The Ambassador got up at this to help himself from the chimney-piece to
another cigar, the end of which he nipped off and lighted before
replying. When he did reply it was with a reassuring hand on Ralph's
shoulder. "No--it's just what I _don't_ think. Your difficulty in
expressing it, whatever it may be, strikes me as the gage of your
general reserve."
The words were as kind as all the others, but they practically, and
happily enough, acted for Ralph as a challenge. He took it up then, and
it afterwards appeared that, in the act, he had also taken the
Ambassador's left hand, removing it by his own right from his shoulder,
where it had remained in soothing and, as he was sure, rather
compassionate intent. He thus appropriated the protection which enabled
him after an instant: "The point is that I'm not myself."
But his friend smiled as if in tribute to his lucidity. "Oh yes you
are!"
Ralph's look, on this, seemed to deprecate, and even in still greater
pity, any tendency to the superficial; it being marked for him more and
more that what had happened to him made him see things in a way compared
to which the ways of others--positively of such brilliant others as his
host--could show but for the simplest. "You don't take it as I mean it;
or rather perhaps I should say I don't mean it as you take it. Take it,
however," he pursued, "as you must: I have the advantage that your
courtesy to me leaves both of us such a margin." And then he explained.
"I'm somebody else."
The Ambassador's hand had during these instants still submitted to his
own for reassurance; but its possessor now disengaged it and turned
away, briefly presenting a meditative back. He was soon reestablished
none the less in his chair with his fresh cigar and every preparation,
it would seem, for the issue. Yet he smoked another moment. "And is the
other person you?"
"That's what I count him; though for certainty one should be able to ask
him--which one isn't. It's he himself only who can know; and I've
enough," said Ralph, "with my own side of the matter. But the whole
affair," he continued, "was that we should exchange identities; an
arrangement all the more easy that he bears an extraordinary resemblance
to me and that on my first meeting him I even made the mistake of taking
him for a wondrous reflection--in a glass or wherever--of my own shape."
The Ambassador was slow; yet as Ralph, once launched, panted a little,
he had the effect of breaking in. "And did he take you for a reflection
of his? You're sure," he asked, "that you know which of you is which?"
Ralph waited a little; then very gently and reasonably, "Be as patient
as you can with me," he returned. "You shall have it all, and as clear
as possible. But be very kind." His host, as to correct the idea of
anything else, made a quick expressive movement, which was, however,
checked by our friend's manner. "It's a most extraordinary thing, you
see, to have befallen a man, and I don't wonder at the queer figure I
must make to you. But you'll see too for yourself in a moment how easily
you'll wish to let me down. It's the most extraordinary thing that ever
happened in the world--but at the same time there's no danger," he
cheerfully declared, "of my losing my way. I'm all here, or
rather"--Ralph was gay about it--"_he_ is."
There was little enough doubt of how his confidant would let him down;
and, the idea of his being "humoured" apart, he welcomed whatever would
help him. There was at any rate no failure of respect in the next
attentive inquiry. "But who is this party to your remarkable affair? Or
if you would rather I should put it so, who was he? I mean," said the
Ambassador, "before what you call your exchange."
"Just exactly, by the amazing chance, what I was myself--and what I am
still, for that matter; the strangest part of all being that it doesn't
interfere nearly as much as you might suppose, and that I'm in fact not
nearly so different."
The way the Ambassador followed amounted--though it wasn't so wonderful
in him--to inspiration. "So different as I might suppose from what you
were before?"
Ralph's face became a tribute to such prompt intelligence. "I'm still a
gentleman, thank God; and no bigger fool, either, than I already was.
I'm not worse looking, even if I'm not better."
"You couldn't very well be better!" his companion handsomely replied.
But Ralph was now so full of the whole fact itself as scarce to
appreciate the compliment. "If I'm so very much the same thing I'm still
an American, you see--and not a Briton."
"I'm awfully glad of that!" the Ambassador laughed.
"Oh it's the great point--our common ground. I mean mine and his. We're
both here--at the same age--for the first time, and but freshly
disembarked. That is," said our young man, "we _were._" It pulled him up
a little, but not, he was instantly eager to show, too much. "I'm not
losing my way--it comes to the same thing."
