Strether took it freely in. "Ah then I shall have news of her."
"I don"t want to frighten you, but I think that likely. However,"
little Bilham continued, "if I"m of the least use to you to hold on by--!"
"You"re not of the least!"--and Strether laid an appreciative hand on him to say it. "No one"s of the least." With which, to mark how gaily he could take it, he patted his companion"s knee. "I must meet my fate alone, and I SHALL--oh you"ll see! And yet," he pursued the next moment, "you CAN help me too. You once said to me"--he followed this further--"that you held Chad should marry. I didn"t see then so well as I know now that you meant he should marry Miss Poc.o.c.k. Do you still consider that he should? Because if you do"--he kept it up--"I want you immediately to change your mind. You can help me that way."
"Help you by thinking he should NOT marry?"
"Not marry at all events Mamie."
"And who then?"
"Ah," Strether returned, "that I"m not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet--I suggest--when he can."
"Oh!" said little Bilham with some sharpness.
"Oh precisely! But he needn"t marry at all--I"m at any rate not obliged to provide for it. Whereas in your case I rather feel that I AM."
Little Bilham was amused. "Obliged to provide for my marrying?"
"Yes--after all I"ve done to you!"
The young man weighed it. "Have you done as much as that?"
"Well," said Strether, thus challenged, "of course I must remember what you"ve also done to ME. We may perhaps call it square. But all the same," he went on, "I wish awfully you"d marry Mamie Poc.o.c.k yourself."
Little Bilham laughed out. "Why it was only the other night, in this very place, that you were proposing to me a different union altogether."
"Mademoiselle de Vionnet?" Well, Strether easily confessed it. "That, I admit, was a vain image. THIS is practical politics. I want to do something good for both of you--I wish you each so well; and you can see in a moment the trouble it will save me to polish you off by the same stroke. She likes you, you know. You console her. And she"s splendid."
Little Bilham stared as a delicate appet.i.te stares at an overheaped plate. "What do I console her for?"
It just made his friend impatient. "Oh come, you knows"
"And what proves for you that she likes me?"
"Why the fact that I found her three days ago stopping at home alone all the golden afternoon on the mere chance that you"d come to her, and hanging over her balcony on that of seeing your cab drive up. I don"t know what you want more."
Little Bilham after a moment found it. "Only just to know what proves to you that I like HER."
"Oh if what I"ve just mentioned isn"t enough to make you do it, you"re a stony-hearted little fiend. Besides"--Strether encouraged his fancy"s flight--"you showed your inclination in the way you kept her waiting, kept her on purpose to see if she cared enough for you."
His companion paid his ingenuity the deference of a pause. "I didn"t keep her waiting. I came at the hour. I wouldn"t have kept her waiting for the world," the young man honourably declared.
"Better still--then there you are!" And Strether, charmed, held him the faster. "Even if you didn"t do her justice, moreover," he continued, "I should insist on your immediately coming round to it. I want awfully to have worked it. I want"--and our friend spoke now with a yearning that was really earnest--"at least to have done THAT."
"To have married me off--without a penny?"
"Well, I shan"t live long; and I give you my word, now and here, that I"ll leave you every penny of my own. I haven"t many, unfortunately, but you shall have them all. And Miss Poc.o.c.k, I think, has a few. I want," Strether went on, "to have been at least to that extent constructive even expiatory. I"ve been sacrificing so to strange G.o.ds that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my fidelity--fundamentally unchanged after all--to our own. I feel as if my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars--of another faith altogether. There it is--it"s done." And then he further explained. "It took hold of me because the idea of getting her quite out of the way for Chad helps to clear my ground."
The young man, at this, bounced about, and it brought them face to face in admitted amus.e.m.e.nt. "You want me to marry as a convenience to Chad?"
"No," Strether debated--"HE doesn"t care whether you marry or not. It"s as a convenience simply to my own plan FOR him."
""Simply"!"--and little Bilham"s concurrence was in itself a lively comment. "Thank you. But I thought," he continued, "you had exactly NO plan "for" him."
