The Ambassadors (30 page)

Almost resentful, Strether could at last be prompt. "How can I
make out such things?"

She remained perfectly good-natured. "Ah but they're beautiful
little things, and you make out—don't pretend—everything in the
world. Haven't you," she asked, "been talking with her?"

"Yes, but not about Chad. At least not much."

"Oh you don't require 'much'!" she reassuringly declared. But
she immediately changed her ground. "I hope you remember your
promise of the other day."

"To 'save' you, as you called it?"

"I call it so still. You WILL?" she insisted. "You haven't
repented?"

He wondered. "No—but I've been thinking what I meant."

She kept it up. "And not, a little, what I did?"

"No—that's not necessary. It will be enough if I know what I
meant myself."

"And don't you know," she asked, "by this time?"

Again he had a pause. "I think you ought to leave it to me. But
how long," he added, "do you give me?"

"It seems to me much more a question of how long you give ME.
Doesn't our friend here himself, at any rate," she went on,
"perpetually make me present to you?"

"Not," Strether replied, "by ever speaking of you to me."

"He never does that?"

"Never."

She considered, and, if the fact was disconcerting to her,
effectually concealed it. The next minute indeed she had recovered.
"No, he wouldn't. But do you NEED that?"

Her emphasis was wonderful, and though his eyes had been
wandering he looked at her longer now. "I see what you mean."

"Of course you see what I mean."

Her triumph was gentle, and she really had tones to make justice
weep. "I've before me what he owes you."

"Admit then that that's something," she said, yet still with the
same discretion in her pride.

He took in this note but went straight on. "You've made of him
what I see, but what I don't see is how in the world you've done
it."

"Ah that's another question!" she smiled. "The point is of what
use is your declining to know me when to know Mr. Newsome—as you do
me the honour to find him—IS just to know me."

"I see," he mused, still with his eyes on her. "I shouldn't have
met you to-night."

She raised and dropped her linked hands. "It doesn't matter. If
I trust you why can't you a little trust me too? And why can't you
also," she asked in another tone, "trust yourself?" But she gave
him no time to reply. "Oh I shall be so easy for you! And I'm glad
at any rate you've seen my child."

"I'm glad too," he said; "but she does you no good."

"No good?"—Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. "Why she's an
angel of light."

"That's precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don't try to find
out. I mean," he explained, "about what you spoke to me of—the way
she feels."

His companion wondered. "Because one really won't?"

"Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She's
the most charming creature I've ever seen. Therefore don't touch
her. Don't know—don't want to know. And moreover—yes—you
won't."

It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. "As a favour
to you?"

"Well—since you ask me."

"Anything, everything you ask," she smiled. "I shan't know
then—never. Thank you," she added with peculiar gentleness as she
turned away.

The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if
he had been tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging
with her for his independence he had, under pressure from a
particular perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed
himself, and, with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an
advantage, she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail,
the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He hadn't detached,
he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he
considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair
which had just come within their range and which struck him as
reflecting his sense of what he had done. He recognised them at the
same moment as those of little Bilham, who had apparently drawn
near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn't, in the
conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed. They
were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room
obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged
with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their
attention had been benevolently given. "I can't see for my life,"
Strether had then observed, "how a young fellow of any spirit—such
a one as you for instance—can be admitted to the sight of that
young lady without being hard hit. Why don't you go in, little
Bilham?" He remembered the tone into which he had been betrayed on
the garden-bench at the sculptor's reception, and this might make
up for that by being much more the right sort of thing to say to a
young man worthy of any advice at all. "There WOULD be some
reason."

"Some reason for what?"

"Why for hanging on here."

"To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?"

"Well," Strether asked, "to what lovelier apparition COULD you
offer them? She's the sweetest little thing I've ever seen."

"She's certainly immense. I mean she's the real thing. I believe
the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous
efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun.
I'M unfortunately but a small farthing candle. What chance in such
a field for a poor little painter-man?"

"Oh you're good enough," Strether threw out.

"Certainly I'm good enough. We're good enough, I consider, nous
autres, for anything. But she's TOO good. There's the difference.
They wouldn't look at me."

Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young
girl, whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a
vague smile—Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant
pulses at last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him,
thought over his companion's words. "Whom do you mean by 'they'?
She and her mother?"

"She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever
else he may be, certainly can't be indifferent to the possibilities
she represents. Besides, there's Chad."

Strether was silent a little. "Ah but he doesn't care for
her—not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking
of. He's NOT in love with her."

"No—but he's her best friend; after her mother. He's very fond
of her. He has his ideas about what can be done for her."

"Well, it's very strange!" Strether presently remarked with a
sighing sense of fulness.

"Very strange indeed. That's just the beauty of it. Isn't it
very much the kind of beauty you had in mind," little Bilham went
on, "when you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other
day? Didn't you adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see,
while I've a chance, everything I can?—and REALLY to see, for it
must have been that only you meant. Well, you did me no end of
good, and I'm doing my best. I DO make it out a situation."

