Part 22

“Ah, let me explain,” she smiled, “that I don’t go about with him in public; I never have such chances—not having them otherwise—and it’s just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I adore.” It was more than kind of him to have thought of it—though, frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn’t a single minute. That however made no difference—she’d throw everything over. Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; but it was a case for a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn’t one a right to one’s snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay? It was on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time gathered them in, the explanations—he had stored them up; but it was at present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them—he couldn’t tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn’t seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their _omelette aux tomates_, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions.

Their human questions became many before they had done—many more, as one after the other came up, than our friend’s free fancy had at all foreseen. The sense he had had before, the sense he had had repeatedly, the sense that the situation was running away with him, had never been so sharp as now; and all the more that he could perfectly put his finger on the moment it had taken the bit in its teeth. That accident had definitely occurred, the other evening, after Chad’s dinner; it had occurred, as he fully knew, at the moment when he interposed between this lady and her child, when he suffered himself so to discuss with her a matter closely concerning them that her own subtlety, marked by its significant “Thank you!” instantly sealed the occasion in her favour. Again he had held off for ten days, but the situation had continued out of hand in spite of that; the fact that it was running so fast being indeed just _why_ he had held off. What had come over him as he recognised her in the nave of the church was that holding off could be but a losing game from the instant she was worked for not only by her subtlety, but by the hand of fate itself. If all the accidents were to fight on her side—and by the actual showing they loomed large—he could only give himself up. This was what he had done in privately deciding then and there to propose she should breakfast with him. What did the success of his proposal in fact resemble but the smash in which a regular runaway properly ends? The smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it—to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tune and nothing less, accordingly, was his surrender made good. It sufficiently lighted up at least the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and the plash of the river. It _was_ clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine.

“Maria’s still away?”—that was the first thing she had asked him; and when he had found the frankness to be cheerful about it in spite of the meaning he knew her to attach to Miss Gostrey’s absence, she had gone on to enquire if he didn’t tremendously miss her. There were reasons that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered “Tremendously”; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to prove. Then, “A man in trouble _must_ be possessed somehow of a woman,” she said; “if she doesn’t come in one way she comes in another.”

“Why do you call me a man in trouble?”

“Ah because that’s the way you strike me.” She spoke ever so gently and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of his bounty. “_Aren’t_ you in trouble?”

He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that—hated to pass for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad’s lady, in respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of indifference—was he already at that point? Perversely, none the less, his pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and what was he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in the way he had most dreamed of not doing? “I’m not in trouble yet,” he at last smiled. “I’m not in trouble now.”

“Well, I’m always so. But that you sufficiently know.” She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table. It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was easy for a _femme du monde_. “Yes—I am ‘now’!”

“There was a question you put to me,” he presently returned, “the night of Chad’s dinner. I didn’t answer it then, and it has been very handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me about it since.”

She was instantly all there. “Of course I know what you allude to. I asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see me, just before you left me, that you’d save me. And you then said—at our friend’s—that you’d have really to wait to see, for yourself, what you did mean.”

“Yes, I asked for time,” said Strether. “And it sounds now, as you put it, like a very ridiculous speech.”

“Oh!” she murmured—she was full of attenuation. But she had another thought. “If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that you’re in trouble?”

“Ah if I were,” he replied, “it wouldn’t be the trouble of fearing ridicule. I don’t fear it.”

“What then do you?”

“Nothing—now.” And he leaned back in his chair.

“I like your ‘now’!” she laughed across at him.

“Well, it’s precisely that it fully comes to me at present that I’ve kept you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I meant by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad’s dinner.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that moment done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the day I went to see you; but I wasn’t then sure of the importance I might represent this as having.”

She was all eagerness. “And you’re sure now?”

“Yes; I see that, practically, I’ve done for you—had done for you when you put me your question—all that it’s as yet possible to me to do. I feel now,” he went on, “that it may go further than I thought. What I did after my visit to you,” he explained, “was to write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and I’m at last, from one day to the other, expecting her answer. It’s this answer that will represent, as I believe, the consequences.”

Patient and beautiful was her interest. “I see—the consequences of your speaking for me.” And she waited as if not to hustle him.

