by Henry James
“No good?”—Madame de Vionnet had a clear stare. “Why she’s an angel of light.”
“That’s precisely the reason. Leave her alone. Don’t try to find out. I mean,” he explained, “about what you spoke to me of— the way she feels.”
His companion wondered. “Because one really won’t?”
“Well, because I ask you, as a favour to myself, not to. She’s the most charming creature I’ve ever seen. Therefore don’t touch her. Don’t know—don’t want to know. And moreover—yes—you won’t.”
It was an appeal, of a sudden, and she took it in. “As a favour to you?”
“Well—since you ask me.”
“Anything, everything you ask,” she smiled. “I shan’t know then—never. Thank you,” she added with peculiar gentleness as she turned away.
The sound of it lingered with him, making him fairly feel as if he had been tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He hadn’t detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another pair which had just come within their range and which struck him as reflecting his sense of what he had done. He recognised them at the same moment as those of little Bilham, who had apparently drawn near on purpose to speak to him, and little Bilham wasn’t, in the conditions, the person to whom his heart would be most closed. They were seated together a minute later at the angle of the room obliquely opposite the corner in which Gloriani was still engaged with Jeanne de Vionnet, to whom at first and in silence their attention had been benevolently given. “I can’t see for my life,” Strether had then observed, “how a young fellow of any spirit—such a one as you for instance—can be admitted to the sight of that young lady without being hard hit. Why don’t you go in, little Bilham?” He remembered the tone into which he had been betrayed on the garden-bench at the sculptor’s reception, and this might make up for that by being much more the right sort of thing to say to a young man worthy of any advice at all. “There WOULD be some reason.”
“Some reason for what?”
“Why for hanging on here.”
“To offer my hand and fortune to Mademoiselle de Vionnet?”
“Well,” Strether asked, “to what lovelier apparition COULD you offer them? She’s the sweetest little thing I’ve ever seen.”
“She’s certainly immense. I mean she’s the real thing. I believe the pale pink petals are folded up there for some wondrous efflorescence in time; to open, that is, to some great golden sun. I’M unfortunately but a small farthing candle. What chance in such a field for a poor little painter-man?”
“Oh you’re good enough,” Strether threw out.
“Certainly I’m good enough. We’re good enough, I consider, nous autres, for anything. But she’s TOO good. There’s the difference. They wouldn’t look at me.”
Strether, lounging on his divan and still charmed by the young girl, whose eyes had consciously strayed to him, he fancied, with a vague smile—Strether, enjoying the whole occasion as with dormant pulses at last awake and in spite of new material thrust upon him, thought over his companion’s words. “Whom do you mean by ‘they’? She and her mother?”
“She and her mother. And she has a father too, who, whatever else he may be, certainly can’t be indifferent to the possibilities she represents. Besides, there’s Chad.”
Strether was silent a little. “Ah but he doesn’t care for her—not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I’m speaking of. He’s NOT in love with her.”
“No—but he’s her best friend; after her mother. He’s very fond of her. He has his ideas about what can be done for her.”
“Well, it’s very strange!” Strether presently remarked with a sighing sense of fulness.
“Very strange indeed. That’s just the beauty of it. Isn’t it very much the kind of beauty you had in mind,” little Bilham went on, “when you were so wonderful and so inspiring to me the other day? Didn’t you adjure me, in accents I shall never forget, to see, while I’ve a chance, everything I can?—and REALLY to see, for it must have been that only you meant. Well, you did me no end of good, and I’m doing my best. I DO make it out a situation.”
“So do I!” Strether went on after a moment. But he had the next minute an inconsequent question. “How comes Chad so mixed up, anyway?”
“Ah, ah, ah!”—and little Bilham fell back on his cushions.
It reminded our friend of Miss Barrace, and he felt again the brush of his sense of moving in a maze of mystic closed allusions. Yet he kept hold of his thread. “Of course I understand really; only the general transformation makes me occasionally gasp. Chad with such a voice in the settlement of the future of a little countess—no,” he declared, “it takes more time! You say moreover,” he resumed, “that we’re inevitably, people like you and me, out of the running. The curious fact remains that Chad himself isn’t. The situation doesn’t make for it, but in a different one he could have her if he would.”
“Yes, but that’s only because he’s rich and because there’s a possibility of his being richer. They won’t think of anything but a great name or a great fortune.”
“Well,” said Strether, “he’ll have no great fortune on THESE lines. He must stir his stumps.”
“Is that,” little Bilham enquired, “what you were saying to Madame de Vionnet?”
“No—I don’t say much to her. Of course, however,” Strether continued, “he can make sacrifices if he likes.”
Little Bilham had a pause. “Oh he’s not keen for sacrifices; or thinks, that is, possibly, that he has made enough.”
“Well, it IS virtuous,” his companion observed with some decision.
