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Rafael Sabatini - "Bardelys the Magnificent"

Samuel White Baker - "Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon"

William Roscoe Thayer - "Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, "

Upton Sinclair - "The Profits of Religion"

The Ambassadors

H >> Henry James >> The Ambassadors




"Why do you call me a man in trouble?"

"Ah because that's the way you strike me." She spoke ever so gently
and as if with all fear of wounding him while she sat partaking of
his bounty. "AREn't you in trouble?"

He felt himself colour at the question, and then hated that--hated
to pass for anything so idiotic as woundable. Woundable by Chad's
lady, in respect to whom he had come out with such a fund of
indifference--was he already at that point? Perversely, none the
less, his pause gave a strange air of truth to her supposition; and
what was he in fact but disconcerted at having struck her just in
the way he had most dreamed of not doing? "I'm not in trouble yet,"
he at last smiled. "I'm not in trouble now."

"Well, I'm always so. But that you sufficiently know." She was a
woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows
on the table. It was a posture unknown to Mrs. Newsome, but it was
easy for a femme du monde. "Yes--I am 'now'!"

"There was a question you put to me," he presently returned, "the
night of Chad's dinner. I didn't answer it then, and it has been
very handsome of you not to have sought an occasion for pressing me
about it since."

She was instantly all there. "Of course I know what you allude to.
I asked you what you had meant by saying, the day you came to see
me, just before you left me, that you'd save me. And you then said
--at our friend's--that you'd have really to wait to see, for
yourself, what you did mean."

"Yes, I asked for time," said Strether. "And it sounds now, as you
put it, like a very ridiculous speech."

"Oh!" she murmured--she was full of attenuation. But she had
another thought. "If it does sound ridiculous why do you deny that
you're in trouble?"

"Ah if I were," he replied, "it wouldn't be the trouble of fearing
ridicule. I don't fear it."

"What then do you?"

"Nothing--now." And he leaned back in his chair.

"I like your 'now'!" she laughed across at him.

"Well, it's precisely that it fully comes to me at present that
I've kept you long enough. I know by this time, at any rate, what I
meant by my speech; and I really knew it the night of Chad's
dinner."

"Then why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it was difficult at the moment. I had already at that
moment done something for you, in the sense of what I had said the
day I went to see you; but I wasn't then sure of the importance I
might represent this as having."

She was all eagerness. "And you're sure now?"

"Yes; I see that, practically, I've done for you--had done for you
when you put me your question--all that it's as yet possible to me
to do. I feel now," he went on, "that it may go further than I
thought. What I did after my visit to you," he explained, "was to
write straight off to Mrs. Newsome about you, and I'm at last, from
one day to the other, expecting her answer. It's this answer that
will represent, as I believe, the consequences."

Patient and beautiful was her interest. "I see--the consequences of
your speaking for me." And she waited as if not to hustle him.

He acknowledged it by immediately going on. "The question, you
understand, was HOW I should save you. Well, I'm trying it by thus
letting her know that I consider you worth saving."

"I see--I see." Her eagerness broke through.

"How can I thank you enough?" He couldn't tell her that, however,
and she quickly pursued. "You do really, for yourself, consider
it?"

His only answer at first was to help her to the dish that had been
freshly put before them. "I've written to her again since then--
I've left her in no doubt of what I think. I've told her all about
you."

"Thanks--not so much. 'All about' me," she went on--"yes."

"All it seems to me you've done for him."

"Ah and you might have added all it seems to ME!" She laughed
again, while she took up her knife and fork, as in the cheer of
these assurances. "But you're not sure how she'll take it."

"No, I'll not pretend I'm sure."

"Voila." And she waited a moment. "I wish you'd tell me about her."

"Oh," said Strether with a slightly strained smile, "all that
need concern you about her is that she's really a grand person."

Madame de Vionnet seemed to demur. "Is that all that need concern
me about her?"

But Strether neglected the question. "Hasn't Chad talked to you?"

"Of his mother? Yes, a great deal--immensely. But not from your
point of view."

"He can't," our friend returned, "have said any ill of her."

"Not the least bit. He has given me, like you, the assurance that
she's really grand. But her being really grand is somehow just what
hasn't seemed to simplify our case. Nothing," she continued, "is
further from me than to wish to say a word against her; but of
course I feel how little she can like being told of her owing me
anything. No woman ever enjoys such an obligation to another
woman."

