The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) đ
- Author: Henry James
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âKnow that poor little Jeanne doesnât know whatâs the matter with her?â
It was as near as they came to saying that she was probably in love with Chad; but it was quite near enough for what Strether wanted; which was to be confirmed in his certitude that, whether in love or not, she appealed to something large and easy in the girl before him. Mamie would be fat, too fat, at thirty; but she would always be the person who, at the present sharp hour, had been disinterestedly tender. âIf I see a little more of her, as I hope I shall, I think sheâll like me enoughâ âfor she seemed to like me todayâ âto want me to tell her.â
âAnd shall you?â
âPerfectly. I shall tell her the matter with her is that she wants only too much to do right. To do right for her, naturally,â said Mamie, âis to please.â
âHer mother, do you mean?â
âHer mother first.â
Strether waited. âAnd then?â
âWell, âthenââ âMr. Newsome.â
There was something really grand for him in the serenity of this reference. âAnd last only Monsieur de Montbron?â
âLast onlyââ âshe good-humouredly kept it up.
Strether considered. âSo that everyone after all then will be suited?â
She had one of her few hesitations, but it was a question only of a moment; and it was her nearest approach to being explicit with him about what was between them. âI think I can speak for myself. I shall be.â
It said indeed so much, told such a story of her being ready to help him, so committed to him that truth, in short, for such use as he might make of it toward those ends of his own with which, patiently and trustfully, she had nothing to doâ âit so fully achieved all this that he appeared to himself simply to meet it in its own spirit by the last frankness of admiration. Admiration was of itself almost accusatory, but nothing less would serve to show her how nearly he understood. He put out his hand for goodbye with a âSplendid, splendid, splendid!â And he left her, in her splendour, still waiting for little Bilham.
Book X IStrether occupied beside little Bilham, three evenings after his interview with Mamie Pocock, the same deep divan they had enjoyed together on the first occasion of our friendâs meeting Madame de Vionnet and her daughter in the apartment of the Boulevard Malesherbes, where his position affirmed itself again as ministering to an easy exchange of impressions. The present evening had a different stamp; if the company was much more numerous, so, inevitably, were the ideas set in motion. It was on the other hand, however, now strongly marked that the talkers moved, in respect to such matters, round an inner, a protected circle. They knew at any rate what really concerned them tonight, and Strether had begun by keeping his companion close to it. Only a few of Chadâs guests had dinedâ âthat is fifteen or twenty, a few compared with the large concourse offered to sight by eleven oâclock; but number and mass, quantity and quality, light, fragrance, sound, the overflow of hospitality meeting the high tide of response, had all from the first pressed upon Stretherâs consciousness, and he felt himself somehow part and parcel of the most festive scene, as the term was, in which he had ever in his life been engaged. He had perhaps seen, on Fourths of July and on dear old domestic Commencements, more people assembled, but he had never seen so many in proportion to the space, or had at all events never known so great a promiscuity to show so markedly as picked. Numerous as was the company, it had still been made so by selection, and what was above all rare for Strether was that, by no fault of his own, he was in the secret of the principle that had worked. He hadnât enquired, he had averted his head, but Chad had put him a pair of questions that themselves smoothed the ground. He hadnât answered the questions, he had replied that they were the young manâs own affair; and he had then seen perfectly that the latterâs direction was already settled.
Chad had applied for counsel only by way of intimating that he knew what to do; and he had clearly never known it better than in now presenting to his sister the whole circle of his society. This was all in the sense and the spirit of the note struck by him on that ladyâs arrival; he had taken at the station itself a line that led him without a break, and that enabled him to lead the Pococksâ âthough dazed a little, no doubt, breathless, no doubt, and bewilderedâ âto the uttermost end of the passage accepted by them perforce as pleasant. He had made it for them violently pleasant and mercilessly full; the upshot of which was, to Stretherâs vision, that they had come all the way without discovering it to be really no passage at all. It was a brave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless they stuck fast, they would haveâ âwhich was always awkwardâ âpublicly to back out. They were touching bottom assuredly tonight; the whole scene represented the terminus of the cul-de-sac. So could things go when there was a hand to keep them consistentâ âa hand that pulled the wire with a skill at which the elder man more and more marvelled. The elder man felt responsible, but he also felt successful, since what had taken place was simply the issue of his own contention, six weeks before, that they properly should wait to see what their friends would have really to say. He had determined Chad to wait, he had determined him to see; he was therefore not to quarrel with the time given up to the business. As much as ever, accordingly, now that a fortnight had elapsed, the situation created for Sarah,
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