He acknowledged it by immediately going on. “The question, you understand, was _how_ I should save you. Well, I’m trying it by thus letting her know that I consider you worth saving.”

“I see—I see.” Her eagerness broke through.

“How can I thank you enough?” He couldn’t tell her that, however, and she quickly pursued. “You do really, for yourself, consider it?”

His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been freshly put before them. “I’ve written to her again since then—I’ve left her in no doubt of what I think. I’ve told her all about you.”

“Thanks—not so much. ‘All about’ me,” she went on—“yes.”

“All it seems to me you’ve done for him.”

“Ah and you might have added all it seems to _me!_” She laughed again, while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of these assurances. “But you’re not sure how she’ll take it.”

“No, I’ll not pretend I’m sure.”

“Voilà.” And she waited a moment. “I wish you’d tell me about her.”

“Oh,” said Strether with a slightly strained smile, “all that need concern you about her is that she’s really a grand person.”

Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. “Is that all that need concern me about her?”

But Strether neglected the question. “Hasn’t Chad talked to you?”

“Of his mother? Yes, a great deal—immensely. But not from your point of view.”

“He can’t,” our friend returned, “have said any ill of her.”

“Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that she’s really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what hasn’t seemed to simplify our case. Nothing,” she continued, “is further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of course I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another woman.”

This was a proposition Strether couldn’t contradict. “And yet what other way could I have expressed to her what I felt? It’s what there was most to say about you.”

“Do you mean then that she _will_ be good to me?”

“It’s what I’m waiting to see. But I’ve little doubt she would,” he added, “if she could comfortably see you.”

It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. “Oh then couldn’t that be managed? Wouldn’t she come out? Wouldn’t she if you so put it to her? _Did_ you by any possibility?” she faintly quavered.

“Oh no”—he was prompt. “Not that. It would be, much more, to give an account of you that—since there’s no question of _your_ paying the visit—I should go home first.”

It instantly made her graver. “And are you thinking of that?”

“Oh all the while, naturally.”

“Stay with us—stay with us!” she exclaimed on this. “That’s your only way to make sure.”

“To make sure of what?”

“Why that he doesn’t break up. You didn’t come out to do that to him.”

“Doesn’t it depend,” Strether returned after a moment, “on what you mean by breaking up?”

“Oh you know well enough what I mean!”

His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding. “You take for granted remarkable things.”

“Yes, I do—to the extent that I don’t take for granted vulgar ones. You’re perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for wasn’t really at all to do what you’d now have to do.”

“Ah it’s perfectly simple,” Strether good-humouredly pleaded. “I’ve had but one thing to do—to put our case before him. To put it as it could only be put here on the spot—by personal pressure. My dear lady,” he lucidly pursued, “my work, you see, is really done, and my reasons for staying on even another day are none of the best. Chad’s in possession of our case and professes to do it full justice. What remains is with himself. I’ve had my rest, my amusement and refreshment; I’ve had, as we say at Woollett, a lovely time. Nothing in it has been more lovely than this happy meeting with you—in these fantastic conditions to which you’ve so delightfully consented. I’ve a sense of success. It’s what I wanted. My getting all this good is what Chad has waited for, and I gather that if I’m ready to go he’s the same.”

She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. “You’re not ready. If you’re ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense you’ve mentioned to me?”

Strether considered. “I shan’t go before I hear from her. You’re too much afraid of her,” he added.

It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. “I don’t think you believe that—believe I’ve not really reason to fear her.”

“She’s capable of great generosity,” Strether presently stated.

“Well then let her trust me a little. That’s all I ask. Let her recognise in spite of everything what I’ve done.”

“Ah remember,” our friend replied, “that she can’t effectually recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and show her what you’ve done, and let him plead with her there for it and, as it were, for _you_.”

She measured the depth of this suggestion. “Do you give me your word of honour that if she once has him there she won’t do her best to marry him?”

It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the view; after which he spoke without sharpness. “When she sees for herself what he is—”

But she had already broken in. “It’s when she sees for herself what he is that she’ll want to marry him most.”

Strether’s attitude, that of due deference to what she said, permitted him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. “I doubt if that will come off. It won’t be easy to make it.”

“It will be easy if he remains there—and he’ll remain for the money. The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously much.”

