“Well then why isn’t he free? He swears to me he is, but meanwhile does nothing—except of course that he’s so kind to me—to prove it; and couldn’t really act much otherwise if he weren’t. My question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of his diplomacy: as if instead of really giving ground his line were to keep me on here and set me a bad example.”
As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score, and the waiter was presently in the act of counting out change. Our friend pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an emphatic recognition, the personage in question retreated. “You give too much,” little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to observe.
“Oh I always give too much!” Strether helplessly sighed. “But you don’t,” he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, “answer my question. Why isn’t he free?”
Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter had been a signal, and had already edged out between the table and the divan. The effect of this was that a minute later they had quitted the place, the gratified waiter alert again at the open door. Strether had found himself deferring to his companion’s abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the outer air they had turned the next corner. There our friend had kept it up. “Why isn’t he free if he’s good?”
Little Bilham looked him full in the face. “Because it’s a virtuous attachment.”
This had settled the question so effectually for the time—that is for the next few days—that it had given Strether almost a new lease of life. It must be added however that, thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other words already dealt with his young friend’s assertion; of which it had made something that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion of his seeing Maria Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been determined promptly by a new circumstance—a circumstance he was the last man to leave her for a day in ignorance of. “When I said to him last night,” he immediately began, “that without some definite word from him now that will enable me to speak to them over there of our sailing—or at least of mine, giving them some sort of date—my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation awkward; when I said that to him what do you think was his reply?” And then as she this time gave it up: “Why that he has two particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to arrive in Paris—coming back from an absence; and that he wants me so furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall oblige him by kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he has had a chance to see them again himself. Is that,” Strether enquired, “the way he’s going to try to get off? These are the people,” he explained, “that he must have gone down to see before I arrived. They’re the best friends he has in the world, and they take more interest than any one else in what concerns him. As I’m his next best he sees a thousand reasons why we should comfortably meet. He hasn’t broached the question sooner because their return was uncertain—seemed in fact for the present impossible. But he more than intimates that—if you can believe it—their desire to make my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting difficulties.”
“They’re dying to see you?” Miss Gostrey asked.
“Dying. Of course,” said Strether, “they’re the virtuous attachment.” He had already told her about that—had seen her the day after his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed out together the bearing of the revelation. She had helped him to put into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly deficient. Strether hadn’t pressed him as to the object of the preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of it, with one of his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which he had in the quest of the quite other article worked himself sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small principle of pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; wishing to make with this the great point that Chad’s virtuous attachments were none of his business. He had wanted from the first not to think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not allowing it any little benefit that might turn up. He had often enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be seen whenever he could that he didn’t interfere. That had of course at the same time not deprived him of the further luxury of much private astonishment; which however he had reduced to some order before communicating his knowledge. When he had done this at last it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey might, like himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on reflexion that such an account of the matter did after all fit the confirmed appearances. Nothing certainly, on all the indications, could have been a greater change for him than a virtuous attachment, and since they had been in search of the “word” as the French called it, of that change, little Bilham’s announcement—though so long and so oddly delayed—would serve as well as another. She had assured Strether in fact after a pause that the more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her assurance hadn’t so weighed with him as that before they parted he hadn’t ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn’t she believe the attachment was virtuous?—he had made sure of her again with the aid of that question. The tidings he brought her on this second occasion were moreover such as would help him to make surer still.
She showed at first none the less as only amused. “You say there are two? An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost necessarily be innocent.”
Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. “Mayn’t he be still in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or daughter, he likes best?”
She gave it more thought. “Oh it must be the daughter—at his age.”
“Possibly. Yet what do we know,” Strether asked, “about hers? She may be old enough.”
“Old enough for what?”
“Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And if Chad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a pinch, could do with it—that is if she doesn’t prevent repatriation—why it may be plain sailing yet.”
It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of his remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had at all events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this one. “I don’t see why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady he hasn’t already done it or hasn’t been prepared with some statement to you about it. And if he both wants to marry her and is on good terms with them why isn’t he ‘free’?”
Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. “Perhaps the girl herself doesn’t like him.”
“Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?”
Strether’s mind echoed the question, but also again met it. “Perhaps it’s with the mother he’s on good terms.”
“As against the daughter?”
“Well, if she’s trying to persuade the daughter to consent to him, what could make him like the mother more? Only,” Strether threw out, “why shouldn’t the daughter consent to him?”
“Oh,” said Miss Gostrey, “mayn’t it be that every one else isn’t quite so struck with him as you?”
“Doesn’t regard him you mean as such an ‘eligible’ young man? Is that what I’ve come to?” he audibly and rather gravely sought to know. “However,” he went on, “his marriage is what his mother most desires—that is if it will help. And oughtn’t any marriage to help? They must want him”—he had already worked it out—“to be better off. Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his taking up his chances. It won’t suit her at least that he shall miss them.”
Miss Gostrey cast about. “No—you reason well! But of course on the other hand there’s always dear old Woollett itself.”
“Oh yes,” he mused—“there’s always dear old W
oollett itself.”
She waited a moment. “The young lady mayn’t find herself able to swallow that quantity. She may think it’s paying too much; she may weigh one thing against another.”
Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn. “It will all depend on who she is. That of course—the proved ability to deal with dear old Woollett, since I’m sure she does deal with it—is what makes so strongly for Mamie.”
“Mamie?”
He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing that it represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed fulness, let his exclamation come. “You surely haven’t forgotten about Mamie!”
“No, I haven’t forgotten about Mamie,” she smiled. “There’s no doubt whatever that there’s ever so much to be said for her. Mamie’s my girl!” she roundly declared.
Strether resumed for a minute his walk. “She’s really perfectly lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I’ve seen over here yet.”
“That’s precisely on what I perhaps most build.” And she mused a moment in her friend’s way. “I should positively like to take her in hand!”
He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. “Oh but don’t, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can’t, you know, be left.”
But she kept it up. “I wish they’d send her out to me!”
“If they knew you,” he returned, “they would.”
“Ah but don’t they?—after all that, as I’ve understood you, you’ve told them about me?”
He had paused before her again, but he continued his course. “They will—before, as you say, I’ve done.” Then he came out with the point he had wished after all most to make. “It seems to give away now his game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along for. He has been waiting for them.”
Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. “You see a good deal in it!”
“I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend,” he went on, “that you don’t see—?”
“Well, what?”—she pressed him as he paused.
“Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been going on from the first; even from before I came.”
She took a minute to answer. “Who are they then—if it’s so grave?”
“It mayn’t be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it’s marked. Only I don’t know,” Strether had to confess, “anything about them. Their name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham’s information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged to follow up.”
“Oh,” she returned, “if you think you’ve got off—!”
Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. “I don’t think I’ve got off. I only think I’m breathing for about five minutes. I dare say I shall have, at the best, still to get on.” A look, over it all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to good humour. “I don’t meanwhile take the smallest interest in their name.”
“Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English, Polish?”
“I don’t care the least little ‘hang,’ ” he smiled, “for their nationality. It would be nice if they’re Polish!” he almost immediately added.
“Very nice indeed.” The transition kept up her spirits. “So you see you do care.”
He did this contention a modified justice. “I think I should if they were Polish. Yes,” he thought—“there might be joy in that.”
“Let us then hope for it.” But she came after this nearer to the question. “If the girl’s of the right age of course the mother can’t be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl’s twenty—and she can’t be less—the mother must be at least forty. So it puts the mother out. She’s too old for him.”
Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. “Do you think so? Do you think any one would be too old for him? I’m eighty, and I’m too young. But perhaps the girl,” he continued, “isn’t twenty. Perhaps she’s only ten—but such a little dear that Chad finds himself counting her in as an attraction of the acquaintance. Perhaps she’s only five. Perhaps the mother’s but five-and-twenty—a charming young widow.”
Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. “She is a widow then?”
“I haven’t the least idea!” They once more, in spite of this vagueness, exchanged a look—a look that was perhaps the longest yet. It seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain itself; which it did as it could. “I only feel what I’ve told you—that he has some reason.”
