Strether, of whom I"ve a question to ask? Our host ought to talk a bit to those other ladies, and I"ll come back in a minute to your rescue."
She made this proposal to Miss Barrace as if her consciousness of a special duty had just flickered-up, but that lady"s recognition of Strether"s little start at it--as at a betrayal on the speaker"s part of a domesticated state--was as mute as his own comment; and after an instant, when their fellow guest had good-naturedly left them, he had been given something else to think of. "Why has Maria so suddenly gone? Do you know?" That was the question Madame de Vionnet had brought with her.
"I"m afraid I"ve no reason to give you but the simple reason I"ve had from her in a note--the sudden obligation to join in the south a sick friend who has got worse."
"Ah then she has been writing you?"
"Not since she went--I had only a brief explanatory word before she started. I went to see her," Strether explained--"it was the day after I called on you--but she was already on her way, and her concierge told me that in case of my coming I was to be informed she had written to me. I found her note when I got home."
Madame de Vionnet listened with interest and with her eyes on Strether"s face; then her delicately decorated head had a small melancholy motion. "She didn"t write to ME. I went to see her," she added, "almost immediately after I had seen you, and as I a.s.sured her I would do when I met her at Gloriani"s. She hadn"t then told me she was to be absent, and I felt at her door as if I understood. She"s absent--with all respect to her sick friend, though I know indeed she has plenty--so that I may not see her. She doesn"t want to meet me again. Well," she continued with a beautiful conscious mildness, "I liked and admired her beyond every one in the old time, and she knew it--perhaps that"s precisely what has made her go--and I dare say I haven"t lost her for ever." Strether still said nothing; he had a horror, as he now thought of himself, of being in question between women--was in fact already quite enough on his way to that, and there was moreover, as it came to him, perceptibly, something behind these allusions and professions that, should he take it in, would square but ill with his present resolve to simplify. It was as if, for him, all the same, her softness and sadness were sincere. He felt that not less when she soon went on: "I"m extremely glad of her happiness." But it also left him mute--sharp and fine though the imputation it conveyed.
What it conveyed was that HE was Maria Gostrey"s happiness, and for the least little instant he had the impulse to challenge the thought. He could have done so however only by saying "What then do you suppose to be between us?" and he was wonderfully glad a moment later not to have spoken. He would rather seem stupid any day than fatuous, and he drew back as well, with a smothered inward shudder, from the consideration of what women--of highly-developed type in particular--might think of each other. Whatever he had come out for he hadn"t come to go into that; so that he absolutely took up nothing his interlocutress had now let drop. Yet, though he had kept away from her for days, had laid wholly on herself the burden of their meeting again, she hadn"t a gleam of irritation to show him. "Well, about Jeanne now?" she smiled--it had the gaiety with which she had originally come in. He felt it on the instant to represent her motive and real errand. But he had been schooling her of a truth to say much in proportion to his little. "Do you make out that she has a sentiment? I mean for Mr. Newsome."
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 rea.s.suringly 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 circ.u.mstance, 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."