This was a proposition Strether couldn't contradict. "And yet what
other way could I have expressed to her what I felt? It's what
there was most to say about you."

"Do you mean then that she WILL be good to me?"

"It's what I'm waiting to see. But I've little doubt she would," he
added, "if she could comfortably see you."

It seemed to strike her as a happy, a beneficent thought. "Oh then
couldn't that be managed? Wouldn't she come out? Wouldn't she if
you so put it to her? DID you by any possibility?" she faintly
quavered.

"Oh no"--he was prompt. "Not that. It would be, much more, to give
an account of you that--since there's no question of YOUR paying
the visit--I should go home first."

It instantly made her graver. "And are you thinking of that?"

"Oh all the while, naturally."

"Stay with us--stay with us!" she exclaimed on this. "That's your
only way to make sure."

"To make sure of what?"

"Why that he doesn't break up. You didn't come out to do that to
him."

"Doesn't it depend," Strether returned after a moment, "on what you
mean by breaking up?"

"Oh you know well enough what I mean!"

His silence seemed again for a little to denote an understanding.
"You take for granted remarkable things."

"Yes, I do--to the extent that I don't take for granted vulgar
ones. You're perfectly capable of seeing that what you came out for
wasn't really at all to do what you'd now have to do."

"Ah it's perfectly simple," Strether good-humouredly pleaded. "I've
had but one thing to do--to put our case before him. To put it as
it could only be put here on the spot--by personal pressure. My
dear lady," he lucidly pursued, "my work, you see, is really done,
and my reasons for staying on even another day are none of the
best. Chad's in possession of our case and professes to do it full
justice. What remains is with himself. I've had my rest, my
amusement and refreshment; I've had, as we say at Woollett, a
lovely time. Nothing in it has been more lovely than this happy
meeting with you--in these fantastic conditions to which you've so
delightfully consented. I've a sense of success. It's what I
wanted. My getting all this good is what Chad has waited for, and I
gather that if I'm ready to go he's the same."

She shook her head with a finer deeper wisdom. "You're not ready.
If you're ready why did you write to Mrs. Newsome in the sense
you've mentioned to me?"

Strether considered. "I shan't go before I hear from her. You're
too much afraid of her," he added.

It produced between them a long look from which neither shrank. "I
don't think you believe that--believe I've not really reason to
fear her."

"She's capable of great generosity," Strether presently stated.

"Well then let her trust me a little. That's all I ask. Let her
recognise in spite of everything what I've done."

"Ah remember," our friend replied, "that she can't effectually
recognise it without seeing it for herself. Let Chad go over and
show her what you've done, and let him plead with her there for it
and, as it were, for YOU."

She measured the depth of this suggestion. "Do you give me your
word of honour that if she once has him there she won't do her best
to marry him?"

It made her companion, this enquiry, look again a while out at the
view; after which he spoke without sharpness. "When she sees for
herself what he is--"

But she had already broken in. "It's when she sees for herself what
he is that she'll want to marry him most."

Strether's attitude, that of due deference to what she said,
permitted him to attend for a minute to his luncheon. "I doubt if
that will come off. It won't be easy to make it."

"It will be easy if he remains there--and he'll remain for the
money. The money appears to be, as a probability, so hideously
much."

"Well," Strether presently concluded, "nothing COULD really hurt
you but his marrying."

She gave a strange light laugh. "Putting aside what may really hurt
HIM."

But her friend looked at her as if he had thought of that too.
"The question will come up, of course, of the future that you
yourself offer him."

She was leaning back now, but she fully faced him. "Well, let it
come up!"

"The point is that it's for Chad to make of it what he can. His
being proof against marriage will show what he does make."

"If he IS proof, yes"--she accepted the proposition. "But for
myself," she added, "the question is what YOU make."

"Ah I make nothing. It's not my affair."

"I beg your pardon. It's just there that, since you've taken it up
and are committed to it, it most intensely becomes yours. You're
not saving me, I take it, for your interest in myself, but for your
interest in our friend. The one's at any rate wholly dependent on
the other. You can't in honour not see me through," she wound up,
"because you can't in honour not see HIM."

