The Ambassadors (49 page)

Strether assisted at his distance. "'For him'? For Chad—?"

"For Chad, in a manner, naturally, always. But in particular
to-night for Mr. Pocock." And then as her friend still stared:
"Yes, it IS of a bravery But that's what she has: her high sense of
duty." It was more than sufficiently before them. "When Mr. Newsome
has his hands so embarrassed with his sister—"

"It's quite the least"—Strether filled it out—"that she should
take his sister's husband? Certainly—quite the least. So she has
taken him."

"She has taken him." It was all Miss Barrace had meant.

Still it remained enough. "It must be funny."

"Oh it IS funny." That of course essentially went with it.

But it brought them back. How indeed then she must cared, in
answer to which Strether's entertainer dropped a comprehensive
"Ah!" expressive perhaps of some impatience for the time he took to
get used to it. She herself had got used to it long before.

When one morning within the week he perceived the whole thing to
be really at last upon him Strether's immediate feeling was all
relief. He had known this morning that something was about to
happen—known it, in a moment, by Waymarsh's manner when Waymarsh
appeared before him during his brief consumption of coffee and a
roll in the small slippery salle-a-manger so associated with rich
rumination. Strether had taken there of late various lonely and
absent-minded meals; he communed there, even at the end of June,
with a suspected chill, the air of old shivers mixed with old
savours, the air in which so many of his impressions had perversely
matured; the place meanwhile renewing its message to him by the
very circumstance of his single state. He now sat there, for the
most part, to sigh softly, while he vaguely tilted his carafe, over
the vision of how much better Waymarsh was occupied. That was
really his success by the common measure—to have led this companion
so on and on. He remembered how at first there had been scarce a
squatting-place he could beguile him into passing; the actual
outcome of which at last was that there was scarce one that could
arrest him in his rush. His rush—as Strether vividly and amusedly
figured it—continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps
moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine
full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of
his own, of Strether's destiny. It might after all, to the end,
only be that they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as
Waymarsh was concerned, that HAD to be the spring of action.
Strether was glad at all events, in connexion with the case, that
the saving he required was not more scant; so constituted a luxury
was it in certain lights just to lurk there out of the full glare.
He had moments of quite seriously wondering whether Waymarsh
wouldn't in fact, thanks to old friendship and a conceivable
indulgence, make about as good terms for him as he might make for
himself. They wouldn't be the same terms of course; but they might
have the advantage that he himself probably should be able to make
none at all.

He was never in the morning very late, but Waymarsh had already
been out, and, after a peep into the dim refectory, he presented
himself with much less than usual of his large looseness. He had
made sure, through the expanse of glass exposed to the court, that
they would be alone; and there was now in fact that about him that
pretty well took up the room. He was dressed in the garments of
summer; and save that his white waistcoat was redundant and bulging
these things favoured, they determined, his expression. He wore a
straw hat such as his friend hadn't yet seen in Paris, and he
showed a buttonhole freshly adorned with a magnificent rose.
Strether read on the instant his story—how, astir for the previous
hour, the sprinkled newness of the day, so pleasant at that season
in Paris, he was fairly panting with the pulse of adventure and had
been with Mrs. Pocock, unmistakeably, to the Marche aux Fleurs.
Strether really knew in this vision of him a joy that was akin to
envy; so reversed as he stood there did their old positions seem;
so comparatively doleful now showed, by the sharp turn of the
wheel, the posture of the pilgrim from Woollett. He wondered, this
pilgrim, if he had originally looked to Waymarsh so brave and well,
so remarkably launched, as it was at present the latter's privilege
to appear. He recalled that his friend had remarked to him even at
Chester that his aspect belied his plea of prostration; but there
certainly couldn't have been, for an issue, an aspect less
concerned than Waymarsh's with the menace of decay. Strether had at
any rate never resembled a Southern planter of the great days—which
was the image picturesquely suggested by the happy relation between
the fuliginous face and the wide panama of his visitor. This type,
it further amused him to guess, had been, on Waymarsh's part, the
object of Sarah's care; he was convinced that her taste had not
been a stranger to the conception and purchase of the hat, any more
than her fine fingers had been guiltless of the bestowal of the
rose. It came to him in the current of thought, as things so oddly
did come, that HE had never risen with the lark to attend a
brilliant woman to the Marche aux Fleurs; this could be fastened on
him in connexion neither with Miss Gostrey nor with Madame de
Vionnet; the practice of getting up early for adventures could
indeed in no manner be fastened on him. It came to him in fact that
just here was his usual case: he was for ever missing things
through his general genius for missing them, while others were for
ever picking them up through a contrary bent. And it was others who
looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he somehow who
finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook. Yes, he should
go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn't know quite whom. He almost,
for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite enjoying
it. It worked out as BECAUSE he was anxious there—it worked out as
for this reason that Waymarsh was so blooming. It was HIS trip for
health, for a change, that proved the success—which was just what
Strether, planning and exerting himself, had desired it should be.
That truth already sat full-blown on his companion's lips;
benevolence breathed from them as with the warmth of active
exercise, and also a little as with the bustle of haste.

"Mrs. Pocock, whom I left a quarter of an hour ago at her hotel,
has asked me to mention to you that she would like to find you at
home here in about another hour. She wants to see you; she has
something to say—or considers, I believe, that you may have: so
that I asked her myself why she shouldn't come right round. She
hasn't BEEN round yet—to see our place; and I took upon myself to
say that I was sure you'd be glad to have her. The thing's
therefore, you see, to keep right here till she comes."