“That’s exactly,” the young man dropped after a moment, “what I mean.”
It kept Strether himself silent a little. “I’ve made it out for myself,” he then went on; “I’ve really, within the last half-hour, got hold of it. I understand it in short at last; which at first— when you originally spoke to me—I didn’t. Nor when Chad originally spoke to me either.”
“Oh,” said little Bilham, “I don’t think that at that time you believed me.”
“Yes—I did; and I believed Chad too. It would have been odious and unmannerly—as well as quite perverse—if I hadn’t. What interest have you in deceiving me?”
The young man cast about. “What interest have I?”
“Yes. Chad MIGHT have. But you?”
“Ah, ah, ah!” little Bilham exclaimed.
It might, on repetition, as a mystification, have irritated our friend a little, but he knew, once more, as we have seen, where he was, and his being proof against everything was only another attestation that he meant to stay there. “I couldn’t, without my own impression, realise. She’s a tremendously clever brilliant capable woman, and with an extraordinary charm on top of it all— the charm we surely all of us this evening know what to think of. It isn’t every clever brilliant capable woman that has it. In fact it’s rare with any woman. So there you are,” Strether proceeded as if not for little Bilham’s benefit alone. “I understand what a relation with such a woman—what such a high fine friendship— may be. It can’t be vulgar or coarse, anyway—and that’s the point.”
“Yes, that’s the point,” said little Bilham. “It can’t be vulgar or coarse. And, bless us and save us, it ISn’t! It’s, upon my word, the very finest thing I ever saw in my life, and the most distinguished.”
Strether, from beside him and leaning back with him as he leaned, dropped on him a momentary look which filled a short interval and of which he took no notice. He only gazed before him with intent participation. “Of course what it has done for him,” Strether at all events presently pursued, “o
f course what it has done for him— that is as to HOW it has so wonderfully worked—isn’t a thing I pretend to understand. I’ve to take it as I find it. There he is.”
“There he is!” little Bilham echoed. “And it’s really and truly she. I don’t understand either, even with my longer and closer opportunity. But I’m like you,” he added; “I can admire and rejoice even when I’m a little in the dark. You see I’ve watched it for some three years, and especially for this last. He wasn’t so bad before it as I seem to have made out that you think—”
“Oh I don’t think anything now!” Strether impatiently broke in: “that is but what I DO think! I mean that originally, for her to have cared for him—”
“There must have been stuff in him? Oh yes, there was stuff indeed, and much more of it than ever showed, I dare say, at home. Still, you know,” the young man in all fairness developed, “there was room for her, and that’s where she came in. She saw her chance and took it. That’s what strikes me as having been so fine. But of course,” he wound up, “he liked her first.”
“Naturally,” said Strether.
“I mean that they first met somehow and somewhere—I believe in some American house—and she, without in the least then intending it, made her impression. Then with time and opportunity he made his; and after THAT she was as bad as he.”
Strether vaguely took it up. “As ‘bad’?”
“She began, that is, to care—to care very much. Alone, and in her horrid position, she found it, when once she had started, an interest. It was, it is, an interest, and it did—it continues to do—a lot for herself as well. So she still cares. She cares in fact,” said little Bilham thoughtfully “more.”
Strether’s theory that it was none of his business was somehow not damaged by the way he took this. “More, you mean, than he?” On which his companion looked round at him, and now for an instant their eyes met. “More than he?” he repeated.
Little Bilham, for as long, hung fire. “Will you never tell any one?”
Strether thought. “Whom should I tell?”
“Why I supposed you reported regularly—”
“To people at home?”—Strether took him up. “Well, I won’t tell them this.”
The young man at last looked away. “Then she does now care more than he.”
“Oh!” Strether oddly exclaimed.
But his companion immediately met it. “Haven’t you after all had your impression of it? That’s how you’ve got hold of him.”
“Ah but I haven’t got hold of him!”
“Oh I say!” But it was all little Bilham said.
“It’s at any rate none of my business. I mean,” Strether explained, “nothing else than getting hold of him is.” It appeared, however, to strike him as his business to add: “The fact remains nevertheless that she has saved him.”
Little Bilham just waited. “I thought that was what you were to do.”
But Strether had his answer ready. “I’m speaking—in connexion with her—of his manners and morals, his character and life. I’m speaking of him as a person to deal with and talk with and live with—speaking of him as a social animal.”
“And isn’t it as a social animal that you also want him?”
“Certainly; so that it’s as if she had saved him FOR us.”
“It strikes you accordingly then,” the young man threw out, “as for you all to save HER?”
“Oh for us ‘all’—!” Strether could but laugh at that. It brought him back, however, to the point he had really wished to make. “They’ve accepted their situation—hard as it is. They’re not free —at least she’s not; but they take what’s left to them. It’s a friendship, of a beautiful sort; and that’s what makes them so strong. They’re straight, they feel; and they keep each other up. It’s doubtless she, however, who, as you yourself have hinted, feels it most.”
