The Ambassadors (62 page)

"An awful ass, wasn't I?"

The response was as prompt as if he had pressed a spring; it had
a ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment
to meet it. "You certainly then wouldn't have seemed worth all
you've let me in for. You've defined yourself better. Your value
has quintupled."

"Well then, wouldn't that be enough—?"

Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank.
"Enough?"

"If one SHOULD wish to live on one's accumulations?" After
which, however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young
man as easily dropped it. "Of course I really never forget, night
or day, what I owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of
honour," he frankly rang out, "that I'm not a bit tired of her."
Strether at this only gave him a stare: the way youth could express
itself was again and again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he
might after all be capable of much; yet he spoke of being "tired"
of her almost as he might have spoken of being tired of roast
mutton for dinner. "She has never for a moment yet bored me—never
been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in tact. She
has never talked about her tact—as even they too sometimes talk;
but she has always had it. She has never had it more"—he handsomely
made the point—"than just lately." And he scrupulously went
further. "She has never been anything I could call a burden."

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."