomach. He moved, however, from the consideration of that +quantity—to say nothing of the consciousness of that organ—back to +the other feature of the show, the deep, deep truth of the intimacy revealed. +That was what, in his vain vigil, he oftenest reverted to: intimacy, at such a +point, was <i>like</i> that—and what in the world else would one have +wished it to be like? It was all very well for him to feel the pity of its +being so much like lying; he almost blushed, in the dark, for the way he had +dressed the possibility in vagueness, as a little girl might have dressed her +doll. He had made them—and by no fault of their own—momentarily +pull it for him, the possibility, out of this vagueness; and must he not +therefore take it now as they had had simply, with whatever thin attenuations, +to give it to him? The very question, it may be added, made him feel lonely and +cold. There was the element of the awkward all round, but Chad and Madame de +Vionnet had at least the comfort that they could talk it over together. With +whom could <i>he</i> talk of such things?—unless indeed always, at almost +any stage, with Maria? He foresaw that Miss Gostrey would come again into +requisition on the morrow; though it wasn’t to be denied that he was +already a little afraid of her “What on earth—that’s what I +want to know now—had you then supposed?” He recognised at last that +he had really been trying all along to suppose nothing. Verily, verily, his +labour had been lost. He found himself supposing innumerable and wonderful +things. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>Book Twelfth</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +Strether couldn’t have said he had during the previous hours definitely +expected it; yet when, later on, that morning—though no later indeed than +for his coming forth at ten o’clock—he saw the concierge produce, +on his approach, a <i>petit bleu</i> delivered since his letters had been sent +up, he recognised the appearance as the first symptom of a sequel. He then knew +he had been thinking of some early sign from Chad as more likely, after all, +than not; and this would be precisely the early sign. He took it so for granted +that he opened the <i>petit bleu</i> just where he had stopped, in the pleasant +cool draught of the <i>porte-cochère</i>—only curious to see where the +young man would, at such a juncture, break out. His curiosity, however, was +more than gratified; the small missive, whose gummed edge he had detached +without attention to the address, not being from the young man at all, but from +the person whom the case gave him on the spot as still more worth while. Worth +while or not, he went round to the nearest telegraph-office, the big one on the +Boulevard, with a directness that almost confessed to a fear of the danger of +delay. He might have been thinking that if he didn’t go before he could +think he wouldn’t perhaps go at all. He at any rate kept, in the lower +side-pocket of his morning coat, a very deliberate hand on his blue missive, +crumpling it up rather tenderly than harshly. He wrote a reply, on the +Boulevard, also in the form of a <i>petit bleu</i>—which was quickly +done, under pressure of the place, inasmuch as, like Madame de Vionnet’s +own communication, it consisted of the fewest words. She had asked him if he +could do her the very great kindness of coming to see her that evening at +half-past nine, and he answered, as if nothing were easier, that he would +present himself at the hour she named. She had added a line of postscript, to +the effect that she would come to him elsewhere and at his own hour if he +preferred; but he took no notice of this, feeling that if he saw her at all +half the value of it would be in seeing her where he had already seen her best. +He mightn’t see her at all; that was one of the reflexions he made after +writing and before he dropped his closed card into the box; he mightn’t +see any one at all any more at all; he might make an end as well now as ever, +leaving things as they were, since he was doubtless not to leave them better, +and taking his way home so far as should appear that a home remained to him. +This alternative was for a few minutes so sharp that if he at last did deposit +his missive it was perhaps because the pressure of the place had an effect. +</p> + +<p> +There was none other, however, than the common and constant pressure, familiar +to our friend under the rubric of <i>Postes et Télégraphes</i>—the +something in the air of these establishments; the vibration of the vast strange +life of the town, the influence of the types, the performers concocting their +messages; the little prompt Paris women, arranging, pretexting goodness knew +what, driving the dreadful needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful +sand-strewn public table: implements that symbolised for Strether’s too +interpretative innocence something more acute in manners, more sinister in +morals, more fierce in the national life. After he had put in his paper he had +ranged himself, he was really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the +sinister, the acute. He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great +city, quite in the key of the <i>Postes et Télégraphes</i> in general; and it +was fairly as if the acceptance of that fact had come from something in his +state that sorted with the occupation of his neighbours. He was mixed up with +the typical tale of Paris, and so were they, poor things—how could they +all together help being? They were no worse than he, in short, and he no worse +than they—if, queerly enough, no better; and at all events he had settled +his hash, so that he went out to begin, from that moment, his day of waiting. +The great settlement was, as he felt, in his preference for seeing his +correspondent in her own best conditions. <i>That</i> was part of the typical +tale, the part most significant in respect to himself. He liked the place she +lived in, the picture that each time squared itself, large and high and clear, +around her: every occasion of seeing it was a pleasure of a different shade. +Yet what precisely was he doing with shades of pleasure now, and why +hadn’t he properly and logically compelled her to commit herself to +whatever of disadvantage and penalty the situation might throw up? He might +have proposed, as for Sarah Pocock, the cold hospitality of his own <i>salon de +lecture</i>, in which the chill of Sarah’s visit seemed still to abide +and shades of pleasure were dim; he might have suggested a stone bench in the +dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at the back part of the Champs Elysées. These +things would have been a trifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn’t +be sinister. An instinct in him cast about for some form of discipline in which +they might meet—some awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or +at least some grave inconvenience, they would incur. This would give a +sense—which the spirit required, rather ached and sighed in the absence +of—that somebody was paying something somewhere and somehow, that they +were at least not all floating together on the silver stream of impunity. Just +instead of that to go and see her late in the evening, as if, for all the +world—well, as if he were as much in the swim as anybody else: this had +as little as possible in common with the penal form. +</p> + +<p> +Even when he had felt that objection melt away, however, the practical +difference was small; the long stretch of his interval took the colour it +would, and if he lived on thus with the sinister from hour to hour it proved an +easier thing than one might have supposed in advance. He reverted in thought to +his old tradition, the one he had been brought up on and which even so many +years of life had but little worn away; the notion that the state of the +wrongdoer, or at least this person’s happiness, presented some special +difficulty. What struck him now rather was the ease of it—for nothing in +truth appeared easier. It was an ease he himself fairly tasted of for the rest +of the day; giving himself quite up; not so much as trying to dress it out, in +any particular whatever, as a difficulty; not after all going to see +Maria—which would have been in a manner a result of such dressing; only +idling, lounging, smoking, sitting in the shade, drinking lemonade and +consuming ices. The day had turned to heat and eventual thunder, and he now and +again went back to his hotel to find that Chad hadn’t been there. He +hadn’t yet struck himself, since leaving Woollett, so much as a loafer, +though there had been times when he believed himself touching bottom. This was +a deeper depth than any, and with no foresight, scarcely with a care, as to +what he should bring up. He almost wondered if he didn’t <i>look</i> +demoralised and disreputable; he had the fanciful vision, as he sat and smoked, +of some accidental, some motived, return of the Pococks, who would be passing +along the Boulevard and would catch this view of him. They would have +distinctly, on his appearance, every ground for scandal. But fate failed to +administer even that sternness; the Pococks never passed and Chad made no sign. +Strether meanwhile continued to hold off from Miss Gostrey, keeping her till +to-morrow; so that by evening his irresponsibility, his impunity, his luxury, +had become—there was no other word for them—immense. +</p> + +<p> +Between nine and ten, at last, in the high clear picture—he was moving in +these days, as in a gallery, from clever canvas to clever canvas—he drew +a long breath: it was so presented to him from the first that the spell of his +luxury wouldn’t be broken. He wouldn’t have, that is, to become +responsible—this was admirably in the air: she had sent for him precisely +to let him feel it, so that he might go on with the comfort (comfort already +established, hadn’t it been?) of regarding his ordeal, the ordeal of the +weeks of Sarah’s stay and of their climax, as safely traversed and left +behind him. Didn’t she just wish to assure him that <i>she</i> now took +it all and so kept it; that he was absolutely not to worry any more, was only +to rest on his laurels and continue generously to help her? The light in her +beautiful formal room was dim, though it would do, as everything would always +do; the hot night had kept out lamps, but there was a pair of clusters of +candles that glimmered over the chimney-piece like the tall tapers of an altar. +The windows were all open, their redundant hangings swaying a little, and he +heard once more, from the empty court, the small plash of the fountain. From +beyond this, and as from a great distance—beyond the court, beyond the +<i>corps de logis</i> forming the front—came, as if excited and exciting, +the vague voice of Paris. Strether had all along been subject to sudden gusts +of fancy in connexion with such matters as these—odd starts of the +historic sense, suppositions and divinations with no warrant but their +intensity. Thus and so, on the eve of the great recorded dates, the days and +nights of revolution, the sounds had come in, the omens, the beginnings broken +out. They were the smell of revolution, the smell of the public temper—or +perhaps simply the smell of blood. +</p> + +<p> +It was at present queer beyond words, “subtle,” he would have +risked saying, that such suggestions should keep crossing the scene; but it was +doubtless the effect of the thunder in the air, which had hung about all day +without release. His hostess was dressed as for thunderous