The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

They now took on to his fancy, Miss Gostrey and he, the image of the Babes in the Wood; they could trust the merciful elements to let them continue at peace. He had been great already, as he knew, at postponements; but he had only to get afresh into the rhythm of one to feel its fine attraction. It amused him to say to himself that he might for all the world have been going to die⁠—die resignedly; the scene was filled for him with so deep a deathbed hush, so melancholy a charm. That meant the postponement of everything else⁠—which made so for the quiet lapse of life; and the postponement in especial of the reckoning to come⁠—unless indeed the reckoning to come were to be one and the same thing with extinction. It faced him, the reckoning, over the shoulder of much interposing experience⁠—which also faced him; and one would float to it doubtless duly through these caverns of Kubla Khan. It was really behind everything; it hadn’t merged in what he had done; his final appreciation of what he had done⁠—his appreciation on the spot⁠—would provide it with its main sharpness. The spot so focused was of course Woollett, and he was to see, at the best, what Woollett would be with everything there changed for him. Wouldn’t that revelation practically amount to the windup of his career? Well, the summer’s end would show; his suspense had meanwhile exactly the sweetness of vain delay; and he had with it, we should mention, other pastimes than Maria’s company⁠—plenty of separate musings in which his luxury failed him but at one point. He was well in port, the outer sea behind him, and it was only a matter of getting ashore. There was a question that came and went for him, however, as he rested against the side of his ship, and it was a little to get rid of the obsession that he prolonged his hours with Miss Gostrey. It was a question about himself, but it could only be settled by seeing Chad again; it was indeed his principal reason for wanting to see Chad. After that it wouldn’t signify⁠—it was a ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest. Only the young man must be there to take the words. Once they were taken he wouldn’t have a question left; none, that is, in connection with this particular affair. It wouldn’t then matter even to himself that he might now have been guilty of speaking because of what he had forfeited. That was the refinement of his supreme scruple⁠—he wished so to leave what he had forfeited out of account. He wished not to do anything because he had missed something else, because he was sore or sorry or impoverished, because he was maltreated or desperate; he wished to do everything because he was lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been. Thus it was that while he virtually hung about for Chad he kept mutely putting it: “You’ve been chucked, old boy; but what has that to do with it?” It would have sickened him to feel vindictive.

These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his idleness, and they were presently lost in a new light from Maria. She had a fresh fact for him before the week was out, and she practically met him with it on his appearing one night. He hadn’t on this day seen her, but had planned presenting himself in due course to ask her to dine with him somewhere out of doors, on one of the terraces, in one of the gardens, of which the Paris of summer was profuse. It had then come on to rain, so that, disconcerted, he changed his mind; dining alone at home, a little stuffily and stupidly, and waiting on her afterwards to make up his loss. He was sure within a minute that something had happened; it was so in the air of the rich little room that he had scarcely to name his thought. Softly lighted, the whole colour of the place, with its vague values, was in cool fusion⁠—an effect that made the visitor stand for a little agaze. It was as if in doing so now he had felt a recent presence⁠—his recognition of the passage of which his hostess in turn divined. She had scarcely to say it⁠—“Yes, she has been here, and this time I received her.” It wasn’t till a minute later that she added: “There being, as I understand you, no reason now⁠—!”

“None for your refusing?”

“No⁠—if you’ve done what you’ve had to do.”

“I’ve certainly so far done it,” Strether said, “as that you needn’t fear the effect, or the appearance of coming between us. There’s nothing between us now but what we ourselves have put there, and not an inch of room for anything else whatever. Therefore you’re only beautifully with us as always⁠—though doubtless now, if she has talked to you, rather more with us than less. Of course if she came,” he added, “it was to talk to you.”

“It was to talk to me,” Maria returned; on which he was further sure that she was practically in possession of what he himself hadn’t yet told her. He was even sure she was in possession of things he himself couldn’t have told; for the consciousness of them was now all in her face and accompanied there with a shade of sadness that marked in her the close of all uncertainties. It came out for him more than ever yet that she had had from the first a knowledge she believed him not to have had, a knowledge the sharp acquisition of which might be destined to make a difference for him. The difference for him might not inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a