The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

it in the act of proving disagreeable, proving in some degree intolerable, to himself. He failed quite to see how his situation could clear up at all logically except by some turn of events that would give him the pretext of disgust. He was building from day to day on the possibility of disgust, but each day brought forth meanwhile a new and more engaging bend of the road. That possibility was now ever so much further from sight than on the eve of his arrival, and he perfectly felt that, should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent. He struck himself as a little nearer to it only when he asked himself what service, in such a life of utility, he was after all rendering Mrs. Newsome. When he wished to help himself to believe that he was still all right he reflected⁠—and in fact with wonder⁠—on the unimpaired frequency of their correspondence; in relation to which what was after all more natural than that it should become more frequent just in proportion as their problem became more complicated?

Certain it is at any rate that he now often brought himself balm by the question, with the rich consciousness of yesterday’s letter, “Well, what can I do more than that⁠—what can I do more than tell her everything?” To persuade himself that he did tell her, had told her, everything, he used to try to think of particular things he hadn’t told her. When at rare moments and in the watches of the night he pounced on one it generally showed itself to be⁠—to a deeper scrutiny⁠—not quite truly of the essence. When anything new struck him as coming up, or anything already noted as reappearing, he always immediately wrote, as if for fear that if he didn’t he would miss something; and also that he might be able to say to himself from time to time “She knows it now⁠—even while I worry.” It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled and attenuated, at the moment. She knew it now: that was what he said to himself tonight in relation to the fresh fact of Chad’s acquaintance with the two ladies⁠—not to speak of the fresher one of his own. Mrs. Newsome knew in other words that very night at Woollett that he himself knew Madame de Vionnet and that he had conscientiously been to see her; also that he had found her remarkably attractive and that there would probably be a good deal more to tell. But she further knew, or would know very soon, that, again conscientiously, he hadn’t repeated his visit; and that when Chad had asked him on the Countess’s behalf⁠—Strether made her out vividly, with a thought at the back of his head, a Countess⁠—if he wouldn’t name a day for dining with her, he had replied lucidly: “Thank you very much⁠—impossible.” He had begged the young man would present his excuses and had trusted him to understand that it couldn’t really strike one as quite the straight thing. He hadn’t reported to Mrs. Newsome that he had promised to “save” Madame de Vionnet; but, so far as he was concerned with that reminiscence, he hadn’t at any rate promised to haunt her house. What Chad had understood could only, in truth, be inferred from Chad’s behaviour, which had been in this connection as easy as in every other. He was easy, always, when he understood; he was easier still, if possible, when he didn’t; he had replied that he would make it all right; and he had proceeded to do this by substituting the present occasion⁠—as he was ready to substitute others⁠—for any, for every occasion as to which his old friend should have a funny scruple.

“Oh but I’m not a little foreign girl; I’m just as English as I can be,” Jeanne de Vionnet had said to him as soon as, in the petit salon, he sank, shyly enough on his own side, into the place near her vacated by Madame Gloriani at his approach. Madame Gloriani, who was in black velvet, with white lace and powdered hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked⁠—making the most of the advantage of his years⁠—that it frightened him quite enough to find himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There were girls he wasn’t afraid of⁠—he was quite bold with little Americans. Thus it was that she had defended herself to the end⁠—“Oh but I’m almost American too. That’s what mamma has wanted me to be⁠—I mean like that; for she has wanted me to have lots of freedom. She has known such good results from it.”

She was fairly beautiful to him⁠—a faint pastel in an oval frame: he thought of her already as of some lurking image in a long gallery, the portrait of a small old-time princess of whom nothing was known but that she had died young. Little Jeanne wasn’t, doubtless, to die young, but one couldn’t, all the same, bear on her lightly enough. It was bearing hard, it was bearing as he, in any case, wouldn’t bear, to concern himself, in relation to her, with the question of a young man. Odious really the question of a young man; one didn’t treat such a person as a maidservant suspected of a “follower.” And then young men, young men⁠—well, the thing was their business simply, or was at all events hers. She was fluttered, fairly fevered⁠—to the point of a little glitter that came