"So do I!" Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next
minute an inconsequent question. "How comes Chad so mixed up,
anyway?"

"Ah, ah, ah!"—and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.

It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the
brush of his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions.
Yet he kept hold of his thread. "Of course I understand really;
only the general transformation makes me occasionally gasp. Chad
with such a voice in the settlement of the future of a little
countess—no," he declared, "it takes more time! You say moreover,"
he resumed, "that we're inevitably, people like you and me, out of
the running. The curious fact remains that Chad himself isn't. The
situation doesn't make for it, but in a different one he could have
her if he would."

"Yes, but that's only because he's rich and because there's a
possibility of his being richer. They won't think of anything but a
great name or a great fortune."

"Well," said Strether, "he'll have no great fortune on THESE
lines. He must stir his stumps."

"Is that," little Bilham enquired, "what you were saying to
Madame de Vionnet?"

"No—I don't say much to her. Of course, however," Strether
continued, "he can make sacrifices if he likes."

Little Bilham had a pause. "Oh he's not keen for sacrifices; or
thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough."

"Well, it IS virtuous," his companion observed with some
decision.

"That's exactly," the young man dropped after a moment, "what I
mean."

It kept Strether himself silent a little. "I've made it out for
myself," he then went on; "I've really, within the last half-hour,
got hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at
first—when you originally spoke to me—I didn't. Nor when Chad
originally spoke to me either."

"Oh," said little Bilham, "I don't think that at that time you
believed me."

"Yes—I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious
and unmannerly—as well as quite perverse—if I hadn't. What interest
have you in deceiving me?"

The young man cast about. "What interest have I?"

"Yes. Chad MIGHT have. But you?"

"Ah, ah, ah!" little Bilham exclaimed.

It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our
friend a little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he
was, and his being proof against everything was only another
attestation that he meant to stay there. "I couldn't, without my
own impression, realise. She's a tremendously clever brilliant
capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm on top of it all—the
charm we surely all of us this evening know what to think of. It
isn't every clever brilliant capable woman that has it. In fact
it's rare with any woman. So there you are," Strether proceeded as
if not for little Bilham's benefit alone. "I understand what a
relation with such a woman—what such a high fine friendship—may be.
It can't be vulgar or coarse, anyway—and that's the point."

"Yes, that's the point," said little Bilham. "It can't be vulgar
or coarse. And, bless us and save us, it ISn't! It's, upon my word,
the very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most
distinguished."

Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he
leaned, dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short
interval and of which he took no notice. He only gazed before him
with intent participation. "Of course what it has done for him,"
Strether at all events presently pursued, "of course what it has
done for him—that is as to HOW it has so wonderfully worked—isn't a
thing I pretend to understand. I've to take it as I find it. There
he is."

"There he is!" little Bilham echoed. "And it's really and truly
she. I don't understand either, even with my longer and closer
opportunity. But I'm like you," he added; "I can admire and rejoice
even when I'm a little in the dark. You see I've watched it for
some three years, and especially for this last. He wasn't so bad
before it as I seem to have made out that you think—"

"Oh I don't think anything now!" Strether impatiently broke in:
"that is but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to
have cared for him—"

"There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff
indeed, and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home.
Still, you know," the young man in all fairness developed, "there
was room for her, and that's where she came in. She saw her chance
and took it. That's what strikes me as having been so fine. But of
course," he wound up, "he liked her first."

"Naturally," said Strether.

"I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere—I believe in
some American house—and she, without in the least then intending
it, made her impression. Then with time and opportunity he made
his; and after THAT she was as bad as he."

Strether vaguely took it up. "As 'bad'?"

"She began, that is, to care—to care very much. Alone, and in
her horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an
interest. It was, it is, an interest, and it did—it continues to
do—a lot for herself as well. So she still cares. She cares in
fact," said little Bilham thoughtfully "more."

Strether's theory that it was none of his business was somehow
not damaged by the way he took this. "More, you mean, than he?" On
which his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant
their eyes met. "More than he?" he repeated.

Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. "Will you never tell any
one?"

Strether thought. "Whom should I tell?"

"Why I supposed you reported regularly—"

"To people at home?"—Strether took him up. "Well, I won't tell
them this."

The young man at last looked away. "Then she does now care more
than he."

"Oh!" Strether oddly exclaimed.

But his companion immediately met it. "Haven't you after all had
your impression of it? That's how you've got hold of him."

"Ah but I haven't got hold of him!"

"Oh I say!" But it was all little Bilham said.

"It's at any rate none of my business. I mean," Strether
explained, "nothing else than getting hold of him is." It appeared,
however, to strike him as his business to add: "The fact remains
nevertheless that she has saved him."

Little Bilham just waited. "I thought that was what you were to
do."

But Strether had his answer ready. "I'm speaking—in connexion
with her—of his manners and morals, his character and life. I'm
speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live
with—speaking of him as a social animal."

"And isn't it as a social animal that you also want him?"

"Certainly; so that it's as if she had saved him FOR us."

"It strikes you accordingly then," the young man threw out, "as
for you all to save HER?"