The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

to deal with them was to walk on water what wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen higher than round this woman. He presently found himself taking a long look from her, and the next thing he knew he had uttered all his thought. “You’re afraid for your life!”

It drew out her long look, and he soon enough saw why. A spasm came into her face, the tears she had already been unable to hide overflowed at first in silence, and then, as the sound suddenly comes from a child, quickened to gasps, to sobs. She sat and covered her face with her hands, giving up all attempt at a manner. “It’s how you see me, it’s how you see me”⁠—she caught her breath with it⁠—“and it’s as I am, and as I must take myself, and of course it’s no matter.” Her emotion was at first so incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine free range of bliss and bale. He couldn’t say it was not no matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway⁠—quite as if what he thought of her had nothing to do with it. It was actually moreover as if he didn’t think of her at all, as if he could think of nothing but the passion, mature, abysmal, pitiful, she represented, and the possibilities she betrayed. She was older for him tonight, visibly less exempt from the touch of time; but she was as much as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition, it had been given him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for her young man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the maidservant wouldn’t; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened. “Of course I’m afraid for my life. But that’s nothing. It isn’t that.”

He was silent a little longer, as if thinking what it might be. “There’s something I have in mind that I can still do.”

But she threw off at last, with a sharp sad headshake, drying her eyes, what he could still do. “I don’t care for that. Of course, as I’ve said, you’re acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what’s for yourself is no more my business⁠—though I may reach out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it⁠—than if it were something in Timbuktu. It’s only that you don’t snub me, as you’ve had fifty chances to do⁠—it’s only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one’s manners. In spite of your patience, all the same,” she went on, “you’d do anything rather than be with us here, even if that were possible. You’d do everything for us but be mixed up with us⁠—which is a statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners. You can say ‘What’s the use of talking of things that at the best are impossible?’ What is of course the use? It’s only my little madness. You’d talk if you were tormented. And I don’t mean now about him. Oh for him⁠—!” Positively, strangely, bitterly, as it seemed to Strether, she gave “him,” for the moment, away. “You don’t care what I think of you; but I happen to care what you think of me. And what you might,” she added. “What you perhaps even did.”

He gained time. “What I did⁠—?”

“Did think before. Before this. Didn’t you think⁠—?”

But he had already stopped her. “I didn’t think anything. I never think a step further than I’m obliged to.”

“That’s perfectly false, I believe,” she returned⁠—“except that you may, no doubt, often pull up when things become too ugly; or even, I’ll say, to save you a protest, too beautiful. At any rate, even so far as it’s true, we’ve thrust on you appearances that you’ve had to take in and that have therefore made your obligation. Ugly or beautiful⁠—it doesn’t matter what we call them⁠—you were getting on without them, and that’s where we’re detestable. We bore you⁠—that’s where we are. And we may well⁠—for what we’ve cost you. All you can do now is not to think at all. And I who should have liked to seem to you⁠—well, sublime!”

He could only after a moment reecho Miss Barrace. “You’re wonderful!”

“I’m old and abject and hideous”⁠—she went on as without hearing him. “Abject above all. Or old above all. It’s when one’s old that it’s worst. I don’t care what becomes of it⁠—let what will; there it is. It’s a doom⁠—I know it; you can’t see it more than I do myself. Things have to happen as they will.” With which she came back again to what, face to face with him, had so quite broken down. “Of course you wouldn’t, even if possible, and no matter what may happen to you, be near us. But think of me, think of me⁠—!” She exhaled it into air.

He took refuge in repeating something he had already said and that she had made nothing of. “There’s something I believe I can still do.” And he put his hand out for goodbye.

She again made nothing of it; she went on with her insistence. “That won’t help you. There’s nothing to help you.”

“Well, it may help you,” he said.

She shook her head. “There’s not a grain of certainty in my future⁠—for the only