The Ambassadors (62 page)

Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his shade of dryness deepened. “Oh if you didn’t do her justice—!”

“I
should
be a beast, eh?”

Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be;
that
, visibly, would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however, repetition was no mistake. “You owe her everything—very much more than she can ever owe you. You’ve in other words duties to her, of the most positive sort; and I don’t see what other duties—as the others are presented to you—can be held to go before them.”

Chad looked at him with a smile. “And you know of course about the others, eh?—since it’s you yourself who have done the presenting.”

“Much of it—yes—and to the best of my ability. But not all—from the moment your sister took my place.”

“She didn’t,” Chad returned. “Sally took a place, certainly; but it was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one—with us—will ever take yours. It wouldn’t be possible.”

“Ah of course,” sighed Strether, “I knew it. I believe you’re right. No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I am,” he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of this truth. “I was made so.”

Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact. “
You
have never needed any one to make you better. There has never been any one good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man declared.

His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They
have
.”

Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?”

Strether—though a little dimly—smiled at him. “Women—too.”

“ ‘Two’?”—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I don’t believe, for such work, in any more than one! So you’re proving too much. And what
is
beastly, at all events,” he added, “is losing you.”

Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid—?”

“Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.” Before Chad could speak, however, he had taken himself up. “I
am
, certainly,” he laughed, “prodigious.”

“Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid—!” This might have been, on Chad’s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. “You needn’t tell me, you needn’t tell me!”—this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether feel. What he needn’t tell him was now at last, in the geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew, up to the hilt—that really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their walk to Strether’s hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou. But there was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn’t, as he said, tell him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement, while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken him, with strange inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all events to have been looking into the question and had encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. “It really does the thing, you know.”

They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. “Affects, you mean, the sale of the object advertised?”

“Yes—but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had supposed. I mean of course when it’s done as one makes out that, in our roaring age, it
can
be done. I’ve been finding out a little; though it doubtless doesn’t amount to much more than what you originally, so awfully vividly—and all, very nearly, that first night—put before me. It’s an art like another, and infinite like all the arts.” He went on as if for the joke of it—almost as if his friend’s face amused him. “In the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold. With the right man to work it
c’est un monde
.”

Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement, without a pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step. “Is what you’re thinking of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right man?”

Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up and down. “Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me for when you first came out?”

Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. “Oh yes, and there’s no doubt that, with your natural parts, you’d have much in common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret of trade. It’s quite possible it will be open to you—giving the whole of your mind to it—to make the whole place hum with you. Your mother’s appeal is to the whole of your mind, and that’s exactly the strength of her case.”

Chad’s fingers continued to twiddle, but he had something of a drop. “Ah we’ve been through my mother’s case!”

“So I thought. Why then do you speak of the matter?”

“Only because it was part of our original discussion. To wind
up where we began, my interest’s purely platonic. There at any rate the fact is—the fact of the possible. I mean the money in it.”

“Oh damn the money in it!” said Strether. And then as the young man’s fixed smile seemed to shine out more strange: “Shall you give your friend up for the money in it?”

Chad preserved his handsome grimace as well as the rest of his attitude. “You’re not altogether—in your so great ‘solemnity’—kind. Haven’t I been drinking you in—showing you all I feel you’re worth to me? What have I done, what am I doing, but cleave to her to the death? The only thing is,” he good-humouredly explained, “that one can’t but have it before one, in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in. Don’t be afraid for
that
. It’s pleasant to a fellow’s feelings,” he developed, “to ‘size-up’ the bribe he applies his foot to.”

“Oh then if all you want’s a kickable surface the bribe’s enormous.”

“Good. Then there it goes!” Chad administered his kick with fantastic force and sent an imaginary object flying. It was accordingly as if they were once more rid of the question and could come back to what really concerned him. “Of course I shall see you tomorrow.”

But Strether scarce heeded the plan proposed for this; he had still the impression—not the slighter for the simulated kick—of an irrelevant hornpipe or jig. “You’re restless.”

“Ah,” returned Chad as they parted, “you’re exciting.”

He had, however, within two days, another separation to face. He had sent Maria Gostrey a word early, by hand, to ask if he might come to breakfast; in consequence of which, at noon, she awaited him in the cool shade of her little Dutch-looking dining-room. This retreat was at the back of the house, with a view of a scrap of old garden that had been saved from modern ravage; and though he had on more than one other occasion had his legs under its small and peculiarly polished table of hospitality, the place had never before struck him as so sacred to pleasant knowledge, to intimate charm, to antique order, to a neatness that was almost august. To sit there was, as he had told his hostess before, to see life reflected for the time in ideally kept pewter; which was somehow becoming, improving to life, so that one’s eyes were held and comforted. Strether’s were comforted at all events now—and the more that it was the last time—with the charming effect, on the board bare of a cloth and proud of its perfect surface, of the small old crockery and old silver, matched by the more substantial pieces happily disposed about the room. The specimens of vivid
Delf, in particular, had the dignity of family portraits; and it was in the midst of them that our friend resignedly expressed himself. He spoke even with a certain philosophic humour. “There’s nothing more to wait for; I seem to have done a good day’s work. I’ve let them have it all round. I’ve seen Chad, who has been to London and come back. He tells me I’m ‘exciting,’ and I seem indeed pretty well to have upset every one. I’ve at any rate excited
him
. He’s distinctly restless.”

