The Ambassadors (38 page)

Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as they drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own strained sense of things. He had already, a few days before, named to him the wire he was convinced their friend had pulled—a confidence that had made on the young man’s part quite hugely for curiosity and diversion. The action of the matter, moreover, Strether could see, was to penetrate; he saw, that is, how
Chad judged a system of influence in which Waymarsh had served as a determinant—an impression just now quickened again; with the whole bearing of such a fact on the youth’s view of his relatives. As it came up between them that they might now take their friend for a feature of the control of these latter now sought to be exerted from Woollett, Strether felt indeed how it would be stamped all over him, half an hour later, for Sarah Pocock’s eyes, that he was as much on Chad’s “side” as Waymarsh had probably described him. He was letting himself, at present, go; there was no denying it; it might be desperation, it might be confidence; he should offer himself to the arriving travellers bristling with all the lucidity he had cultivated.

He repeated to Chad what he had been saying in the court to Waymarsh; how there was no doubt whatever that his sister would find the latter a kindred spirit, no doubt of the alliance, based on an exchange of views, that the pair would successfully strike up. They would become as thick as thieves—which moreover was but a development of what Strether remembered to have said in one of his first discussions with his mate, struck as he had then already been with the elements of affinity between that personage and Mrs. Newsome herself. “I told him, one day, when he had questioned me on your mother, that she was a person who, when he should know her, would rouse in him, I was sure, a special enthusiasm; and that hangs together with the conviction we now feel—this certitude that Mrs. Pocock will take him into her boat. For it’s your mother’s own boat that she’s pulling.”

“Ah,” said Chad, “Mother’s worth fifty of Sally!”

“A thousand; but when you presently meet her, all the same, you’ll be meeting your mother’s representative—just as I shall. I feel like the outgoing ambassador,” said Strether, “doing honour to his appointed successor.” A moment after speaking as he had just done he felt he had inadvertently rather cheapened
Mrs. Newsome to her son; an impression audibly reflected, as at first seen, in Chad’s prompt protest. He had recently rather failed of apprehension of the young man’s attitude and temper—remaining principally conscious of how little worry, at the worst, he wasted; and he studied him at this critical hour with renewed interest. Chad had done exactly what he had promised him a fortnight previous—had accepted without another question his plea for delay. He was waiting cheerfully and handsomely, but also inscrutably and with a slight increase perhaps of the hardness originally involved in his acquired high polish. He was neither excited nor depressed; was easy and acute and deliberate—unhurried un-flurried unworried, only at most a little less amused than usual. Strether felt him more than ever a justification of the extraordinary process of which his own absurd spirit had been the arena; he knew as their cab rolled along, knew as he hadn’t even yet known, that nothing else than what Chad had done and had been would have led to his present showing. They had made him, these things, what he was, and the business hadn’t been easy; it had taken time and trouble, it had cost, above all, a price. The result at any rate was now to be offered to Sally; which Strether, so far as that was concerned, was glad to be there to witness. Would she in the least make it out or take it in, the result, or would she in the least care for it if she did? He scratched his chin as he asked himself by what name, when challenged—as he was sure he should be—he could call it for her. Oh those were determinations she must herself arrive at; since she wanted so much to see, let her see then and welcome. She had come out in the pride of her competence, yet it hummed in Strether’s inner sense that she practically wouldn’t see.

That this was moreover what Chad shrewdly suspected was clear from a word that next dropped from him. “They’re children; they play at life!”—and the exclamation was significant and reassuring.
It implied that he hadn’t then, for his companion’s sensibility, appeared to give Mrs. Newsome away; and it facilitated our friend’s presently asking him if it were his idea that Mrs. Pocock and Madame de Vionnet should become acquainted. Strether was still more sharply struck, hereupon, with Chad’s lucidity. “Why, isn’t that exactly—to get a sight of the company I keep—what she has come out for?”

“Yes—I’m afraid it is,” Strether unguardedly replied.

Chad’s quick rejoinder lighted his precipitation. “Why do you say you’re afraid?”

“Well, because I feel a certain responsibility. It’s my testimony, I imagine, that will have been at the bottom of Mrs. Pocock’s curiosity. My letters, as I’ve supposed you to understand from the beginning, have spoken freely. I’ve certainly said my little say about Madame de Vionnet.”

All that, for Chad, was beautifully obvious. “Yes, but you’ve only spoken handsomely.”

“Never more handsomely of any woman. But it’s just that tone—!”

“That tone,” said Chad, “that has fetched her? I dare say; but I’ve no quarrel with you about it. And no more has Madame de Vionnet. Don’t you know by this time how she likes you?”

“Oh!”—and Strether had, with his groan, a real pang of melancholy. “For all I’ve done for her!”

“Ah you’ve done a great deal.”

Chad’s urbanity fairly shamed him, and he was at this moment absolutely impatient to see the face Sarah Pocock would present to a sort of thing, as he synthetically phrased it to himself, with no adequate forecast of which, despite his admonitions, she would certainly arrive. “I’ve done
this
!”

“Well, this is all right. She likes,” Chad comfortably remarked, “to be liked.”

It gave his companion a moment’s thought. “And she’s sure Mrs. Pocock
will
—?”

“No, I say that for you. She likes your liking her; it’s so much, as it were,” Chad laughed, “to the good. However, she doesn’t despair of Sarah either, and is prepared, on her own side, to go all lengths.”

“In the way of appreciation?”

“Yes, and of everything else. In the way of general amiability, hospitality and welcome. She’s under arms,” Chad laughed again; “she’s prepared.”

Strether took it in; then as if an echo of Miss Barrace were in the air: “She’s wonderful.”

“You don’t begin to know
how
wonderful!”

There was a depth in it, to Strether’s ear, of confirmed luxury—almost a kind of unconscious insolence of proprietorship; but the effect of the glimpse was not at this moment to foster speculation: there was something so conclusive in so much graceful and generous assurance. It was in fact a fresh evocation; and the evocation had before many minutes another consequence. “Well, I shall see her oftener now. I shall see her as much as I like—by your leave; which is what I hitherto haven’t done.”

“It has been,” said Chad, but without reproach, “only your own fault. I tried to bring you together, and
she
, my dear fellow—I never saw her more charming to any man. But you’ve got your extraordinary ideas.”

“Well, I
did
have,” Strether murmured; while he felt both how they had possessed him and how they had now lost their authority. He couldn’t have traced the sequence to the end, but it was all because of Mrs. Pocock. Mrs. Pocock might be because of Mrs. Newsome, but that was still to be proved. What came over him was the sense of having stupidly failed to profit where profit would have been precious. It had been open to him to see so much
more of her, and he had but let the good days pass. Fierce in him almost was the resolve to lose no more of them, and he whimsically reflected, while at Chad’s side he drew nearer to his destination, that it was after all Sarah who would have quickened his chance. What her visit of inquisition might achieve in other directions was as yet all obscure—only not obscure that it would do supremely much to bring two earnest persons together. He had but to listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of remarking to him that they of course both counted on him—he himself and the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed
that
, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah’s being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps but little to consider she might prove so; it being distinct that her character would rather make for every possible difference. This idea of his own bribeability set him apart for himself; with the further mark in fact that his case was absolutely proved. He liked always, where Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The only difficulty was that he couldn’t quite have said with what. It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn’t somehow got the cash. That, however, was what, characteristically,
would
happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic. While he thought of these things he reminded Chad of the truth they mustn’t lose sight of—the truth that, with all deference to her susceptibility to new interests, Sarah would have come out with a high firm definite purpose. “She hasn’t come out, you know, to be bamboozled. We may all be ravishing—nothing
perhaps can be more easy for us; but she hasn’t come out to be ravished. She has come out just simply to take you home.”