times, and it fell +in with the kind of imagination we have just attributed to him that she should +be in simplest coolest white, of a character so old-fashioned, if he were not +mistaken, that Madame Roland must on the scaffold have worn something like it. +This effect was enhanced by a small black fichu or scarf, of crape or gauze, +disposed quaintly round her bosom and now completing as by a mystic touch the +pathetic, the noble analogy. Poor Strether in fact scarce knew what analogy was +evoked for him as the charming woman, receiving him and making him, as she +could do such things, at once familiarly and gravely welcome, moved over her +great room with her image almost repeated in its polished floor, which had been +fully bared for summer. The associations of the place, all felt again; the +gleam here and there, in the subdued light, of glass and gilt and parquet, with +the quietness of her own note as the centre—these things were at first as +delicate as if they had been ghostly, and he was sure in a moment that, +whatever he should find he had come for, it wouldn’t be for an impression +that had previously failed him. That conviction held him from the outset, and, +seeming singularly to simplify, certified to him that the objects about would +help him, would really help them both. No, he might never see them +again—this was only too probably the last time; and he should certainly +see nothing in the least degree like them. He should soon be going to where +such things were not, and it would be a small mercy for memory, for fancy, to +have, in that stress, a loaf on the shelf. He knew in advance he should look +back on the perception actually sharpest with him as on the view of something +old, old, old, the oldest thing he had ever personally touched; and he also +knew, even while he took his companion in as the feature among features, that +memory and fancy couldn’t help being enlisted for her. She might intend +what she would, but this was beyond anything she could intend, with things from +far back—tyrannies of history, facts of type, values, as the painters +said, of expression—all working for her and giving her the supreme +chance, the chance of the happy, the really luxurious few, the chance, on a +great occasion, to be natural and simple. She had never, with him, been more +so; or if it was the perfection of art it would never—and that came to +the same thing—be proved against her. +</p> + +<p> +What was truly wonderful was her way of differing so from time to time without +detriment to her simplicity. Caprices, he was sure she felt, were before +anything else bad manners, and that judgement in her was by itself a thing +making more for safety of intercourse than anything that in his various own +past intercourses he had had to reckon on. If therefore her presence was now +quite other than the one she had shown him the night before, there was nothing +of violence in the change—it was all harmony and reason. It gave him a +mild deep person, whereas he had had on the occasion to which their interview +was a direct reference a person committed to movement and surface and abounding +in them; but she was in either character more remarkable for nothing than for +her bridging of intervals, and this now fell in with what he understood he was +to leave to her. The only thing was that, if he was to leave it <i>all</i> to +her, why exactly had she sent for him? He had had, vaguely, in advance, his +explanation, his view of the probability of her wishing to set something right, +to deal in some way with the fraud so lately practised on his presumed +credulity. Would she attempt to carry it further or would she blot it out? +Would she throw over it some more or less happy colour; or would she do nothing +about it at all? He perceived soon enough at least that, however reasonable she +might be, she wasn’t vulgarly confused, and it herewith pressed upon him +that their eminent “lie,” Chad’s and hers, was simply after +all such an inevitable tribute to good taste as he couldn’t have wished +them not to render. Away from them, during his vigil, he had seemed to wince at +the amount of comedy involved; whereas in his present posture he could only ask +himself how he should enjoy any attempt from her to take the comedy back. He +shouldn’t enjoy it at all; but, once more and yet once more, he could +trust her. That is he could trust her to make deception right. As she presented +things the ugliness—goodness knew why—went out of them; none the +less too that she could present them, with an art of her own, by not so much as +touching them. She let the matter, at all events, lie where it was—where +the previous twenty-four hours had placed it; appearing merely to circle about +it respectfully, tenderly, almost piously, while she took up another question. +</p> + +<p> +She knew she hadn’t really thrown dust in his eyes; this, the previous +night, before they separated, had practically passed between them; and, as she +had sent for him to see what the difference thus made for him might amount to, +so he was conscious at the end of five minutes that he had been tried and +tested. She had settled with Chad after he left them that she would, for her +satisfaction, assure herself of this quantity, and Chad had, as usual, let her +have her way. Chad was always letting people have their way when he felt that +it would somehow turn his wheel for him; it somehow always did turn his wheel. +Strether felt, oddly enough, before these facts, freshly and consentingly +passive; they again so rubbed it into him that the couple thus fixing his +attention were intimate, that his intervention had absolutely aided and +intensified their intimacy, and that in fine he must accept the consequence of +that. He had absolutely become, himself, with his perceptions and his mistakes, +his concessions and his reserves, the droll mixture, as it must seem to them, +of his braveries and his fears, the general spectacle of his art and his +innocence, almost an added link and certainly a common priceless ground for +them to meet upon. It was as if he had been hearing their very tone when she +brought out a reference that was comparatively straight. “The last twice +that you’ve been here, you know, I never asked you,” she said with +an abrupt transition—they had been pretending before this to talk simply +of the charm of yesterday and of the interest of the country they had seen. The +effort was confessedly vain; not for such talk had she invited him; and her +impatient reminder was of their having done for it all the needful on his +coming to her after Sarah’s flight. What she hadn’t asked him then +was to state to her where and how he stood for her; she had been resting on +Chad’s report of their midnight hour together in the Boulevard +Malesherbes. The thing therefore she at present desired was ushered in by this +recall of the two occasions on which, disinterested and merciful, she +hadn’t worried him. To-night truly she <i>would</i> worry him, and this +was her appeal to him to let her risk it. He wasn’t to mind if she bored +him a little: she had behaved, after all—hadn’t she?—so +awfully, awfully well. +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +“Oh, you’re all right, you’re all right,” he almost +impatiently declared; his impatience being moreover not for her pressure, but +for her scruple. More and more distinct to him was the tune to which she would +have had the matter out with Chad: more and more vivid for him the idea that +she had been nervous as to what he might be able to “stand.” Yes, +it had been a question if he had “stood” what the scene on the +river had given him, and, though the young man had doubtless opined in favour +of his recuperation, her own last word must have been that she should feel +easier in seeing for herself. That was it, unmistakeably; she <i>was</i> seeing +for herself. What he could stand was thus, in these moments, in the balance for +Strether, who reflected, as he became fully aware of it, that he must properly +brace himself. He wanted fully to appear to stand all he might; and there was a +certain command of the situation for him in this very wish not to look too much +at sea. She was ready with everything, but so, sufficiently, was he; that is he +was at one point the more prepared of the two, inasmuch as, for all her +cleverness, she couldn’t produce on the spot—and it was +surprising—an account of the motive of her note. He had the advantage +that his pronouncing her “all right” gave him for an enquiry. +“May I ask, delighted as I’ve been to come, if you’ve wished +to say something special?” He spoke as if she might have seen he had been +waiting for it—not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest. +Then he saw that she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at +the detail she had neglected—the only one ever yet; having somehow +assumed he would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said. +She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that if he wanted them +<i>all</i>—! +</p> + +<p> +“Selfish and vulgar—that’s what I must seem to you. +You’ve done everything for me, and here I am as if I were asking for +more. But it isn’t,” she went on, “because I’m +afraid—though I <i>am</i> of course afraid, as a woman in my position +always is. I mean it isn’t because one lives in terror—it +isn’t because of that one is selfish, for I’m ready to give you my +word to-night that I don’t care; don’t care what still may happen +and what I may lose. I don’t ask you to raise your little finger for me +again, nor do I wish so much as to mention to you what we’ve talked of +before, either my danger or my safety, or his mother, or his sister, or the +girl he may marry, or the fortune he may make or miss, or the right or the +wrong, of any kind, he may do. If after the help one has had from you one +can’t either take care of one’s self or simply hold one’s +tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. It’s in +the name of what I <i>do</i> care about that I’ve tried still to keep +hold of you. How can I be indifferent,” she asked, “to how I appear +to you?” And as he found himself unable immediately to say: “Why, +if you’re going, <i>need</i> you, after all? Is it impossible you should +stay on—so that one mayn’t lose you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not ‘with’ us, if you object to that, but near enough to us, +somewhere, for us to see you—well,” she beautifully brought out, +“when we feel we <i>must</i>. How shall we not sometimes feel it? +I’ve wanted to see you often when I couldn’t,” she pursued, +“all these last weeks. How shan’t I then miss you now, with the +sense of your being gone forever?” Then as if the straightness of this +appeal, taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering: “Where +<i>is</i> your ‘home’ moreover now—what has become of it? +I’ve made a change in your life, I know I have; I’ve upset +everything in your mind as well; in your sense of—what shall I call +it?