But he had had to consider it, and the Ambassador smoked. "If that then
is the case with everything, what is--or what was the difference?"
"Between us?"--Ralph was prompt. "Nothing but our age."
"But I thought you said your age was the same."
"Oh," Ralph explained, "I meant in the sense of our time, our period.
That's the difference of the greater part of a century. It was
then--that time ago--he came over."
There would have been a failure of verisimilitude if his host hadn't
visibly wondered. "And where has he been since?"
Ralph looked an instant, from where he stood, through the window and out
into the world of things less strange than those he might so well be
felt to have filled the room with. But if he was grave he was not blank.
"You see I don't know everything." And for a moment again he dropped.
During this lapse the Ambassador on his side smoked; to the effect of
his presently saying: "Is he ninety--nine years old?"
It brought back his visitor. "No--for if he were I should be; and I'm
exactly thirty, which does very well; for since I've become him, in
particular, I call it young." Ralph hung fire--but really from the sense
of now so interesting his auditor that keeping it up was almost a
strain. Quite for himself, however, nothing was easier. "He's
magnificent. He's really beautiful." That indeed made him catch himself,
and this time he turned away. "What I mean is he _was!_ Before he
ceased to be?"
"He hadn't--or he hasn't," Ralph returned, "ceased to be; for if that
were the case I myself shouldn't be here before you in the solid
soundness I've undertaken to impress you with. He was in a perfect prime
that it was a joy, as a fellow-countryman, to behold. It was in that
form that he again, for an hour, existed to me."
"For an hour?" the Ambassador asked as if to be exact.
"It was probably less--even for all that passed between us; but the fact
of my situation is that he did exist."
"Is the fact of your situation that you've seen a ghost?"
"Oh," Ralph raised his head high to say, "I decline to admit for a
moment that he was _that._ He was much better than any ghost."
It seemed to make for the Ambassador a distinction that he desired to
grasp. "'Better'?"
"Well, much more contrary to nature."
"I don't understand then," the Ambassador said, "why you don't rather
call it worse. Isn't the impression strange in proportion as it's
contrary to nature, and isn't it by the same token agitating or
upsetting or appalling, for any relation with such a matter, in
proportion as it's strange?" After which he went on while Ralph felt his
considering look: "Do you really _like_ such impressions?"
"I see I'm an impression to you--and of course an extraordinary one; but
he wasn't one to me," Ralph pursued, "in any such sense as that--for the
interest of our relation, as you justly term it, is so much more
interesting, you see, than any with which, even at the best, I can hope
to inspire you. He was a man as substantial for me as I am--or as I
_was!_" Ralph pulled up a moment to smile--"for myself; and interesting
most of all, I suppose, because so extraordinarily interested."
"Interested in _you?_" his host inquired as with the care to avoid alike
too much or too little gravity.
"Well, yes--interested in me by his being so possessed of the kind of
thing that interests us both. I've been ridden all my life, I think I
should tell you"--for our young man thought it but fair to develop
this--"by the desire to cultivate some better sense of the past than has
mostly seemed sufficient even for those people who have gone in most for
cultivating it, and who with most complacency," Ralph permitted himself
to add, "have put forth their results. So you can fancy what a charm it
was," he wound up, "to catch a person, and a beautifully intelligent
one, in the very act of cultivating----"
The Ambassador was on his feet at this, with an effect of interruption,
as by the very quickness of his apprehension. "His sense of the
present!" he triumphantly smiled.
But his visitor's smile reduced that felicity. "His sense of the future,
don't you see?--which had at last declined to let him rest, just as my
corresponding expression had declined to let me. Only after his being
worried," Ralph's scruple explained, "nearly a century longer."
"A century's a long time to be worried!" the Ambassador remarked through
his smoke, but permitting himself this time a confession of amusement.
"Oh a terrible time of course--but all leading up, you see, to this
tremendous relief I've brought him. I've brought him, I've given him,
I've introduced him to, the Future. So there we are!" Ralph gloried.
