The Ambassadors (11 page)

“Consent to be an American in order to be an invalid?”

“No,” said Strether, “the other way round. She’s at any rate delicate sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself into everything—”

Ah Maria knew these things! “That she has nothing left for anything else? Of course she hasn’t. To whom do you say it? High-strung? Don’t I spend my life, for them, jamming down the pedal? I see moreover how it has told on you.”

Strether took this more lightly. “Oh I jam down the pedal too!”

“Well,” she lucidly returned, “we must from this moment bear on it together with all our might.” And she forged ahead. “Have they money?”

But it was as if, while her energetic image still held him, her enquiry fell short. “Mrs. Newsome,” he wished further to explain,
“hasn’t moreover your courage on the question of contact. If she had come it would have been to see the person herself.”

“The woman? Ah but that’s courage.”

“No—it’s exaltation, which is a very different thing. Courage,” he, however, accommodatingly threw out, “is what
you
have.”

She shook her head. “You say that only to patch me up—to cover the nudity of my want of exaltation. I’ve neither the one nor the other. I’ve mere battered indifference. I see that what you mean,” Miss Gostrey pursued, “is that if your friend
had
come she would take great views, and the great views, to put it simply, would be too much for her.”

Strether looked amused at her notion of the simple, but he adopted her formula. “Everything’s too much for her.”

“Ah then such a service as this of yours—”

“Is more for her than anything else? Yes—far more. But so long as it isn’t too much for
me
—!”

“Her condition doesn’t matter? Surely not; we leave her condition out; we take it, that is, for granted. I see it, her condition, as behind and beneath you; yet at the same time I see it as bearing you up.”

“Oh it does bear me up!” Strether laughed.

“Well then as yours bears
me
nothing more’s needed.” With which she put again her question. “Has Mrs. Newsome money?”

This time he heeded. “Oh plenty. That’s the root of the evil. There’s money, to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the free use of a great deal. But if he’ll pull himself together and come home, all the same, he’ll find his account in it.”

She had listened with all her interest. “And I hope to goodness you’ll find yours!”

“He’ll take up his definite material reward,” said Strether without acknowledgement of this. “He’s at the parting of the ways. He can come into the business now—he can’t come later.”

“Is there a business?”

“Lord, yes—a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.”

“A great shop?”

“Yes—a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The concern’s a manufacture—and a manufacture that, if it’s only properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It’s a little thing they make—make better, it appears, than other people can, or than other people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at least in that particular line,” Strether explained, “put them on it with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense lift.”

“It’s a place in itself?”

“Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony. But above all it’s a thing. The article produced.”

“And what
is
the article produced?”

Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. “I’ll tell you next time.” But when the next time came he only said he’d tell her later on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture of the stage was now overlaid with another image. His postponements, however, made her wonder—wonder if the article referred to were anything bad. And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong. But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her. “Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it’s just wanting in—what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so grand—!” In short he shrank.

“It’s a false note?”

“Sadly. It’s vulgar.”

“But surely not vulgarer than this.” Then on his wondering as she herself had done: “Than everything about us.” She seemed a trifle irritated. “What do you take this for?”

“Why for—comparatively—divine!”

“This dreadful London theatre? It’s impossible, if you really want to know.”

“Oh then,” laughed Strether, “I
don’t
really want to know!”

It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by the mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. “ ‘Rather ridiculous’? Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?”

It brought him round. “No—you don’t even ‘burn.’ I don’t think, you know, you’ll guess it.”

“How then can I judge how vulgar it is?”

“You’ll judge when I do tell you”—and he persuaded her to patience. But it may even now frankly be mentioned that he in the sequel never
was
to tell her. He actually never did so, and it moreover oddly occurred that by the law, within her, of the incalculable, her desire for the information dropped and her attitude to the question converted itself into a positive cultivation of ignorance. In ignorance she could humour her fancy, and that proved a useful freedom. She could treat the little nameless object as indeed unnameable—she could make their abstention enormously definite. There might indeed have been for Strether the portent of this in what she next said.

“Is it perhaps then because it’s so bad—because your industry, as you call it,
is
so vulgar—that Mr. Chad won’t come back? Does he feel the taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed up in it?”

“Oh,” Strether laughed, “it wouldn’t appear—would it?—that he feels ‘taints’! He’s glad enough of the money from it, and the money’s his whole basis. There’s appreciation in that—I mean as to the allowance his mother has hitherto made him. She has of course the resource of cutting this allowance off; but even then he
has unfortunately, and on no small scale, his independent supply—money left him by his grandfather, her own father.”

“Wouldn’t the fact you mention then,” Miss Gostrey asked, “make it just more easy for him to be particular? Isn’t he conceivable as fastidious about the source—the apparent and public source—of his income?”

Strether was able quite good-humouredly to entertain the proposition. “The source of his grandfather’s wealth—and thereby of his own share in it—was not particularly noble.”

“And what source was it?”

Strether cast about. “Well—practices.”

“In business? Infamies? He was an old swindler?”

“Oh,” he said with more emphasis than spirit, “I shan’t describe
him
nor narrate his exploits.”

“Lord, what abysses! And the late Mr. Newsome then?”

“Well, what about him?”

“Was he like the grandfather?”

“No—he was on the other side of the house. And he was different.”

Miss Gostrey kept it up. “Better?”

Her friend for a moment hung fire. “No.”