—all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of +detestation—” She pulled up short. +</p> + +<p> +Oh but he wanted to hear. “Detestation of what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of everything—of life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah that’s too much,” he laughed—“or too +little!” +</p> + +<p> +“Too little, precisely”—she was eager. “What I hate is +myself—when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the +lives of others, and that one isn’t happy even then. One does it to cheat +one’s self and to stop one’s mouth—but that’s only at +the best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making one +somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that +it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to <i>take</i>. The only +safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false.” +Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from +her, she yet puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her +quietness. He felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more +behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that. “You know +so, at least,” she added, “where you are!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> ought to know it indeed then; for isn’t what +you’ve been giving exactly what has brought us together this way? +You’ve been making, as I’ve so fully let you know I’ve +felt,” Strether said, “the most precious present I’ve ever +seen made, and if you can’t sit down peacefully on that performance you +<i>are</i>, no doubt, born to torment yourself. But you ought,” he wound +up, “to be easy.” +</p> + +<p> +“And not trouble you any more, no doubt—not thrust on you even the +wonder and the beauty of what I’ve done; only let you regard our business +as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that matches my own? No +doubt, no doubt, no doubt,” she nervously repeated—“all the +more that I don’t really pretend I believe you couldn’t, for +yourself, <i>not</i> have done what you have. I don’t pretend you feel +yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live, and it’s +what—we’re agreed—is the best way. Yes, as you say,” +she continued after a moment, “I ought to be easy and rest on my work. +Well then here am I doing so. I <i>am</i> easy. You’ll have it for your +last impression. When is it you say you go?” she asked with a quick +change. +</p> + +<p> +He took some time to reply—his last impression was more and more so mixed +a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that was deeper even +than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good of what he had done, +if he had done so much, wasn’t there to enliven him quite to the point +that would have been ideal for a grand gay finale. Women were thus endlessly +absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the +matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might—what +was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she +was after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the +very strength of her fear; she clung to <i>him</i>, Lambert Strether, as to a +source of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she might +try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within +reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the air to +him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious +forces, a creature so exploited. For at the end of all things they <i>were</i> +mysterious: she had but made Chad what he was—so why could she think she +had made him infinite? She had made him better, she had made him best, she had +made him anything one would; but it came to our friend with supreme queerness +that he was none the less only Chad. Strether had the sense that <i>he</i>, a +little, had made him too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her +work The work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order, +and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of +comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience +should be so transcendently prized. It might have made Strether hot or shy, as +such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make us; but he was held there +by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of +last night; that had quite passed—such discomposures were a detail; the +real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again—it +took women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water what +wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen higher than round +this woman. He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the +next thing he knew he had uttered all his thought. “You’re afraid +for your life!” +</p> + +<p> +It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why. A spasm came into her +face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed at first in +silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a child, quickened to +gasps, to sobs. She sat and covered her face with her hands, giving up all +attempt at a manner. “It’s how you see me, it’s how you see +me”—she caught her breath with it—“and it’s as I +<i>am</i>, and as I must take myself, and of course it’s no +matter.” Her emotion was at first so incoherent that he could only stand +there at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having +done it by the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no +immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim +diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even +conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine free range +of bliss and bale. He couldn’t say it was <i>not</i> no matter; for he +was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway—quite as if what he +thought of her had nothing to do with it. It was actually moreover as if he +didn’t think of her at all, as if he could think of nothing but the +passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and the possibilities she +betrayed. She was older for him to-night, visibly less exempt from the touch of +time; but she was as much as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the +happiest apparition, it had been given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet +he could see her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant +crying for her young man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the +maidservant wouldn’t; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of +which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt, +was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened. +“Of course I’m afraid for my life. But that’s nothing. It +isn’t that.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be. +“There’s something I have in mind that I can still do.” +</p> + +<p> +But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes, what he +could still do. “I don’t care for that. Of course, as I’ve +said, you’re acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and +what’s for yourself is no more my business—though I may reach out +unholy hands so clumsily to touch it—than if it were something in +Timbuctoo. It’s only that you don’t snub me, as you’ve had +fifty chances to do—it’s only your beautiful patience that makes +one forget one’s manners. In spite of your patience, all the same,” +she went on, “you’d do anything rather than be with us here, even +if that were possible. You’d do everything for us but be mixed up with +us—which is a statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your +own manners. You can say ‘What’s the use of talking of things that +at the best are impossible?’ What <i>is</i> of course the use? It’s +only my little madness. You’d talk if you were tormented. And I +don’t mean now about <i>him</i>. Oh for him—!” Positively, +strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave “him,” for +the moment, away. “You don’t care what I think of you; but I happen +to care what you think of me. And what you <i>might</i>,” she added. +“What you perhaps even did.” +</p> + +<p> +He gained time. “What I did—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did think before. Before this. <i>Didn’t</i> you +think—?” +</p> + +<p> +But he had already stopped her. “I didn’t think anything. I never +think a step further than I’m obliged to.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s perfectly false, I believe,” she +returned—“except that you may, no doubt, often pull up when things +become <i>too</i> ugly; or even, I’ll say, to save you a protest, too +beautiful. At any rate, even so far as it’s true, we’ve thrust on +you appearances that you’ve had to take in and that have therefore made +your obligation. Ugly or beautiful—it doesn’t matter what we call +them—you were getting on without them, and that’s where we’re +detestable. We bore you—that’s where we are. And we may +well—for what we’ve cost you. All you can do <i>now</i> is not to +think at all. And I who should have liked to seem to you—well, +sublime!” +</p> + +<p> +He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace. “You’re +wonderful!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m old and abject and hideous”—she went on as without +hearing him. “Abject above all. Or old above all. It’s when +one’s old that it’s worst. I don’t care what becomes of +it—let what <i>will</i>; there it is. It’s a doom—I know it; +you can’t see it more than I do myself. Things have to happen as they +will.” With which she came back again to what, face to face with him, had +so quite broken down. “Of course you wouldn’t, even if possible, +and no matter what may happen to you, be near us. But think of me, think of +me—!” She exhaled it into air. +</p> + +<p> +He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she had made +nothing of. “There’s something I believe I can still do.” And +he put his hand out for good-bye. +</p> + +<p> +She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. “That +won’t help you. There’s nothing to help you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it may help <i>you</i>,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head. “There’s not a grain of certainty in my +future—for the only certainty is that I shall be the loser in the +end.” +</p> + +<p> +She hadn’t taken his hand, but she moved with him to the door. +“That’s cheerful,” he laughed, “for your +benefactor!” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s cheerful for <i>me</i>,” she replied, “is that +we might, you and I, have been friends. That’s it—that’s it. +You see how, as I say, I want everything. I’ve wanted you too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but you’ve <i>had</i> me!” he declared, at the door, with +an emphasis that made an end. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +His purpose had been to see Chad the next day, and he had prefigured seeing him +by an early call; having in general never stood on ceremony in respect to +visits at the Boulevard Malesherbes. It had been more often natural for him to +go there than for Chad to come to the small hotel, the attractions of which +were scant; yet it nevertheless, just now, at the eleventh hour, did suggest +itself to Strether to begin by giving the young man a chance. It struck him +that, in the inevitable course, Chad would be “round,” as Waymarsh +used to say—Waymarsh who already, somehow, seemed long ago. He +hadn’t come the day before, because it had been arranged between them +that Madame de Vionnet should see their friend first; but now that this passage +had taken place he would present himself, and their friend wouldn’t have +long to wait. Strether assumed, he became aware, on this reasoning, that the +interesting parties to the arrangement would have met betimes, and that the +more interesting of the two—as she was after all—would have +communicated to the other the issue of her appeal. Chad would know without +delay that his mother’s messenger had been with her, and, though it was +perhaps not quite easy to see how she could qualify what had occurred, he would +at least have been sufficiently advised to feel he could go on. The day, +however, brought, early or late, no word from him, and Strether felt, as a +result of this, that a change had practically come over their intercourse. It +was perhaps a premature judgement; or it only meant perhaps—how could he +tell?