The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

with Chad he was now on ground⁠—Chad he could meet; so pleasant a confidence in that and in everything did the young man freely exhale. There was the whole of a story in his tone to his companion, and he spoke indeed as if already of the family. It made Strether guess the more quickly what it might be about which Madame de Vionnet was so urgent. Having seen him then she had found him easy; she wished to have it out with him that some way for the young people must be discovered, some way that would not impose as a condition the transplantation of her daughter. He already saw himself discussing with this lady the attractions of Woollett as a residence for Chad’s companion. Was that youth going now to trust her with the affair⁠—so that it would be after all with one of his “lady-friends” that his mother’s missionary should be condemned to deal? It was quite as if for an instant the two men looked at each other on this question. But there was no mistaking at last Chad’s pride in the display of such a connection. This was what had made him so carry himself while, three minutes before, he was bringing it into view; what had caused his friend, first catching sight of him, to be so struck with his air. It was, in a word, just when he thus finally felt Chad putting things straight off on him that he envied him, as he had mentioned to little Bilham, most. The whole exhibition however was but a matter of three or four minutes, and the author of it had soon explained that, as Madame de Vionnet was immediately going “on,” this could be for Jeanne but a snatch. They would all meet again soon, and Strether was meanwhile to stay and amuse himself⁠—“I’ll pick you up again in plenty of time.” He took the girl off as he had brought her, and Strether, with the faint sweet foreignness of her “Au revoir, monsieur!” in his ears as a note almost unprecedented, watched them recede side by side and felt how, once more, her companion’s relation to her got an accent from it. They disappeared among the others and apparently into the house; whereupon our friend turned round to give out to little Bilham the conviction of which he was full. But there was no little Bilham any more; little Bilham had within the few moments, for reasons of his own, proceeded further: a circumstance by which, in its order, Strether was also sensibly affected. III

Chad was not in fact on this occasion to keep his promise of coming back; but Miss Gostrey had soon presented herself with an explanation of his failure. There had been reasons at the last for his going off with ces dames; and he had asked her with much instance to come out and take charge of their friend. She did so, Strether felt as she took her place beside him, in a manner that left nothing to desire. He had dropped back on his bench, alone again for a time, and the more conscious for little Bilham’s defection of his unexpressed thought; in respect to which however this next converser was a still more capacious vessel. “It’s the child!” he had exclaimed to her almost as soon as she appeared; and though her direct response was for some time delayed he could feel in her meanwhile the working of this truth. It might have been simply, as she waited, that they were now in presence altogether of truth spreading like a flood and not for the moment to be offered her in the mere cupful; inasmuch as who should ces dames prove to be but persons about whom⁠—once thus face to face with them⁠—she found she might from the first have told him almost everything? This would have freely come had he taken the simple precaution of giving her their name. There could be no better example⁠—and she appeared to note it with high amusement⁠—than the way, making things out already so much for himself, he was at last throwing precautions to the winds. They were neither more nor less, she and the child’s mother, than old school-friends⁠—friends who had scarcely met for years but whom this unlooked-for chance had brought together with a rush. It was a relief, Miss Gostrey hinted, to feel herself no longer groping; she was unaccustomed to grope and as a general thing, he might well have seen, made straight enough for her clue. With the one she had now picked up in her hands there need be at least no waste of wonder. “She’s coming to see me⁠—that’s for you,” Strether’s counsellor continued; “but I don’t require it to know where I am.”

The waste of wonder might be proscribed; but Strether, characteristically, was even by this time in the immensity of space. “By which you mean that you know where she is?”

She just hesitated. “I mean that if she comes to see me I shall⁠—now that I’ve pulled myself round a bit after the shock⁠—not be at home.”

Strether hung poised. “You call it⁠—your recognition⁠—a shock?”

She gave one of her rare flickers of impatience. “It was a surprise, an emotion. Don’t be so literal. I wash my hands of her.”

Poor Strether’s face lengthened. “She’s impossible⁠—?”

“She’s even more charming than I remembered her.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

She had to think how to put it. “Well, I’m impossible. It’s impossible. Everything’s impossible.”

He looked at her an instant. “I see where you’re coming out. Everything’s possible.” Their eyes had on it in fact an exchange of some duration; after which he pursued: “Isn’t it that beautiful child?” Then as she still said nothing: “Why don’t you mean to receive her?”

Her answer in an instant rang clear. “Because I wish to keep out of the business.”

It provoked in him a weak wail. “You’re going to abandon me now?”

“No, I’m