THE AMBASSADORS. Генри Джеймс

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      “I’m afraid I have,” Strether laughed: “one does fill out some with all one takes in, and I’ve taken in, I dare say, more than I’ve natural room for. I was dog-tired when I sailed.” It had the oddest sound of cheerfulness.

      “i was dog-tired,” his companion returned, “when I arrived, and it’s this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me. The fact is, Strether — and it’s a comfort to have you here at last to say it to; though I don’t know, after all, that I’ve really waited; I’ve told it to people I’ve met in the cars — the fact is, such a country as this ain’t my KIND of country anyway. There ain’t a country I’ve seen over here that DOES seem my kind. Oh I don’t say but what there are plenty of pretty places and remarkable old things; but the trouble is that I don’t seem to feel anywhere in tune. That’s one of the reasons why I suppose I’ve gained so little. I haven’t had the first sign of that lift I was led to expect.” With this he broke out more earnestly. “Look here — I want to go back.”

      His eyes were all attached to Strether’s now, for he was one of the men who fully face you when they talk of themselves. This enabled his friend to look at him hard and immediately to appear to the highest advantage in his eyes by doing so. “That’s a genial thing to say to a fellow who has come out on purpose to meet you!”

      Nothing could have been finer, on this, than Waymarsh’s sombre glow. “HAVE you come out on purpose?”

      “Well — very largely.”

      “I thought from the way you wrote there was something back of it.”

      Strether hesitated. “Back of my desire to be with you?”

      “Back of your prostration.”

      Strether, with a smile made more dim by a certain consciousness, shook his head. “There are all the causes of it!”

      “And no particular cause that seemed most to drive you?”

      Our friend could at last conscientiously answer. “Yes. One. There IS a matter that has had much to do with my coming out.”

      Waymarsh waited a little. “Too private to mention?”

      “No, not too private — for YOU. Only rather complicated.”

      “Well,” said Waymarsh, who had waited again, “I MAY lose my mind over here, but I don’t know as I’ve done so yet.”

      “Oh you shall have the whole thing. But not tonight.”

      Waymarsh seemed to sit stiffer and to hold his elbows tighter. “Why not — if I can’t sleep?”

      “Because, my dear man, I CAN!”

      “Then where’s your prostration?”

      “Just in that — that I can put in eight hours.” And Strether brought it out that if Waymarsh didn’t “gain” it was because he didn’t go to bed: the result of which was, in its order, that, to do the latter justice, he permitted his friend to insist on his really getting settled. Strether, with a kind coercive hand for it, assisted him to this consummation, and again found his own part in their relation auspiciously enlarged by the smaller touches of lowering the lamp and seeing to a sufficiency of blanket. It somehow ministered for him to indulgence to feel Waymarsh, who looked unnaturally big and black in bed, as much tucked in as a patient in a hospital and, with his covering up to his chin, as much simplified by it. He hovered in vague pity, to be brief, while his companion challenged him out of the bedclothes. “Is she really after you? Is that what’s behind?”

      Strether felt an uneasiness at the direction taken by his companion’s insight, but he played a little at uncertainty. “Behind my coming out?”

      “Behind your prostration or whatever. It’s generally felt, you know, that she follows you up pretty close.”

      Strether’s candour was never very far off. “Oh it has occurred to you that I’m literally running away from Mrs. Newsome?”

      “Well, I haven’t KNOWN but what you are. You’re a very attractive man, Strether. You’ve seen for yourself,” said Waymarsh, “what that lady downstairs makes of it. Unless indeed,” he rambled on with an effect between the ironic and the anxious, “it’s you who are after HER. Is Mrs. Newsome OVER here?” He spoke as with a droll dread of her.

      It made his friend — though rather dimly — smile. “Dear no; she’s safe, thank goodness — as I think I more and more feel — at home. She thought of coming, but she gave it up. I’ve come in a manner instead of her; and come to that extent — for you’re right in your inference — on her business. So you see there IS plenty of connexion.”

      Waymarsh continued to see at least all there was. “Involving accordingly the particular one I’ve referred to?”

      Strether took another turn about the room, giving a twitch to his companion’s blanket and finally gaining the door. His feeling was that of a nurse who had earned personal rest by having made everything straight. “Involving more things than I can think of breaking ground on now. But don’t be afraid — you shall have them from me: you’ll probably find yourself having quite as much of them as you can do with. I shall — if we keep together — very much depend on your impression of some of them.”

      Waymarsh’s acknowledgement of this tribute was characteristically indirect. “You mean to say you don’t believe we WILL keep together?”

      “I only glance at the danger,” Strether paternally said, “because when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up such possibilities of folly.”

      Waymarsh took it — silent a little — like a large snubbed child. “What are you going to do with me?”

      It was the very question Strether himself had put to Miss Gostrey, and he wondered if he had sounded like that. But HE at least could be more definite. “I’m going to take you right down to London.”

      “Oh I’ve BEEN down to London!” Waymarsh more softly moaned. “I’ve no use, Strether, for anything down there.”

      “Well,” said Strether, goodhumouredly, “I guess you’ve some use for ME.”

      “So I’ve got to go?”

      “Oh you’ve got to go further yet.”

      “Well,” Waymarsh sighed, “do your damnedest! Only you WILL tell me before you lead me on all the way — ?”

      Our friend had again so lost himself, both for amusement and for contrition, in the wonder of whether he had made, in his own challenge that afternoon, such another figure, that he for an instant missed the thread. “Tell you — ?”

      “Why what you’ve got on hand.”

      Strether hesitated. “Why it’s such a matter as that even if I positively wanted I shouldn’t be able to keep it from you.”

      Waymarsh gloomily gazed. “What does that mean then but that your trip is just FOR her?”

      “For Mrs. Newsome? Oh it certainly is, as СКАЧАТЬ