The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

of the great romancer and the great romance, and of what, to his imagination, they had done for the whole, mentioning to her moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the seventy blazing volumes that were so out of proportion.

“Out of proportion to what?”

“Well, to any other plunge.” Yet he felt even as he spoke how at that instant he was plunging. He had made up his mind and was impatient to get into the air; for his purpose was a purpose to be uttered outside, and he had a fear that it might with delay still slip away from him. She however took her time; she drew out their quiet gossip as if she had wished to profit by their meeting, and this confirmed precisely an interpretation of her manner, of her mystery. While she rose, as he would have called it, to the question of Victor Hugo, her voice itself, the light low quaver of her deference to the solemnity about them, seemed to make her words mean something that they didn’t mean openly. Help, strength, peace, a sublime support⁠—she hadn’t found so much of these things as that the amount wouldn’t be sensibly greater for any scrap his appearance of faith in her might enable her to feel in her hand. Every little, in a long strain, helped, and if he happened to affect her as a firm object she could hold on by, he wouldn’t jerk himself out of her reach. People in difficulties held on by what was nearest, and he was perhaps after all not further off than sources of comfort more abstract. It was as to this he had made up his mind; he had made it up, that is, to give her a sign. The sign would be that⁠—though it was her own affair⁠—he understood; the sign would be that⁠—though it was her own affair⁠—she was free to clutch. Since she took him for a firm object⁠—much as he might to his own sense appear at times to rock⁠—he would do his best to be one.

The end of it was that half an hour later they were seated together for an early luncheon at a wonderful, a delightful house of entertainment on the left bank⁠—a place of pilgrimage for the knowing, they were both aware, the knowing who came, for its great renown, the homage of restless days, from the other end of the town. Strether had already been there three times⁠—first with Miss Gostrey, then with Chad, then with Chad again and with Waymarsh and little Bilham, all of whom he had himself sagaciously entertained; and his pleasure was deep now on learning that Madame de Vionnet hadn’t yet been initiated. When he had said as they strolled round the church, by the river, acting at last on what, within, he had made up his mind to, “Will you, if you have time, come to déjeuner with me somewhere? For instance, if you know it, over there on the other side, which is so easy a walk”⁠—and then had named the place; when he had done this she stopped short as for quick intensity, and yet deep difficulty, of response. She took in the proposal as if it were almost too charming to be true; and there had perhaps never yet been for her companion so unexpected a moment of pride⁠—so fine, so odd a case, at any rate, as his finding himself thus able to offer to a person in such universal possession a new, a rare amusement. She had heard of the happy spot, but she asked him in reply to a further question how in the world he could suppose her to have been there. He supposed himself to have supposed that Chad might have taken her, and she guessed this the next moment to his no small discomfort.

“Ah, let me explain,” she smiled, “that I don’t go about with him in public; I never have such chances⁠—not having them otherwise⁠—and it’s just the sort of thing that, as a quiet creature living in my hole, I adore.” It was more than kind of him to have thought of it⁠—though, frankly, if he asked whether she had time she hadn’t a single minute. That however made no difference⁠—she’d throw everything over. Every duty at home, domestic, maternal, social, awaited her; but it was a case for a high line. Her affairs would go to smash, but hadn’t one a right to one’s snatch of scandal when one was prepared to pay? It was on this pleasant basis of costly disorder, consequently, that they eventually seated themselves, on either side of a small table, at a window adjusted to the busy quay and the shining barge-burdened Seine; where, for an hour, in the matter of letting himself go, of diving deep, Strether was to feel he had touched bottom. He was to feel many things on this occasion, and one of the first of them was that he had travelled far since that evening in London, before the theatre, when his dinner with Maria Gostrey, between the pink-shaded candles, had struck him as requiring so many explanations. He had at that time gathered them in, the explanations⁠—he had stored them up; but it was at present as if he had either soared above or sunk below them⁠—he couldn’t tell which; he could somehow think of none that didn’t seem to leave the appearance of collapse and cynicism easier for him than lucidity. How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for anyone, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered waterside life came in at the open window?⁠—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm