The Ambassadors by Henry James (read people like a book .TXT) 📕

how much more, in this place, he should know himself “in” hadn’t his friend been on the spot to measure the amount to his appetite. Her compact and crowded little chambers, almost dusky, as they at first struck him, with accumulations, represented a supreme general adjustment to opportunities and conditions. Wherever he looked he saw an old ivory or an old brocade, and he scarce knew where to sit for fear of a misappliance. The life of the occupant struck him of a sudden as more charged with possession even than Chad’s or than Miss Barrace’s; wide as his glimpse had lately become of the empire of “things,” what was before him still enlarged it; the lust of the eyes and the pride of life had indeed thus their temple. It was the innermost nook of the shrine⁠—as brown as a pirate’s cave. In the brownness were glints of gold; patches of purple were in the gloom; objects all that caught, through the muslin, with their high rarity, the light of the low windows. Nothing was clear about them but that they were precious, and they brushed his ignorance with their contempt as a flower, in a liberty taken with him, might have been whisked under his nose. But after a full look at his hostess he knew none the less what most concerned him. The circle in which they stood together was warm with life, and every question between them would live there as nowhere else. A question came up as soon as they had spoken, for his answer, with a laugh, was quickly: “Well, they’ve got hold of me!” Much of their talk on this first occasion was his development of that truth. He was extraordinarily glad to see her, expressing to her frankly what she most showed him, that one might live for years without a blessing unsuspected, but that to know it at last for no more than three days was to need it or miss it forever. She was the blessing that had now become his need, and what could prove it better than that without her he had lost himself?

“What do you mean?” she asked with an absence of alarm that, correcting him as if he had mistaken the “period” of one of her pieces, gave him afresh a sense of her easy movement through the maze he had but begun to tread. “What in the name of all the Pococks have you managed to do?”

“Why exactly the wrong thing. I’ve made a frantic friend of little Bilham.”

“Ah that sort of thing was of the essence of your case and to have been allowed for from the first.” And it was only after this that, quite as a minor matter, she asked who in the world little Bilham might be. When she learned that he was a friend of Chad’s and living for the time in Chad’s rooms in Chad’s absence, quite as if acting in Chad’s spirit and serving Chad’s cause, she showed, however, more interest. “Should you mind my seeing him? Only once, you know,” she added.

“Oh the oftener the better: he’s amusing⁠—he’s original.”

“He doesn’t shock you?” Miss Gostrey threw out.

“Never in the world! We escape that with a perfection⁠—! I feel it to be largely, no doubt, because I don’t half-understand him; but our modus vivendi isn’t spoiled even by that. You must dine with me to meet him,” Strether went on. “Then you’ll see.’

“Are you giving dinners?”

“Yes⁠—there I am. That’s what I mean.”

All her kindness wondered. “That you’re spending too much money?”

“Dear no⁠—they seem to cost so little. But that I do it to them. I ought to hold off.”

She thought again⁠—she laughed. “The money you must be spending to think it cheap! But I must be out of it⁠—to the naked eye.”

He looked for a moment as if she were really failing him. “Then you won’t meet them?” It was almost as if she had developed an unexpected personal prudence.

She hesitated. “Who are they⁠—first?”

“Why little Bilham to begin with.” He kept back for the moment Miss Barrace. “And Chad⁠—when he comes⁠—you must absolutely see.”

“When then does he come?”

“When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me. Bilham, however,” he pursued, “will report favourably⁠—favourably for Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff.”

“Oh you’ll do yourself for your bluff.” She was perfectly easy. “At the rate you’ve gone I’m quiet.”

“Ah but I haven’t,” said Strether, “made one protest.”

She turned it over. “Haven’t you been seeing what there’s to protest about?”

He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. “I haven’t yet found a single thing.”

“Isn’t there anyone with him then?”

“Of the sort I came out about?” Strether took a moment. “How do I know? And what do I care?”

“Oh oh!”⁠—and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by the effect on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. She saw, however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them. “You’ve got at no facts at all?”

He tried to muster them. “Well, he has a lovely home.”

“Ah that, in Paris,” she quickly returned, “proves nothing. That is rather it disproves nothing. They may very well, you see, the people your mission is concerned with, have done it for him.”

“Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh and I sat guzzling.”

“Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,” she replied, “you might easily die of starvation.” With which she smiled at him. “You’ve worse before you.”

“Ah I’ve everything before me. But on our hypothesis, you know, they must be wonderful.”

“They are!” said Miss Gostrey. “You’re not therefore, you see,” she added, “wholly without facts. They’ve been, in effect, wonderful.”

To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a little to help⁠—a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection was washed. “My young