The Ambassadors (44 page)

So far as a direct approach was concerned Sarah had neglected
him, for the week now about to end, with a civil consistency of
chill that, giving him a higher idea of her social resource, threw
him back on the general reflexion that a woman could always be
amazing. It indeed helped a little to console him that he felt sure
she had for the same period also left Chad's curiosity hanging;
though on the other hand, for his personal relief, Chad could at
least go through the various motions—and he made them
extraordinarily numerous—of seeing she had a good time. There
wasn't a motion on which, in her presence, poor Strether could so
much as venture, and all he could do when he was out of it was to
walk over for a talk with Maria. He walked over of course much less
than usual, but he found a special compensation in a certain
half-hour during which, toward the close of a crowded empty
expensive day, his several companions seemed to him so disposed of
as to give his forms and usages a rest. He had been with them in
the morning and had nevertheless called on the Pococks in the
afternoon; but their whole group, he then found, had dispersed
after a fashion of which it would amuse Miss Gostrey to hear. He
was sorry again, gratefully sorry she was so out of it—she who had
really put him in; but she had fortunately always her appetite for
news. The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of
treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault. It was just now, as
happened, that for so fine a sense as hers a near view would have
begun to pay. Within three days, precisely, the situation on which
he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium; the effect of
his look in at the hotel was to confirm this appearance. If the
equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh, Mamie
was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he
himself was booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the
Varieties—which Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced
them.

Miss Gostrey drank it in. "What then to-night do the others
do?"

"Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at
Bignons."

She wondered. "And what do they do after? They can't come
straight home."

"No, they can't come straight home—at least Sarah can't. It's
their secret, but I think I've guessed it." Then as she waited:
"The circus."

It made her stare a moment longer, then laugh almost to
extravagance. "There's no one like you!"

"Like ME?"—he only wanted to understand.

"Like all of you together—like all of us: Woollett, Milrose and
their products. We're abysmal—but may we never be less so! Mr.
Newsome," she continued, "meanwhile takes Miss Pocock—?"

"Precisely—to the Francais: to see what you took Waymarsh and me
to, a family-bill."

"Ah then may Mr. Chad enjoy it as I did!" But she saw so much in
things. "Do they spend their evenings, your young people, like
that, alone together?"

"Well, they're young people—but they're old friends."

"I see, I see. And do THEY dine—for a difference—at
Brebant's?"

"Oh where they dine is their secret too. But I've my idea that
it will be, very quietly, at Chad's own place."

"She'll come to him there alone?"

They looked at each other a moment. "He has known her from a
child. Besides," said Strether with emphasis, "Mamie's remarkable.
She's splendid."

She wondered. "Do you mean she expects to bring it off?"

"Getting hold of him? No—I think not."

"She doesn't want him enough?—or doesn't believe in her power?"
On which as he said nothing she continued: "She finds she doesn't
care for him?"

"No—I think she finds she does. But that's what I mean by so
describing her. It's IF she does that she's splendid. But we'll
see," he wound up, "where she comes out."

"You seem to show me sufficiently," Miss Gostrey laughed, "where
she goes in! But is her childhood's friend," she asked, "permitting
himself recklessly to flirt with her?"

"No—not that. Chad's also splendid. They're ALL splendid!" he
declared with a sudden strange sound of wistfulness and envy.
"They're at least HAPPY."

"Happy?"—it appeared, with their various difficulties, to
surprise her.

"Well—I seem to myself among them the only one who isn't."

She demurred. "With your constant tribute to the ideal?"

He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained
after a moment his impression. "I mean they're living. They're
rushing about. I've already had my rushing. I'm waiting."

"But aren't you," she asked by way of cheer, "waiting with
ME?"

He looked at her in all kindness. "Yes—if it weren't for
that!"

"And you help me to wait," she said. "However," she went on,
"I've really something for you that will help you to wait and which
you shall have in a minute. Only there's something more I want from
you first. I revel in Sarah."