—that the wonderful pair he protected had taken up again together +the excursion he had accidentally checked. They might have gone back to the +country, and gone back but with a long breath drawn; that indeed would best +mark Chad’s sense that reprobation hadn’t rewarded Madame de +Vionnet’s request for an interview. At the end of the twenty-four hours, +at the end of the forty-eight, there was still no overture; so that Strether +filled up the time, as he had so often filled it before, by going to see Miss +Gostrey. +</p> + +<p> +He proposed amusements to her; he felt expert now in proposing amusements; and +he had thus, for several days, an odd sense of leading her about Paris, of +driving her in the Bois, of showing her the penny steamboats—those from +which the breeze of the Seine was to be best enjoyed—that might have +belonged to a kindly uncle doing the honours of the capital to an intelligent +niece from the country. He found means even to take her to shops she +didn’t know, or that she pretended she didn’t; while she, on her +side, was, like the country maiden, all passive modest and grateful—going +in fact so far as to emulate rusticity in occasional fatigues and +bewilderments. Strether described these vague proceedings to himself, described +them even to her, as a happy interlude; the sign of which was that the +companions said for the time no further word about the matter they had talked +of to satiety. He proclaimed satiety at the outset, and she quickly took the +hint; as docile both in this and in everything else as the intelligent obedient +niece. He told her as yet nothing of his late adventure—for as an +adventure it now ranked with him; he pushed the whole business temporarily +aside and found his interest in the fact of her beautiful assent. She left +questions unasked—she who for so long had been all questions; she gave +herself up to him with an understanding of which mere mute gentleness might +have seemed the sufficient expression. She knew his sense of his situation had +taken still another step—of that he was quite aware; but she conveyed +that, whatever had thus happened for him, it was thrown into the shade by what +was happening for herself. This—though it mightn’t to a detached +spirit have seemed much—was the major interest, and she met it with a new +directness of response, measuring it from hour to hour with her grave hush of +acceptance. Touched as he had so often been by her before, he was, for his part +too, touched afresh; all the more that though he could be duly aware of the +principle of his own mood he couldn’t be equally so of the principle of +hers. He knew, that is, in a manner—knew roughly and +resignedly—what he himself was hatching; whereas he had to take the +chance of what he called to himself Maria’s calculations. It was all he +needed that she liked him enough for what they were doing, and even should they +do a good deal more would still like him enough for that; the essential +freshness of a relation so simple was a cool bath to the soreness produced by +other relations. These others appeared to him now horribly complex; they +bristled with fine points, points all unimaginable beforehand, points that +pricked and drew blood; a fact that gave to an hour with his present friend on +a <i>bateau-mouche</i>, or in the afternoon shade of the Champs Elysées, +something of the innocent pleasure of handling rounded ivory. His relation with +Chad personally—from the moment he had got his point of view—had +been of the simplest; yet this also struck him as bristling, after a third and +a fourth blank day had passed. It was as if at last however his care for such +indications had dropped; there came a fifth blank day and he ceased to enquire +or to heed. +</p> + +<p> +They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the Babes in +the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them continue at peace. +He had been great already, as he knew, at postponements; but he had only to get +afresh into the rhythm of one to feel its fine attraction. It amused him to say +to himself that he might for all the world have been going to die—die +resignedly; the scene was filled for him with so deep a death-bed hush, so +melancholy a charm. That meant the postponement of everything else—which +made so for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the +reckoning to come—unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one and +the same thing with extinction. It faced him, the reckoning, over the shoulder +of much interposing experience—which also faced him; and one would float +to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla Khan. It was really behind +everything; it hadn’t merged in what he had done; his final appreciation +of what he had done—his appreciation on the spot—would provide it +with its main sharpness. The spot so focussed was of course Woollett, and he +was to see, at the best, what Woollett would be with everything there changed +for him. Wouldn’t <i>that</i> revelation practically amount to the +wind-up of his career? Well, the summer’s end would show; his suspense +had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of vain delay; and he had with it, we +should mention, other pastimes than Maria’s company—plenty of +separate musings in which his luxury failed him but at one point. He was well +in port, the outer sea behind him, and it was only a matter of getting ashore. +There was a question that came and went for him, however, as he rested against +the side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that he +prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey. It was a question about himself, but it +could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was indeed his principal reason +for wanting to see Chad. After that it wouldn’t signify—it was a +ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest. Only the young man must be +there to take the words. Once they were taken he wouldn’t have a question +left; none, that is, in connexion with this particular affair. It +wouldn’t then matter even to himself that he might now have been guilty +of speaking <i>because</i> of what he had forfeited. That was the refinement of +his supreme scruple—he wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of +account. He wished not to do anything because he had missed something else, +because he was sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or +desperate; he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the +same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that +while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it: +“You’ve been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with +it?” It would have sickened him to feel vindictive. +</p> + +<p> +These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his +idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria. She had a +fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically met him with it +on his appearing one night. He hadn’t on this day seen her, but had +planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to dine with him somewhere +out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of the gardens, of which the Paris +of summer was profuse. It had then come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he +changed his mind; dining alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and +waiting on her afterwards to make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that +something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room that he +had scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole colour of the +place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion—an effect that made the +visitor stand for a little agaze. It was as if in doing so now he had felt a +recent presence—his recognition of the passage of which his hostess in +turn divined. She had scarcely to say it—“Yes, she has been here, +and this time I received her.” It wasn’t till a minute later that +she added: “There being, as I understand you, no reason +<i>now</i>—!” +</p> + +<p> +“None for your refusing?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—if you’ve done what you’ve had to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve certainly so far done it,” Strether said, “as +that you needn’t fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us. +There’s nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and +not an inch of room for anything else whatever. Therefore you’re only +beautifully <i>with</i> us as always—though doubtless now, if she has +talked to you, rather more with us than less. Of course if she came,” he +added, “it was to talk to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was to talk to me,” Maria returned; on which he was further +sure that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn’t yet +told her. He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself +couldn’t have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her face +and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her the close of +all uncertainties. It came out for him more than ever yet that she had had from +the first a knowledge she believed him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp +acquisition of which might be destined to make a difference for him. The +difference for him might not inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and +a change in his attitude—in other words a revulsion in favour of the +principles of Woollett. She had really prefigured the possibility of a shock +that would send him swinging back to Mrs. Newsome. He hadn’t, it was +true, week after week, shown signs of receiving it, but the possibility had +been none the less in the air. What Maria accordingly had had now to take in +was that the shock had descended and that he hadn’t, all the same, swung +back. He had grown clear, in a flash, on a point long since settled for +herself; but no reapproximation to Mrs. Newsome had occurred in consequence. +Madame de Vionnet had by her visit held up the torch to these truths, and what +now lingered in poor Maria’s face was the somewhat smoky light of the +scene between them. If the light however wasn’t, as we have hinted, the +glow of joy, the reasons for this also were perhaps discernible to Strether +even through the blur cast over them by his natural modesty. She had held +herself for months with a firm hand; she hadn’t interfered on any +chance—and chances were specious enough—that she might interfere to +her profit. She had turned her back on the dream that Mrs. Newsome’s +rupture, their friend’s forfeiture—the engagement, the relation +itself, broken beyond all mending—might furnish forth her advantage; and, +to stay her hand from promoting these things, she had on private, difficult, +but rigid, lines, played strictly fair. She couldn’t therefore but feel +that, though, as the end of all, the facts in question had been stoutly +confirmed, her ground for personal, for what might have been called interested, +elation remained rather vague. Strether might easily have made out that she had +been asking herself, in the hours she had just sat through, if there were still +for her, or were only not, a fair shade of uncertainty. Let us hasten to add, +however, that what he at first made out on this occasion he also at first kept +to himself. He only asked what in particular Madame de Vionnet had come for, +and as to this his companion was ready. +</p> + +<p> +“She wants tidings of Mr. Newsome, whom she appears not to have seen for +some days.