The Ambassadors by Henry James (read people like a book .TXT) 📕

“Tuesday then with pleasure.”

“And at half-past five?⁠—or at six?”

It was ridiculous, but Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh struck him as fairly waiting for his answer. It was indeed as if they were arranged, gathered for a performance, the performance of “Europe” by his confederate and himself. Well, the performance could only go on. “Say five forty-five.”

“Five forty-five⁠—good.” And now at last Madame de Vionnet must leave them, though it carried, for herself, the performance a little further. “I did hope so much also to see Miss Pocock. Mayn’t I still?”

Sarah hesitated, but she rose equal. “She’ll return your visit with me. She’s at present out with Mr. Pocock and my brother.”

“I see⁠—of course Mr. Newsome has everything to show them. He has told me so much about her. My great desire’s to give my daughter the opportunity of making her acquaintance. I’m always on the lookout for such chances for her. If I didn’t bring her today it was only to make sure first that you’d let me.” After which the charming woman risked a more intense appeal. “It wouldn’t suit you also to mention some near time, so that we shall be sure not to lose you?” Strether on his side waited, for Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform; and it occupied him to have been thus reminded that she had stayed at home⁠—and on her first morning of Paris⁠—while Chad led the others forth. Oh she was up to her eyes; if she had stayed at home she had stayed by an understanding, arrived at the evening before, that Waymarsh would come and find her alone. This was beginning well⁠—for a first day in Paris; and the thing might be amusing yet. But Madame de Vionnet’s earnestness was meanwhile beautiful. “You may think me indiscreet, but I’ve such a desire my Jeanne shall know an American girl of the really delightful kind. You see I throw myself for it on your charity.”

The manner of this speech gave Strether such a sense of depths below it and behind it as he hadn’t yet had⁠—ministered in a way that almost frightened him to his dim divinations of reasons; but if Sarah still, in spite of it, faltered, this was why he had time for a sign of sympathy with her petitioner. “Let me say then, dear lady, to back your plea, that Miss Mamie is of the most delightful kind of all⁠—is charming among the charming.”

Even Waymarsh, though with more to produce on the subject, could get into motion in time. “Yes, Countess, the American girl’s a thing that your country must at least allow ours the privilege to say we can show you. But her full beauty is only for those who know how to make use of her.”

“Ah then,” smiled Madame de Vionnet, “that’s exactly what I want to do. I’m sure she has much to teach us.”

It was wonderful, but what was scarce less so was that Strether found himself, by the quick effect of it, moved another way. “Oh that may be! But don’t speak of your own exquisite daughter, you know, as if she weren’t pure perfection. I at least won’t take that from you. Mademoiselle de Vionnet,” he explained, in considerable form, to Mrs. Pocock, “is pure perfection. Mademoiselle de Vionnet is exquisite.”

It had been perhaps a little portentous, but “Ah?” Sarah simply glittered.

Waymarsh himself, for that matter, apparently recognised, in respect to the facts, the need of a larger justice, and he had with it an inclination to Sarah. “Miss Jane’s strikingly handsome⁠—in the regular French style.”

It somehow made both Strether and Madame de Vionnet laugh out, though at the very moment he caught in Sarah’s eyes, as glancing at the speaker, a vague but unmistakeable “You too?” It made Waymarsh in fact look consciously over her head. Madame de Vionnet meanwhile, however, made her point in her own way. “I wish indeed I could offer you my poor child as a dazzling attraction: it would make one’s position simple enough! She’s as good as she can be, but of course she’s different, and the question is now⁠—in the light of the way things seem to go⁠—if she isn’t after all too different: too different I mean from the splendid type everyone is so agreed that your wonderful country produces. On the other hand of course Mr. Newsome, who knows it so well, has, as a good friend, dear kind man that he is, done everything he can⁠—to keep us from fatal benightedness⁠—for my small shy creature. Well,” she wound up after Mrs. Pocock had signified, in a murmur still a little stiff, that she would speak to her own young charge on the question⁠—“well, we shall sit, my child and I, and wait and wait and wait for you.” But her last fine turn was for Strether. “Do speak of us in such a way⁠—!”

“As that something can’t but come of it? Oh something shall come of it! I take a great interest!” he further declared; and in proof of it, the next moment, he had gone with her down to her carriage.

“The difficulty is,” Strether said to Madame de Vionnet a couple of days later, “that I can’t surprise them into the smallest sign of his not being the same old Chad they’ve been for the last three years glowering at across the sea. They simply won’t give any, and as a policy, you know⁠—what you call a parti pris, a deep game⁠—that’s positively remarkable.”

It was so remarkable that our friend had pulled up before his hostess with the vision of it; he had risen from his chair at the end of ten minutes and begun, as a help not to worry, to move about before her quite as he moved before Maria. He had kept his appointment with her to the minute and had been intensely impatient, though divided in truth between the sense of having everything to tell her and the sense of