His companion, though visibly impressed, appeared a little to wonder
where indeed they were. Then this wonder found voice. "How could you
bring him what you didn't have yourself?"
Ralph needed but a moment to consider. "Why, I _am_ the Future. The
Future, that is, for _him_; which means the Present, don't you see----?"
"The Present, I see, for _me!_" his host, fairly flushed with
divination, broke in.
"Yes," Ralph promptly returned, "nothing could do more beautifully than
your Present, not to say, literally, your presence, for the Future he
has waited so long, poor dear chap, to know about."
"What it comes to then," the Ambassador considered in all apparent
sympathy--"what it comes to in fine," this functionary smoked, "is that
I and my contemporaries _are_ his Future."
Ralph accepted the conclusion. "It would come to that if he could get
into relation with you."
It might have been by reason of something conveyed in his visitor's tone
that the Ambassador said: "With me in particular you mean?"
Ralph met it handsomely. "Ah I could wish nothing better for him than
you!"
"And nothing better for me than him?"
Ralph kept his eyes kindly on his country's representative. "Yes, since
I find you so remarkably good for myself."
The Ambassador acknowledged the tribute, yet couldn't but formulate
after all a certain inward confusion. "I'm only puzzled by your not
having spoken to me of your friend and yourself a moment ago as separate
persons--but on the contrary of your having arrived, wasn't it? at some
common identity or wonderful unity. You _are_ the other fellow, you
said, didn't you?--and the other fellow, by the same stroke, is you. So
that when I wonder where the other fellow is," he genially pursued, "it
would seem that I've only to suppose him here in this room with me, in
your interesting person."
These words might have struck us as insidious enough just to trip up our
young man, but his lucidity was in fact perfectly proof. "I didn't say,
kindly understand, that we have _merged_ personalities, but that we have
definitely exchanged them--which is a different matter. Our duality is
so far from diminished that it's only the greater--by our formulation,
each to the other, of the so marked difference in our interest. The man
ridden by his curiosity about the Past _can't_, you'll grasp, be one and
the same with the man ridden by his curiosity about the Future. He has
given me his chance for this, while I have given him mine for that.
Recognise accordingly," said Ralph, "that we're at the opposite
poles--or at least in quite different places."
It was wonderful more and more what the Ambassador _could_ recognise by
the aid of his kind wise little intervals of thought and indulgences of
contemplation. "Yes, yes--but if I of course see that you, as the
distinct individual you are so fortunately able to claim to be, stand
here delightfully before me, that doesn't in the least tell me where
_he_ is located, as we say, in time and space."
"Why, he's down at the door in the cab," Ralph returned with splendid
simplicity.
His host might have been lost for a moment in the sheer radiance of
it--even to the point indeed of a gesture guarding against excess of
impression or for that matter just gaining time. "Do you mean to say
you're all this while keeping your hansom?"
"It's not a hansom--in this eternal rain: it's a four-wheeler with the
glasses up. And he only wants," our young man explained, "to wait as
long as I require. So at least I understand," he remarked as an
afterthought.
"So that you'll find him--in his rather tried patience, it strikes
me--when you go down? And I should have the pleasure of seeing him too,"
the Ambassador further ventured, "if I were to go down with you?"
This truly was the first of his Excellency's questions to induce in our
friend a pause at all ominous. "Surely--if he has _not_, under the
strain of my absence, as you suggest, gone off on his own account."
The Ambassador faced this contingency. "Where in that case will he have
gone?"
"Why, as I've explained, into the Future. Say," Ralph threw off, "into
Regent Street or Piccadilly." And then as his companion, at this,
frankly laughed out: "They didn't exist, you see, at that time in any
such form as they have to-day."
"I see, I see"--his Excellency again was prepared. "But fancy them," he
clearly couldn't help at the same time exclaiming, "fancy _them_ the
reward for him of so sublime a self-projection!"
"Well," Ralph readily reasoned, "my idea is that, with all they
represent for him, they're not unlikely to prove as great a reward as
any this extravagance of my own may come in for."
"It's wonderful for me," the Ambassador soon replied, "by which I mean
it's quite out of my common routine, to allow myself--as you see I
do!--such intimate strange participations. I understand you that I'm to
regard myself as mixed in the concern of your friend down there no less
than in your own."
