The upshot of the state in which he found himself for three or four days
was a sudden decision to call on the Ambassador. The idea, in coming to
him, brought him ease, offered an issue to his pressing need to
communicate. He had been divided between this need and the equal
one--the profound policy--of silence; than which conflict nothing in his
life had ever more tormented him. He wished he had been a Catholic, that
he might go to confession; his desire, remarkably enough, being no less
for secrecy than for relief. He recalled the chapter in Hawthorne's fine
novel in which the young woman from New England kneels, for the
lightening of her woe, to the old priest at St. Peter's, and felt that
he sounded as never before the depth of that passage. _His_ case in
truth was worse than Hilda's and his burden much greater, for she had
been but a spectator of what weighed upon her, whereas he had been a
close participant. It mattered little enough that his sense was not the
sense of crime; it was the sense, in an extraordinary degree, of
something done in passion, and of an experience far stranger than a mere
glimpse, or than, if it came to that, a positive perpetration, of
murder. He wondered that a knowledge of anything less than murder could
be able to constitute in one's soul such a closed back room; but what
was of course now most present to him was that he had hitherto grasped
of life a sadly insignificant shred. There were at least as many more
things in it for one's philosophy than poor Hamlet himself was to have
found in heaven and earth. He went about and took his food and did his
business; he had tested the truth of the promise made, the promise that
he should successively present, even to himself, on reappearance; he was
in fact fully aware that he had never yet _had_ for the world--yes, and
perhaps too for himself--so much to rest on as in the appearance he
presented.
Nothing perhaps was more strange than that what he had accepted he still
accepted; he was not attended with disorders or fears; he had neither
alarms nor lapses nor returns, neither cold sweats nor hot flushes: it
was much nearer true that he found in the excitement--for it was after
all, however muffled and compressed, the felt throb of a pulse--an
inordinate charm. But if it might be a charm, for the time, as much as
one would, just so it might become later on, and was probably sure to, a
terror; whatever form one should finally best know it by, he wanted in
some single instance to impart his knowledge. He desired, he chose, that
one other person, anxiously selected, should share his charge of it. One
person would do--in fact more than one would spoil everything. There was
a difference for him that he conceived this would make if he could only
be sure of the safety of the vessel. His word once dropped into that
moral receptacle and the key turned upon it and pocketed, he should come
the more assuredly back to life, or might rather, and as for the first
time, attack and perhaps surmount it. The motive he obeyed was indeed on
the occasion of the visit itself as completely expressed as might be.
The Ambassador, blest and distinguished man, was not a personal friend,
was only the friend of friends. These latter had so taken the field that
Ralph was more "introduced" than he had ever been to anyone, or than his
Excellency could ever have known any bearer of letters. Such, however,
was the high urbanity of this personage that our young man was as well
received as if the heralds had been dumb. To the blare of trumpets Ralph
had moreover not himself contributed, leaving his letters at the Embassy
as little as elsewhere: he only knew that suggestion would have been
applied from over the sea without action of his own, and this in fact
put further delay at odds with good manners. It was sufficient that the
representative of his country should be pre-eminent, accomplished, witty
and kind, and that, much addicted to good cigars, he should usually be
accessible at about six o'clock.
On the spot of course and in presence of his easy host, who must have
adopted, he could see, defensively and professionally, the plan of
taking for granted only the usual--it was naturally there and so
difficult enough to state; at the same time that he had not been three
minutes in the room without feeling how fully he should at last deliver
himself. The way, it was true, was not smoothed by the Ambassador's
remark that he knew all about him: there was at present so much more to
know than even an Ambassador could possibly imagine. He remembered his
excellent father; and was also good enough to mention that he remembered
his beautiful mother, concerning whose later years he inquired; and they
talked for some minutes of the several friends who had, as his
Excellency was so good as to call it, brought them together, and of whom
our young man found himself surprised, for particular reasons, to be
able to give coherent news. He felt the charm of his host's tone, with
its note of free recognition, which seemed to make him for the moment
something almost of an equal; and yet even while he wondered if these
were perhaps not, as minor instances, high refinements of that very
diplomacy which he had studied, afar off, in dusty books and tracked
through the wilderness of history, he was quite aware of not being made
ashamed, as a person received with such special marks possibly ought to
have been, of what he had there up his sleeve. He was only a little
abashed when the Ambassador, who had read everything, spoke of having
read his book and found it remarkably clever. He himself had learnt
three days after landing in England how clever it wasn't, but the case
was now above all that this faint effort of a groundless presumption had
forfeited even such claim to existence as might belong to some nameless
baby of the prehistoric age who should have died at birth. But only
after he had shaken his head quite sadly and too sharply had he the
sense of having, by this contradiction, appeared to attribute to his
entertainer more innocence than was altogether just. He had not at all
events come to put him in his place, and his need was immediately, that
this should be clear, to explain for what he _had_ come--a question the
more urgent as he was really full of it to the brim. "I know but too
well," he said, "that nine compatriots out of ten approach you with a
Story. But no strayed maniac of them all can have bored you with one
like mine."
