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,
panem et circenses. 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.
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.
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 hôtels 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.
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.
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 his
knowledge. If he had said to him on the instant what was uppermost he would
have said: “Have 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.
“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 cher
confrère; and then gros bonnets 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 femmes du monde. You can fancy his history on
that side—I believe it’s fabulous: they never 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.’
“Ah doesn’t he?” Strether laughed.
Bilham met it with all his candour. “How then should I be here?
“Oh for what you tell me. You’re part of the perfect choice.”
Well, the young man took in the scene. “It seems rather good
to-day.”
Strether followed the direction of his eyes. “Are they all, this time,
femmes du monde?”
Little Bilham showed his competence. “Pretty well.”
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?”
His companion considered. “I think I make out a ‘Portuguee.’
But I’ve seen Turks.”
Strether wondered, desiring justice. “They seem—all the
women—very harmonious.”
“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 is 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.”
Strether liked it and felt it only too much; so “I say, don’t lay
traps for me!” he rather helplessly murmured.
“Well,” his companion returned, “he’s wonderfully kind
to us.”
“To us Americans you mean?”
“Oh no—he doesn’t know anything about that.
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.”
“I’m afraid,” Strether said, amused, “that it puts me
rather forward: oh ever so far!”
“Into the next? But isn’t that only,” little Bilham asked,
“because you’re really of the century before?”
“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.”
“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!”
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?”
“I haven’t seen them yet, but Miss Gostrey has come. She’s in
the pavilion looking at objects. One can see she’s a
collector,” little Bilham added without offence.
“Oh yes, she’s a collector, and I knew she was to come. Is Madame
de Vionnet a collector?” Strether went on.
“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 are here—their first
appearance after their return.”
Strether, very quickly, turned these things over. “Chad told you last
night? To me, on our way here, he said nothing about it.”
“But did you ask him?”
Strether did him the justice. “I dare say not.”
“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
is easy, I admit—it’s quite beautiful,” he
benevolently added, “when you do want to.”
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?”
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.”
Strether came round to it. “They then are the virtuous attachment?”
“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.”
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?”
“Magnificent.”
Strether had a pause. “The husband’s dead?”
“Dear no. Alive.”
“Oh!” said Strether. After which, as his companion laughed:
“How then can it be so good?”
“You’ll see for yourself. One does see.”
“Chad’s in love with the daughter?”
“That’s what I mean.”
Strether wondered. “Then where’s the difficulty?”
“Why, aren’t you and I—with our grander bolder ideas?”
“Oh mine—!” Strether said rather strangely. But then as if to
attenuate: “You mean they won’t hear of Woollett?”
Little Bilham smiled. “Isn’t that just what you must see
about?”
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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 you.”
“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.”
“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. Il
faut en avoir. I always like to see you while you last. And I’ll tell
you who will last.”
“Waymarsh?”—he had already taken her up.
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.”
“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 that
‘lasting’?”
“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.
“Michelangelesque!”—little Bilham completed her meaning.
“He is a success. Moses, on the ceiling, brought down to the
floor; overwhelming, colossal, but somehow portable.”
“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, en exil; 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
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.”
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.”
“Any moral,” little Bilham explained, watching serenely, across the
garden, the several femmes du monde. “But Miss Barrace has a moral
distinction,” he kindly continued; speaking as if for Strether’s
benefit not less than for her own.
“Have you?” Strether, scarce knowing what he was about,
asked of her almost eagerly.
“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 are 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!”
“Dear old Paris!” little Bilham echoed.
“Everything, every one shows,” Miss Barrace went on.
“But for what they really are?” Strether asked.
“Oh I like your Boston ‘reallys’! But
sometimes—yes.”
“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?”
Her answer was prompt. “She’s charming. She’s perfect.”
“Then why did you a minute ago say ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ at her
name?”
She easily remembered. “Why just because—! She’s
wonderful.”
“Ah she too?”—Strether had almost a groan.
But Miss Barrace had meanwhile perceived relief. “Why not put your
question straight to the person who can answer it best?”
“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.”
