The Ambassadors (35 page)

“Oh it isn’t
you
!” Chad generously protested.

“I beg your pardon—it
is
me.” Strether was mild and melancholy, but firm. He saw it far away and over his companion’s head. “It’s very particularly me.”

“Well then all the more reason.
Marchons, marchons
!” said the
young man gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand agaze; and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment before. “Has Miss Gostrey come back?”

“Yes, two days ago.”

“Then you’ve seen her?”

“No—I’m to see her to-day.” But Strether wouldn’t linger now on Miss Gostrey. “Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I can’t bring you I’m to leave you; I’m to come at any rate myself.”

“Ah but you
can
bring me now,” Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly replied.

Strether had a pause. “I don’t think I understand you. Why was it that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let Madame de Vionnet speak for you?”

“ ‘Why’?” Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers’ ends. “Why but because I knew how well she’d do it? It was the way to keep you quiet and, to that extent, do you good. Besides,” he happily and comfortably explained, “I wanted you really to know her and to get the impression of her—and you see the good that
has
done you.”

“Well,” said Strether, “the way she has spoken for you, all the same—so far as I’ve given her a chance—has only made me feel how much she wishes to keep you. If you make nothing of that I don’t see why you wanted me to listen to her.”

“Why my dear man,” Chad exclaimed, “I make everything of it! How can you doubt—?”

“I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal to start.”

Chad stared, then gave a laugh. “And isn’t my signal to start just what you’ve been waiting for?”

Strether debated; he took another turn. “This last month I’ve been awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have here.”

“You mean you’ve been afraid of it?”

“Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your present announcement,” Strether went on, “isn’t merely the result of your sense of what I’ve expected. Otherwise you wouldn’t have put me in relation—” But he paused, pulling up.

At this Chad rose. “Ah
her
wanting me not to go has nothing to do with it! It’s only because she’s afraid—afraid of the way that, over there, I may get caught. But her fear’s groundless.”

He had met again his companion’s sufficiently searching look. “Are you tired of her?”

Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the strangest slow smile he had ever had from him. “Never.”

It had immediately, on Strether’s imagination, so deep and soft an effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before him. “Never?”

“Never,” Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.

It made his companion take several more steps. “Then
you’re
not afraid.”

“Afraid to go?”

Strether pulled up again. “Afraid to stay.”

The young man looked brightly amazed. “You want me now to ‘stay’?”

“If I don’t immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out. That’s what I mean,” said Strether, “by your mother’s ultimatum.”

Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. “She has turned on Sarah and Jim?”

Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. “Oh and you may be sure Mamie.
That’s
whom she’s turning on.”

This also Chad saw—he laughed out. “Mamie—to corrupt me?”

“Ah,” said Strether, “she’s very charming.”

“So you’ve already more than once told me. I should like to see her.”

Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious,
in the way he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility of his attitude and the enviability of his state. “See her then by all means. And consider too,” Strether went on, “that you really give your sister a lift in letting her come to you. You give her a couple of months of Paris, which she hasn’t seen, if I’m not mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I’m sure she wants but the pretext to visit.”

Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. “She has had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never taken it.”

“Do you mean
you
?” Strether after an instant enquired.

“Certainly—the lone exile. And whom do you mean?” said Chad.

“Oh I mean
me
. I’m her pretext. That is—for it comes to the same thing—I’m your mother’s.”

“Then why,” Chad asked, “doesn’t Mother come herself?”

His friend gave him a long look. “Should you like her to?” And as he for the moment said nothing: “It’s perfectly open to you to cable for her.”

Chad continued to think. “Will she come if I do?”

“Quite possibly. But try, and you’ll see.”

“Why don’t
you
try?” Chad after a moment asked.

“Because I don’t want to.”

Chad thought. “Don’t desire her presence here?”

Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic. “Don’t put it off, my dear boy, on
me
!”

“Well—I see what you mean. I’m sure you’d behave beautifully, but you
don’t
want to see her. So I won’t play you that trick.”

“Ah,” Strether declared, “I shouldn’t call it a trick. You’ve a perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you.” Then he added in a different tone: “You’d have moreover, in the person of Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her.”

Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad’s,
pleasant and bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last, and he said something with which Strether was struck. “She wouldn’t understand her, but that makes no difference. Madame de Vionnet would like to see her. She’d like to be charming to her. She believes she could work it.”

Strether thought a moment, affected by this, but finally turning away. “She couldn’t!”

“You’re quite sure?” Chad asked.

“Well, risk it if you like!”

Strether, who uttered this with serenity, had urged a plea for their now getting into the air; but the young man still waited. “Have you sent your answer?”

“No, I’ve done nothing yet.”

“Were you waiting to see me?”

“No, not that.”

“Only waiting”—and Chad, with this, had a smile for him—“to see Miss Gostrey?”

“No—not even Miss Gostrey. I wasn’t waiting to see anyone. I had only waited, till now, to make up my mind—in complete solitude; and, since I of course absolutely owe you the information, was on the point of going out with it quite made up. Have therefore a little more patience with me. Remember,” Strether went on, “that that’s what you originally asked
me
to have. I’ve had it, you see, and you see what has come of it. Stay on with me.”

Chad looked grave. “How much longer?”

“Well, till I make you a sign. I can’t myself, you know, at the best, or at the worst, stay for ever. Let the Pococks come,” Strether repeated.

“Because it gains you time?”

“Yes—it gains me time.”

Chad, as if it still puzzled him, waited a minute. “You don’t want to get back to Mother?”

“Not just yet. I’m not ready.”

“You feel,” Chad asked in a tone of his own, “the charm of life over here?”

“Immensely.” Strether faced it. “You’ve helped me so to feel it that that surely needn’t surprise you.”

