"Oh but it appears to me I don"t at all meet your request. How can I when I don"t understand it?"
"It isn"t at all necessary you should understand; it will do quite well enough if you simply remember it. Only feel I trust you--and for nothing so tremendous after all. Just," she said with a wonderful smile, "for common civility."
Strether had a long pause while they sat again face to face, as they had sat, scarce less conscious, before the poor lady had crossed the stream. She was the poor lady for Strether now because clearly she had some trouble, and her appeal to him could only mean that her trouble was deep. He couldn"t help it; it wasn"t his fault; he had done nothing; but by a turn of the hand she had somehow made their encounter a relation. And the relation profited by a ma.s.s of things that were not strictly in it or of it; by the very air in which they sat, by the high cold delicate room, by the world outside and the little plash in the court, by the First Empire and the relics in the stiff cabinets, by matters as far off as those and by others as near as the unbroken clasp of her hands in her lap and the look her expression had of being most natural when her eyes were most fixed. "You count upon me of course for something really much greater than it sounds."
"Oh it sounds great enough too!" she laughed at this.
He found himself in time on the point of telling her that she was, as Miss Barrace called it, wonderful; but, catching himself up, he said something else instead. "What was it Chad"s idea then that you should say to me?"
"Ah his idea was simply what a man"s idea always is--to put every effort off on the woman."
"The "woman"--?" Strether slowly echoed.
"The woman he likes--and just in proportion as he likes her. In proportion too--for shifting the trouble--as she likes HIM."
Strether followed it; then with an abruptness of his own: "How much do you like Chad?"
"Just as much as THAT--to take all, with you, on myself." But she got at once again away from this. "I"ve been trembling as if we were to stand or fall by what you may think of me; and I"m even now," she went on wonderfully, "drawing a long breath--and, yes, truly taking a great courage--from the hope that I don"t in fact strike you as impossible."
"That"s at all events, clearly," he observed after an instant, "the way I don"t strike YOU."
"Well," she so far a.s.sented, "as you haven"t yet said you WON"T have the little patience with me I ask for--"
"You draw splendid conclusions? Perfectly. But I don"t understand them," Strether pursued. "You seem to me to ask for much more than you need. What, at the worst for you, what at the best for myself, can I after all do? I can use no pressure that I haven"t used. You come really late with your request. I"ve already done all that for myself the case admits of. I"ve said my say, and here I am."
"Yes, here you are, fortunately!" Madame de Vionnet laughed. "Mrs.
Newsome," she added in another tone, "didn"t think you can do so little."
He had an hesitation, but he brought the words out. "Well, she thinks so now."
"Do you mean by that--?" But she also hung fire.
"Do I mean what?"
She still rather faltered. "Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I"m saying extraordinary things, why, perhaps, mayn"t I? Besides, doesn"t it properly concern us to know?"
"To know what?" he insisted as after thus beating about the bush she had again dropped.
She made the effort. "Has she given you up?"
He was amazed afterwards to think how simply and quietly he had met it.
"Not yet." It was almost as if he were a trifle disappointed--had expected still more of her freedom. But he went straight on. "Is that what Chad has told you will happen to me?"
She was evidently charmed with the way he took it. "If you mean if we"ve talked of it--most certainly. And the question"s not what has had least to do with my wishing to see you."
"To judge if I"m the sort of man a woman CAN--?"
"Precisely," she exclaimed--"you wonderful gentleman! I do judge--I HAVE judged. A woman can"t. You"re safe--with every right to be.
You"d be much happier if you"d only believe it."
Strether was silent a little; then he found himself speaking with a cynicism of confidence of which even at the moment the sources were strange to him. "I try to believe it. But it"s a marvel," he exclaimed, "how YOU already get at it!"
Oh she was able to say. "Remember how much I was on the way to it through Mr. Newsome--before I saw you. He thinks everything of your strength."
"Well, I can bear almost anything!" our friend briskly interrupted.
Deep and beautiful on this her smile came back, and with the effect of making him hear what he had said just as she had heard it. He easily enough felt that it gave him away, but what in truth had everything done but that? It had been all very well to think at moments that he was holding her nose down and that he had coerced her: what had he by this time done but let her practically see that he accepted their relation? What was their relation moreover--though light and brief enough in form as yet--but whatever she might choose to make it?
Nothing could prevent her--certainly he couldn"t--from making it pleasant. At the back of his head, behind everything, was the sense that she was--there, before him, close to him, in vivid imperative form--one of the rare women he had so often heard of, read of, thought of, but never met, whose very presence, look, voice, the mere contemporaneous FACT of whom, from the moment it was at all presented, made a relation of mere recognition. That was not the kind of woman he had ever found Mrs. Newsome, a contemporaneous fact who had been distinctly slow to establish herself; and at present, confronted with Madame de Vionnet, he felt the simplicity of his original impression of Miss Gostrey. She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson. There were at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations. "Of course I suit Chad"s grand way," he quickly added. "He hasn"t had much difficulty in working me in."
She seemed to deny a little, on the young man"s behalf, by the rise of her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. "You must know how grieved he"d be if you were to lose anything. He believes you can keep his mother patient."
Strether wondered with his eyes on her. "I see. THAT"S then what you really want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you"ll tell me that."
"Simply tell her the truth."
"And what do you call the truth?"
"Well, any truth--about us all--that you see yourself. I leave it to you."
"Thank you very much. I like," Strether laughed with a slight harshness, "the way you leave things!"
But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn"t so bad. "Be perfectly honest. Tell her all."
"All?" he oddly echoed.
"Tell her the simple truth," Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.
"But what is the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what I"m trying to discover."
She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. "Tell her, fully and clearly, about US."
Strether meanwhile had been staring. "You and your daughter?"
"Yes--little Jeanne and me. Tell her," she just slightly quavered, "you like us."
"And what good will that do me? Or rather"--he caught himself up--"what good will it do YOU?"
She looked graver. "None, you believe, really?"
Strether debated. "She didn"t send me out to "like" you."
"Oh," she charmingly contended, "she sent you out to face the facts."
He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. "But how can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him," he then braced himself to ask, "to marry your daughter?"
She gave a headshake as n.o.ble as it was prompt. "No--not that."
"And he really doesn"t want to himself?"
She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face.