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

happy of tact, she exquisitely stayed out; so that it was for all the world as if to show she could deal with him without being reduced to⁠—well, scarcely anything.

It fully came up for them then, by means of their talking of everything but Chad, that Mamie, unlike Sarah, unlike Jim, knew perfectly what had become of him. It fully came up that she had taken to the last fraction of an inch the measure of the change in him, and that she wanted Strether to know what a secret she proposed to make of it. They talked most conveniently⁠—as if they had had no chance yet⁠—about Woollett; and that had virtually the effect of their keeping the secret more close. The hour took on for Strether, little by little, a queer sad sweetness of quality, he had such a revulsion in Mamie’s favour and on behalf of her social value as might have come from remorse at some early injustice. She made him, as under the breath of some vague western whiff, homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck. Their little interview was like a picnic on a coral strand; they passed each other, with melancholy smiles and looks sufficiently allusive, such cupfuls of water as they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she had come out. It was at a very particular place⁠—only that she would never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to puzzle for himself. This was what he hoped for, because his interest in the girl wouldn’t be complete without it. No more would the appreciation to which she was entitled⁠—so assured was he that the more he saw of her process the more he should see of her pride. She saw, herself, everything; but she knew what she didn’t want, and that it was that had helped her. What didn’t she want?⁠—there was a pleasure lost for her old friend in not yet knowing, as there would doubtless be a thrill in getting a glimpse. Gently and sociably she kept that dark to him, and it was as if she soothed and beguiled him in other ways to make up for it. She came out with her impression of Madame de Vionnet⁠—of whom she had “heard so much”; she came out with her impression of Jeanne, whom she had been “dying to see”: she brought it out with a blandness by which her auditor was really stirred that she had been with Sarah early that very afternoon, and after dreadful delays caused by all sorts of things, mainly, eternally, by the purchase of clothes⁠—clothes that unfortunately wouldn’t be themselves eternal⁠—to call in the Rue de Bellechasse.

At the sound of these names Strether almost blushed to feel that he couldn’t have sounded them first⁠—and yet couldn’t either have justified his squeamishness. Mamie made them easy as he couldn’t have begun to do, and yet it could only have cost her more than he should ever have had to spend. It was as friends of Chad’s, friends special, distinguished, desirable, enviable, that she spoke of them, and she beautifully carried it off that much as she had heard of them⁠—though she didn’t say how or where, which was a touch of her own⁠—she had found them beyond her supposition. She abounded in praise of them, and after the manner of Woollett⁠—which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to Strether. He had never so felt the true inwardness of it as when his blooming companion pronounced the elder of the ladies of the Rue de Bellechasse too fascinating for words and declared of the younger that she was perfectly ideal, a real little monster of charm. “Nothing,” she said of Jeanne, “ought ever to happen to her⁠—she’s so awfully right as she is. Another touch will spoil her⁠—so she oughtn’t to be touched.”

“Ah but things, here in Paris,” Strether observed, “do happen to little girls.” And then for the joke’s and the occasion’s sake: “Haven’t you found that yourself?”

“That things happen⁠—? Oh I’m not a little girl. I’m a big battered blowsy one. I don’t care,” Mamie laughed, “what happens.”

Strether had a pause while he wondered if it mightn’t happen that he should give her the pleasure of learning that he found her nicer than he had really dreamed⁠—a pause that ended when he had said to himself that, so far as it at all mattered for her, she had in fact perhaps already made this out. He risked accordingly a different question⁠—though conscious, as soon as he had spoken, that he seemed to place it in relation to her last speech. “But that Mademoiselle de Vionnet is to be married⁠—I suppose you’ve heard of that.”

For all, he then found, he need fear! “Dear, yes; the gentleman was there: Monsieur de Montbron, whom Madame de Vionnet presented to us.”

“And was he nice?”

Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “Any man’s nice when he’s in love.”

It made Strether laugh. “But is Monsieur de Montbron in love⁠—already⁠—with you?”

“Oh that’s not necessary⁠—it’s so much better he should be so with her: which, thank goodness, I lost no time in discovering for myself. He’s perfectly gone⁠—and I couldn’t have borne it for her if he hadn’t been. She’s just too sweet.”

Strether hesitated. “And through being in love too?”

On which with a smile that struck him as wonderful Mamie had a wonderful answer. “She doesn’t know if she is or not.”

It made him again laugh out. “Oh but you do!”

She was willing to take it that way. “Oh yes, I know everything.” And as she sat there rubbing her polished hands and making the best of it⁠—only holding her elbows perhaps a little too much out⁠—the momentary effect for Strether was