The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

“Being here, you mean, with me?”

“Yes, and talking to you as I do. I’ve known you a few hours, and I’ve known him all my life; so that if the ease I thus take with you about him isn’t magnificent”⁠—and the thought of it held him a moment⁠—“why it’s rather base.”

“It’s magnificent!” said Miss Gostrey to make an end of it. “And you should hear,” she added, “the ease I take⁠—and I above all intend to take⁠—with Mr. Waymarsh.”

Strether thought. “About me? Ah that’s no equivalent. The equivalent would be Waymarsh’s himself serving me up⁠—his remorseless analysis of me. And he’ll never do that”⁠—he was sadly clear. “He’ll never remorselessly analyse me.” He quite held her with the authority of this. “He’ll never say a word to you about me.”

She took it in; she did it justice; yet after an instant her reason, her restless irony, disposed of it. “Of course he won’t. For what do you take people, that they’re able to say words about anything, able remorselessly to analyse? There are not many like you and me. It will be only because he’s too stupid.”

It stirred in her friend a sceptical echo which was at the same time the protest of the faith of years. “Waymarsh stupid?”

“Compared with you.”

Strether had still his eyes on the jeweller’s front, and he waited a moment to answer. “He’s a success of a kind that I haven’t approached.”

“Do you mean he has made money?”

“He makes it⁠—to my belief. And I,” said Strether, “though with a back quite as bent, have never made anything. I’m a perfectly equipped failure.”

He feared an instant she’d ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was glad she didn’t, for he really didn’t know to what the truth on this unpleasant point mightn’t have prompted her. She only, however, confirmed his assertion. “Thank goodness you’re a failure⁠—it’s why I so distinguish you! Anything else today is too hideous. Look about you⁠—look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour? Look, moreover,” she continued, “at me.”

For a little accordingly their eyes met. “I see,” Strether returned. “You too are out of it.”

“The superiority you discern in me,” she concurred, “announces my futility. If you knew,” she sighed, “the dreams of my youth! But our realities are what has brought us together. We’re beaten brothers in arms.”

He smiled at her kindly enough, but he shook his head. “It doesn’t alter the fact that you’re expensive. You’ve cost me already⁠—!”

But he had hung fire. “Cost you what?”

“Well, my past⁠—in one great lump. But no matter,” he laughed: “I’ll pay with my last penny.”

Her attention had unfortunately now been engaged by their comrade’s return, for Waymarsh met their view as he came out of his shop. “I hope he hasn’t paid,” she said, “with his last; though I’m convinced he has been splendid, and has been so for you.”

“Ah no⁠—not that!”

“Then for me?”

“Quite as little.” Waymarsh was by this time near enough to show signs his friend could read, though he seemed to look almost carefully at nothing in particular.

“Then for himself?”

“For nobody. For nothing. For freedom.”

“But what has freedom to do with it?”

Strether’s answer was indirect. “To be as good as you and me. But different.”

She had had time to take in their companion’s face; and with it, as such things were easy for her, she took in all. “Different⁠—yes. But better!”

If Waymarsh was sombre he was also indeed almost sublime. He told them nothing, left his absence unexplained, and though they were convinced he had made some extraordinary purchase they were never to learn its nature. He only glowered grandly at the tops of the old gables. “It’s the sacred rage,” Strether had had further time to say; and this sacred rage was to become between them, for convenient comprehension, the description of one of his periodical necessities. It was Strether who eventually contended that it did make him better than they. But by that time Miss Gostrey was convinced that she didn’t want to be better than Strether.

Those occasions on which Strether was, in association with the exile from Milrose, to see the sacred rage glimmer through would doubtless have their due periodicity; but our friend had meanwhile to find names for many other matters. On no evening of his life perhaps, as he reflected, had he had to supply so many as on the third of his short stay in London; an evening spent by Miss Gostrey’s side at one of the theatres, to which he had found himself transported, without his own hand raised, on the mere expression of a conscientious wonder. She knew her theatre, she knew her play, as she had triumphantly known, three days running, everything else, and the moment filled to the brim, for her companion, that apprehension of the interesting which, whether or no the interesting happened to filter through his guide, strained now to its limits his brief opportunity. Waymarsh hadn’t come with them; he had seen plays enough, he signified, before Strether had joined him⁠—an affirmation that had its full force when his friend ascertained by questions that he had seen two and a circus. Questions as to what he had seen had on him indeed an effect only less favourable than questions as to what he hadn’t. He liked the former to be discriminated; but how could it be done, Strether asked of their constant counsellor, without discriminating the latter?

Miss Gostrey had dined with him at his hotel, face to face over a small table on which the lighted candles had rose-coloured shades; and the rose-coloured shades and the small table and the soft fragrance of the lady⁠—had anything to his mere sense ever been so soft?⁠—were so many touches in he scarce knew what positive high picture. He had been to the theatre, even to the opera, in Boston, with Mrs. Newsome, more than once acting as her only escort; but there had been