The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

as if he had pressed a spring; it had a ready abundance at which he even winced; so that he took a moment to meet it. “You certainly then wouldn’t have seemed worth all you’ve let me in for. You’ve defined yourself better. Your value has quintupled.”

“Well then, wouldn’t that be enough⁠—?”

Chad had risked it jocosely, but Strether remained blank. “Enough?”

“If one should wish to live on one’s accumulations?” After which, however, as his friend appeared cold to the joke, the young man as easily dropped it. “Of course I really never forget, night or day, what I owe her. I owe her everything. I give you my word of honour,” he frankly rang out, “that I’m not a bit tired of her.” Strether at this only gave him a stare: the way youth could express itself was again and again a wonder. He meant no harm, though he might after all be capable of much; yet he spoke of being “tired” of her almost as he might have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner. “She has never for a moment yet bored me⁠—never been wanting, as the cleverest women sometimes are, in tact. She has never talked about her tact⁠—as even they too sometimes talk; but she has always had it. She has never had it more”⁠—he handsomely made the point⁠—“than just lately.” And he scrupulously went further. “She has never been anything I could call a burden.”

Strether for a moment said nothing; then he spoke gravely, with his shade of dryness deepened. “Oh if you didn’t do her justice⁠—!”

“I should be a beast, eh?”

Strether devoted no time to saying what he would be; that, visibly, would take them far. If there was nothing for it but to repeat, however, repetition was no mistake. “You owe her everything⁠—very much more than she can ever owe you. You’ve in other words duties to her, of the most positive sort; and I don’t see what other duties⁠—as the others are presented to you⁠—can be held to go before them.”

Chad looked at him with a smile. “And you know of course about the others, eh?⁠—since it’s you yourself who have done the presenting.”

“Much of it⁠—yes⁠—and to the best of my ability. But not all⁠—from the moment your sister took my place.”

“She didn’t,” Chad returned. “Sally took a place, certainly; but it was never, I saw from the first moment, to be yours. No one⁠—with us⁠—will ever take yours. It wouldn’t be possible.”

“Ah of course,” sighed Strether, “I knew it. I believe you’re right. No one in the world, I imagine, was ever so portentously solemn. There I am,” he added with another sigh, as if weary enough, on occasion, of this truth. “I was made so.”

Chad appeared for a little to consider the way he was made; he might for this purpose have measured him up and down. His conclusion favoured the fact. “You have never needed anyone to make you better. There has never been anyone good enough. They couldn’t,” the young man declared.

His friend hesitated. “I beg your pardon. They have.”

Chad showed, not without amusement, his doubt. “Who then?”

Strether⁠—though a little dimly⁠—smiled at him. “Women⁠—too.”

“ ‘Two’?”⁠—Chad stared and laughed. “Oh I don’t believe, for such work, in any more than one! So you’re proving too much. And what is beastly, at all events,” he added, “is losing you.”

Strether had set himself in motion for departure, but at this he paused. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid⁠—?”

“Of doing wrong. I mean away from my eye.” Before Chad could speak, however, he had taken himself up. “I am, certainly,” he laughed, “prodigious.”

“Yes, you spoil us for all the stupid⁠—!” This might have been, on Chad’s part, in its extreme emphasis, almost too freely extravagant; but it was full, plainly enough, of the intention of comfort, it carried with it a protest against doubt and a promise, positively, of performance. Picking up a hat in the vestibule he came out with his friend, came downstairs, took his arm, affectionately, as to help and guide him, treating him if not exactly as aged and infirm, yet as a noble eccentric who appealed to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next. “You needn’t tell me, you needn’t tell me!”⁠—this again as they proceeded, he wished to make Strether feel. What he needn’t tell him was now at last, in the geniality of separation, anything at all it concerned him to know. He knew, up to the hilt⁠—that really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they lingered on it as they had lingered in their walk to Strether’s hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou. But there was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn’t, as he said, tell him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of the art of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this announcement while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what had taken him, with strange inconsequence, over to London. He appeared at all events to have been looking into the question and had encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically worked presented itself thus as the great new force. “It really does the thing, you know.”

They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. “Affects, you mean, the sale of the object advertised?”

“Yes⁠—but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had supposed. I mean of course when it’s done as one makes out that in our roaring age, it can be done. I’ve been finding out a little, though it doubtless doesn’t amount to much more than what you originally, so awfully vividly⁠—and all, very nearly, that first