Miss Gostrey’s imagination had taken its own flight. “Perhaps she’s not a widow.”
Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he accepted it. “Then that’s why the attachment—if it’s to her—is virtuous.”
But she looked as if she scarce followed. “Why is it virtuous if—since she’s free—there’s nothing to impose on it any condition?”
He laughed at her question. “Oh I perhaps don’t mean as virtuous as that! Your idea is that it can be virtuous—in any sense worthy of the name—only if she’s not free? But what does it become then,” he asked, “for her?”
“Ah that’s another matter.” He said nothing for a moment, and she soon went on. “I dare say you’re right, at any rate, about Mr. Newsome’s little plan. He has been trying you—has been reporting on you to these friends.”
Strether meanwhile had had time to think more. “Then where’s his straightness?”
“Well, as we say, it’s struggling up, breaking out, asserting itself as it can. We can be on the side, you see, of his straightness. We can help him. But he has made out,” said Miss Gostrey, “that you’ll do.”
“Do for what?”
“Why, for them—for ces dames. He has watched you, studied you, liked you—and recognized that they must. It’s a great compliment to you, my dear man; for I’m sure they’re particular. You came out for a success. Well,” she gaily declared, “you’re having it!”
He took it from her with momentary patience and then turned abruptly away. It was always convenient to him that there were so many fine things in her room to look at. But the examination of two or three of them appeared soon to have determined a speech that had little to do with them. “You don’t believe in it!”
“In what?”
“In the character of the attachment. In its innocence.”
But she defended herself. “I don’t pretend to know anything about it. Everything’s possible. We must see.”
“See?” he echoed with a groan. “Haven’t we seen enough?”
“I haven’t,” she smiled.
“But do you suppose then little Bilham has lied?”
“You must find out.”
It made him almost turn pale. “Find out any more?”
He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him, to have the last word. “Wasn’t what you came out for to find out all?”
BOOK FIFTH
I
The Sunday of the next week was a wonderful day, and Chad Newsome had let his friend know in advance that he had provided for it. There had already been a question of his taking him to see the great Gloriani, who was at home on Sunday afternoons and at whose house, for the most part, fewer bores were to be met than elsewhere; but the project, through some accident, had not had instant effect, and now revived in happier conditions. Chad had made the point that the celebrated sculptor had a queer old garden, for which the weather—spring at last frank and fair—was propitious; and two or three of his other allusions had confirmed for Strether the expectation of something special. He had by this time, for all introductions and adventures, let himself recklessly go, cherishing the sense that whatever the young man showed him he was showing at least himself. He could have wished indeed, so far as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was not without the impression—now that the vision of his game, his plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself—of his taking refuge from the realities of their intercourse in
profusely dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased it, panem et circenses. Our friend continued to feel rather smothered in flowers, though he made in his other moments the almost angry inference that this was only because of his odious ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty. He periodically assured himself—for his reactions were sharp—that he shouldn’t reach the truth of anything till he had at least got rid of that.
He had known beforehand that Madame de Vionnet and her daughter would probably be on view, an intimation to that effect having constituted the only reference again made by Chad to his good friends from the south. The effect of Strether’s talk about them with Miss Gostrey had been quite to consecrate his reluctance to pry; something in the very air of Chad’s silence—judged in the light of that talk—offered it to him as a reserve he could markedly match. It shrouded them about with he scarce knew what, a consideration, a distinction; he was in presence at any rate—so far as it placed him there—of ladies; and the one thing that was definite for him was that they themselves should be, to the extent of his responsibility, in presence of a gentleman. Was it because they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good—was it for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force—to confound his critic, slight though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the sound of their name. “Yes. That is no!” had been Chad’s reply; but he had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he wouldn’t in the least find one. Never in fact had Strether—in the mood into which the place had quickly launched him—felt, for himself, less the need of an excuse. Those he might have found would have been, at the worst, all for the others, the people before him, in whose liberty to be as they were he was aware that he positively rejoiced. His fellow guests were multiplying, and these things, their liberty, their intensity, their variety, their conditions at large, were in fusion in the admirable medium of the scene.