The Ambassadors, Henry James [short novels in english .txt] 📗

a sense of the lurid in the picture was also perhaps sufficiently protected. He had a moment of wondering, while his friend went on, what sins might be especially Roumelian. She went on at all events to the mention of her having met the young thing⁠—again by some Swiss lake⁠—in her first married state, which had appeared for the few intermediate years not at least violently disturbed. She had been lovely at that moment, delightful to her, full of responsive emotion, of amused recognitions and amusing reminders, and then once more, much later, after a long interval, equally but differently charming⁠—touching and rather mystifying for the five minutes of an encounter at a railway-station en province, during which it had come out that her life was all changed. Miss Gostrey had understood enough to see, essentially, what had happened, and yet had beautifully dreamed that she was herself faultless. There were doubtless depths in her, but she was all right; Strether would see if she wasn’t. She was another person however⁠—that had been promptly marked⁠—from the small child of nature at the Geneva school, a little person quite made over (as foreign women were, compared with American) by marriage. Her situation too had evidently cleared itself up; there would have been⁠—all that was possible⁠—a judicial separation. She had settled in Paris, brought up her daughter, steered her boat. It was no very pleasant boat⁠—especially there⁠—to be in; but Marie de Vionnet would have headed straight. She would have friends, certainly⁠—and very good ones. There she was at all events⁠—and it was very interesting. Her knowing Mr. Chad didn’t in the least prove she hadn’t friends; what it proved was what good ones he had. “I saw that,” said Miss Gostrey, “that night at the Français; it came out for me in three minutes. I saw her⁠—or somebody like her. And so,” she immediately added, “did you.”

“Oh no⁠—not anybody like her!” Strether laughed. “But you mean,” he as promptly went on, “that she has had such an influence on him?”

Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. “She has brought him up for her daughter.”

Their eyes, as so often, in candid conference, through their settled glasses, met over it long; after which Strether’s again took in the whole place. They were quite alone there now. “Mustn’t she rather⁠—in the time then⁠—have rushed it?”

“Ah she won’t of course have lost an hour. But that’s just the good mother⁠—the good French one. You must remember that of her⁠—that as a mother she’s French, and that for them there’s a special providence. It precisely however⁠—that she mayn’t have been able to begin as far back as she’d have liked⁠—makes her grateful for aid.”

Strether took this in as they slowly moved to the house on their way out. “She counts on me then to put the thing through?”

“Yes⁠—she counts on you. Oh and first of all of course,” Miss Gostrey added, “on her⁠—well, convincing you.”

“Ah,” her friend returned, “she caught Chad young!”

“Yes, but there are women who are for all your ‘times of life.’ They’re the most wonderful sort.”

She had laughed the words out, but they brought her companion, the next thing, to a stand. “Is what you mean that she’ll try to make a fool of me?”

“Well, I’m wondering what she will⁠—with an opportunity⁠—make.”

“What do you call,” Strether asked, “an opportunity? My going to see her?”

“Ah you must go to see her”⁠—Miss Gostrey was a trifle evasive. “You can’t not do that. You’d have gone to see the other woman. I mean if there had been one⁠—a different sort. It’s what you came out for.”

It might be; but Strether distinguished. “I didn’t come out to see this sort.”

She had a wonderful look at him now. “Are you disappointed she isn’t worse?”

He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the frankest of answers. “Yes. If she were worse she’d be better for our purpose. It would be simpler.”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But won’t this be pleasanter?”

“Ah you know,” he promptly replied, “I didn’t come out⁠—wasn’t that just what you originally reproached me with?⁠—for the pleasant.”

“Precisely. Therefore I say again what I said at first. You must take things as they come. Besides,” Miss Gostrey added, “I’m not afraid for myself.”

“For yourself⁠—?”

“Of your seeing her. I trust her. There’s nothing she’ll say about me. In fact there’s nothing she can.”

Strether wondered⁠—little as he had thought of this. Then he broke out. “Oh you women!”

There was something in it at which she flushed. “Yes⁠—there we are. We’re abysses.” At last she smiled. “But I risk her!”

He gave himself a shake. “Well then so do I!” But he added as they passed into the house that he would see Chad the first thing in the morning.

This was the next day the more easily effected that the young man, as it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He had himself as yet had nothing⁠—they would sit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into the Boulevard they had, for their greater privacy, sat down among twenty others, our friend saw in his companion’s move a fear of the advent of Waymarsh. It was the first time Chad had to that extent given this personage “away”; and Strether found himself wondering of what it was symptomatic. He made out in a moment that the youth was in earnest as he hadn’t yet seen him; which in its turn threw a ray perhaps a trifle startling on what they had each up to that time been treating as earnestness. It was sufficiently flattering however that the real thing⁠—if this was at last the real thing⁠—should have been determined, as appeared, precisely by an accretion of Strether’s importance. For this was what it quickly enough came