"So do I. If it weren't," he again amusedly sighed, "for
THAT—!"

"Well, you owe more to women than any man I ever saw. We do seem
to keep you going. Yet Sarah, as I see her, must be great."

"She IS" Strether fully assented: "great! Whatever happens, she
won't, with these unforgettable days, have lived in vain."

Miss Gostrey had a pause. "You mean she has fallen in love?"

"I mean she wonders if she hasn't—and it serves all her
purpose."

"It has indeed," Maria laughed, "served women's purposes
before!"

"Yes—for giving in. But I doubt if the idea—as an idea—has ever
up to now answered so well for holding out. That's HER tribute to
the ideal—we each have our own. It's her romance—and it seems to me
better on the whole than mine. To have it in Paris too," he
explained—"on this classic ground, in this charged infectious air,
with so sudden an intensity: well, it's more than she expected. She
has had in short to recognise the breaking out for her of a real
affinity—and with everything to enhance the drama."

Miss Gostrey followed. "Jim for instance?"

"Jim. Jim hugely enhances. Jim was made to enhance. And then Mr.
Waymarsh. It's the crowning touch—it supplies the colour. He's
positively separated."

"And she herself unfortunately isn't—that supplies the colour
too." Miss Gostrey was all there. But somehow—! "Is HE in
love?"

Strether looked at her a long time; then looked all about the
room; then came a little nearer. "Will you never tell any one in
the world as long as ever you live?"

"Never." It was charming.

"He thinks Sarah really is. But he has no fear," Strether
hastened to add.

"Of her being affected by it?"

"Of HIS being. He likes it, but he knows she can hold out. He's
helping her, he's floating her over, by kindness."

Maria rather funnily considered it. "Floating her over in
champagne? The kindness of dining her, nose to nose, at the hour
when all Paris is crowding to profane delights, and in the—well, in
the great temple, as one hears of it, of pleasure?"

"That's just IT, for both of them," Strether insisted—"and all
of a supreme innocence. The Parisian place, the feverish hour, the
putting before her of a hundred francs' worth of food and drink,
which they'll scarcely touch—all that's the dear man's own romance;
the expensive kind, expensive in francs and centimes, in which he
abounds. And the circus afterwards—which is cheaper, but which
he'll find some means of making as dear as possible—that's also HIS
tribute to the ideal. It does for him. He'll see her through. They
won't talk of anything worse than you and me."

"Well, we're bad enough perhaps, thank heaven," she laughed, "to
upset them! Mr. Waymarsh at any rate is a hideous old coquette."
And the next moment she had dropped everything for a different
pursuit. "What you don't appear to know is that Jeanne de Vionnet
has become engaged. She's to marry—it has been definitely
arranged—young Monsieur de Montbron."

He fairly blushed. "Then—if you know it—it's 'out'?"

"Don't I often know things that are NOT out? However," she said,
"this will be out to-morrow. But I see I've counted too much on
your possible ignorance. You've been before me, and I don't make
you jump as I hoped."

He gave a gasp at her insight. "You never fail! I've HAD my
jump. I had it when I first heard."

"Then if you knew why didn't you tell me as soon as you came
in?"

"Because I had it from her as a thing not yet to be spoken
of."

Miss Gostrey wondered. "From Madame de Vionnet herself?"

"As a probability—not quite a certainty: a good cause in which
Chad has been working. So I've waited."

"You need wait no longer," she returned. "It reached me
yesterday—roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it
from one of the young man's own people—as a thing quite settled. I
was only keeping it for you."

"You thought Chad wouldn't have told me?"

She hesitated. "Well, if he hasn't—"

"He hasn't. And yet the thing appears to have been practically
his doing. So there we are."

"There we are!" Maria candidly echoed.

"That's why I jumped. I jumped," he continued to explain,
"because it means, this disposition of the daughter, that there's
now nothing else: nothing else but him and the mother."

