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

he felt the simplicity of his original impression of Miss Gostrey. She certainly had been a fact of rapid growth; but the world was wide, each day was more and more a new lesson. There were at any rate even among the stranger ones relations and relations. “Of course I suit Chad’s grand way,” he quickly added. “He hasn’t had much difficulty in working me in.”

She seemed to deny a little, on the young man’s behalf, by the rise of her eyebrows, an intention of any process at all inconsiderate. “You must know how grieved he’d be if you were to lose anything. He believes you can keep his mother patient.”

Strether wondered with his eyes on her. “I see. That’s then what you really want of me. And how am I to do it? Perhaps you’ll tell me that.”

“Simply tell her the truth.”

“And what do you call the truth?”

“Well, any truth⁠—about us all⁠—that you see yourself. I leave it to you.”

“Thank you very much. I like,” Strether laughed with a slight harshness, “the way you leave things!”

But she insisted kindly, gently, as if it wasn’t so bad. “Be perfectly honest. Tell her all.”

“All?” he oddly echoed.

“Tell her the simple truth,” Madame de Vionnet again pleaded.

“But what is the simple truth? The simple truth is exactly what I’m trying to discover.”

She looked about a while, but presently she came back to him. “Tell her, fully and clearly, about us.”

Strether meanwhile had been staring. “You and your daughter?”

“Yes⁠—little Jeanne and me. Tell her,” she just slightly quavered, “you like us.”

“And what good will that do me? Or rather”⁠—he caught himself up⁠—“what good will it do you?”

She looked graver. “None, you believe, really?”

Strether debated. “She didn’t send me out to ‘like’ you.”

“Oh,” she charmingly contended, “she sent you out to face the facts.”

He admitted after an instant that there was something in that. “But how can I face them till I know what they are? Do you want him,” he then braced himself to ask, “to marry your daughter?”

She gave a headshake as noble as it was prompt. “No⁠—not that.”

“And he really doesn’t want to himself?”

She repeated the movement, but now with a strange light in her face. “He likes her too much.”

Strether wondered. “To be willing to consider, you mean, the question of taking her to America?”

“To be willing to do anything with her but be immensely kind and nice⁠—really tender of her. We watch over her, and you must help us. You must see her again.”

Strether felt awkward. “Ah with pleasure⁠—she’s so remarkably attractive.”

The mother’s eagerness with which Madame de Vionnet jumped at this was to come back to him later as beautiful in its grace. “The dear thing did please you?” Then as he met it with the largest “Oh!” of enthusiasm: “She’s perfect. She’s my joy.”

“Well, I’m sure that⁠—if one were near her and saw more of her⁠—she’d be mine.”

“Then,” said Madame de Vionnet, “tell Mrs. Newsome that!”

He wondered the more. “What good will that do you?” As she appeared unable at once to say, however, he brought out something else. “Is your daughter in love with our friend?”

“Ah,” she rather startlingly answered, “I wish you’d find out!”

He showed his surprise. “I? A stranger?”

“Oh you won’t be a stranger⁠—presently. You shall see her quite, I assure you, as if you weren’t.”

It remained for him none the less an extraordinary notion. “It seems to me surely that if her mother can’t⁠—”

“Ah little girls and their mothers today!” she rather inconsequently broke in. But she checked herself with something she seemed to give out as after all more to the point. “Tell her I’ve been good for him. Don’t you think I have?”

It had its effect on him⁠—more than at the moment he quite measured. Yet he was consciously enough touched. “Oh if it’s all you⁠—!”

“Well, it may not be ‘all,’ ” she interrupted, “but it’s to a great extent. Really and truly,” she added in a tone that was to take its place with him among things remembered.

“Then it’s very wonderful.” He smiled at her from a face that he felt as strained, and her own face for a moment kept him so. At last she also got up. “Well, don’t you think that for that⁠—”

“I ought to save you?” So it was that the way to meet her⁠—and the way, as well, in a manner, to get off⁠—came over him. He heard himself use the exorbitant word, the very sound of which helped to determine his flight. “I’ll save you if I can.”

II

In Chad’s lovely home, however, one evening ten days later, he felt himself present at the collapse of the question of Jeanne de Vionnet’s shy secret. He had been dining there in the company of that young lady and her mother, as well as of other persons, and he had gone into the petit salon, at Chad’s request, on purpose to talk with her. The young man had put this to him as a favour⁠—“I should like so awfully to know what you think of her. It will really be a chance for you,” he had said, “to see the jeune fille⁠—I mean the type⁠—as she actually is, and I don’t think that, as an observer of manners, it’s a thing you ought to miss. It will be an impression that⁠—whatever else you take⁠—you can carry home with you, where you’ll find again so much to compare it with.”

Strether knew well enough with what Chad wished him to compare it, and though he entirely assented he hadn’t yet somehow been so deeply reminded that he was being, as he constantly though mutely expressed it, used. He was as far as ever from making out exactly to what end; but he was none the less constantly accompanied by a sense of the service he rendered. He conceived only that this service was highly agreeable to those who profited by it; and he was indeed still waiting for the moment at which he should catch