“You’ve excited me,” Miss Gostrey smiled. “
I’m
distinctly restless.”

“Oh you were that when I found you. It seems to me I’ve rather got you out of it. What’s this,” he asked as he looked about him, “but a haunt of ancient peace?”

“I wish with all my heart,” she presently replied, “I could make you treat it as a haven of rest.” On which they fronted each other, across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.

Strether seemed, in his way, when he next spoke, to take some of them up. “It wouldn’t give me—that would be the trouble—what it will, no doubt, still give you. I’m not,” he explained, leaning back in his chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon—“in real harmony with what surrounds me. You
are
. I take it too hard. You
don’t
. It makes—that’s what it comes to in the end—a fool of me.” Then at a tangent, “What has he been doing in London?” he demanded.

“Ah one may go to London,” Maria laughed. “You know
I
did.”

Yes—he took the reminder. “And you brought
me
back.” He brooded there opposite to her, but without gloom. “Whom has Chad brought? He’s full of ideas. And I wrote to Sarah,” he added, “the first thing this morning. So I’m square. I’m ready for them.”

She neglected certain parts of this speech in the interest of others. “Marie said to me the other day that she felt him to have the makings of an immense man of business.”

“There it is. He’s the son of his father!”

“But
such
a father!”

“Ah just the right one from that point of view! But it isn’t his father in him,” Strether added, “that troubles me.”

“What is it then?” He came back to his breakfast; he partook presently of the charming melon, which she liberally cut for him; and it was only after this that he met her question. Then moreover it was but to remark that he’d answer her presently. She waited, she watched, she served him and amused him, and it was perhaps with this last idea that she soon reminded him of his having never even yet named to her the article produced at Woollett. “Do you remember our talking of it in London—that night at the play?” Before he could say yes, however, she had put it to him for other matters. Did he remember, did he remember—this and that of their first days? He remembered everything, bringing up with humour even things of which she professed no recollection, things she vehemently denied; and falling back above all on the great interest of their early time, the curiosity felt by both of them as to where he would “come out.” They had so assumed it was to be in some wonderful place—they had thought of it as so very
much
out. Well, that was doubtless what it had been—since he had come out just there. He was out, in truth, as far as it was possible to be, and must now rather bethink himself of getting in again. He found on the spot the image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne.
They
came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had jigged his little course—him too a modest retreat awaited. He offered now, should she really like to know, to name the great product of Woollett. It would be a great commentary on everything. At this she stopped him off; she not only had no wish to know, but she wouldn’t know for the world. She had done with the products of Woollett—for all the good she had got from them. She desired no further news of them,
and she mentioned that Madame de Vionnet herself had, to her knowledge, lived exempt from the information he was ready to supply. She had never consented to receive it, though she would have taken it, under stress, from Mrs. Pocock. But it was a matter about which Mrs. Pocock appeared to have had little to say—never sounding the word—and it didn’t signify now. There was nothing clearly for Maria Gostrey that signified now—save one sharp point, that is, to which she came in time. “I don’t know whether it’s before you as a possibility that, left to himself, Mr. Chad may after all go back. I judge that it
is
more or less so before you, from what you just now said of him.”

Her guest had his eyes on her, kindly but attentively, as if foreseeing what was to follow this. “I don’t think it will be for the money.” And then as she seemed uncertain: “I mean I don’t believe it will be for that he’ll give her up.”

“Then he
will
give her up?”

Strether waited a moment, rather slow and deliberate now, drawing out a little this last soft stage, pleading with her in various suggestive and unspoken ways for patience and understanding. “What were you just about to ask me?”

“Is there anything he can do that would make you patch it up?”

“With Mrs. Newsome?”

Her assent, as if she had had a delicacy about sounding the name, was only in her face; but she added with it: “Or is there anything he can do that would make
her
try it?”

“To patch it up with me?” His answer came at last in a conclusive headshake. “There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s over. Over for both of us.”

Maria wondered, seemed a little to doubt. “Are you so sure for her?”

“Oh yes—sure now. Too much has happened. I’m different for her.”

She took it in then, drawing a deeper breath. “I see. So that as she’s different for
you
—”