The Ambassadors (21 page)

"DO I?"—Strether stared. "I've been supposing I see just the
opposite—an extraordinary case of the equilibrium arrived at and
assured."

"Oh there's a lot behind it."

"Ah there you are!" Strether exclaimed. "That's just what I want
to get at. You speak of your familiar volume altered out of
recognition. Well, who's the editor?"

Little Bilham looked before him a minute in silence. "He ought
to get married. THAT would do it. And he wants to."

"Wants to marry her?"

Again little Bilham waited, and, with a sense that he had
information, Strether scarce knew what was coming. "He wants to be
free. He isn't used, you see," the young man explained in his lucid
way, "to being so good."

Strether hesitated. "Then I may take it from you that he IS
good?"

His companion matched his pause, but making it up with a quiet
fulness. "DO take it from me."

"Well then why isn't he free? He swears to me he is, but
meanwhile does nothing—except of course that he's so kind to me—to
prove it; and couldn't really act much otherwise if he weren't. My
question to you just now was exactly on this queer impression of
his diplomacy: as if instead of really giving ground his line were
to keep me on here and set me a bad example."

As the half-hour meanwhile had ebbed Strether paid his score,
and the waiter was presently in the act of counting out change. Our
friend pushed back to him a fraction of it, with which, after an
emphatic recognition, the personage in question retreated. "You
give too much," little Bilham permitted himself benevolently to
observe.

"Oh I always give too much!" Strether helplessly sighed. "But
you don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the
contemplation of that doom, "answer my question. Why isn't he
free?"

Little Bilham had got up as if the transaction with the waiter
had been a signal, and had already edged out between the table and
the divan. The effect of this was that a minute later they had
quitted the place, the gratified waiter alert again at the open
door. Strether had found himself deferring to his companion's
abruptness as to a hint that he should be answered as soon as they
were more isolated. This happened when after a few steps in the
outer air they had turned the next comer. There our friend had kept
it up. "Why isn't he free if he's good?"

Little Bilham looked him full in the face. "Because it's a
virtuous attachment."

This had settled the question so effectually for the time—that
is for the next few days—that it had given Strether almost a new
lease of life. It must be added however that, thanks to his
constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the
wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising
as usual into his draught. His imagination had in other words
already dealt with his young friend's assertion; of which it had
made something that sufficiently came out on the very next occasion
of his seeing Maria Gostrey. This occasion moreover had been
determined promptly by a new circumstance—a circumstance he was the
last man to leave her for a day in ignorance of. "When I said to
him last night," he immediately began, "that without some definite
word from him now that will enable me to speak to them over there
of our sailing—or at least of mine, giving them some sort of
date—my responsibility becomes uncomfortable and my situation
awkward; when I said that to him what do you think was his reply?"
And then as she this time gave it up: "Why that he has two
particular friends, two ladies, mother and daughter, about to
arrive in Paris—coming back from an absence; and that he wants me
so furiously to meet them, know them and like them, that I shall
oblige him by kindly not bringing our business to a crisis till he
has had a chance to see them again himself. Is that," Strether
enquired, "the way he's going to try to get off? These are the
people," he explained, "that he must have gone down to see before I
arrived. They're the best friends he has in the world, and they
take more interest than any one else in what concerns him. As I'm
his next best he sees a thousand reasons why we should comfortably
meet. He hasn't broached the question sooner because their return
was uncertain—seemed in fact for the present impossible. But he
more than intimates that—if you can believe it—their desire to make
my acquaintance has had to do with their surmounting
difficulties."

"They're dying to see you?" Miss Gostrey asked.

"Dying. Of course," said Strether, "they're the virtuous
attachment." He had already told her about that—had seen her the
day after his talk with little Bilham; and they had then threshed
out together the bearing of the revelation. She had helped him to
put into it the logic in which little Bilham had left it slightly
deficient Strether hadn't pressed him as to the object of the
preference so unexpectedly described; feeling in the presence of
it, with one of his irrepressible scruples, a delicacy from which
he had in the quest of the quite other article worked himself
sufficiently free. He had held off, as on a small principle of
pride, from permitting his young friend to mention a name; wishing
to make with this the great point that Chad's virtuous attachments
were none of his business. He had wanted from the first not to
think too much of his dignity, but that was no reason for not
allowing it any little benefit that might turn up. He had often
enough wondered to what degree his interference might pass for
interested; so that there was no want of luxury in letting it be
seen whenever he could that he didn't interfere. That had of course
at the same time not deprived him of the further luxury of much
private astonishment; which however he had reduced to some order
before communicating his knowledge. When he had done this at last
it was with the remark that, surprised as Miss Gostrey might, like
himself, at first be, she would probably agree with him on
reflexion that such an account of the matter did after all fit the
confirmed appearances. Nothing certainly, on all the indications,
could have been a greater change for him than a virtuous
attachment, and since they had been in search of the "word" as the
French called it, of that change, little Bilham's
announcement—though so long and so oddly delayed—would serve as
well as another. She had assured Strether in fact after a pause
that the more she thought of it the more it did serve; and yet her
assurance hadn't so weighed with him as that before they parted he
hadn't ventured to challenge her sincerity. Didn't she believe the
attachment was virtuous?—he had made sure of her again with the aid
of that question. The tidings he brought her on this second
occasion were moreover such as would help him to make surer
still.

She showed at first none the less as only amused. "You say there
are two? An attachment to them both then would, I suppose, almost
necessarily be innocent."

Our friend took the point, but he had his clue. "Mayn't he be
still in the stage of not quite knowing which of them, mother or
daughter, he likes best?"

She gave it more thought. "Oh it must be the daughter—at his
age."