"Well then call it my plan for myself--which may be well, as you say, to have none. His situation, don"t you see? is reduced now to the bare facts one has to recognise. Mamie doesn"t want him, and he doesn"t want Mamie: so much as that these days have made clear. It"s a thread we can wind up and tuck in."
But little Bilham still questioned. "YOU can--since you seem so much to want to. But why should I?"
Poor Strether thought it over, but was obliged of course to admit that his demonstration did superficially fail. "Seriously, there is no reason. It"s my affair--I must do it alone. I"ve only my fantastic need of making my dose stiff."
Little Bilham wondered. "What do you call your dose?"
"Why what I have to swallow. I want my conditions unmitigated."
He had spoken in the tone of talk for talk"s sake, and yet with an obscure truth lurking in the loose folds; a circ.u.mstance presently not without its effect on his young friend. Little Bilham"s eyes rested on him a moment with some intensity; then suddenly, as if everything had cleared up, he gave a happy laugh. It seemed to say that if pretending, or even trying, or still even hoping, to be able to care for Mamie would be of use, he was all there for the job. "I"ll do anything in the world for you!"
"Well," Strether smiled, "anything in the world is all I want. I don"t know anything that pleased me in her more," he went on, "than the way that, on my finding her up there all alone, coming on her unawares and feeling greatly for her being so out of it, she knocked down my tall house of cards with her instant and cheerful allusion to the next young man. It was somehow so the note I needed--her staying at home to receive him."
"It was Chad of course," said little Bilham, "who asked the next young man--I like your name for me!--to call."
"So I supposed--all of which, thank G.o.d, is in our innocent and natural manners. But do you know," Strether asked, "if Chad knows--?" And then as this interlocutor seemed at a loss: "Why where she has come out."
Little Bilham, at this, met his face with a conscious look--it was as if, more than anything yet, the allusion had penetrated. "Do you know yourself?"
Strether lightly shook his head. "There I stop. Oh, odd as it may appear to you, there ARE things I don"t know. I only got the sense from her of something very sharp, and yet very deep down, that she was keeping all to herself. That is I had begun with the belief that she HAD kept it to herself; but face to face with her there I soon made out that there was a person with whom she would have shared it. I had thought she possibly might with ME--but I saw then that I was only half in her confidence. When, turning to me to greet me--for she was on the balcony and I had come in without her knowing it--she showed me she had been expecting YOU and was proportionately disappointed, I got hold of the tail of my conviction. Half an hour later I was in possession of all the rest of it. You know what has happened." He looked at his young friend hard--then he felt sure. "For all you say, you"re up to your eyes. So there you are."
Little Bilham after an instant pulled half round. "I a.s.sure you she hasn"t told me anything."
"Of course she hasn"t. For what do you suggest that I suppose her to take you? But you"ve been with her every day, you"ve seen her freely, you"ve liked her greatly--I stick to that--and you"ve made your profit of it. You know what she has been through as well as you know that she has dined here to-night--which must have put her, by the way, through a good deal more."
The young man faced this blast; after which he pulled round the rest of the way. "I haven"t in the least said she hasn"t been nice to me. But she"s proud."
"And quite properly. But not too proud for that."
"It"s just her pride that has made her. Chad," little Bilham loyally went on, "has really been as kind to her as possible. It"s awkward for a man when a girl"s in love with him."
"Ah but she isn"t--now."
Little Bilham sat staring before him; then he sprang up as if his friend"s penetration, recurrent and insistent, made him really after all too nervous. "No--she isn"t now. It isn"t in the least," he went on, "Chad"s fault. He"s really all right. I mean he would have been willing. But she came over with ideas. Those she had got at home.
They had been her motive and support in joining her brother and his wife. She was to SAVE our friend."
"Ah like me, poor thing?" Strether also got to his feet.
"Exactly--she had a bad moment. It was very soon distinct to her, to pull her up, to let her down, that, alas, he was, he IS, saved. There"s nothing left for her to do."
"Not even to love him?"