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.
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—_vous allez
voir_; 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.
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 _you_, 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.
“Hasn’t Miss Gostrey,” she asked, “said a good word for me?”
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.”
“Well, now she’ll tell you all. I’m so glad you’re in relation with
her.”
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—_differed_
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 _was_
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 _femme du
monde?_ 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.
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 _was_ hard—as if she would have
liked, all the same, to know him. “Oh yes, my dear, it’s all right,
it’s _me_; and who are _you_, 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.
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?”
“Oh dear, yes.”
“Ah then—!”
“Ah then what?”
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—_him_ 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.
“It’s not too late for _you_, 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 _have_ 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 _his_ place—well,
have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped _that_ 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 _do_ 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 _any_ 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 _my_ 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!”
“Oh but I don’t know that I want to be, at your age, too different from
you!”
“Ah prepare while you’re about it,” said Strether, “to be more
amusing.”
Little Bilham continued to think, but at last had a smile. “Well, you
_are_ amusing—to _me_.”
“_Impayable_, 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, _in_ 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_ should enjoy being like!”
Little Bilham followed his eyes; but then as with a shade of knowing
surprise: “Gloriani?”
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.”
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.”
“She quite reproaches herself,” Chad helpfully explained: “you were
interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be
interrupted.”
“Ah don’t mention it!” Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to
the other and wondering at many things.
“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.”
“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.