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then she hasn’t been away with him again?” +</p> + +<p> +“She seemed to think,” Maria answered, “that he might have +gone away with <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“And did you tell her I know nothing of him?” +</p> + +<p> +She had her indulgent headshake. “I’ve known nothing of what you +know. I could only tell her I’d ask you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ve not seen him for a week—and of course I’ve +wondered.” His wonderment showed at this moment as sharper, but he +presently went on. “Still, I dare say I can put my hand on him. Did she +strike you,” he asked, “as anxious?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s always anxious.” +</p> + +<p> +“After all I’ve done for her?” And he had one of the last +flickers of his occasional mild mirth. “To think that was just what I +came out to prevent!” +</p> + +<p> +She took it up but to reply. “You don’t regard him then as +safe?” +</p> + +<p> +“I was just going to ask you how in that respect you regard Madame de +Vionnet.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him a little. “What woman was <i>ever</i> safe? She told +me,” she added—and it was as if at the touch of the +connexion—“of your extraordinary meeting in the country. After that +<i>à quoi se fier?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“It was, as an accident, in all the possible or impossible +chapter,” Strether conceded, “amazing enough. But still, but +still—!” +</p> + +<p> +“But still she didn’t mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t mind anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, as you don’t either, we may all sink to rest!” +</p> + +<p> +He appeared to agree with her, but he had his reservation. “I do mind +Chad’s disappearance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you’ll get him back. But now you know,” she said, +“why I went to Mentone.” He had sufficiently let her see that he +had by this time gathered things together, but there was nature in her wish to +make them clearer still. “I didn’t want you to put it to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“To put it to you—?” +</p> + +<p> +“The question of what you were at last—a week ago—to see for +yourself. I didn’t want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too +much for me. A man of course is always expected to do it—to do it, I +mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the +tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself. I don’t +need protection, so that I was free to ‘funk’ you—simply to +dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me. I gained time, and +when I came back the need of a test had blown over.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether thought of it serenely. “Yes; when you came back little Bilham +had shown me what’s expected of a gentleman. Little Bilham had lied like +one.” +</p> + +<p> +“And like what you believed him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Strether, “it was but a technical lie—he +classed the attachment as virtuous. That was a view for which there was much to +be said—and the virtue came out for me hugely There was of course a great +deal of it. I got it full in the face, and I haven’t, you see, done with +it yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“What I see, what I saw,” Maria returned, “is that you +dressed up even the virtue. You were wonderful—you were beautiful, as +I’ve had the honour of telling you before; but, if you wish really to +know,” she sadly confessed, “I never quite knew <i>where</i> you +were. There were moments,” she explained, “when you struck me as +grandly cynical; there were others when you struck me as grandly vague.” +</p> + +<p> +Her friend considered. “I had phases. I had flights.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but things must have a basis.” +</p> + +<p> +“A basis seemed to me just what her beauty supplied.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her beauty of person?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, her beauty of everything. The impression she makes. She has such +variety and yet such harmony.” +</p> + +<p> +She considered him with one of her deep returns of indulgence—returns out +of all proportion to the irritations they flooded over. “You’re +complete.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re always too personal,” he good-humouredly said; +“but that’s precisely how I wondered and wandered.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you mean,” she went on, “that she was from the first for +you the most charming woman in the world, nothing’s more simple. Only +that was an odd foundation.” +</p> + +<p> +“For what I reared on it?” +</p> + +<p> +“For what you didn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it was all not a fixed quantity. And it had for me—it has +still—such elements of strangeness. Her greater age than his, her +different world, traditions, association; her other opportunities, liabilities, +standards.” +</p> + +<p> +His friend listened with respect to his enumeration of these disparities; then +she disposed of them at a stroke. “Those things are nothing when a +woman’s hit. It’s very awful. She was hit.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether, on his side, did justice to that plea. “Oh of course I saw she +was hit. That she was hit was what we were busy with; that she was hit was our +great affair. But somehow I couldn’t think of her as down in the dust. +And as put there by <i>our</i> little Chad!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet wasn’t ‘your’ little Chad just your +miracle?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether admitted it. “Of course I moved among miracles. It was all +phantasmagoric. But the great fact was that so much of it was none of my +business—as I saw my business. It isn’t even now.” +</p> + +<p> +His companion turned away on this, and it might well have been yet again with +the sharpness of a fear of how little his philosophy could bring her +personally. “I wish <i>she</i> could hear you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—not Mrs. Newsome; since I understand you that it doesn’t +matter now what Mrs. Newsome hears. Hasn’t she heard everything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Practically—yes.” He had thought a moment, but he went on. +“You wish Madame de Vionnet could hear me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Madame de Vionnet.” She had come back to him. “She thinks +just the contrary of what you say. That you distinctly judge her.” +</p> + +<p> +He turned over the scene as the two women thus placed together for him seemed +to give it. “She might have known—!” +</p> + +<p> +“Might have known you don’t?” Miss Gostrey asked as he let it +drop. “She was sure of it at first,” she pursued as he said +nothing; “she took it for granted, at least, as any woman in her position +would. But after that she changed her mind; she believed you +believed—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?”—he was curious. +</p> + +<p> +“Why in her sublimity. And that belief had remained with her, I make out, +till the accident of the other day opened your eyes. For that it did,” +said Maria, “open them—” +</p> + +<p> +“She can’t help”—he had taken it up—“being +aware? No,” he mused; “I suppose she thinks of that even +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then they <i>were</i> closed? There you are! However, if you see her as +the most charming woman in the world it comes to the same thing. And if +you’d like me to tell her that you do still so see her—!” +Miss Gostrey, in short, offered herself for service to the end. +</p> + +<p> +It was an offer he could temporarily entertain; but he decided. “She +knows perfectly how I see her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not favourably enough, she mentioned to me, to wish ever to see her +again. She told me you had taken a final leave of her. She says you’ve +done with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I have.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria had a pause; then she spoke as if for conscience. “She +wouldn’t have done with <i>you</i>. She feels she has lost you—yet +that she might have been better for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh she has been quite good enough!” Strether laughed. +</p> + +<p> +“She thinks you and she might at any rate have been friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“We might certainly. That’s just”—he continued to +laugh—“why I’m going.” +</p> + +<p> +It was as if Maria could feel with this then at last that she had done her best +for each. But she had still an idea. “Shall I tell her that?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Tell her nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well then.” To which in the next breath Miss Gostrey added: +“Poor dear thing!” +</p> + +<p> +Her friend wondered; then with raised eyebrows: “Me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. Marie de Vionnet.” +</p> + +<p> +He accepted the correction, but he wondered still. “Are you so sorry for +her as that?” +</p> + +<p> +It made her think a moment—made her even speak with a smile. But she +didn’t really retract. “I’m sorry for us all!” +</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p> +He was to delay no longer to re-establish communication with Chad, and we have +just seen that he had spoken to Miss Gostrey of this intention on hearing from +her of the young man’s absence. It was not moreover only the assurance so +given that prompted him; it was the need of causing his conduct to square with +another profession still—the motive he had described to her as his +sharpest for now getting away. If he was to get away because of some of the +relations involved in staying, the cold attitude toward them might look +pedantic in the light of lingering on. He must do both things; he must see +Chad, but he must go. The more he thought of the former of these duties the +more he felt himself make a subject of insistence of the latter. They were +alike intensely present to him as he sat in front of a quiet little café into +which he had dropped on quitting Maria’s entresol. The rain that had +spoiled his evening with her was over; for it was still to him as if his +evening <i>had</i> been spoiled—though it mightn’t have been wholly +the rain. It was late when he left the café, yet not too late; he +couldn’t in any case go straight to bed, and he would walk round by the +Boulevard Malesherbes—rather far round—on his way home. Present +enough always was the small circumstance that had originally pressed for him +the spring of so big a difference—the accident of little Bilham’s +appearance on the balcony of the mystic troisième at the moment of his first +visit, and the effect of it on his sense of what was then before him. He +recalled his watch, his wait, and the recognition that had proceeded from the +young stranger, that had played frankly into the air and had presently brought +him up—things smoothing the way for his first straight step. He had since +had occasion, a few times, to pass the house without going in; but he had never +passed it without again feeling how it had then spoken to him. He stopped short +to-night