“Oh well, with
her
I’ll go,” said Chad good-humouredly. “I suppose you’ll allow
that
.” And then as for a minute Strether said nothing: “Or is your idea that when I’ve seen her I shan’t want to go?” As this question, however, again left his friend silent he presently went on: “My own idea at any rate is that they shall have while they’re here the best sort of time.”

It was at this that Strether spoke. “Ah there you are! I think if you really wanted to go—!”

“Well?” said Chad to bring it out.

“Well, you wouldn’t trouble about our good time. You wouldn’t care what sort of a time we have.”

Chad could always take in the easiest way in the world any ingenious suggestion. “I see. But can I help it? I’m too decent.”

“Yes, you’re too decent!” Strether heavily sighed. And he felt for the moment as if it were the preposterous end of his mission.

It ministered for the time to this temporary effect that Chad made no rejoinder. But he spoke again as they came in sight of the station. “Do you mean to introduce her to Miss Gostrey?”

As to this Strether was ready. “No.”

“But haven’t you told me they know about her?”

“I think I’ve told you your mother knows.”

“And won’t she have told Sally?”

“That’s one of the things I want to see.”

“And if you find she
has
—?”

“Will I then, you mean, bring them together?”

“Yes,” said Chad with his pleasant promptness: “to show her there’s nothing in it.”

Strether hesitated. “I don’t know that I care very much what she may think there’s in it.”

“Not if it represents what Mother thinks?”

“Ah what
does
your mother think?” There was in this some sound of bewilderment.

But they were just driving up, and help, of a sort, might after all be quite at hand. “Isn’t that, my dear man, what we’re both just going to make out?”

Strether quitted the station half an hour later in different company. Chad had taken charge, for the journey to the hotel, of Sarah, Mamie, the maid and the luggage, all spaciously installed and conveyed; and it was only after the four had rolled away that his companion got into a cab with Jim. A strange new feeling had come over Strether, in consequence of which his spirits had risen; it was as if what had occurred on the alighting of his critics had been something other than his fear, though his fear had yet not been of an instant scene of violence. His impression had been nothing but what was inevitable—he said that to himself; yet relief and reassurance had softly dropped upon him. Nothing could be so odd as to be indebted for these things to the look of faces and the sound of voices that had been with him to satiety, as he might have said, for years; but he now knew, all the same, how uneasy he had felt; that was brought home to him by his present sense of a respite. It had come moreover in the flash of an eye; it had come in the smile with which Sarah, whom, at the window of her compartment,
they had effusively greeted from the platform, rustled down to them a moment later, fresh and handsome from her cool June progress through the charming land. It was only a sign, but enough: she was going to be gracious and unallusive, she was going to play the larger game—which was still more apparent, after she had emerged from Chad’s arms, in her direct greeting to the valued friend of her family.

Strether
was
then as much as ever the valued friend of her family; it was something he could at all events go on with; and the manner of his response to it expressed even for himself how little he had enjoyed the prospect of ceasing to figure in that likeness. He had always seen Sarah gracious—had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry; her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted to-day almost as if she had been a new acquaintance. This first glimpse of her had given a brief but vivid accent to her resemblance to her mother; he could have taken her for Mrs. Newsome while she met his eyes as the train rolled into the station. It was an impression that quickly dropped; Mrs. Newsome was much handsomer, and while Sarah inclined to the massive her mother had, at an age, still the girdle of a maid; also the latter’s chin was rather short, than long, and her smile, by good fortune, much more, oh ever so much more, mercifully vague. Strether had seen Mrs. Newsome reserved; he had literally heard her silent, though he had never known her unpleasant. It was the case with Mrs. Pocock that he had known
her
unpleasant, even though he had never known her not affable. She had forms of affability
that were in a high degree assertive; nothing for instance had ever been more striking than that she was affable to Jim.