Strange and beautiful to him was her quiet soft acuteness. The thing
that most moved him was really that she was so deeply serious. She had
none of the portentous forms of it, but he had never come in contact,
it struck him, with a force brought to so fine a head. Mrs. Newsome,
goodness knew, was serious; but it was nothing to this. He took it
all in, he saw it all together. "No," he mused, "I can't in honour
not see him."

Her face affected him as with an exquisite light. "You WILL then?"

"I will."

At this she pushed back her chair and was the next moment on her
feet. "Thank you!" she said with her hand held out to him across
the table and with no less a meaning in the words than her lips had
so particularly given them after Chad's dinner. The golden nail she
had then driven in pierced a good inch deeper. Yet he reflected
that he himself had only meanwhile done what he had made up his mind to
on the same occasion. So far as the essence of the matter went he had
simply stood fast on the spot on which he had then planted his feet.



II


He received three days after this a communication from America, in
the form of a scrap of blue paper folded and gummed, not reaching
him through his bankers, but delivered at his hotel by a small boy
in uniform, who, under instructions from the concierge, approached
him as he slowly paced the little court. It was the evening hour,
but daylight was long now and Paris more than ever penetrating. The
scent of flowers was in the streets, he had the whiff of violets
perpetually in his nose; and he had attached himself to sounds and
suggestions, vibrations of the air, human and dramatic, he
imagined, as they were not in other places, that came out for him
more and more as the mild afternoons deepened--a far-off hum, a
sharp near click on the asphalt, a voice calling, replying,
somewhere and as full of tone as an actor's in a play. He was to
dine at home, as usual, with Waymarsh--they had settled to that for
thrift and simplicity; and he now hung about before his friend came
down.

He read his telegram in the court, standing still a long time where
he had opened it and giving five minutes afterwards to the renewed
study of it. At last, quickly, he crumpled it up as if to get it
out of the way; in spite of which, however, he kept it there--
still kept it when, at the end of another turn, he had dropped into
a chair placed near a small table. Here, with his scrap of paper
compressed in his fist and further concealed by his folding his
arms tight, he sat for some time in thought, gazed before him so
straight that Waymarsh appeared and approached him without catching
his eye. The latter in fact, struck with his appearance, looked at
him hard for a single instant and then, as if determined to that
course by some special vividness in it, dropped back into the salon
de lecture without addressing him. But the pilgrim from Milrose
permitted himself still to observe the scene from behind the clear
glass plate of that retreat. Strether ended, as he sat, by a fresh
scrutiny of his compressed missive, which he smoothed out carefully
again as he placed it on his table. There it remained for some
minutes, until, at last looking up, he saw Waymarsh watching him
from within. It was on this that their eyes met--met for a moment
during which neither moved. But Strether then got up, folding his
telegram more carefully and putting it into his waistcoat pocket

A few minutes later the friends were seated together at dinner; but
Strether had meanwhile said nothing about it, and they eventually
parted, after coffee in the court, with nothing said on either
side. Our friend had moreover the consciousness that even less than
usual was on this occasion said between them, so that it was almost
as if each had been waiting for something from the other. Waymarsh
had always more or less the air of sitting at the door of his tent,
and silence, after so many weeks, had come to play its part in
their concert. This note indeed, to Strether's sense, had lately
taken a fuller tone, and it was his fancy to-night that they had
never quite so drawn it out. Yet it befell, none the less that he
closed the door to confidence when his companion finally asked him
if there were anything particular the matter with him. "Nothing,"
he replied, "more than usual."

On the morrow, however, at an early hour, he found occasion to give
an answer more in consonance with the facts. What was the matter
had continued to be so all the previous evening, the first hours of
which, after dinner, in his room, he had devoted to the copious
composition of a letter. He had quitted Waymarsh for this purpose,
leaving him to his own resources with less ceremony than their
wont, but finally coming down again with his letter unconcluded and
going forth into the streets without enquiry for his comrade. He
had taken a long vague walk, and one o'clock had struck before his
return and his re-ascent to his room by the aid of the glimmering
candle-end left for him on the shelf outside the porter's lodge. He
had possessed himself, on closing his door, of the numerous loose
sheets of his unfinished composition, and then, without reading
them over, had torn them into small pieces. He had thereupon slept--
as if it had been in some measure thanks to that sacrifice--the
sleep of the just, and had prolonged his rest considerably beyond
his custom. Thus it was that when, between nine and ten, the tap of
the knob of a walking-stick sounded on his door, he had not yet
made himself altogether presentable. Chad Newsome's bright deep
voice determined quickly enough none the less the admission of the
visitor. The little blue paper of the evening before, plainly an
object the more precious for its escape from premature destruction,
now lay on the sill of the open window, smoothed out afresh and
kept from blowing away by the superincumbent weight of his watch.
Chad, looking about with careless and competent criticism, as he
looked wherever he went immediately espied it and permitted himself
to fix it for a moment rather hard. After which he turned his eyes
to his host. "It has come then at last?"