on coming to sight of it: it was as if his last day were oddly copying +his first. The windows of Chad’s apartment were open to the +balcony—a pair of them lighted; and a figure that had come out and taken +up little Bilham’s attitude, a figure whose cigarette-spark he could see +leaned on the rail and looked down at him. It denoted however no reappearance +of his younger friend; it quickly defined itself in the tempered darkness as +Chad’s more solid shape; so that Chad’s was the attention that +after he had stepped forward into the street and signalled, he easily engaged; +Chad’s was the voice that, sounding into the night with promptness and +seemingly with joy, greeted him and called him up. +</p> + +<p> +That the young man had been visible there just in this position expressed +somehow for Strether that, as Maria Gostrey had reported, he had been absent +and silent; and our friend drew breath on each landing—the lift, at that +hour, having ceased to work—before the implications of the fact. He had +been for a week intensely away, away to a distance and alone; but he was more +back than ever, and the attitude in which Strether had surprised him was +something more than a return—it was clearly a conscious surrender. He had +arrived but an hour before, from London, from Lucerne, from Homburg, from no +matter where—though the visitor’s fancy, on the staircase, liked to +fill it out; and after a bath, a talk with Baptiste and a supper of light cold +clever French things, which one could see the remains of there in the circle of +the lamp, pretty and ultra-Parisian, he had come into the air again for a +smoke, was occupied at the moment of Strether’s approach in what might +have been called taking up his life afresh. His life, his life!—Strether +paused anew, on the last flight, at this final rather breathless sense of what +Chad’s life was doing with Chad’s mother’s emissary. It was +dragging him, at strange hours, up the staircases of the rich; it was keeping +him out of bed at the end of long hot days; it was transforming beyond +recognition the simple, subtle, conveniently uniform thing that had anciently +passed with him for a life of his own. Why should it concern him that Chad was +to be fortified in the pleasant practice of smoking on balconies, of supping on +salads, of feeling his special conditions agreeably reaffirm themselves, of +finding reassurance in comparisons and contrasts? There was no answer to such a +question but that he was still practically committed—he had perhaps never +yet so much known it. It made him feel old, and he would buy his +railway-ticket—feeling, no doubt, older—the next day; but he had +meanwhile come up four flights, counting the entresol, at midnight and without +a lift, for Chad’s life. The young man, hearing him by this time, and +with Baptiste sent to rest, was already at the door; so that Strether had +before him in full visibility the cause in which he was labouring and even, +with the troisième fairly gained, panting a little. +</p> + +<p> +Chad offered him, as always, a welcome in which the cordial and the +formal—so far as the formal was the respectful—handsomely met; and +after he had expressed a hope that he would let him put him up for the night +Strether was in full possession of the key, as it might have been called, to +what had lately happened. If he had just thought of himself as old Chad was at +sight of him thinking of him as older: he wanted to put him up for the night +just because he was ancient and weary. It could never be said the tenant of +these quarters wasn’t nice to him; a tenant who, if he might indeed now +keep him, was probably prepared to work it all still more thoroughly. Our +friend had in fact the impression that with the minimum of encouragement Chad +would propose to keep him indefinitely; an impression in the lap of which one +of his own possibilities seemed to sit. Madame de Vionnet had wished him to +stay—so why didn’t that happily fit? He could enshrine himself for +the rest of his days in his young host’s <i>chambre d’ami</i> and +draw out these days at his young host’s expense: there could scarce be +greater logical expression of the countenance he had been moved to give. There +was literally a minute—it was strange enough—during which he +grasped the idea that as he <i>was</i> acting, as he could only act, he was +inconsistent. The sign that the inward forces he had obeyed really hung +together would be that—in default always of another career—he +should promote the good cause by mounting guard on it. These things, during his +first minutes, came and went; but they were after all practically disposed of +as soon as he had mentioned his errand. He had come to say good-bye—yet +that was only a part; so that from the moment Chad accepted his farewell the +question of a more ideal affirmation gave way to something else. He proceeded +with the rest of his business. “You’ll be a brute, you +know—you’ll be guilty of the last infamy—if you ever forsake +her.” +</p> + +<p> +That, uttered there at the solemn hour, uttered in the place that was full of +her influence, was the rest of his business; and when once he had heard himself +say it he felt that his message had never before been spoken. It placed his +present call immediately on solid ground, and the effect of it was to enable +him quite to play with what we have called the key. Chad showed no shade of +embarrassment, but had none the less been troubled for him after their meeting +in the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was +disturbed, as it were, only <i>for</i> him, and had positively gone away to +ease him off, to let him down—if it wasn’t indeed rather to screw +him up—the more gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with +characteristic good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether +thereupon supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in +conscientious assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor +remained; so far from having to go over old ground he found his entertainer +keen to agree to everything. It couldn’t be put too strongly for him that +he’d be a brute. “Oh rather!—if I should do anything of +<i>that</i> sort. I hope you believe I really feel it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I want it,” said Strether, “to be my last word of all to +you. I can’t say more, you know; and I don’t see how I can do more, +in every way, than I’ve done.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad took this, almost artlessly, as a direct allusion. “You’ve +seen her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—to say good-bye. And if I had doubted the truth of what I +tell you—” +</p> + +<p> +“She’d have cleared up your doubt?” Chad +understood—“rather”—again! It even kept him briefly +silent. But he made that up. “She must have been wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>was</i>,” Strether candidly admitted—all of which +practically told as a reference to the conditions created by the accident of +the previous week. +</p> + +<p> +They appeared for a little to be looking back at it; and that came out still +more in what Chad next said. “I don’t know what you’ve really +thought, all along; I never did know—for anything, with you, seemed to be +possible. But of course—of course—” Without confusion, quite +with nothing but indulgence, he broke down, he pulled up. “After all, you +understand. I spoke to you originally only as I <i>had</i> to speak. +There’s only one way—isn’t there?—about such things. +However,” he smiled with a final philosophy, “I see it’s all +right.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether met his eyes with a sense of multiplying thoughts. What was it that +made him at present, late at night and after journeys, so renewedly, so +substantially young? Strether saw in a moment what it was—it was that he +was younger again than Madame de Vionnet. He himself said immediately none of +the things that he was thinking; he said something quite different. “You +<i>have</i> really been to a distance?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been to England.” Chad spoke cheerfully and promptly, +but gave no further account of it than to say: “One must sometimes get +off.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether wanted no more facts—he only wanted to justify, as it were, his +question. “Of course you do as you’re free to do. But I hope, this +time, that you didn’t go for <i>me</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“For very shame at bothering you really too much? My dear man,” +Chad laughed, “what <i>wouldn’t</i> I do for you?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether’s easy answer for this was that it was a disposition he had +exactly come to profit by. “Even at the risk of being in your way +I’ve waited on, you know, for a definite reason.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad took it in. “Oh yes—for us to make if possible a still better +impression.” And he stood there happily exhaling his full general +consciousness. “I’m delighted to gather that you feel we’ve +made it.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pleasant irony in the words, which his guest, preoccupied and +keeping to the point, didn’t take up. “If I had my sense of wanting +the rest of the time—the time of their being still on this side,” +he continued to explain—“I know now why I wanted it.” +</p> + +<p> +He was as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard, and Chad +continued to face him like an intelligent pupil. “You wanted to have been +put through the whole thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether again, for a moment, said nothing; he turned his eyes away, and they +lost themselves, through the open window, in the dusky outer air. “I +shall learn from the Bank here where they’re now having their letters, +and my last word, which I shall write in the morning and which they’re +expecting as my ultimatum, will so immediately reach them.” The light of +his plural pronoun was sufficiently reflected in his companion’s face as +he again met it; and he completed his demonstration. He pursued indeed as if +for himself. “Of course I’ve first to justify what I shall +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re justifying it beautifully!” Chad declared. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not a question of advising you not to go,” Strether +said, “but of absolutely preventing you, if possible, from so much as +thinking of it. Let me accordingly appeal to you by all you hold sacred.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad showed a surprise. “What makes you think me capable—?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’d not only be, as I say, a brute; you’d be,” his +companion went on in the same way, “a criminal of the deepest dye.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad gave a sharper look, as if to gauge a possible suspicion. “I +don’t know what should make you think I’m tired of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether didn’t quite know either, and such impressions, for the +imaginative mind, were always too fine, too floating, to produce on the spot +their warrant. There was none the less for him, in the very manner of his +host’s allusion to satiety as a thinkable motive, a slight breath of the +ominous. “I feel how much more she can do for you. She hasn’t done +it all yet. Stay with her at least till she has.” +</p> + +<p> +“And leave her <i>then?