The Ambassadors (48 page)

"I see, I see," our friend repeated, charmed by the responsive
wisdom he had ended by so richly extracting. "Mamie is one of the
real and the right."

"The very thing itself."

"And what it comes to then," Strether went on, "is that poor
awful Chad is simply too good for her."

"Ah too good was what he was after all to be; but it was she
herself, and she herself only, who was to have made him so."

It hung beautifully together, but with still a loose end.
"Wouldn't he do for her even if he should after all break—"

"With his actual influence?" Oh little Bilham had for this
enquiry the sharpest of all his controls. "How can he 'do'—on any
terms whatever—when he's flagrantly spoiled?"

Strether could only meet the question with his passive, his
receptive pleasure. "Well, thank goodness, YOU'RE not! You remain
for her to save, and I come back, on so beautiful and full a
demonstration, to my contention of just now—that of your showing
distinct signs of her having already begun."

The most he could further say to himself—as his young friend
turned away—was that the charge encountered for the moment no
renewed denial. Little Bilham, taking his course back to the music,
only shook his good-natured ears an instant, in the manner of a
terrier who has got wet; while Strether relapsed into the
sense—which had for him in these days most of comfort—that he was
free to believe in anything that from hour to hour kept him going.
He had positively motions and flutters of this conscious
hour-to-hour kind, temporary surrenders to irony, to fancy,
frequent instinctive snatches at the growing rose of observation,
constantly stronger for him, as he felt, in scent and colour, and
in which he could bury his nose even to wantonness. This last
resource was offered him, for that matter, in the very form of his
next clear perception—the vision of a prompt meeting, in the
doorway of the room, between little Bilham and brilliant Miss
Barrace, who was entering as Bilham withdrew. She had apparently
put him a question, to which he had replied by turning to indicate
his late interlocutor; toward whom, after an interrogation further
aided by a resort to that optical machinery which seemed, like her
other ornaments, curious and archaic, the genial lady, suggesting
more than ever for her fellow guest the old French print, the
historic portrait, directed herself with an intention that Strether
instantly met. He knew in advance the first note she would sound,
and took in as she approached all her need of sounding it. Nothing
yet had been so "wonderful" between them as the present occasion;
and it was her special sense of this quality in occasions that she
was there, as she was in most places, to feed. That sense had
already been so well fed by the situation about them that she had
quitted the other room, forsaken the music, dropped out of the
play, abandoned, in a word, the stage itself, that she might stand
a minute behind the scenes with Strether and so perhaps figure as
one of the famous augurs replying, behind the oracle, to the wink
of the other. Seated near him presently where little Bilham had
sat, she replied in truth to many things; beginning as soon as he
had said to her—what he hoped he said without fatuity—"All you
ladies are extraordinarily kind to me."

She played her long handle, which shifted her observation; she
saw in an instant all the absences that left them free. "How can we
be anything else? But isn't that exactly your plight? 'We
ladies'—oh we're nice, and you must be having enough of us! As one
of us, you know, I don't pretend I'm crazy about us. But Miss
Gostrey at least to-night has left you alone, hasn't she?" With
which she again looked about as if Maria might still lurk.

"Oh yes," said Strether; "she's only sitting up for me at home."
And then as this elicited from his companion her gay "Oh, oh, oh!"
he explained that he meant sitting up in suspense and prayer. "We
thought it on the whole better she shouldn't be present; and either
way of course it's a terrible worry for her." He abounded in the
sense of his appeal to the ladies, and they might take their choice
of his doing so from humility or from pride. "Yet she inclines to
believe I shall come out."

"Oh I incline to believe too you'll come out!"—Miss Barrace,
with her laugh, was not to be behind. "Only the question's about
WHERE, isn't it? However," she happily continued, "if it's anywhere
at all it must be very far on, mustn't it? To do us justice, I
think, you know," she laughed, "we do, among us all, want you
rather far on. Yes, yes," she repeated in her quick droll way; "we
want you very, VERY far on!" After which she wished to know why he
had thought it better Maria shouldn't be present.

"Oh," he replied, "it was really her own idea. I should have
wished it. But she dreads responsibility."

