The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

one’s tongue, one must renounce all claim to be an object of interest. It’s in the name of what I do care about that I’ve tried still to keep hold of you. How can I be indifferent,” she asked, “to how I appear to you?” And as he found himself unable immediately to say: “Why, if you’re going, need you, after all? Is it impossible you should stay on⁠—so that one mayn’t lose you?”

“Impossible I should live with you here instead of going home?”

“Not ‘with’ us, if you object to that, but near enough to us, somewhere, for us to see you⁠—well,” she beautifully brought out, “when we feel we must. How shall we not sometimes feel it? I’ve wanted to see you often when I couldn’t,” she pursued, “all these last weeks. How shan’t I then miss you now, with the sense of your being gone forever?” Then as if the straightness of this appeal, taking him unprepared, had visibly left him wondering: “Where is your ‘home’ moreover now⁠—what has become of it? I’ve made a change in your life, I know I have; I’ve upset everything in your mind as well; in your sense of⁠—what shall I call it?⁠—all the decencies and possibilities. It gives me a kind of detestation⁠—” She pulled up short.

Oh but he wanted to hear. “Detestation of what?”

“Of everything⁠—of life.”

“Ah that’s too much,” he laughed⁠—“or too little!”

“Too little, precisely”⁠—she was eager. “What I hate is myself⁠—when I think that one has to take so much, to be happy, out of the lives of others, and that one isn’t happy even then. One does it to cheat one’s self and to stop one’s mouth⁠—but that’s only at the best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false.” Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him⁠—so fine was the quaver of her quietness. He felt what he had felt before with her, that there was always more behind what she showed, and more and more again behind that. “You know so, at least,” she added, “where you are!”

“You ought to know it indeed then; for isn’t what you’ve been giving exactly what has brought us together this way? You’ve been making, as I’ve so fully let you know I’ve felt,” Strether said, “the most precious present I’ve ever seen made, and if you can’t sit down peacefully on that performance you are, no doubt, born to torment yourself. But you ought,” he wound up, “to be easy.”

“And not trouble you any more, no doubt⁠—not thrust on you even the wonder and the beauty of what I’ve done; only let you regard our business as over, and well over, and see you depart in a peace that matches my own? No doubt, no doubt, no doubt,” she nervously repeated⁠—“all the more that I don’t really pretend I believe you couldn’t, for yourself, not have done what you have. I don’t pretend you feel yourself victimised, for this evidently is the way you live, and it’s what⁠—we’re agreed⁠—is the best way. Yes, as you say,” she continued after a moment, “I ought to be easy and rest on my work. Well then here am I doing so. I am easy. You’ll have it for your last impression. When is it you say you go?” she asked with a quick change.

He took some time to reply⁠—his last impression was more and more so mixed a one. It produced in him a vague disappointment, a drop that was deeper even than the fall of his elation the previous night. The good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn’t there to enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand gay finale. Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water. What was at bottom the matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might⁠—what was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was after all renewedly afraid; the strange strength of her passion was the very strength of her fear; she clung to him, Lambert Strether, as to a source of safety she had tested, and, generous graceful truthful as she might try to be, exquisite as she was, she dreaded the term of his being within reach. With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited. For at the end of all things they were mysterious: she had but made Chad what he was⁠—so why could she think she had made him infinite? She had made him better, she had made him best, she had made him anything one would; but it came to our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the less only Chad. Strether had the sense that he, a little, had made him too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order, and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience should be so transcendently prized. It might have made Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed⁠—such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again⁠—it took women, it took women; if