The Ambassadors (London: Methuen & Co., 1903)/Part 8/Chapter 21
XXI
As the door of Mrs. Pocock's salon was pushed open for him the next day, before noon, he became conscious of a voice with a charming sound that made him just falter before crossing the threshold. Mme. 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 Mme. de Vionnet a part of that situation as she had not 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 independent and charming—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."
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, in addition, that they were not, 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 Mme. 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 Mme. 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 unmistakably 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 know Paris," said Sally Pocock in a tone that breathed a certain chill on Strether's heart.
"Ah, but a woman, in this tiresome place, where everything is always changing, a woman of good will," Mme. 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 she kept it more 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 good stare at her; but he read in Mme. de Vionnet's own eyes that this curiosity had not been so successfully met as that she herself would not 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 could 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." Mme. 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 he 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?
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 could 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 is 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 like 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, was 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, he pulled.
"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we do meet," Mme. 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 aid and comfort of Mr. Strether so close at hand. "It's he, I gather, who has learned to know his Paris, and to love it better than anyone 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."
"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 Mme. 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."
Yet it only at first gave Mme. de Vionnet a chance immediately to take him up. "You've renewed acquaintance with your friend; you've learned 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.
Waymarsh at this, as if he had been in question, straightway turned from the window. "Oh yes, Countess, he has renewed acquaintance with me, and he has, I guess, learned 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."
"Oh, but you," 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!" Mme. de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.
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 is not an impossible place. We've plenty of reasons," Sarah pursued a little piercingly, "for everything we do"; and in short she wouldn't give herself the little least 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."
"Ah, fortunately!" Mme. 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 rather 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 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 Mme. 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 Mme. 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.
"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you again."
"Oh, I shall come to see you, since you've been so good"; and Mrs. Pocock looked her interlocutress 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 would not report again at Woollett without at least so much producible history as that in her pocket
"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter," Mme. 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 too 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 half way would be odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was with her, and, confronted even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion with 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 me. 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."
"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 conceded, "but the privilege of his society is not a thing I shall quarrel about with anyone."
"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 your natural due. I should like much better," he laughed, "to see you fight for me."
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 was not 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 Mme. 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 spots burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that this must be for the present the limit of her response. Mme. 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 Mme. 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.
"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 inquired 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 anyone else—a notion of whom you're talking about."
"Well, he won't let you see her, you know," Mme. 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 thoroughly to himself; only gives us others the crumbs of the feast."
"Well, Countess, I've had some of the crumbs," Waymarsh observed deliberately 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 that there's any real harm in her."
"'Harm'?" Mme. 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, responsibly 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 justify itself. "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 say 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 your stale 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, narrow 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 as reflected in him: "Oh, it's as true as they please! There's no Miss Gostrey for anyone 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 Mme. de Vionnet. "But I hope I shan't miss her too much."
Mme. 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 Mme. 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 will 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 chose your moments well. But don't wait for my next absence, for I shan't make another," Mme. de Vionnet declared, "while Mrs. Pocock is 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 such 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 Mme. de Vionnet must leave them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further. "I hoped so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn't I still?"
Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. "She will return your visit with me. She's at present out with my husband 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 is to give my daughter the opportunity of making her acquaintance. I'm always on the look-out 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 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 Mme. 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 threw 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 had not 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 is 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 Mme. 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 were not pure perfection. Mlle, de Vionnet," he explained in considerable form to Mrs. Pocock, "is is pure perfection. Mlle. 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 his ally. "Miss Jane is strikingly handsome—in the regular French style."
It somehow made both Strether and Mme. de Vionnet laugh out, though at the very moment he caught in Sarah's eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a vague but unmistakable "You too?" It made Waymarsh in fact look consciously over her head. Mme. 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 everyone 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.