"Possibly. Yet what do we know," Strether asked, "about hers?
She may be old enough."

"Old enough for what?"

"Why to marry Chad. That may be, you know, what they want. And
if Chad wants it too, and little Bilham wants it, and even we, at a
pinch, could do with it—that is if she doesn't prevent
repatriation—why it may be plain sailing yet."

It was always the case for him in these counsels that each of
his remarks, as it came, seemed to drop into a deeper well. He had
at all events to wait a moment to hear the slight splash of this
one. "I don't see why if Mr. Newsome wants to marry the young lady
he hasn't already done it or hasn't been prepared with some
statement to you about it. And if he both wants to marry her and is
on good terms with them why isn't he 'free'?"

Strether, responsively, wondered indeed. "Perhaps the girl
herself doesn't like him."

"Then why does he speak of them to you as he does?"

Strether's mind echoed the question, but also again met it.
"Perhaps it's with the mother he's on good terms."

"As against the daughter?"

"Well, if she's trying to persuade the daughter to consent to
him, what could make him like the mother more? Only," Strether
threw out, "why shouldn't the daughter consent to him?"

"Oh," said Miss Gostrey, "mayn't it be that every one else isn't
quite so struck with him as you?"

"Doesn't regard him you mean as such an 'eligible' young man? Is
that what I've come to?" he audibly and rather gravely sought to
know. "However," he went on, "his marriage is what his mother most
desires—that is if it will help. And oughtn't ANY marriage to help?
They must want him"—he had already worked it out—"to be better off.
Almost any girl he may marry will have a direct interest in his
taking up his chances. It won't suit HER at least that he shall
miss them."

Miss Gostrey cast about. "No—you reason well! But of course on
the other hand there's always dear old Woollett itself."

"Oh yes," he mused—"there's always dear old Woollett
itself."

She waited a moment. "The young lady mayn't find herself able to
swallow THAT quantity. She may think it's paying too much; she may
weigh one thing against another."

Strether, ever restless in such debates, took a vague turn "It
will all depend on who she is. That of course—the proved ability to
deal with dear old Woollett, since I'm sure she does deal with
it—is what makes so strongly for Mamie."

"Mamie?"

He stopped short, at her tone, before her; then, though seeing
that it represented not vagueness, but a momentary embarrassed
fulness, let his exclamation come. "You surely haven't forgotten
about Mamie!"

"No, I haven't forgotten about Mamie," she smiled. "There's no
doubt whatever that there's ever so much to be said for her.
Mamie's MY girl!" she roundly declared.

Strether resumed for a minute his walk. "She's really perfectly
lovely, you know. Far prettier than any girl I've seen over here
yet."

"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build." And she mused a
moment in her friend's way. "I should positively like to take her
in hand!"

He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it.
"Oh but don't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and
can't, you know, be left."

But she kept it up. "I wish they'd send her out to me!"

"If they knew you," he returned, "they would."

"Ah but don't they?—after all that, as I've understood you
you've told them about me?"

He had paused before her again, but he continued his course
"They WILL—before, as you say, I've done." Then he came out with
the point he had wished after all most to make. "It seems to give
away now his game. This is what he has been doing—keeping me along
for. He has been waiting for them."

Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. "You see a good deal in it!"

"I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend," he went on,
"that you don't see—?"

"Well, what?"—she pressed him as he paused.

"Why that there must be a lot between them—and that it has been
going on from the first; even from before I came."

She took a minute to answer. "Who are they then—if it's so
grave?"

"It mayn't be grave—it may be gay. But at any rate it's marked.
Only I don't know," Strether had to confess, "anything about them.
Their name for instance was a thing that, after little Bilham's
information, I found it a kind of refreshment not to feel obliged
to follow up."

"Oh," she returned, "if you think you've got off—!"

Her laugh produced in him a momentary gloom. "I don't think I've
got off. I only think I'm breathing for about five minutes. I dare
say I SHALL have, at the best, still to get on." A look, over it
all, passed between them, and the next minute he had come back to
good humour. "I don't meanwhile take the smallest interest in their
name."

"Nor in their nationality?—American, French, English,
Polish?"

"I don't care the least little 'hang,'" he smiled, "for their
nationality. It would be nice if they're Polish!" he almost
immediately added.

"Very nice indeed." The transition kept up her spirits. "So you
see you do care."

He did this contention a modified justice. "I think I should if
they WERE Polish. Yes," he thought—"there might be joy in
THAT."

"Let us then hope for it." But she came after this nearer to the
question. "If the girl's of the right age of course the mother
can't be. I mean for the virtuous attachment. If the girl's
twenty—and she can't be less—the mother must be at least forty. So
it puts the mother out. SHE'S too old for him."

Strether, arrested again, considered and demurred. "Do you think
so? Do you think any one would be too old for him? I'M eighty, and
I'm too young. But perhaps the girl," he continued, "ISn't twenty.
Perhaps she's only ten—but such a little dear that Chad finds
himself counting her in as an attraction of the acquaintance.
Perhaps she's only five. Perhaps the mother's but five-and-twenty—a
charming young widow."

Miss Gostrey entertained the suggestion. "She IS a widow
then?"

"I haven't the least idea!" They once more, in spite of this
vagueness, exchanged a look—a look that was perhaps the longest
yet. It seemed in fact, the next thing, to require to explain
itself; which it did as it could. "I only feel what I've told
you—that he has some reason."

Miss Gostrey's imagination had taken its own flight. "Perhaps
she's NOT a widow."

Strether seemed to accept the possibility with reserve. Still he
accepted it. "Then that's why the attachment—if it's to her—is
virtuous."

But she looked as if she scarce followed. "Why is it virtuous
if—since she's free—there's nothing to impose on it any
condition?"