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.”
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 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’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 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, pulled.
“That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we do
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.”
“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.”
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.
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, 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.”
“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!” Madame 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’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.”
“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.
“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 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.
“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 with 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 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 allowed, “but the privilege of his society
isn’t a thing I shall quarrel about with any one.”
“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 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.
“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.
