VOLUME II - BOOK EIGHTH - CHAPTER I

Strether rambled alone during these few days, the effect of the

incident of the previous week having been to simplify in a marked

fashion his mixed relations with Waymarsh. Nothing had passed

between them in reference to Mrs. Newsome's summons but that our

friend had mentioned to his own the departure of the deputation

actually at sea--giving him thus an opportunity to confess to the

occult intervention he imputed to him. Waymarsh however in the

event confessed to nothing; and though this falsified in some

degree Strether's forecast the latter amusedly saw in it the same

depth of good conscience out of which the dear man's impertinence

had originally sprung. He was patient with the dear man now and

delighted to observe how unmistakeably he had put on flesh; he felt

his own holiday so successfully large and free that he was full of

allowances and charities in respect to those cabined and confined'

his instinct toward a spirit so strapped down as Waymarsh's was to

walk round it on tiptoe for fear of waking it up to a sense of

losses by this time irretrievable. It was all very funny he knew,

and but the difference, as he often said to himself, of tweedledum

and tweedledee--an emancipation so purely comparative that it was

like the advance of the door-mat on the scraper; yet the present

crisis was happily to profit by it and the pilgrim from Milrose to

know himself more than ever in the right.

Strether felt that when he heard of the approach of the Pococks the

impulse of pity quite sprang up in him beside the impulse of

triumph. That was exactly why Waymarsh had looked at him with eyes

in which the heat of justice was measured and shaded. He had looked

very hard, as if affectionately sorry for the friend--the friend of

fifty-five--whose frivolity had had thus to be recorded; becoming,

however, but obscurely sententious and leaving his companion to

formulate a charge. It was in this general attitude that he had of

late altogether taken refuge; with the drop of discussion they were

solemnly sadly superficial; Strether recognised in him the mere

portentous rumination to which Miss Barrace had so good-humouredly

described herself as assigning a corner of her salon. It was quite

as if he knew his surreptitious step had been divined, and it was

also as if he missed the chance to explain the purity of his

motive; but this privation of relief should be precisely his small

penance: it was not amiss for Strether that he should find himself

to that degree uneasy. If he had been challenged or accused,

rebuked for meddling or otherwise pulled up, he would probably have

shown, on his own system, all the height of his consistency, all

the depth of his good faith. Explicit resentment of his course

would have made him take the floor, and the thump of his fist on

the table would have affirmed him as consciously incorruptible. Had

what now really prevailed with Strether been but a dread of that

thump--a dread of wincing a little painfully at what it might

invidiously demonstrate? However this might be, at any rate, one of

the marks of the crisis was a visible, a studied lapse, in

Waymarsh, of betrayed concern. As if to make up to his comrade for

the stroke by which he had played providence he now conspicuously

ignored his movements, withdrew himself from the pretension to

share them, stiffened up his sensibility to neglect, and, clasping

his large empty hands and swinging his large restless foot, clearly

looked to another quarter for justice.

This made for independence on Strether's part, and he had in truth

at no moment of his stay been so free to go and come. The early

summer brushed the picture over and blurred everything but the

near; it made a vast warm fragrant medium in which the elements

floated together on the best of terms, in which rewards were

immediate and reckonings postponed. Chad was out of town again, for

the first time since his visitor's first view of him; he had

explained this necessity--without detail, yet also without

embarrassment, the circumstance was one of those which, in the

young man's life, testified to the variety of his ties. Strether

wasn't otherwise concerned with it than for its so testifying--a

pleasant multitudinous image in which he took comfort. He took

comfort, by the same stroke, in the swing of Chad's pendulum back

from that other swing, the sharp jerk towards Woollett, so stayed

by his own hand. He had the entertainment of thinking that if he

had for that moment stopped the clock it was to promote the next

minute this still livelier motion. He himself did what he hadn't

done before; he took two or three times whole days off--

irrespective of others, of two or three taken with Miss Gostrey,

two or three taken with little Bilham: he went to Chartres and

cultivated, before the front of the cathedral, a general easy

beatitude; he went to Fontainebleau and imagined himself on the way

to Italy; he went to Rouen with a little handbag and inordinately

spent the night.

One afternoon he did something quite different; finding himself in

the neighbourhood of a fine old house across the river, he passed

under the great arch of its doorway and asked at the porter's lodge

for Madame de Vionnet. He had already hovered more than once about

that possibility, been aware of it, in the course of ostensible

strolls, as lurking but round the corner. Only it had perversely

happened, after his morning at Notre Dame, that his consistency, as

he considered and intended it, had come back to him; whereby he had

reflected that the encounter in question had been none of his

making; clinging again intensely to the strength of his position,

which was precisely that there was nothing in it for himself. From

the moment he actively pursued the charming associate of his

adventure, from that moment his position weakened, for he was then

acting in an interested way. It was only within a few days that he

had fixed himself a limit: he promised himself his consistency

should end with Sarah's arrival. It was arguing correctly to feel

the title to a free hand conferred on him by this event. If he

wasn't to be let alone he should be merely a dupe to act with

delicacy. If he wasn't to be trusted he could at least take his

ease. If he was to be placed under control he gained leave to try

what his position MIGHT agreeably give him. An ideal rigour would

perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks had shown their

spirit; and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite promised

himself to conform.

Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular

fear under which everything collapsed. He knew abruptly that he was

afraid of himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his

sensibilities of another hour of Madame de Vionnet. What he dreaded

was the effect of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was

visited, in troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams. She

loomed at him larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew

nearer; she so met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the

first step, all, and more than all, the strides, he already felt

her come down on him, already burned, under her reprobation, with

the blush of guilt, already consented, by way of penance, to the

instant forfeiture of everything. He saw himself, under her

direction, recommitted to Woollett as juvenile offenders are

committed to reformatories. It wasn't of course that Woollett was

really a place of discipline; but he knew in advance that Sarah's

salon at the hotel would be. His danger, at any rate, in such moods

of alarm, was some concession, on this ground, that would involve a

sharp rupture with the actual; therefore if he waited to take leave

of that actual he might wholly miss his chance. It was represented

with supreme vividness by Madame de Vionnet, and that is why, in a

word, he waited no longer. He had seen in a flash that he must

anticipate Mrs. Pocock. He was accordingly much disappointed on now

learning from the portress that the lady of his quest was not in

Paris. She had gone for some days to the country. There was nothing

in this accident but what was natural; yet it produced for poor

Strether a drop of all confidence. It was suddenly as if he should

never see her again, and as if moreover he had brought it on

himself by not having been quite kind to her.

It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for a

little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began really

to brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett alighted

on the platform of the station. They had come straight from Havre,

having sailed from New York to that port, and having also, thanks

to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that left Chad

Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated. He had

received their telegram, with the announcement of their immediate

further advance, just as he was taking the train for Havre, so that

nothing had remained for him but to await them in Paris. He hastily

picked up Strether, at the hotel, for this purpose, and he even,

with easy pleasantry, suggested the attendance of Waymarsh as well--

Waymarsh, at the moment his cab rattled up, being engaged, under

Strether's contemplative range, in a grave perambulation of the

familiar court. Waymarsh had learned from his companion, who had

already had a note, delivered by hand, from Chad, that the Pococks

were due, and had ambiguously, though, as always, impressively,

glowered at him over the circumstance; carrying himself in a manner

in which Strether was now expert enough to recognise his uncertainty,

in the premises, as to the best tone. The only tone he aimed at with

confidence was a full tone--which was necessarily difficult in the

absence of a full knowledge. The Pococks were a quantity as yet

unmeasured, and, as he had practically brought them over, so this

witness had to that extent exposed himself. He wanted to feel right

about it, but could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague.

"I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our friend had said,

"to help me with them," and he had been quite conscious of the

effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort, on his

comrade's sombre sensibility. He had insisted on the fact that

Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he

would: he would be with her about everything, and she would also be

with HIM, and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out

of joint.

Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in

the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself

quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and

turned before him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he

arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition at this particular

hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with

him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face

half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as

they drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own

strained sense of things. He had already, a few days before, named

to him the wire he was convinced their friend had pulled--a

confidence that had made on the young man's part quite hugely for

curiosity and diversion. The action of the matter, moreover,

Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw that is, how Chad

judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a

determinant--an impression just now quickened again; with the whole

bearing of such a fact on the youth's view of his relatives. As it

came up between them that they might now take their friend for a

feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted

from Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all

over him, half an hour later for Sarah Pocock's eyes, that he was

as much on Chad's "side" as Waymarsh had probably described him. He

was letting himself at present, go; there was no denying it; it

might be desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer

himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity

he had cultivated.

He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to

Waymarsh; how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would

find the latter a kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based

on an exchange of views, that the pair would successfully strike

up. They would become as thick as thieves--which moreover was but a

development of what Strether remembered to have said in one of his

first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been

with the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs.

Newsome herself. "I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on

your mother, that she was a person who, when he should know her,

would rouse in him, I was sure, a special enthusiasm; and that

hangs together with the conviction we now feel--this certitude that

Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For it's your mother's own

boat that she's pulling."

"Ah," said Chad, "Mother's worth fifty of Sally!"

"A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same you'll

be meeting your mother's representative--just as I shall. I feel

like the outgoing ambassador," said Strether, "doing honour to his

appointed successor." A moment after speaking as he had just done

he felt he had inadvertently rather cheapened Mrs. Newsome to her

son; an impression audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad's

prompt protest. He had recently rather failed of apprehension of

the young man's attitude and temper--remaining principally

conscious of how little worry, at the worst, he wasted, and he

studied him at this critical hour with renewed interest. Chad had

done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight previous--had

accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was

waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a

slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his

acquired high polish. He was neither excited nor depressed; was

easy and acute and deliberate--unhurried unflurried unworried, only

at most a little less amused than usual. Strether felt him more

than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of which his

own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled

along, knew as he hadn't even yet known, that nothing else than

what Chad had done and had been would have led to his present

showing. They had made him, these things, what he was, and the

business hadn't been easy; it had taken time and trouble, it had

cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate was now to be

offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, was

glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or

take it in, the result, or would she in the least care for it if

she did? He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what name,

when challenged--as he was sure he should be--he could call it for

her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at; since

she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had

come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in

Strether's inner sense that she practically wouldn't see.