Strether paused in the act of pinning his necktie. "Then you know--?
You've had one too?"

"No, I've had nothing, and I only know what I see. I see that thing
and I guess. Well," he added, "it comes as pat as in a play, for
I've precisely turned up this morning--as I would have done
yesterday, but it was impossible--to take you."

"To take me?" Strether had turned again to his glass.

"Back, at last, as I promised. I'm ready--I've really been ready
this month. I've only been waiting for you--as was perfectly right.
But you're better now; you're safe--I see that for myself; you've
got all your good. You're looking, this morning, as fit as a flea."

Strether, at his glass, finished dressing; consulting that witness
moreover on this last opinion. WAS he looking preternaturally fit?
There was something in it perhaps for Chad's wonderful eye, but he
had felt himself for hours rather in pieces. Such a judgement,
however, was after all but a contribution to his resolve; it
testified unwittingly to his wisdom. He was still firmer,
apparently--since it shone in him as a light--than he had flattered
himself. His firmness indeed was slightly compromised, as he faced
about to his friend, by the way this very personage looked--though
the case would of course have been worse hadn't the secret of
personal magnificence been at every hour Chad's unfailing
possession. There he was in all the pleasant morning freshness of
it--strong and sleek and gay, easy and fragrant and fathomless,
with happy health in his colour, and pleasant silver in his thick
young hair, and the right word for everything on the lips that his
clear brownness caused to show as red. He had never struck Strether
as personally such a success; it was as if now, for his definite
surrender, he had gathered himself vividly together. This, sharply
and rather strangely, was the form in which he was to be presented
to Woollett. Our friend took him in again--he was always taking him
in and yet finding that parts of him still remained out; though
even thus his image showed through a mist of other things. "I've
had a cable," Strether said, "from your mother."

"I dare say, my dear man. I hope she's well."

Strether hesitated. "No--she's not well, I'm sorry to have to tell
you."

"Ah," said Chad, "I must have had the instinct of it. All the more
reason then that we should start straight off."

Strether had now got together hat, gloves and stick, but Chad had
dropped on the sofa as if to show where he wished to make his
point. He kept observing his companion's things; he might have been
judging how quickly they could be packed. He might even have wished
to hint that he'd send his own servant to assist. "What do you
mean," Strether enquired, "by 'straight off'?"

"Oh by one of next week's boats. Everything at this season goes out
so light that berths will be easy anywhere."

Strether had in his hand his telegram, which he had kept there
after attaching his watch, and he now offered it to Chad, who,
however, with an odd movement, declined to take it. "Thanks, I'd
rather not. Your correspondence with Mother's your own affair. I'm
only WITH you both on it, whatever it is." Strether, at this, while
their eyes met, slowly folded the missive and put it in his pocket;
after which, before he had spoken again, Chad broke fresh ground.
"Has Miss Gostrey come back?"

But when Strether presently spoke it wasn't in answer. "It's not, I
gather, that your mother's physically ill; her health, on the
whole, this spring, seems to have been better than usual. But she's
worried, she's anxious, and it appears to have risen within the
last few days to a climax. We've tired out, between us, her
patience."

"Oh it isn't YOU!" Chad generously protested.

"I beg your pardon--it IS me." Strether was mild and melancholy,
but firm. He saw it far away and over his companion's head. "It's
very particularly me."

"Well then all the more reason. Marchons, marchons!" said the young
man gaily. His host, however, at this, but continued to stand
agaze; and he had the next thing repeated his question of a moment
before. "Has Miss Gostrey come back?"

"Yes, two days ago."

"Then you've seen her?"

"No--I'm to see her to-day." But Strether wouldn't linger now on
Miss Gostrey. "Your mother sends me an ultimatum. If I can't bring
you I'm to leave you; I'm to come at any rate myself."

"Ah but you CAN bring me now," Chad, from his sofa, reassuringly
replied.