"Still—it simplifies."

"It simplifies"—he fully concurred. "But that's precisely where
we are. It marks a stage in his relation. The act is his answer to
Mrs. Newsome's demonstration."

"It tells," Maria asked, "the worst?"

"The worst."

"But is the worst what he wants Sarah to know?"

"He doesn't care for Sarah."

At which Miss Gostrey's eyebrows went up. "You mean she has
already dished herself?"

Strether took a turn about; he had thought it out again and
again before this, to the end; but the vista seemed each time
longer. "He wants his good friend to know the best. I mean the
measure of his attachment. She asked for a sign, and he thought of
that one. There it is."

"A concession to her jealousy?"

Strether pulled up. "Yes—call it that. Make it lurid—for that
makes my problem richer."

"Certainly, let us have it lurid—for I quite agree with you that
we want none of our problems poor. But let us also have it clear.
Can he, in the midst of such a preoccupation, or on the heels of
it, have seriously cared for Jeanne?—cared, I mean, as a young man
at liberty would have cared?"

Well, Strether had mastered it. "I think he can have thought it
would be charming if he COULD care. It would be nicer."

"Nicer than being tied up to Marie?"

"Yes—than the discomfort of an attachment to a person he can
never hope, short of a catastrophe, to marry. And he was quite
right," said Strether. "It would certainly have been nicer. Even
when a thing's already nice there mostly is some other thing that
would have been nicer—or as to which we wonder if it wouldn't. But
his question was all the same a dream. He COULDn't care in that
way. He IS tied up to Marie. The relation is too special and has
gone too far. It's the very basis, and his recent lively
contribution toward establishing Jeanne in life has been his
definite and final acknowledgement to Madame de Vionnet that he has
ceased squirming. I doubt meanwhile," he went on, "if Sarah has at
all directly attacked him."

His companion brooded. "But won't he wish for his own
satisfaction to make his ground good to her?"

"No—he'll leave it to me, he'll leave everything to me. I 'sort
of' feel"—he worked it out—"that the whole thing will come upon me.
Yes, I shall have every inch and every ounce of it. I shall be USED
for it—!" And Strether lost himself in the prospect. Then he
fancifully expressed the issue. "To the last drop of my blood."

Maria, however, roundly protested. "Ah you'll please keep a drop
for ME. I shall have a use for it!"—which she didn't however follow
up. She had come back the next moment to another matter. "Mrs.
Pocock, with her brother, is trusting only to her general
charm?"

"So it would seem."

"And the charm's not working?"

Well, Strether put it otherwise, "She's sounding the note of
home—which is the very best thing she can do."

"The best for Madame de Vionnet?"

"The best for home itself. The natural one; the right one."

"Right," Maria asked, "when it fails?"

Strether had a pause. "The difficulty's Jim. Jim's the note of
home."

She debated. "Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome."

But he had it all. "The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome
wants him—the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little
legs apart, at the door of THAT tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking,
extremely awful."

Maria stared. "And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with
him?"

"Oh he's all right for ME!" Strether laughed. "Any one's good
enough for ME. But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him.
She doesn't appreciate him."

His friend was amused with this statement of it. "Doesn't know,
you mean, how bad he is?"

Strether shook his head with decision. "Not really."

She wondered. "Then doesn't Mrs. Newsome?"

It made him frankly do the same. "Well, no—since you ask
me."

Maria rubbed it in. "Not really either?"

"Not at all. She rates him rather high." With which indeed,
immediately, he took himself up. "Well, he IS good too, in his way.
It depends on what you want him for."

Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on
anything—wouldn't have it, and wouldn't want him, at any price. "It
suits my book," she said, "that he should be impossible; and it
suits it still better," she more imaginatively added, "that Mrs.
Newsome doesn't know he is."

Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell
back on something else. "I'll tell you who does really know."