"And isn't that a new thing for her?"

"To dread it? No doubt—no doubt. But her nerve has given
way."

Miss Barrace looked at him a moment. "She has too much at
stake." Then less gravely: "Mine, luckily for me, holds out."

"Luckily for me too"—Strether came back to that. "My own isn't
so firm, MY appetite for responsibility isn't so sharp, as that I
haven't felt the very principle of this occasion to be 'the more
the merrier.' If we ARE so merry it's because Chad has understood
so well."

"He has understood amazingly," said Miss Barrace.

"It's wonderful—Strether anticipated for her.

"It's wonderful!" she, to meet it, intensified; so that, face to
face over it, they largely and recklessly laughed. But she
presently added: "Oh I see the principle. If one didn't one would
be lost. But when once one has got hold of it—"

"It's as simple as twice two! From the moment he had to do
something—"

"A crowd"—she took him straight up—"was the only thing? Rather,
rather: a rumpus of sound," she laughed, "or nothing. Mrs. Pocock's
built in, or built out—whichever you call it; she's packed so tight
she can't move. She's in splendid isolation"—Miss Barrace
embroidered the theme.

Strether followed, but scrupulous of justice. "Yet with every
one in the place successively introduced to her."

"Wonderfully—but just so that it does build her out. She's
bricked up, she's buried alive!"

Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him
to a sigh. "Oh but she's not dead! It will take more than this to
kill her."

His companion had a pause that might have been for pity. "No, I
can't pretend I think she's finished—or that it's for more than
to-night." She remained pensive as if with the same compunction.
"It's only up to her chin." Then again for the fun of it: "She can
breathe."

"She can breathe!"—he echoed it in the same spirit. "And do you
know," he went on, "what's really all this time happening to
me?—through the beauty of music, the gaiety of voices, the uproar
in short of our revel and the felicity of your wit? The sound of
Mrs. Pocock's respiration drowns for me, I assure you, every other.
It's literally all I hear."

She focussed him with her clink of chains. "Well—!" she breathed
ever so kindly.

"Well, what?"

"She IS free from her chin up," she mused; "and that WILL be
enough for her."

"It will be enough for me!" Strether ruefully laughed. "Waymarsh
has really," he then asked, "brought her to see you?"

"Yes—but that's the worst of it. I could do you no good. And yet
I tried hard."

Strether wondered. "And how did you try?"

"Why I didn't speak of you."

"I see. That was better."

"Then what would have been worse? For speaking or silent," she
lightly wailed, "I somehow 'compromise.' And it has never been any
one but you."

"That shows"—he was magnanimous—"that it's something not in you,
but in one's self. It's MY fault."

She was silent a little. "No, it's Mr. Waymarsh's. It's the
fault of his having brought her."

"Ah then," said Strether good-naturedly, "why DID he bring
her?"

"He couldn't afford not to."

"Oh you were a trophy—one of the spoils of conquest? But why in
that case, since you do 'compromise'—"

"Don't I compromise HIM as well? I do compromise him as well,"
Miss Barrace smiled. "I compromise him as hard as I can. But for
Mr. Waymarsh it isn't fatal. It's—so far as his wonderful relation
with Mrs. Pocock is concerned—favourable." And then, as he still
seemed slightly at sea: "The man who had succeeded with ME, don't
you see? For her to get him from me was such an added
incentive."

Strether saw, but as if his path was still strewn with
surprises. "It's 'from' you then that she has got him?"

She was amused at his momentary muddle. "You can fancy my fight!
She believes in her triumph. I think it has been part of her
joy.

"Oh her joy!" Strether sceptically murmured.

"Well, she thinks she has had her own way. And what's to-night
for her but a kind of apotheosis? Her frock's really good."

"Good enough to go to heaven in? For after a real apotheosis,"
Strether went on, "there's nothing BUT heaven. For Sarah there's
only to-morrow."

"And you mean that she won't find to-morrow heavenly?"