Strether had a pause. "I don't think I understand you. Why was it
that, more than a month ago, you put it to me so urgently to let
Madame de Vionnet speak for you?"

"'Why'?" Chad considered, but he had it at his fingers' ends. "Why
but because I knew how well she'd do it? It was the way to keep you
quiet and, to that extent, do you good. Besides," he happily and
comfortably explained, "I wanted you really to know her and to get
the impression of her--and you see the good that HAS done you."

"Well," said Strether, "the way she has spoken for you, all the
same--so far as I've given her a chance--has only made me feel how
much she wishes to keep you. If you make nothing of that I don't
see why you wanted me to listen to her."

"Why my dear man," Chad exclaimed, "I make everything of it! How
can you doubt--?"

"I doubt only because you come to me this morning with your signal
to start."

Chad stared, then gave a laugh. "And isn't my signal to start just
what you've been waiting for?"

Strether debated; he took another turn. "This last month I've been
awaiting, I think, more than anything else, the message I have
here."

"You mean you've been afraid of it?"

"Well, I was doing my business in my own way. And I suppose your
present announcement," Strether went on, "isn't merely the result
of your sense of what I've expected. Otherwise you wouldn't have
put me in relation--" But he paused, pulling up.

At this Chad rose. "Ah HER wanting me not to go has nothing to do
with it! It's only because she's afraid--afraid of the way that,
over there, I may get caught. But her fear's groundless."

He had met again his companion's sufficiently searching look. "Are
you tired of her?"

Chad gave him in reply to this, with a movement of the head, the
strangest slow smile he had ever had from him. "Never."

It had immediately, on Strether's imagination, so deep and soft an
effect that our friend could only for the moment keep it before
him. "Never?"

"Never," Chad obligingly and serenely repeated.

It made his companion take several more steps. "Then YOU'RE not
afraid."

"Afraid to go?"

Strether pulled up again. "Afraid to stay."

The young man looked brightly amazed. "You want me now to 'stay'?"

"If I don't immediately sail the Pococks will immediately come out.
That's what I mean," said Strether, "by your mother's ultimatum ."

Chad showed a still livelier, but not an alarmed interest. "She has
turned on Sarah and Jim?"

Strether joined him for an instant in the vision. "Oh and you may
be sure Mamie. THAT'S whom she's turning on."

This also Chad saw--he laughed out. "Mamie--to corrupt me?"

"Ah," said Strether, "she's very charming."

"So you've already more than once told me. I should like to see
her."

Something happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the
way he said this, brought home again to his companion the facility
of his attitude and the enviability of his state. "See her then by
all means. And consider too," Strether went on, "that you really
give your sister a lift in letting her come to you. You give her a
couple of months of Paris, which she hasn't seen, if I'm not
mistaken, since just after she was married, and which I'm sure she
wants but the pretext to visit."

Chad listened, but with all his own knowledge of the world. "She
has had it, the pretext, these several years, yet she has never
taken it."

"Do you mean YOU?" Strether after an instant enquired.

"Certainly--the lone exile. And whom do you mean?" said Chad.

"Oh I mean ME. I'm her pretext. That is--for it comes to the same
thing--I'm your mother's."

"Then why," Chad asked, "doesn't Mother come herself?"

His friend gave him a long look. "Should you like her to?" And as
he for the moment said nothing: "It's perfectly open to you to
cable for her."

Chad continued to think. "Will she come if I do?"

"Quite possibly. But try, and you'll see."

"Why don't YOU try?" Chad after a moment asked.

"Because I don't want to."

Chad thought. "Don't desire her presence here?"

Strether faced the question, and his answer was the more emphatic.
"Don't put it off, my dear boy, on ME!"

"Well--I see what you mean. I'm sure you'd behave beautifully but you
DON'T want to see her. So I won't play you that trick.'

"Ah," Strether declared, "I shouldn't call it a trick. You've a
perfect right, and it would be perfectly straight of you." Then he
added in a different tone: "You'd have moreover, in the person of
Madame de Vionnet, a very interesting relation prepared for her."

Their eyes, on this proposition, continued to meet, but Chad's
pleasant and bold, never flinched for a moment. He got up at last
and he said something with which Strether was struck. "She wouldn't
understand her, but that makes no difference. Madame de Vionnet
would like to see her. She'd like to be charming to her. She
believes she could work it."

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