Her comment on his hesitation was scarce the less marked for being mute. “Thank you.
Now
don’t you see,” she went on, “why the boy doesn’t come home? He’s drowning his shame.”

“His shame? What shame?”

“What shame?
Comment donc? The
shame.”

“But where and when,” Strether asked, “is ‘the shame’—where is any shame—to-day? The men I speak of—they did as every one does; and (besides being ancient history) it was all a matter of appreciation.”

She showed how she understood. “Mrs. Newsome has appreciated?”

“Ah I can’t speak for
her
!”

“In the midst of such doings—and, as I understand you, profiting by them, she at least has remained exquisite?”

“Oh I can’t talk of her!” Strether said.

“I thought she was just what you
could
talk of. You
don’t
trust me,” Miss Gostrey after a moment declared.

It had its effect. “Well, her money is spent, her life conceived and carried on with a large beneficence—”

“That’s a kind of expiation of wrongs? Gracious,” she added before he could speak, “how intensely you make me see her!”

“If you see her,” Strether dropped, “it’s all that’s necessary.”

She really seemed to have her. “I feel that. She
is
, in spite of everything, handsome.”

This at least enlivened him. “What do you mean by everything?”

“Well, I mean you.” With which she had one of her swift changes of ground. “You say the concern needs looking after; but doesn’t Mrs. Newsome look after it?”

“So far as possible. She’s wonderfully able, but it’s not her affair, and her life’s a good deal over-charged. She has many, many things.”

“And you also?”

“Oh yes—I’ve many too, if you will.”

“I see. But what I mean is,” Miss Gostrey amended, “do you also look after the business?”

“Oh no, I don’t touch the business.”

“Only everything else?”

“Well, yes—some things.”

“As for instance—?”

Strether obligingly thought. “Well, the Review.”

“The Review?—you have a Review?”

“Certainly. Woollett has a Review—which Mrs. Newsome, for the most part, magnificently pays for and which I, not at all magnificently, edit. My name’s on the cover,” Strether pursued, “and
I’m really rather disappointed and hurt that you seem never to have heard of it.”

She neglected for a moment this grievance. “And what kind of a Review is it?”

His serenity was now completely restored. “Well, it’s green.”

“Do you mean in political colour as they say here—in thought?”

“No; I mean the cover’s green—of the most lovely shade.”

“And with Mrs. Newsome’s name on it too?”

He waited a little. “Oh as for that you must judge if she peeps out. She’s behind the whole thing; but she’s of a delicacy and a discretion—!”

Miss Gostrey took it all. “I’m sure. She
would
be. I don’t underrate her. She must be rather a swell.”

“Oh yes, she’s rather a swell!”

“A Woollett swell—
bon
! I like the idea of a Woollett swell. And you must be rather one too, to be so mixed up with her.”

“Ah no,” said Strether, “that’s not the way it works.”

But she had already taken him up. “The way it works—you needn’t tell me!—is of course that you efface yourself.”

“With my name on the cover?” he lucidly objected.

“Ah but you don’t put it on for yourself.”

“I beg your pardon—that’s exactly what I do put it on for. It’s exactly the thing that I’m reduced to doing for myself. It seems to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little scrap of an identity.”

On this she looked at him as to say many things, but what she at last simply said was: “She likes to see it there. You’re the bigger swell of the two,” she immediately continued, “because you think you’re not one. She thinks she
is
one. However,” Miss Gostrey added, “she thinks you’re one too. You’re at all events the biggest she can get hold of.” She embroidered, she abounded. “I don’t say
it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one—!” Strether had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already higher. “Therefore close with her—!”

“Close with her?” he asked as she seemed to hang poised.

“Before you lose your chance.”

Their eyes met over it. “What do you mean by closing?”

“And what do I mean by your chance? I’ll tell you when you tell me all the things
you
don’t. Is it her
greatest
fad?” she briskly pursued.

“The Review?” He seemed to wonder how he could best describe it. This resulted however but in a sketch. “It’s her tribute to the ideal.”

“I see. You go in for tremendous things.”

“We go in for the unpopular side—that is so far as we dare.”

“And how far
do
you dare?”

“Well, she very far. I much less. I don’t begin to have her faith. She provides,” said Strether, “three fourths of that. And she provides, as I’ve confided to you,
all
the money.”

It evoked somehow a vision of gold that held for a little Miss Gostrey’s eyes, and she looked as if she heard the bright dollars shovelled in. “I hope then you make a good thing—”

“I
never
made a good thing!” he at once returned.

She just waited. “Don’t you call it a good thing to be loved?”

“Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only just sweetly ignored.”

She had another pause. “You don’t trust me!” she once more repeated.

“Don’t I when I lift the last veil?—tell you the very secret of the prison-house?”

Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of
that
!” After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again. “She’s just a
moral
swell.”

He accepted gaily enough the definition. “Yes—I really think that describes her.”

But it had for his friend the oddest connexion. “How does she do her hair?”

He laughed out. “Beautifully!”

“Ah that doesn’t tell me. However, it doesn’t matter—I know. It’s tremendously neat—a real reproach; quite remarkably thick and without, as yet, a single strand of white. There!”

He blushed for her realism, but gaped at her truth. “You’re the very deuce.”

“What else
should
I be? It was as the very deuce I pounced on you. But don’t let it trouble you, for everything but the very deuce—at our age—is a bore and a delusion, and even he himself, after all, but half a joy.” With which, on a single sweep of her wing, she resumed. “You assist her to expiate—which is rather hard when you’ve yourself not sinned.”