The Ambassadors (26 page)

"Oh no—not anybody like her!" Strether laughed. "But you mean,"
he as promptly went on, "that she has had such an influence on
him?"

Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. "She
has brought him up for her daughter."

Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their
settled glasses, met over it long; after which Strether's again
took in the whole place. They were quite alone there now. "Mustn't
she rather—in the time then—have rushed it?"

"Ah she won't of course have lost an hour. But that's just the
good mother—the good French one. You must remember that of her—that
as a mother she's French, and that for them there's a special
providence. It precisely however—that she mayn't have been able to
begin as far back as she'd have liked—makes her grateful for
aid."

Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their
way out. "She counts on me then to put the thing through?"

"Yes—she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course," Miss
Gostrey added, "on her—well, convincing you."

"Ah," her friend returned, "she caught Chad young!"

"Yes, but there are women who are for all your 'times of life.'
They're the most wonderful sort."

She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion,
the next thing, to a stand. "Is what you mean that she'll try to
make a fool of me?"

"Well, I'm wondering what she WILL—with an
opportunity—make."

"What do you call," Strether asked, "an opportunity? My going to
see her?"

"Ah you must go to see her"—Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive.
"You can't not do that. You'd have gone to see the other woman. I
mean if there had been one—a different sort. It's what you came out
for."

It might be; but Strether distinguished. "I didn't come out to
see THIS sort."

She had a wonderful look at him now. "Are you disappointed she
isn't worse?"

He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the
frankest of answers. "Yes. If she were worse she'd be better for
our purpose. It would be simpler."

"Perhaps," she admitted. "But won't this be pleasanter?"

"Ah you know," he promptly replied, "I didn't come out—wasn't
that just what you originally reproached me with?—for the
pleasant."

"Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must
take things as they come. Besides," Miss Gostrey added, "I'm not
afraid for myself."

"For yourself—?"

"Of your seeing her. I trust her. There's nothing she'll say
about me. In fact there's nothing she CAN."

Strether wondered—little as he had thought of this. Then he
broke out. "Oh you women!"

There was something in it at which she flushed. "Yes—there we
are. We're abysses." At last she smiled. "But I risk her!"

He gave himself a shake. "Well then so do I!" But he added as
they passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing
in the morning.

This was the next day the more easily effected that the young
man, as it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his
hotel. Strether took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but
on his descending for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an
adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He had himself as
yet had nothing—they would sit down somewhere together; and when
after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their
greater privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in
his companion's move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh. It was the
first time Chad had to that extent given this personage "away"; and
Strether found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic. He
made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest as he hadn't yet
seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling
on what they had each up to that time been treating as earnestness.
It was sufficiently flattering however that the real thing—if this
WAS at last the real thing—should have been determined, as
appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether's importance. For
this was what it quickly enough came to—that Chad, rising with the
lark, had rushed down to let him know while his morning
consciousness was yet young that he had literally made the
afternoon before a tremendous impression. Madame de Vionnet
wouldn't, couldn't rest till she should have some assurance from
him that he WOULD consent again to see her. The announcement was
made, across their marble-topped table, while the foam of the hot
milk was in their cups and its plash still in the air, with the
smile of Chad's easiest urbanity; and this expression of his face
caused our friend's doubts to gather on the spot into a challenge
of the lips. "See here"—that was all; he only for the moment said
again "See here." Chad met it with all his air of straight
intelligence, while Strether remembered again that fancy of the
first impression of him, the happy young Pagan, handsome and hard
but oddly indulgent, whose mysterious measure he had under the
street-lamp tried mentally to take. The young Pagan, while a long
look passed between them, sufficiently understood. Strether scarce
needed at last to say the rest—"I want to know where I am." But he
said it, adding before any answer something more. "Are you engaged
to be married—is that your secret?—to the young lady?"

Chad shook his head with the slow amenity that was one of his
ways of conveying that there was time for everything. "I have no
secret—though I may have secrets! I haven't at any rate that one.
We're not engaged. No."

"Then where's the hitch?"

"Do you mean why I haven't already started with you?" Chad,
beginning his coffee and buttering his roll, was quite ready to
explain. "Nothing would have induced me—nothing will still induce
me—not to try to keep you here as long as you can be made to stay.
It's too visibly good for you." Strether had himself plenty to say
about this, but it was amusing also to measure the march of Chad's
tone. He had never been more a man of the world, and it was always
in his company present to our friend that one was seeing how in
successive connexions a man of the world acquitted himself. Chad
kept it up beautifully. "My idea—voyons!—is simply that you should
let Madame de Vionnet know you, simply that you should consent to
know HER. I don't in the least mind telling you that, clever and
charming as she is, she's ever so much in my confidence. All I ask
of you is to let her talk to you. You've asked me about what you
call my hitch, and so far as it goes she'll explain it to you.
She's herself my hitch, hang it—if you must really have it all out.
But in a sense," he hastened in the most wonderful manner to add,
"that you'll quite make out for yourself. She's too good a friend,
confound her. Too good, I mean, for me to leave without—without—"
It was his first hesitation.

"Without what?"

"Well, without my arranging somehow or other the damnable terms
of my sacrifice."

"It WILL be a sacrifice then?"

"It will be the greatest loss I ever suffered. I owe her so
much."