Ralph considered of that, but with all equanimity and to the upshot of
his saying very naturally: "You want to be sure, properly enough, of
what you may at the worst be let in for; you want to be guaranteed
against undue inconvenience. Well, I don't think I see you let in for
anything worse than having thus heard me out and taken my name and
address." With which our young man smiled. "May they lie light on your
conscience!"
"They will lie there, I assure you, in a place quite of their own"--and
the Ambassador took up the card brought in to him on his visitor's
arrival and left close at hand. "This shall be carefully preserved, and
I shall cherish, for the interest you inspire me with, the good hope of
our some time meeting again."
Ralph didn't discourage this hope, though whatever support he offered it
was but to be inferred from what was left for recognition of such
connections in his more and more preoccupied face. That countenance,
charged for a moment with further fair acknowledgments, seemed to turn
away from them, before they were uttered, in the interest of something
more urgent. "Of course I perfectly understand that you think me, that
you must think me, more or less raving mad. I perfectly understand that
you must want to keep me in view and be able as far as possible to track
me and give some account of me in case of future inquiry. I appreciate
that, and it was even exactly for it, I think, that I came. I really
believe I ought to be tracked, to be subject to identification, to have
an eye kept on me. I'm like one starting a perhaps perilous journey and
wanting not to have neglected precautions in advance. I don't in the
least mind your thinking me mad--I should be so, or should be at least
idiotic, not to conceive my making the impression. At the same time I
strike myself as of a sanity I've never enjoyed before. Don't be afraid
of offending me, for what is it but your very protection against myself
that I've thus invoked? Not that I fear I shall destroy myself--at least
in any common way; I'm so far from intending or wishing to commit
suicide that I'm proposing to push my affair all the way it will go, or
in other words to live with an intensity unprecedented."
"Well, if you live with the intensity to which you help others I don't
see what responsibility you're likely to be accused of shirking. _I_
can't keep still," the Ambassador then flatly declared, "till I've been
down with you to verify that question of your friend in the cab."
Ralph offered so little objection to this--his looking for a moment
intensely grave about it amounting to no real objection--that they had
within a couple of minutes more descended together to the hall; where
the servant in waiting, Ralph was afterwards to reflect, must at once
have attested his conviction that his master was not simply seeing to
the door a visitor of no inscribed importance. His Excellency would
therefore be going further--under some exceptional stress; and to this
end would have been placed without delay in possession of his hat,
gloves and stick; equipped with which objects it verily was that the
Ambassador presently stood with his guest on the outer pavement and in
presence of the waiting vehicle, any further domestic attendance
repressed and the door of the house closed behind them. There they
remained a little, it may be mentioned--long enough at least for the
exchange of a smile now rather strained on either side, strained even to
breaking, possibly, before Ralph could decide to approach his cab near
enough for an effective view of its inner state. He had before this
checked the motion of the roused driver, dozing on the box, toward a
heavy officious descent, and then had himself faced the consequences of
another step and a sufficient thrust of his head through the window of
his "growler" to assure himself of the degree of dissimulation under
which a conceivable companion might lurk there. His renewed look at the
Ambassador after this was a confession that nothing lurked, though
without its being at all a confession of consequent defeat; so that,
himself opening the door and inviting his distinguished friend to pass
in, he signalled a perfect readiness to explain disappointment away. The
Ambassador, it must be added, allowed him at once and ever so
considerately the largest license of apology for the production of a
groundless hope; the great man's words in fact represented a glance at
grounds that had lived their little hour.
"His failure of patience through my having kept you so long--you did, I
recognise, mention the possibility of that," was his Excellency's noble
remark.
