III
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.