That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from

a word that next dropped from him. "They're children; they play at

life!"--and the exclamation was significant and reassuring. It

implied that he hadn't then, for his companion's sensibility,

appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend's

presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and

Madame de Vionnet should become acquainted. Strether was still more

sharply struck, hereupon, with Chad's lucidity. "Why, isn't that

exactly--to get a sight of the company I keep--what she has come

out for?"

"Yes--I'm afraid it is," Strether unguardedly replied.

Chad's quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. "Why do you say

you're afraid?"

"Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It's my testimony,

I imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock's

curiosity. My letters, as I've supposed you to understand from the

beginning, have spoken freely. I've certainly said my little say

about Madame de Vionnet."

All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. "Yes, but you've only

spoken handsomely."

"Never more handsomely of any woman. But it's just that tone--!"

"That tone," said Chad, "that has fetched her? I dare say; but I've

no quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet.

Don't you know by this time how she likes you?"

"Oh!"--and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy.

"For all I've done for her!"

"Ah you've done a great deal."

Chad's urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment

absolutely impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to

a sort of thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no

adequate forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would

certainly arrive. "I've done THIS!"

"Well, this is all right. She likes," Chad comfortably remarked,

"to be liked."

It gave his companion a moment's thought. "And she's sure Mrs.

Pocock WILL--?"

"No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it's so much,

as it were," Chad laughed, "to the good. However, she doesn't

despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go

all lengths."

"In the way of appreciation?"

"Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability,

hospitality and welcome. She's under arms," Chad laughed again;

"she's prepared."

Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the

air: "She's wonderful."

"You don't begin to know HOW wonderful!"

There was a depth in it, to Strether's ear, of confirmed luxury--

almost a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the

effect of the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation:

there was something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous

assurance. It was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had

before many minutes another consequence. "Well, I shall see her

oftener now. I shall see her as much as I like--by your leave;

which is what I hitherto haven't done."

"It has been," said Chad, but without reproach, "only your own

fault. I tried to bring you together, and SHE, my dear fellow--I

never saw her more charming to any man. But you've got your

extraordinary ideas."

"Well, I DID have," Strether murmured, while he felt both how they

had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He

couldn't have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all

because of Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome,

but that was still to be proved. What came over him was the sense

of having stupidly failed to profit where profit would have been

precious. It had been open to him to see so much more of her, and

he had but let the good days pass. Fierce in him almost was the

resolve to lose no more of them, and he whimsically reflected,

while at Chad's side he drew nearer to his destination, that it

was after all Sarah who would have quickened his chance. What

her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was

as yet all obscure--only not obscure that it would do supremely

much to bring two earnest persons together. He had but to listen

to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of

remarking to him that they of course both counted on him--he

himself and the other earnest person--for cheer and support. It was

brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they

had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if

Madame de Vionnet compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the

Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a

beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of

Sarah's being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case

helped Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so;

it being distinct that her character would rather make for every

possible difference. This idea of his own bribeability set him

apart for himself; with the further mark in fact that his case was

absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert Strether was

concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was

not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually

bribed. The only difficulty was that he couldn't quite have said

with what. It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn't somehow got

the cash. That, however, was what, characteristically, WOULD happen

to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic. While he thought

of these things he reminded Chad of the truth they mustn't lose

sight of--the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility

to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high firm

definite purpose. "She hasn't come out, you know, to be bamboozled.

We may all be ravishing--nothing perhaps can be more easy for us;

but she hasn't come out to be ravished. She has come out just

simply to take you home."

"Oh well, with HER I'll go," said Chad good-humouredly. "I suppose

you'll allow THAT." And then as for a minute Strether said nothing:

"Or is your idea that when I've seen her I shan't want to go?" As

this question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went

on: "My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they're here

the best sort of time."

It was at this that Strether spoke. "Ah there you are! I think if

you really wanted to go--!"

"Well?" said Chad to bring it out.

"Well, you wouldn't trouble about our good time. You wouldn't care

what sort of a time we have."

Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any

ingenious suggestion. "I see. But can I help it? I'm too decent."

"Yes, you're too decent!" Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for

the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.

It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made

no rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the

station. "Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?"

As to this Strether was ready. "No."

"But haven't you told me they know about her?"

"I think I've told you your mother knows."

"And won't she have told Sally?"

"That's one of the things I want to see."

"And if you find she HAS--?"

"Will I then, you mean, bring them together?"

"Yes," said Chad with his pleasant promptness: "to show her there's

nothing in it."

Strether hesitated. "I don't know that I care very much what she

may think there's in it."

"Not if it represents what Mother thinks?"

"Ah what DOES your mother think?" There was in this some sound of

bewilderment.

But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all

be quite at hand. "Isn't that, my dear man, what we're both just

going to make out?"

Read next: VOLUME II#BOOK EIGHTH#CHAPTER II

Read previous: VOLUME II#BOOK SEVEN#CHAPTER III

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