"Oh Chad!"--it was that rare youth he should have enjoyed being "like." The virtuous attachment would be all there before him; the virtuous attachment would be in the very act of appeal for his blessing;Jeanne de Vionnet, this charming creature, would be exquisitely, intensely now--the object of it.Chad brought her straight up to him, and Chad was, oh yes, at this moment--for the glory of Woollett or whatever--better still even than Gloriani.He had plucked this blossom; he had kept it over-night in water; and at last as he held it up to wonder he did enjoy his effect.That was why Strether had felt at first the breath of calculation--and why moreover, as he now knew, his look at the girl would be, for the young man, a sign of the latter's success.What young man had ever paraded about that way, without a reason, a maiden in her flower? And there was nothing in his reason at present obscure.Her type sufficiently told of it--they wouldn't, they couldn't, want her to go to Woollett.Poor Woollett, and what it might miss!--though brave Chad indeed too, and what it might gain! Brave Chad however had just excellently spoken."This is a good little friend of mine who knows all about you and has moreover a message for you.And this, my dear"--he had turned to the child herself--"is the best man in the world, who has it in his power to do a great deal for us and whom Iwant you to like and revere as nearly as possible as much as I do."She stood there quite pink, a little frightened, prettier and prettier and not a bit like her mother.There was in this last particular no resemblance but that of youth to youth; and here was in fact suddenly Strether's sharpest impression.It went wondering, dazed, embarrassed, back to the woman he had just been talking with; it was a revelation in the light of which he already saw she would become more interesting.So slim and fresh and fair, she had yet put forth this perfection; so that for really believing it of her, for seeing her to any such developed degree as a mother, comparison would be urgent.Well, what was it now but fairly thrust upon him? "Mamma wishes me to tell you before we go," the girl said, "that she hopes very much you'll come to see us very soon.
She has something important to say to you.""She quite reproaches herself," Chad helpfully explained: "you were interesting her so much when she accidentally suffered you to be interrupted.""Ah don't mention it!" Strether murmured, looking kindly from one to the other and wondering at many things.
"And I'm to ask you for myself," Jeanne continued with her hands clasped together as if in some small learnt prayer--"I'm to ask you for myself if you won't positively come.""Leave it to me, dear--I'll take care of it!" Chad genially declared in answer to this, while Strether himself almost held his breath.What was in the girl was indeed too soft, too unknown for direct dealing; so that one could only gaze at it as at a picture, quite staying one's own hand.But with Chad he was now on ground--Chad he could meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man freely exhale.There was the whole of a story in his tone to his companion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family.It made Strether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de Vionnet was so urgent.Having seen him then she had found him easy; she wished to have it out with him that some way for the young people must be discovered, some way that would not impose as a condition the transplantation of her daughter.He already saw himself discussing with this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad's companion.
Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair--so that it would be after all with one of his "lady-friends" that his mother's missionary should be condemned to deal? It was quite as if for an instant the two men looked at each other on this question.But there was no mistaking at last Chad's pride in the display of such a connexion.This was what had made him so carry himself while, three minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air.It was, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things straight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little Bilham, most.The whole exhibition however was but a matter of three or four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that, as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going "on,"this could be for Jeanne but a snatch.They would all meet again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and amuse himself--"I'll pick you up again in plenty of time." He took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet foreignness of her "Au revoir, monsieur!" in his ears as a note almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how, once more, her companion's relation to her got an accent from it.They disappeared among the others and apparently into the house;whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of which he was full.But there was no little Bilham any more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a circumstance by which, in its order, Strether was also sensibly affected.
III