It was beautiful, the way Chad said these things, and his plea
was now confessedly—oh quite flagrantly and publicly—interesting.
The moment really took on for Strether an intensity. Chad owed
Madame de Vionnet so much? What DID that do then but clear up the
whole mystery? He was indebted for alterations, and she was thereby
in a position to have sent in her bill for expenses incurred in
reconstruction. What was this at bottom but what had been to be
arrived at? Strether sat there arriving at it while he munched
toast and stirred his second cup. To do this with the aid of Chad's
pleasant earnest face was also to do more besides. No, never before
had he been so ready to take him as he was. What was it that had
suddenly so cleared up? It was just everybody's character; that is
everybody's but—in a measure—his own. Strether felt HIS character
receive for the instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had
suspected or believed. The person to whom Chad owed it that he
could positively turn out such a comfort to other persons—such a
person was sufficiently raised above any "breath" by the nature of
her work and the young man's steady light. All of which was vivid
enough to come and go quickly; though indeed in the midst of it
Strether could utter a question. "Have I your word of honour that
if I surrender myself to Madame de Vionnet you'll surrender
yourself to me?"

Chad laid his hand firmly on his friend's. "My dear man, you
have it."

There was finally something in his felicity almost embarrassing
and oppressive—Strether had begun to fidget under it for the open
air and the erect posture. He had signed to the waiter that he
wished to pay, and this transaction took some moments, during which
he thoroughly felt, while he put down money and pretended—it was
quite hollow—to estimate change, that Chad's higher spirit, his
youth, his practice, his paganism, his felicity, his assurance, his
impudence, whatever it might be, had consciously scored a success.
Well, that was all right so far as it went; his sense of the thing
in question covered our friend for a minute like a veil through
which—as if he had been muffled—he heard his interlocutor ask him
if he mightn't take him over about five. "Over" was over the river,
and over the river was where Madame de Vionnet lived, and five was
that very afternoon. They got at last out of the place—got out
before he answered. He lighted, in the street, a cigarette, which
again gave him more time. But it was already sharp for him that
there was no use in time. "What does she propose to do to me?" he
had presently demanded.

Chad had no delays. "Are you afraid of her?"

"Oh immensely. Don't you see it?"

"Well," said Chad, "she won't do anything worse to you than make
you like her."

"It's just of that I'm afraid."

"Then it's not fair to me."

Strether cast about. "It's fair to your mother."

"Oh," said Chad, "are you afraid of HER?"

"Scarcely less. Or perhaps even more. But is this lady against
your interests at home?" Strether went on.

"Not directly, no doubt; but she's greatly in favour of them
here."

"And what—'here'—does she consider them to be?"

"Well, good relations!"

"With herself?"

"With herself."

"And what is it that makes them so good?"

"What? Well, that's exactly what you'll make out if you'll only
go, as I'm supplicating you, to see her."

Strether stared at him with a little of the wanness, no doubt,
that the vision of more to "make out" could scarce help producing.
"I mean HOW good are they?"

"Oh awfully good."

Again Strether had faltered, but it was brief. It was all very
well, but there was nothing now he wouldn't risk. "Excuse me, but I
must really—as I began by telling you—know where I am. Is she
bad?"

"'Bad'?"—Chad echoed it, but without a shock. "Is that what's
implied—?"

"When relations are good?" Strether felt a little silly, and was
even conscious of a foolish laugh, at having it imposed on him to
have appeared to speak so. What indeed was he talking about? His
stare had relaxed; he looked now all round him. But something in
him brought him back, though he still didn't know quite how to turn
it. The two or three ways he thought of, and one of them in
particular, were, even with scruples dismissed, too ugly. He none
the less at last found something. "Is her life without
reproach?"

It struck him, directly he had found it, as pompous and
priggish; so much so that he was thankful to Chad for taking it
only in the right spirit. The young man spoke so immensely to the
point that the effect was practically of positive blandness.
"Absolutely without reproach. A beautiful life. Allez donc
voir!"

These last words were, in the liberality of their confidence, so
imperative that Strether went through no form of assent; but before
they separated it had been confirmed that he should be picked up at
a quarter to five.

It was quite by half-past five—after the two men had been
together in Madame de Vionnet's drawing-room not more than a dozen
minutes—that Chad, with a look at his watch and then another at
their hostess, said genially, gaily: "I've an engagement, and I
know you won't complain if I leave him with you. He'll interest you
immensely; and as for her," he declared to Strether, "I assure you,
if you're at all nervous, she's perfectly safe."

He had left them to be embarrassed or not by this guarantee, as
they could best manage, and embarrassment was a thing that Strether
wasn't at first sure Madame de Vionnet escaped. He escaped it
himself, to his surprise; but he had grown used by this time to
thinking of himself as brazen. She occupied, his hostess, in the
Rue de Bellechasse, the first floor of an old house to which our
visitors had had access from an old clean court. The court was
large and open, full of revelations, for our friend, of the habit
of privacy, the peace of intervals, the dignity of distances and
approaches; the house, to his restless sense, was in the high
homely style of an elder day, and the ancient Paris that he was
always looking for—sometimes intensely felt, sometimes more acutely
missed—was in the immemorial polish of the wide waxed staircase and
in the fine boiseries, the medallions, mouldings, mirrors, great
clear spaces, of the greyish-white salon into which he had been
shown. He seemed at the very outset to see her in the midst of
possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary cherished
charming. While his eyes turned after a little from those of his
hostess and Chad freely talked—not in the least about HIM, but
about other people, people he didn't know, and quite as if he did
know them—he found himself making out, as a background of the
occupant, some glory, some prosperity of the First Empire, some
Napoleonic glamour, some dim lustre of the great legend; elements
clinging still to all the consular chairs and mythological brasses
and sphinxes' heads and faded surfaces of satin striped with
alternate silk.