The announcement was sociably, even though, after Waymarsh's
wont, somewhat solemnly made; but Strether quickly felt other
things in it than these light features. It was the first approach,
from that quarter, to admitted consciousness; it quickened his
pulse; it simply meant at last that he should have but himself to
thank if he didn't know where he was. He had finished his
breakfast; he pushed it away and was on his feet. There were plenty
of elements of surprise, but only one of doubt. "The thing's for
YOU to keep here too?" Waymarsh had been slightly ambiguous.

He wasn't ambiguous, however, after this enquiry; and Strether's
understanding had probably never before opened so wide and
effective a mouth as it was to open during the next five minutes.
It was no part of his friend's wish, as appeared, to help to
receive Mrs. Pocock; he quite understood the spirit in which she
was to present herself, but his connexion with her visit was
limited to his having—well, as he might say—perhaps a little
promoted it. He had thought, and had let her know it, that Strether
possibly would think she might have been round before. At any rate,
as turned out, she had been wanting herself, quite a while, to
come. "I told her," said Waymarsh, "that it would have been a
bright idea if she had only carried it out before."

Strether pronounced it so bright as to be almost dazzling. "But
why HASn't she carried it out before? She has seen me every day—she
had only to name her hour. I've been waiting and waiting."

"Well, I told her you had. And she has been waiting too." It
was, in the oddest way in the world, on the showing of this tone, a
genial new pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a
different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed, and actually
rendered by it almost insinuating. He lacked only time for full
persuasion, and Strether was to see in a moment why. Meantime,
however, our friend perceived, he was announcing a step of some
magnanimity on Mrs. Pocock's part, so that he could deprecate a
sharp question. It was his own high purpose in fact to have
smoothed sharp questions to rest. He looked his old comrade very
straight in the eyes, and he had never conveyed to him in so mute a
manner so much kind confidence and so much good advice. Everything
that was between them was again in his face, but matured and
shelved and finally disposed of. "At any rate," he added, "she's
coming now."

Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell,
in Strether's brain, into a close rapid order. He saw on the spot
what had happened, and what probably would yet; and it was all
funny enough. It was perhaps just this freedom of appreciation that
wound him up to his flare of high spirits. "What is she coming
FOR?—to kill me?"

"She's coming to be very VERY kind to you, and you must let me
say that I greatly hope you'll not be less so to herself."

This was spoken by Waymarsh with much gravity of admonition, and
as Strether stood there he knew he had but to make a movement to
take the attitude of a man gracefully receiving a present. The
present was that of the opportunity dear old Waymarsh had flattered
himself he had divined in him the slight soreness of not having yet
thoroughly enjoyed; so he had brought it to him thus, as on a
little silver breakfast-tray, familiarly though delicately—without
oppressive pomp; and he was to bend and smile and acknowledge, was
to take and use and be grateful. He was not—that was the beauty of
it—to be asked to deflect too much from his dignity. No wonder the
old boy bloomed in this bland air of his own distillation. Strether
felt for a moment as if Sarah were actually walking up and down
outside. Wasn't she hanging about the porte-cochere while her
friend thus summarily opened a way? Strether would meet her but to
take it, and everything would be for the best in the best of
possible worlds. He had never so much known what any one meant as,
in the light of this demonstration, he knew what Mrs. Newsome did.
It had reached Waymarsh from Sarah, but it had reached Sarah from
her mother, and there was no break in the chain by which it reached
HIM. "Has anything particular happened," he asked after a
minute—"so suddenly to determine her? Has she heard anything
unexpected from home?"

Waymarsh, on this, it seemed to him, looked at him harder than
ever. "'Unexpected'?" He had a brief hesitation; then, however, he
was firm. "We're leaving Paris."

"Leaving? That IS sudden."

Waymarsh showed a different opinion. "Less so than it may seem.
The purpose of Mrs. Pocock's visit is to explain to you in fact
that it's NOT."

Strether didn't at all know if he had really an
advantage—anything that would practically count as one; but he
enjoyed for the moment—as for the first time in his life—the sense
of so carrying it off. He wondered—it was amusing—if he felt as the
impudent feel. "I shall take great pleasure, I assure you, in any
explanation. I shall be delighted to receive Sarah."

The sombre glow just darkened in his comrade's eyes; but he was
struck with the way it died out again. It was too mixed with
another consciousness—it was too smothered, as might be said, in
flowers. He really for the time regretted it—poor dear old sombre
glow! Something straight and simple, something heavy and empty, had
been eclipsed in its company; something by which he had best known
his friend. Waymarsh wouldn't BE his friend, somehow, without the
occasional ornament of the sacred rage, and the right to the sacred
rage—inestimably precious for Strether's charity—he also seemed in
a manner, and at Mrs. Pocock's elbow, to have forfeited. Strether
remembered the occasion early in their stay when on that very spot
he had come out with his earnest, his ominous "Quit it!"—and, so
remembering, felt it hang by a hair that he didn't himself now
utter the same note. Waymarsh was having a good time—this was the
truth that was embarrassing for him, and he was having it then and
there, he was having it in Europe, he was having it under the very
protection of circumstances of which he didn't in the least
approve; all of which placed him in a false position, with no issue
possible—none at least by the grand manner. It was practically in
the manner of any one—it was all but in poor Strether's own—that
instead of taking anything up he merely made the most of having to
be himself explanatory. "I'm not leaving for the United States
direct. Mr. and Mrs. Pocock and Miss Mamie are thinking of a little
trip before their own return, and we've been talking for some days
past of our joining forces. We've settled it that we do join and
that we sail together the end of next month. But we start to-morrow
for Switzerland. Mrs. Pocock wants some scenery. She hasn't had
much yet."

He was brave in his way too, keeping nothing back, confessing
all there was, and only leaving Strether to make certain
connexions. "Is what Mrs. Newsome had cabled her daughter an
injunction to break off short?"

The grand manner indeed at this just raised its head a little.
"I know nothing about Mrs. Newsome's cables."