“No, it doesn’t surprise me, and I’m delighted. But what, my dear man,” Chad went on with conscious queerness, “does it all lead to for you?”

The change of position and of relation, for each, was so oddly betrayed in the question that Chad laughed out as soon as he had uttered it—which made Strether also laugh. “Well, to my having a certitude that has been tested—that has passed through the fire. But oh,” he couldn’t help breaking out, “if within my first month here you had been willing to move with me—!”

“Well?” said Chad, while he broke down as for weight of thought.

“Well, we should have been over there by now.”

“Ah but you wouldn’t have had your fun!”

“I should have had a month of it; and I’m having now, if you want to know,” Strether continued, “enough to last me for the rest of my days.”

Chad looked amused and interested, yet still somewhat in the dark; partly perhaps because Strether’s estimate of fun had required of him from the first a good deal of elucidation. “It wouldn’t do if I left you—?”

“Left me?”—Strether remained blank.

“Only for a month or two—time to go and come. Madame de Vionnet,” Chad smiled, “would look after you in the interval.”

“To go back by yourself, I remaining here?” Again for an instant their eyes had the question out; after which Strether said: “Grotesque!”

“But I want to see Mother,” Chad presently returned. “Remember how long it is since I’ve seen Mother.”

“Long indeed; and that’s exactly why I was originally so keen
for moving you. Hadn’t you shown us enough how beautifully you could do without it?”

“Oh but,” said Chad wonderfully, “I’m better now.”

There was an easy triumph in it that made his friend laugh out again. “Oh if you were worse I
should
know what to do with you. In that case I believe I’d have you gagged and strapped down, carried on board resisting, kicking. How
much
,” Strether asked, “do you want to see Mother?”

“How much?”—Chad seemed to find it in fact difficult to say.

“How much.”

“Why as much as you’ve made me. I’d give anything to see her. And you’ve left me,” Chad went on, “in little enough doubt as to how much
she
wants it.”

Strether thought a minute. “Well then if those things are really your motive catch the French steamer and sail to-morrow. Of course, when it comes to that, you’re absolutely free to do as you choose. From the moment you can’t hold yourself I can only accept your flight.”

“I’ll fly in a minute then,” said Chad, “if you’ll stay here.”

“I’ll stay here till the next steamer—then I’ll follow you.”

“And do you call that,” Chad asked, “accepting my flight?”

“Certainly—it’s the only thing to call it. The only way to keep me here, accordingly,” Strether explained, “is by staying yourself.”

Chad took it in. “All the more that I’ve really dished you, eh?”

“Dished me?” Strether echoed as inexpressively as possible.

“Why if she sends out the Pococks it will be that she doesn’t trust you, and if she doesn’t trust you, that bears upon—well, you know what.”

Strether decided after a moment that he did know what, and in consonance with this he spoke. “You see then all the more what you owe me.”

“Well, if I do see, how can I pay?”

“By not deserting me. By standing by me.”

“Oh I say—!” But Chad, as they went downstairs, clapped a firm hand, in the manner of a pledge, upon his shoulder. They descended slowly together and had, in the court of the hotel, some further talk, of which the upshot was that they presently separated. Chad Newsome departed, and Strether, left alone, looked about, superficially, for Waymarsh. But Waymarsh hadn’t yet, it appeared, come down, and our friend finally went forth without sight of him.

At four o’clock that afternoon he had still not seen him, but he was then, as to make up for this, engaged in talk about him with Miss Gostrey. Strether had kept away from home all day, given himself up to the town and to his thoughts, wandered and mused, been at once restless and absorbed—and all with the present climax of a rich little welcome in the Quartier Marboeuf. “Waymarsh has been, ‘unbeknown’ to me, I’m convinced”—for Miss Gostrey had enquired—“in communication with Woollett: the consequence of which was, last night, the loudest possible call for me.”

“Do you mean a letter to bring you home?”

“No—a cable, which I have at this moment in my pocket: a ‘Come back by the first ship.’ ”

Strether’s hostess, it might have been made out, just escaped changing colour. Reflexion arrived but in time and established a provisional serenity. It was perhaps exactly this that enabled her to say with duplicity: “And you’re going—?”

“You almost deserve it when you abandon me so.”

She shook her head as if this were not worth taking up. “My
absence has helped you—as I’ve only to look at you to see. It was my calculation, and I’m justified. You’re not where you were. And the thing,” she smiled, “was for me not to be there either. You can go of yourself.”

“Oh but I feel to-day,” he comfortably declared, “that I shall want you yet.”

She took him all in again. “Well, I promise you not again to leave you, but it will only be to follow you. You’ve got your momentum and can toddle alone.”

He intelligently accepted it. “Yes—I suppose I can toddle. It’s the sight of that in fact that has upset Waymarsh. He can bear it—the way I strike him as going—no longer. That’s only the climax of his original feeling. He wants me to quit; and he must have written to Woollett that I’m in peril of perdition.”

“Ah good!” she murmured. “But is it only your supposition?”

“I make it out—it explains.”

“Then he denies?—or you haven’t asked him?”

“I’ve not had time,” Strether said; “I made it out but last night, putting various things together, and I’ve not been since then face to face with him.”

She wondered. “Because you’re too disgusted? You can’t trust yourself?”

He settled his glasses on his nose. “Do I look in a great rage?”

“You look divine!”

“There’s nothing,” he went on, “to be angry about. He has done me on the contrary a service.”

She made it out. “By bringing things to a head?”

“How well you understand!” he almost groaned. “Waymarsh won’t in the least, at any rate, when I have it out with him, deny or extenuate. He has acted from the deepest conviction, with the best conscience and after wakeful nights. He’ll recognize that he’s fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite
together again—bridge the dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. We shall have at last, in the consequences of his act, something we can definitely talk about.”