The Ambassadors (37 page)

It was the advantage of his having let his fancy lose itself for
a little in the gloom that, as by reaction, the prospect began
really to brighten from the moment the deputation from Woollett
alighted on the platform of the station. They had come straight
from Havre, having sailed from New York to that port, and having
also, thanks to a happy voyage, made land with a promptitude that
left Chad Newsome, who had meant to meet them at the dock, belated.
He had received their telegram, with the announcement of their
immediate further advance, just as he was taking the train for
Havre, so that nothing had remained for him but to await them in
Paris. He hastily picked up Strether, at the hotel, for this
purpose, and he even, with easy pleasantry, suggested the
attendance of Waymarsh as well—Waymarsh, at the moment his cab
rattled up, being engaged, under Strether's contemplative range, in
a grave perambulation of the familiar court. Waymarsh had learned
from his companion, who had already had a note, delivered by hand,
from Chad, that the Pococks were due, and had ambiguously, though,
as always, impressively, glowered at him over the circumstance;
carrying himself in a manner in which Strether was now expert
enough to recognise his uncertainty, in the premises, as to the
best tone. The only tone he aimed at with confidence was a full
tone—which was necessarily difficult in the absence of a full
knowledge. The Pococks were a quantity as yet unmeasured, and, as
he had practically brought them over, so this witness had to that
extent exposed himself. He wanted to feel right about it, but could
only, at the best, for the time, feel vague. "I shall look to you,
you know, immensely," our friend had said, "to help me with them,"
and he had been quite conscious of the effect of the remark, and of
others of the same sort, on his comrade's sombre sensibility. He
had insisted on the fact that Waymarsh would quite like Mrs.
Pocock—one could be certain he would: he would be with her about
everything, and she would also be with HIM, and Miss Barrace's
nose, in short, would find itself out of joint.

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 unflurried 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."