Little Bilham appeared to wonder what he had hinted. “Feels most that they’re straight?”
“Well, feels that SHE is, and the strength that comes from it. She keeps HIM up—she keeps the whole thing up. When people are able to it’s fine. She’s wonderful, wonderful, as Miss Barrace says; and he is, in his way, too; however, as a mere man, he may sometimes rebel and not feel that he finds his account in it. She has simply given him an immense moral lift, and what that can explain is prodigious. That’s why I speak of it as a situation. It IS one, if there ever was.” And Strether, with his head back and his eyes on the ceiling, seemed to lose himself in the vision of it.
His companion attended deeply. “You state it much better than I could.” “Oh you see it doesn’t concern you.”
Little Bilham considered. “I thought you said just now that it doesn’t concern you either.”
“Well, it doesn’t a bit as Madame de Vionnet’s affair. But as we were again saying just now, what did I come out for but to save him?”
“Yes—to remove him.”
“To save him by removal; to win him over to HIMSELF thinking it best he shall take up business—thinking he must immediately do therefore what’s necessary to that end.”
“Well,” said little Bilham after a moment, “you HAVE won him over. He does think it best. He has within a day or two again said to me as much.”
“And that,” Strether asked, “is why you consider that he cares less than she?”
“Cares less for her than she for him? Yes, that’s one of the reasons. But other things too have given me the impression. A man, don’t you think?” little Bilham presently pursued, “CAN’T, in such conditions, care so much as a woman. It takes different conditions to make him, and then perhaps he cares more. Chad,” he wound up, “has his possible future before him.”
“Are you speaking of his business future?”
“No—on the contrary; of the other, the future of what you so justly call their situation. M. de Vionnet may live for ever.”
“So that they can’t marry?”
The young man waited a moment. “Not being able to marry is all they’ve with any confidence to look forward to. A woman—a particular woman—may stand that strain. But can a man?” he propounded.
Strether’s answer was as prompt as if he had already, for himself, worked it out. “Not without a very high ideal of conduct. But that’s just what we’re attributing to Chad. And how, for that matter,” he mused, “does his going to America diminish the particular strain? Wouldn’t it seem rather to add to it?”
“Out of sight out of mind!” his companion laughed. Then more bravely: “Wouldn’t distance lessen the torment?” But before Strether could reply, “The thing is, you see, Chad ought to marry!” he wound up.
Strether, for a little, appeared to think of it. “If you talk of torments you don’t diminish mine!” he then broke out. The next moment he was on his feet with a question. “He ought to marry whom?”
Little Bilham rose more slowly. “Well, some one he CAN—some thoroughly nice girl “
Strether’s eyes, as they stood together, turned again to Jeanne. “Do you mean HER?”
His friend made a sudden strange face. “After being in love with her mother? No.”
“But isn’t it exactly your idea that he ISn’t in love with her mother?”
His friend once more had a pause. “Well, he isn’t at any rate in love with Jeanne.”
“I dare say not.”
“How CAN he be with any other woman?”
“Oh that I admit. But being in love isn’t, you know, here”—little Bilham spoke in friendly reminder—”thought necessary, in strictness, for marriage.”
“And what torment—to call a torment—can there ever possibly be with a woman like that?” As if from the interest of his own question Strether had gone on without hearing. “Is it for her to have turned a man out so wonderfully, too, only for somebody else?” He appeared to make a point of this, and little Bilham looked at him now. “When it’s for each other that people give things up they don’t miss them.” Then he threw off as with an ex
travagance of which he was conscious: “Let them face the future together!”
Little Bilham looked at him indeed. “You mean that after all he shouldn’t go back?”
“I mean that if he gives her up—!”
“Yes?”
“Well, he ought to be ashamed of himself.” But Strether spoke with a sound that might have passed for a laugh.
Volume II
Book Seventh
I
It wasn’t the first time Strether had sat alone in the great dim church—still less was it the first of his giving himself up, so far as conditions permitted, to its beneficent action on his nerves. He had been to Notre Dame with Waymarsh, he had been there with Miss Gostrey, he had been there with Chad Newsome, and had found the place, even in company, such a refuge from the obsession of his problem that, with renewed pressure from that source, he had not unnaturally recurred to a remedy meeting the case, for the moment, so indirectly, no doubt, but so relievingly. He was conscious enough that it was only for the moment, but good moments— if he could call them good—still had their value for a man who by this time struck himself as living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth. Having so well learnt the way, he had lately made the pilgrimage more than once by himself—had quite stolen off, taking an unnoticed chance and making no point of speaking of the adventure when restored to his friends.