Free The Ambassadors by Henry James Page B

failed to rest; it was almost as if they obeyed an instinct of propriety, and the effect was still stronger when, always considering the basin and jug, he added: “You’ve filled out some since then.”
    “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 genialthing 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 bigand 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.