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had kept smiling, but its effect in Strether was a shade of dryness. +“Don’t leave her <i>before</i>. When you’ve got all that can +be got—I don’t say,” he added a trifle grimly. “That +will be the proper time. But as, for you, from such a woman, there will always +be something to be got, my remark’s not a wrong to her.” Chad let +him go on, showing every decent deference, showing perhaps also a candid +curiosity for this sharper accent. “I remember you, you know, as you +were.” +</p> + +<p> +“An awful ass, wasn’t I?” +</p> + +<p> +The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had a ready +abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to meet it. +“You certainly then wouldn’t have seemed worth all you’ve let +me in for. You’ve defined yourself better. Your value has +quintupled.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then, wouldn’t that be enough—?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. “Enough?” +</p> + +<p> +“If one <i>should</i> wish to live on one’s accumulations?” +After which, however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as +easily dropped it. “Of course I really never forget, night or day, what I +owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of honour,” he frankly +rang out, “that I’m not a bit tired of her.” Strether at this +only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and again a +wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable of much; yet he +spoke of being “tired” of her almost as he might have spoken of +being tired of roast mutton for dinner. “She has never for a moment yet +bored me—never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in +tact. She has never talked about her tact—as even they too sometimes +talk; but she has always had it. She has never had it more”—he +handsomely made the point—“than just lately.” And he +scrupulously went further. “She has never been anything I could call a +burden.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his shade of +dryness deepened. “Oh if you didn’t do her justice—!” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>should</i> be a beast, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; <i>that</i>, visibly, +would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however, +repetition was no mistake. “You owe her everything—very much more +than she can ever owe you. You’ve in other words duties to her, of the +most positive sort; and I don’t see what other duties—as the others +are presented to you—can be held to go before them.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad looked at him with a smile. “And you know of course about the +others, eh?—since it’s you yourself who have done the +presenting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Much of it—yes—and to the best of my ability. But not +all—from the moment your sister took my place.” +</p> + +<p> +“She didn’t,” Chad returned. “Sally took a place, +certainly; but it was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No +one—with us—will ever take yours. It wouldn’t be +possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah of course,” sighed Strether, “I knew it. I believe +you’re right. No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously +solemn. There I am,” he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on +occasion, of this truth. “I was made so.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for this +purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact. +“<i>You</i> have never needed any one to make you better. There has never +been any one good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man declared. +</p> + +<p> +His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They <i>have</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether—though a little dimly—smiled at him. +“Women—too.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Two’?”—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I +don’t believe, for such work, in any more than one! So you’re +proving too much. And what <i>is</i> beastly, at all events,” he added, +“is losing you.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused. +“Are you afraid?” +</p> + +<p> +“Afraid—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.” Before Chad could speak, +however, he had taken himself up. “I <i>am</i>, certainly,” he +laughed, “prodigious.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid—!” This might have +been, on Chad’s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely +extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it +carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of +performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend, +came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him, +treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who +appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next +corner and the next. “You needn’t tell me, you needn’t tell +me!”—this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether feel. +What he needn’t tell him was now at last, in the geniality of separation, +anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew, up to the hilt—that +really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they lingered +on it as they had lingered in their walk to Strether’s hotel the night of +their first meeting. The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had +given all he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last +sou. But there was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed +disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn’t, as he said, tell +him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art +of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement while +Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken him, with strange +inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all events to have been looking +into the question and had encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically +worked presented itself thus as the great new force. “It really does the +thing, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first night, +and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. “Affects, you mean, the sale of the +object advertised?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had +supposed. I mean of course when it’s done as one makes out that in our +roaring age, it <i>can</i> be done. I’ve been finding out a little, +though it doubtless doesn’t amount to much more than what you originally, +so awfully vividly—and all, very nearly, that first night—put +before me. It’s an art like another, and infinite like all the +arts.” He went on as if for the joke of it—almost as if his +friend’s face amused him. “In the hands, naturally, of a master. +The right man must take hold. With the right man to work it <i>c’est un +monde</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a pretext, +he had begun to dance a fancy step. “Is what you’re thinking of +that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right man?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into an +armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up and down. +“Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for when you +first came out?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. “Oh yes, and +there’s no doubt that, with your natural parts, you’d have much in +common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret of +trade. It’s quite possible it will be open to you—giving the whole +of your mind to it—to make the whole place hum with you. Your +mother’s appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that’s exactly +the strength of her case.” +</p> + +<p> +Chad’s fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop. +“Ah we’ve been through my mother’s case!” +</p> + +<p> +“So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind up where we +began, my interest’s purely platonic. There at any rate the fact +is—the fact of the possible. I mean the money in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh damn the money in it!” said Strether. And then as the young +man’s fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange: “Shall you give +your friend up for the money in it?” +</p> + +<p> +Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his attitude. +“You’re not altogether—in your so great +‘solemnity’—kind. Haven’t I been drinking you +in—showing you all I feel you’re worth to me? What have I done, +what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death? The only thing is,” he +good-humouredly explained, “that one can’t but have it before one, +in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in. Don’t be afraid +for <i>that</i>. It’s pleasant to a fellow’s feelings,” he +developed, “to ‘size-up’ the bribe he applies his foot +to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh then if all you want’s a kickable surface the bribe’s +enormous.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good. Then there it goes!” Chad administered his kick with +fantastic force and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if +they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what really +concerned him. “Of course I shall see you tomorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the +impression—not the slighter for the simulated kick—of an irrelevant +hornpipe or jig. “You’re restless.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” returned Chad as they parted, “you’re +exciting.” +</p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p> +He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had sent Maria +Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to breakfast; in +consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the cool shade of her little +Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at the back of the house, with a +view of a scrap of old garden that had been saved from modern ravage; and +though he had on more than one other occasion had his legs under its small and +peculiarly polished table of hospitality, the place had never before struck him +as so sacred to pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a +neatness that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess +before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter; which was +somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one’s eyes were held and +comforted. Strether’s were comforted at all events now—and the more +that it was the last time—with the charming effect, on the board bare of +a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small old crockery and old +silver, matched by the more substantial pieces happily disposed about the room. +The specimens of vivid Delf, in particular had the dignity of family portraits; +and it was in the midst of them that our friend resignedly expressed himself. +He spoke even with a certain philosophic humour. “There’s nothing +more to wait for; I seem to have done a good day’s work. I’ve let +them have it all round. I’ve seen Chad, who has been to London and come +back. He tells me I’m ‘exciting,’ and I seem indeed pretty +well to have upset every one. I’ve at any rate excited <i>him</i>. +He’s distinctly restless.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve excited <i>me</i>,” Miss Gostrey smiled. +“<i>I’m</i> distinctly restless.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I’ve rather got +you out of it. What’s this,” he asked as he looked about him, +“but a haunt of ancient peace?