"Well, I mean that I somehow feel to-night—on her behalf—too
good to be true. She has had her cake; that is she's in the act now
of having it, of swallowing the largest and sweetest piece. There
won't be another left for her. Certainly I haven't one. It can
only, at the best, be Chad." He continued to make it out as for
their common entertainment. "He may have one, as it were, up his
sleeve; yet it's borne in upon me that if he had—"

"He wouldn't"—she quite understood—"have taken all THIS trouble?
I dare say not, and, if I may be quite free and dreadful, I very
much hope he won't take any more. Of course I won't pretend now,"
she added, "not to know what it's a question of."

"Oh every one must know now," poor Strether thoughtfully
admitted; "and it's strange enough and funny enough that one should
feel everybody here at this very moment to be knowing and watching
and waiting."

"Yes—isn't it indeed funny?" Miss Barrace quite rose to it.
"That's the way we ARE in Paris." She was always pleased with a new
contribution to that queerness. "It's wonderful! But, you know,"
she declared, "it all depends on you. I don't want to turn the
knife in your vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant
by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the
drama, and we're gathered to see what you'll do."

Strether looked at her a moment with a light perhaps slightly
obscured. "I think that must be why the hero has taken refuge in
this corner. He's scared at his heroism—he shrinks from his
part."

"Ah but we nevertheless believe he'll play it. That's why," Miss
Barrace kindly went on, "we take such an interest in you. We feel
you'll come up to the scratch." And then as he seemed perhaps not
quite to take fire: "Don't let him do it."

"Don't let Chad go?"

"Yes, keep hold of him. With all this"—and she indicated the
general tribute—"he has done enough. We love him here—he's
charming."

"It's beautiful," said Strether, "the way you all can simplify
when you will."

But she gave it to him back. "It's nothing to the way you will
when you must."

He winced at it as at the very voice of prophecy, and it kept
him a moment quiet. He detained her, however, on her appearing
about to leave him alone in the rather cold clearance their talk
had made. "There positively isn't a sign of a hero to-night; the
hero's dodging and shirking, the hero's ashamed. Therefore, you
know, I think, what you must all REALLY be occupied with is the
heroine."

Miss Barrace took a minute. "The heroine?"

"The heroine. I've treated her," said Strether, "not a bit like
a hero. Oh," he sighed, "I don't do it well!"

She eased him off. "You do it as you can." And then after
another hesitation: "I think she's satisfied."

But he remained compunctious. "I haven't been near her. I
haven't looked at her."

"Ah then you've lost a good deal!"

He showed he knew it. "She's more wonderful than ever?"

"Than ever. With Mr. Pocock."

Strether wondered. "Madame de Vionnet—with Jim?"

"Madame de Vionnet—with 'Jim.'" Miss Barrace was historic.

"And what's she doing with him?"

"Ah you must ask HIM!"

Strether's face lighted again at the prospect. "It WILL be
amusing to do so." Yet he continued to wonder. "But she must have
some idea."

"Of course she has—she has twenty ideas. She has in the first
place," said Miss Barrace, swinging a little her tortoise-shell,
"that of doing her part. Her part is to help YOU."

It came out as nothing had come yet; links were missing and
connexions unnamed, but it was suddenly as if they were at the
heart of their subject. "Yes; how much more she does it," Strether
gravely reflected, "than I help HER!" It all came over him as with
the near presence of the beauty, the grace, the intense,
dissimulated spirit with which he had, as he said, been putting off
contact. "SHE has courage."

"Ah she has courage!" Miss Barrace quite agreed; and it was as
if for a moment they saw the quantity in each other's face.

But indeed the whole thing was present. "How much she must
care!"

"Ah there it is. She does care. But it isn't, is it," Miss
Barrace considerately added, "as if you had ever had any doubt of
that?"

Strether seemed suddenly to like to feel that he really never
had. "Why of course it's the whole point."

"Voila!" Miss Barrace smiled.

"It's why one came out," Strether went on. "And it's why one has
stayed so long. And it's also"—he abounded—"why one's going home.
It's why, it's why—"

"It's why everything!" she concurred. "It's why she might be
to-night—for all she looks and shows, and for all your friend 'Jim'
does—about twenty years old. That's another of her ideas; to be for
him, and to be quite easily and charmingly, as young as a little
girl."