The Ambassadors (41 page)

"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."

"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."

"Ah it isn't 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."

"Well, he won't let you see her, you know," Madame de Vionnet
sympathetically threw in. "He never lets me—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."

"Well, Countess, I'VE 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.

"Comment donc, he shares her with YOU?" she exclaimed in droll
stupefaction. "Take care you don't have, before you go much
further, rather more of all ces dames than you may know what to do
with!"

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."

"'Harm'?" Madame de Vionnet quickly echoed. "Why she's the
dearest and cleverest of all the clever and dear."

"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."

"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.

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 MY 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 SHALL 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 COULD, 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."

"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."

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."

"Ah but extremely!" Strether laughed while he wondered at the
odd part he found thus imposed on him.

It continued to be so by every touch from Madame de Vionnet.
"Well, as I say, you know, I wish you would keep ME 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."

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."

"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."

"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.

"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."

"Tuesday then with pleasure."

"And at half-past five?—or at six?"

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."

"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 DID hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't
I still?"

Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. "She'll return your visit
with me. She's at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother."

"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 you
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
SUCH a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really
delightful kind. You see I throw myself for it on your
charity."

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."

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 CAN show you. But her full beauty is only for those who know
how to make use of her."

"Ah then," smiled Madame de Vionnet, "that's exactly what I want
to do. I'm sure she has much to teach us."

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 at least won't take that
from you. Mademoiselle de Vionnet," he explained, in considerable
form, to Mrs. Pocock, "IS pure perfection. Mademoiselle de Vionnet
IS exquisite."

It had been perhaps a little portentous, but "Ah?" Sarah simply
glittered.

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."

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 TOO 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—!"

"As that something can't but come of it? Oh something SHALL 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.

"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 parti pris, a deep
game—that's positively remarkable."

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 HE 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
COULD be tormented—!