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish with all my heart,” she presently replied, “I could +make you treat it as a haven of rest.” On which they fronted each other, +across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air. +</p> + +<p> +Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up. +“It wouldn’t give me—that would be the trouble—what it +will, no doubt, still give you. I’m not,” he explained, leaning +back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round +melon—“in real harmony with what surrounds me. You <i>are</i>. I +take it too hard. You <i>don’t</i>. It makes—that’s what it +comes to in the end—a fool of me.” Then at a tangent, “What +has he been doing in London?” he demanded. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah one may go to London,” Maria laughed. “You know <i>I</i> +did.” +</p> + +<p> +Yes—he took the reminder. “And you brought <i>me</i> back.” +He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom. “Whom has Chad +brought? He’s full of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah,” he added, +“the first thing this morning. So I’m square. I’m ready for +them.” +</p> + +<p> +She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others. +“Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of +an immense man of business.” +</p> + +<p> +“There it is. He’s the son of his father!” +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>such</i> a father!” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn’t his +father in him,” Strether added, “that troubles me.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it then?” He came back to his breakfast; he partook +presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was +only after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark +that he’d answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him +and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded +him of his having never even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett. +“Do you remember our talking of it in London—that night at the +play?” Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to him for other +matters. Did he remember, did he remember—this and that of their first +days? He remembered everything, bringing up with humour even things of which +she professed no recollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back +above all on the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both +of them as to where he would “come out.” They had so assumed it was +to be in some wonderful place—they had thought of it as so very +<i>much</i> out. Well, that was doubtless what it had been—since he had +come out just there. He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and +must now rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the +image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at +Berne. <i>They</i> came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their +little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had +jigged his little course—him too a modest retreat awaited. He offered +now, should she really like to know, to name the great product of Woollett. It +would be a great commentary on everything. At this she stopped him off; she not +only had no wish to know, but she wouldn’t know for the world. She had +done with the products of Woollett—for all the good she had got from +them. She desired no further news of them, and she mentioned that Madame de +Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the information he was +ready to supply. She had never consented to receive it, though she would have +taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs. +Pocock appeared to have had little to say—never sounding the +word—and it didn’t signify now. There was nothing clearly for Maria +Gostrey that signified now—save one sharp point, that is, to which she +came in time. “I don’t know whether it’s before you as a +possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that +it <i>is</i> more or less so before you, from what you just now said of +him.” +</p> + +<p> +Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing what +was to follow this. “I don’t think it will be for the money.” +And then as she seemed uncertain: “I mean I don’t believe it will +be for that he’ll give her up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then he <i>will</i> give her up?” +</p> + +<p> +Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a little +this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive and unspoken ways +for patience and understanding. “What were you just about to ask +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?” +</p> + +<p> +“With Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was only in +her face; but she added with it: “Or is there anything he can do that +would make <i>her</i> try it?” +</p> + +<p> +“To patch it up with me?” His answer came at last in a conclusive +headshake. “There’s nothing any one can do. It’s over. Over +for both of us.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. “Are you so sure for +her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—sure now. Too much has happened. I’m different for +her.” +</p> + +<p> +She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. “I see. So that as +she’s different for <i>you</i>—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah but,” he interrupted, “she’s not.” And as +Miss Gostrey wondered again: “She’s the same. She’s more than +ever the same. But I do what I didn’t before—I <i>see</i> +her.” +</p> + +<p> +He spoke gravely and as if responsibly—since he had to pronounce; and the +effect of it was slightly solemn, so that she simply exclaimed +“Oh!” Satisfied and grateful, however, she showed in her own next +words an acceptance of his statement. “What then do you go home +to?” +</p> + +<p> +He had pushed his plate a little away, occupied with another side of the +matter; taking refuge verily in that side and feeling so moved that he soon +found himself on his feet. He was affected in advance by what he believed might +come from her, and he would have liked to forestall it and deal with it +tenderly; yet in the presence of it he wished still more to be—though as +smoothly as possible—deterrent and conclusive. He put her question by for +the moment; he told her more about Chad. “It would have been impossible +to meet me more than he did last night on the question of the infamy of not +sticking to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that what you called it for him—‘infamy’?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh rather! I described to him in detail the base creature he’d be, +and he quite agrees with me about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“So that it’s really as if you had nailed him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite really as if—! I told him I should curse him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” she smiled, “you <i>have</i> done it.” And then +having thought again: “You <i>can’t</i> after that +propose—!” Yet she scanned his face. +</p> + +<p> +“Propose again to Mrs. Newsome?” +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out. “I’ve never believed, +you know, that you did propose. I always believed it was really she—and, +so far as that goes, I can understand it. What I mean is,” she explained, +“that with such a spirit—the spirit of curses!—your breach is +past mending. She has only to know what you’ve done to him never again to +raise a finger.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve done,” said Strether, “what I could—one +can’t do more. He protests his devotion and his horror. But I’m not +sure I’ve saved him. He protests too much. He asks how one can dream of +his being tired. But he has all life before him.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria saw what he meant. “He’s formed to please.” +</p> + +<p> +“And it’s our friend who has formed him.” Strether felt in it +the strange irony. +</p> + +<p> +“So it’s scarcely his fault!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s at any rate his danger. I mean,” said Strether, +“it’s hers. But she knows it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she knows it. And is your idea,” Miss Gostrey asked, +“that there was some other woman in London?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. No. That is I <i>have</i> no ideas. I’m afraid of them. +I’ve done with them.” And he put out his hand to her. +“Good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +It brought her back to her unanswered question. “To what do you go +home?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. There will always be something.” +</p> + +<p> +“To a great difference,” she said as she kept his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“A great difference—no doubt. Yet I shall see what I can make of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you make anything so good—?” But, as if remembering +what Mrs. Newsome had done, it was as far as she went. +</p> + +<p> +He had sufficiently understood. “So good as this place at this moment? So +good as what <i>you</i> make of everything you touch?” He took a moment +to say, for, really and truly, what stood about him there in her +offer—which was as the offer of exquisite service, of lightened care, for +the rest of his days—might well have tempted. It built him softly round, +it roofed him warmly over, it rested, all so firm, on selection. And what ruled +selection was beauty and knowledge. It was awkward, it was almost stupid, not +to seem to prize such things; yet, none the less, so far as they made his +opportunity they made it only for a moment. She’d moreover +understand—she always understood. +</p> + +<p> +That indeed might be, but meanwhile she was going on. “There’s +nothing, you know, I wouldn’t do for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes—I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s nothing,” she repeated, “in all the +world.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know. I know. But all the same I must go.” He had got it at +last. “To be right.” +</p> + +<p> +“To be right?” +</p> + +<p> +She had echoed it in vague deprecation, but he felt it already clear for her. +“That, you see, is my only logic. Not, out of the whole affair, to have +got anything for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +She thought. “But with your wonderful impressions you’ll have got a +great deal.” +</p> + +<p> +“A great deal”—he agreed. “But nothing like <i>you</i>. +It’s you who would make me wrong!” +</p> + +<p> +Honest and fine, she couldn’t greatly pretend she didn’t see it. +Still she could pretend just a little. “But why should you be so +dreadfully right?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the way that—if I must go—you yourself would be +the first to want me. And I can’t do anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +So then she had to take it, though still with her defeated protest. “It +isn’t so much your <i>being</i> ‘right’—it’s your +horrible sharp eye for what makes you so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but you’re just as bad yourself. You can’t resist me when +I point that out.” +</p> + +<p> +She sighed it at last all comically, all tragically, away. “I can’t +indeed resist you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then there we are!” said Strether. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMBASSADORS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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