The Ambassadors (23 page)

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 comer; 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."

On which Strether saw that Chad was again at hand, and he
afterwards scarce knew, absurd as it may seem, what had then
quickly occurred. The moment concerned him, he felt, more deeply
than he could have explained, and he had a subsequent passage of
speculation as to whether, on walking off with Chad, he hadn't
looked either pale or red. The only thing he was clear about was
that, luckily, nothing indiscreet had in fact been said and that
Chad himself was more than ever, in Miss Barrace's great sense,
wonderful. It was one of the connexions—though really why it should
be, after all, was none so apparent—in which the whole change in
him came out as most striking. Strether recalled as they approached
the house that he had impressed him that first night as knowing how
to enter a box. Well, he impressed him scarce less now as knowing
how to make a presentation. It did something for Strether's own
quality—marked it as estimated; so that our poor friend, conscious
and passive, really seemed to feel himself quite handed over and
delivered; absolutely, as he would have said, made a present of,
given away. As they reached the house a young woman, about to come
forth, appeared, unaccompanied, on the steps; at the exchange with
whom of a word on Chad's part Strether immediately perceived that,
obligingly, kindly, she was there to meet them. Chad had left her
in the house, but she had afterwards come halfway and then the next
moment had joined them in the garden. Her air of youth, for
Strether, was at first almost disconcerting, while his second
impression was, not less sharply, a degree of relief at there not
having just been, with the others, any freedom used about her. It
was upon him at a touch that she was no subject for that, and
meanwhile, on Chad's introducing him, she had spoken to him, very
simply and gently, in an English clearly of the easiest to her, yet
unlike any other he had ever heard. It wasn't as if she tried;
nothing, he could see after they had been a few minutes together,
was as if she tried; but her speech, charming correct and odd, was
like a precaution against her passing for a Pole. There were
precautions, he seemed indeed to see, only when there were really
dangers.

Later on he was to feel many more of them, but by that time he
was to feel other things besides. She was dressed in black, but in
black that struck him as light and transparent; she was exceedingly
fair, and, though she was as markedly slim, her face had a
roundness, with eyes far apart and a little strange. Her smile was
natural and dim; her hat not extravagant; he had only perhaps a
sense of the clink, beneath her fine black sleeves, of more gold
bracelets and bangles than he had ever seen a lady wear. Chad was
excellently free and light about their encounter; it was one of the
occasions on which Strether most wished he himself might have
arrived at such ease and such humour: "Here you are then, face to
face at last; you're made for each other—vous allez voir; and I
bless your union." It was indeed, after he had gone off, as if he
had been partly serious too. This latter motion had been determined
by an enquiry from him about "Jeanne"; to which her mother had
replied that she was probably still in the house with Miss Gostrey,
to whom she had lately committed her. "Ah but you know," the young
man had rejoined, "he must see her"; with which, while Strether
pricked up his ears, he had started as if to bring her, leaving the
other objects of his interest together. Strether wondered to find
Miss Gostrey already involved, feeling that he missed a link; but
feeling also, with small delay, how much he should like to talk
with her of Madame de Vionnet on this basis of evidence.