The Ambassador, from his deep chair, in his "own" room on the ground
floor, where books and papers were many and colours brown and sounds
soft, smiled across the old Turkey rug through his beard and his fumes.
"Is it very, very good?"
"For credibility no. But for everything else," said poor Ralph,
"lovely."
"And very, very long?"
"Only as long--beyond the prime fact or two--as your Excellency himself
may make it. It hasn't for me somehow at all that sort of dimension. I
don't _know_ at least how long it is. I wish I did!"
"Do you mean," the Ambassador asked, "that it's only broad? Why don't
you, with your cleverness," he pursued before his visitor could answer,
"put it on paper?"
"They generally do write them, you mean?" Ralph on his side returned. "I
daresay, but if I did, you see, you might be obliged by the rules of
your position to reply--not that I'm at all acquainted with them; and
any reply is exactly what I ask your leave to assure you that my
communication absolutely doesn't look for. I simply want to make it--so
that I shan't be the only person living to know; and my sole request of
you is kindly to keep it altogether to yourself. There's nothing in the
world you can 'do.' You can't lend me money. I've the advantage, which
I fully appreciate, of having enough for my business. I'm not in
love--or at least if I am it's not what I propose to trouble you with.
I'm not in a scrape--that is I hope I'm not; for if I shall prove to be
I fear the good offices of the Embassy even will scarce avail me and
that I shall have to get out of it very much as I've got in."
"And how _have_ you got in?" the Ambassador went on.
Ralph already felt how right his idea had been and how this application
of it would help him. It was as if he had held in his hand the key he
wished to confide for safe keeping. His friend's face--by this time
quite that of a friend--was by itself as perfect a promise as the case
required. It was exactly as if the key--too precious an object to be
carried about the person--were to be taken over before his eyes and
placed in the official strong-box. "I think, sir, you _will_ make it
long."
"That won't matter if I don't find it so."
His Excellency had spoken with such kindness that Ralph laughed out. It
was the kindness of indulgence; he saw, as he thought, what was behind
it. "I'm at the worst," he replied, "one of the quiet kind--for I'm sure
you see all sorts; but I shall nevertheless, if you'll pardon me, need
to move a little as I talk." He was in fact out of his chair, and as he
remained there before the fire, on the rug, the men exchanged a long
look, a look which, as it gave the younger everything he wanted, must
also more or less have comprised some gain for the elder. Ralph was
willing to be taken for anything: he didn't mind the estimate--all that
was important was the considerate form. It had quite begun, as we have
seen, to draw him on and on. "I shan't even expect you to believe me,"
he after an instant resumed, "I simply say to myself that my secret is
one that your own interest will lead you to keep--though it can be but
an interest merely intellectual, not at all official; if you permit me,"
our young man finally smiled, "to make the difference. I somehow see
that you'll be sure to feel that giving it any publicity would somehow
spoil it for you."
The Ambassador blandly smoked. "You mean I must keep it for my
pleasure?"
Ralph, who had declined with thanks so much as a cigarette, met this
from where he had continued to stand. "That will be exactly my strength.
It will leave me as much at ease as the seal of confession. And there's
another thing," he frankly added, "I don't fear to appear ridiculous;
but with your Excellency, naturally, it won't be the same."
His Excellency was too delightful. "You don't fear to appear ridiculous
to _me._ That's all. I can meet you at least on the same ground. I
shan't fear to appear so to you. I'm perfectly willing," he went on, "to
give you my definite word. If you do tell nobody else you may take it
that I shall tell as little."