There came to Ralph's assistance on this a suddenly enlarged interest of
vision; he had indeed within the house given utterance to that
precautionary thought, but it was for all the world as if the same idea
on the lips of his friend suggested something to go on with beyond even
what his own intelligence had found. That was it!--nothing in the least
discredited the report he had been occupied in making. That other party
to the drive ending at the Embassy door was, with the most conceivable
congruity, and thanks to a passion of curiosity that nothing could
longer bridle, off on his own irresistible adventure: one had asked too
much of him, at the point reached by their relation, in expecting so to
choke off his own criticism. The interview upstairs had drawn itself
out, and what had he had to do meanwhile, poor dear creature, but count
the minutes that would lead to the striking of his hour? That the hour
would strike for each of them as soon as the wise step now achieved had
been taken--this had been their assumption on settling together that
afternoon, so much more for the accommodation, when all was said, Ralph
could see now, of the victim of the sense of the Past than for that of
the victim of the sense of the Future. The latter, it came to our
friend, taking no precaution and making no provision, none at least that
one could one's self know anything about, brought the business a more
hurrying passion: as would be perhaps of the very essence for a man so
concerned as compared with a man concerned as he himself was. He was
conscious of ten rather bedimmed seconds during which he had positively
to see the appeal he had obeyed as a thing in itself inferior to the
motive under the force of which his late companion, no longer able
merely to oblige him, had doubtless begun to beat fine wings and test
brave lungs in the fresh air of his experiment. He had the real start,
so to speak, while the subject of the Ambassador's interest had
doubtless only the advantage that might, on some contingency as yet of
the vaguest, reside in that.
There thus breathed on our young man a momentary chill--which, however,
didn't prevent the Ambassador's seating himself without further delay,
nor his own perhaps slightly more contracted occupation of the second
seat, nor their presently effective, their in fact rather confessedly
contemplative, start for Mansfield Square. It was to appear to Ralph
later on, at any rate, that they had at this stage been reduced to
unembarrassed contemplation; which is perhaps indeed but a proof that
while he gazed out of the cab window during this extraordinary progress
what he looked at so fixedly as to take note of no interval of speech
was neither the exhibition of successive streets, with their aspects and
their varieties of identity, but the portentous truth of his being
launched, since, so conclusively, his counterpart in the circumstance
was, and of his fate's having thereby shut down on any backward step.
Not that he wanted to take one, not that he wanted to take one----he
kept repeating that as the vehicle rolled; to be as "in" for whatever
awaited him as he now felt, as he now absolutely knew, himself, was a
strong simplification--with which wasn't it positively a blest one too?
which question had not been answered in the negative, at any rate, even
by the time they pulled up at the address he had given. This was what
had taken place during their transit, he afterwards knew; the minutes
had been so wholly given, in their course, to his inwardly sealing the
charter of accommodation, as he would have called it, to whatever might
now confront him that after he had got out, on the stoppage of the cab,
he addressed to his companion a "Will you keep it on?" which left things
taken for granted between them without a scrap of a loose end dangling.
_He_ at least suffered none such, though there might have been just the
sign of a difference in his good friend's face while the latter stepped
straight out by way of answer. "Oh my dear man, I'll walk," he seemed to
be saying; "I don't in the least mind your knowing that you've given me
the fidgets or that I shall extremely need to think you over: which
indulgence the use of my legs will healthily stimulate."
Something of that sort Ralph was much later on, as I say, to recover the
appearance of his having found words for; just as he was to piece
together the presumption that, the cabman paid, magnificently paid, and
getting again into motion, he and his protector--for hadn't they after
all rather exquisitely agreed to leave it at this?--stood face to face a
little, under the prolongation of a handclasp; followed then by the
mutual release that left his Excellency standing there on the pavement
with the graver face of the two, _he_ at least little doubted. Our young
man was after that aware of a position of such eminence on the upper
doorstep as made him, his fine rat-tat-tat-ah of the knocker achieved,
see the whole world, the waiting, the wondering, the shrunkenly staring
representative of his country included, far, far, in fact at last quite
abysmally below him. Whether these had been rapid or rather retarded
stages he was really never to make out. Everything had come to him
through an increasingly thick _other_ medium; the medium to which the
opening door of the house gave at once an extension that was like an
extraordinarily strong odour inhaled--an inward and inward warm reach
that his bewildered judge would literally have seen swallow him up;
though perhaps with the supreme pause of the determined diver about to
plunge just marked in him before the closing of the door again placed
him on the right side and the whole world as he had known it on the
wrong.