“Well,” Strether presently concluded, “nothing _could_ really hurt you but his marrying.”

She gave a strange light laugh. “Putting aside what may really hurt _him_.”

But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too. “The question will come up, of course, of the future that you yourself offer him.”

She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. “Well, let it come up!”

“The point is that it’s for Chad to make of it what he can. His being proof against marriage will show what he does make.”

“If he _is_ proof, yes”—she accepted the proposition. “But for myself,” she added, “the question is what _you_ make.”

“Ah I make nothing. It’s not my affair.”

“I beg your pardon. It’s just there that, since you’ve taken it up and are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You’re not saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your interest in our friend. The one’s at any rate wholly dependent on the other. You can’t in honour not see me through,” she wound up, “because you can’t in honour not see _him_.”

Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing that most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had none of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact, it struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome, goodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this. He took it all in, he saw it all together. “No,” he mused, “I can’t in honour not see him.”

Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. “You _will_ then?”

“I will.”

At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her feet. “Thank you!” she said with her hand held out to him across the table and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had so particularly given them after Chad’s dinner. The golden nail she had then driven in pierced a good inch deeper. Yet he reflected that he himself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to on the same occasion. So far as the essence of the matter went he had simply stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.

II

He received three days after this a communication from America, in the form of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching him through his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy in uniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached him as he slowly paced the little court. It was the evening hour, but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating. The scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets perpetually in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and suggestions, vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he imagined, as they were not in other places, that came out for him more and more as the mild afternoons deepened—a far-off hum, a sharp near click on the asphalt, a voice calling, replying, somewhere and as full of tone as an actor’s in a play. He was to dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh—they had settled to that for thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his friend came down.

He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where he had opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed study of it. At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it out of the way; in spite of which, however, he kept it there—still kept it when, at the end of another turn, he had dropped into a chair placed near a small table. Here, with his scrap of paper compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding his arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so straight that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching his eye. The latter in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at him hard for a single instant and then, as if determined to that course by some special vividness in it, dropped back into the _salon de lecture_ without addressing him. But the pilgrim from Milrose permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind the clear glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully again as he placed it on his table. There it remained for some minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him from within. It was on this that their eyes met—met for a moment during which neither moved. But Strether then got up, folding his telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket.

A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but Strether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually parted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either side. Our friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than usual was on this occasion said between them, so that it was almost as if each had been waiting for something from the other. Waymarsh had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent, and silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in their concert. This note indeed, to Strether’s sense, had lately taken a fuller tone, and it was his fancy to-night that they had never quite so drawn it out. Yet it befell, none the less that he closed the door to confidence when his companion finally asked him if there were anything particular the matter with him. “Nothing,” he replied, “more than usual.”

On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give an answer more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter had continued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of which, after dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious composition of a letter. He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose, leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony than their wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and going forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade. He had taken a long vague walk, and one o’clock had struck before his return and his re-ascent to his room by the aid of the glimmering candle-end left for him on the shelf outside the porter’s lodge. He had possessed himself, on closing his door, of the numerous loose sheets of his unfinished composition, and then, without reading them over, had torn them into small pieces. He had thereupon slept—as if it had been in some measure thanks to that sacrifice—the sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest considerably beyond his custom. Thus it was that when, between nine and ten, the tap of the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had not yet made himself altogether presentable. Chad Newsome’s bright deep voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the visitor. The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an object the more precious for its escape from premature destruction, now lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and kept from blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his watch. Chad, looking about with careless and competent criticism, as he looked wherever he went immediately espied it and permitted himself to fix it for a moment rather hard. After which he turned his eyes to his host. “It has come then at last?”

Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. “Then you know—? You’ve had one too?”

“No, I’ve had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing and I guess. Well,” he added, “it comes as pat as in a play, for I’ve precisely turned up this morning—as I would have done yesterday, but it was impossible—to take you.”

“To take me?” Strether had turned again to his glass.

“Back, at last, as I promised. I’m ready—I’ve really been ready this month. I’ve only been waiting for you—as was perfectly right. But you’re better now; you’re safe—I see that for myself; you’ve got all your good. You’re looking, this morning, as fit as a flea.”