pg432 [149]
He shook his head. "Miss Barrace is a raffinee, and her amusement won't lose by Mrs. Pocock. It will gain rather—especially if Sarah triumphs and she comes in for a view of it."
"How well you know us!" Madame de Vionnet, at this, frankly sighed.
"No—it seems to me it's we that I know. I know Sarah—it's perhaps on that ground only that my feet are firm. Waymarsh will take her round while Chad takes Jim—and I shall be, I assure you delighted for both of them. Sarah will have had what she requires—she will have paid her tribute to the ideal; and he will have done about the same. In Paris it's in the air—so what can one do less? If there's a point that, beyond any other, Sarah wants to make, it's that she didn't come out to be narrow. We shall feel at least that."
"Oh," she sighed, "the quantity we seem likely to 'feel'! But what becomes, in these conditions, of the girl?"
"Of Mamie—if we're all provided? Ah for that," said Strether, "you can trust Chad."
"To be, you mean, all right to her?"
"To pay her every attention as soon as he has polished off Jim. He wants what Jim can give him—and what Jim really won't—though he has had it all, and more than all, from me. He wants in short his own personal impression, and he'll get it—strong. But as soon as he has got it Mamie won't suffer."
"Oh Mamie mustn't SUFFER!" Madame de Vionnet soothingly emphasised.
But Strether could reassure her. "Don't fear. As soon as he has done with Jim, Jim will fall to me. And then you'll see."
It was as if in a moment she saw already; yet she still waited. Then "Is she really quite charming?" she asked.
He had got up with his last words and gathered in his hat and gloves. "I don't know; I'm watching. I'm studying the case, as it were—and I dare say I shall be able to tell you."
She wondered. "Is it a case?"
"Yes—I think so. At any rate I shall see.'
"But haven't you known her before?"
"Yes," he smiled—"but somehow at home she wasn't a case. She has become one since." It was as if he made it out for himself. "She has become one here."
"So very very soon?"
He measured it, laughing. "Not sooner than I did."
"And you became one—?"
"Very very soon. The day I arrived."
Her intelligent eyes showed her thought of it. "Ah but the day you arrived you met Maria. Whom has Miss Pocock met?"
He paused again, but he brought it out. "Hasn't she met Chad?"
"Certainly—but not for the first time. He's an old friend." At which Strether had a slow amused significant headshake that made her go on: "You mean that for HER at least he's a new person—that she sees him as different?"
"She sees him as different."
"And how does she see him?"
Strether gave it up. "How can one tell how a deep little girl sees a deep young man?"
"Is every one so deep? Is she too?"
"So it strikes me deeper than I thought. But wait a little—between us we'll make it out. You'll judge for that matter yourself."
Madame de Vionnet looked for the moment fairly bent on the chance. "Then she WILL come with her?—I mean Mamie with Mrs. Pocock?"
"Certainly. Her curiosity, if nothing else, will in any case work that. But leave it all to Chad."
"Ah," wailed Madame de Vionnet, turning away a little wearily, "the things I leave to Chad!"
The tone of it made him look at her with a kindness that showed his vision of her suspense. But he fell back on his confidence. "Oh well—trust him. Trust him all the way." He had indeed no sooner so spoken than the queer displacement of his point of view appeared again to come up for him in the very sound, which drew from him a short laugh, immediately checked. He became still more advisory. "When they do come give them plenty of Miss Jeanne. Let Mamie see her well."
She looked for a moment as if she placed them face to face. "For Mamie to hate her?"
He had another of his corrective headshakes. "Mamie won't. Trust THEM."
She looked at him hard, and then as if it were what she must always come back to: "It's you I trust. But I was sincere," she said, "at the hotel. I did, I do, want my child—"
"Well?"—Strether waited with deference while she