Part 6

This act employed him, thanks to the bunchy wick, a minute or two; but no sooner was the little flame assured and he had raised aloft the glimmering torch than he was filled with the sense of a quite new relation to the house. It was but a trifle, yet he had not hitherto so much used the place even as to light a candle. This triviality made all the difference of raising him from the condition, comparatively poor, of a visitor who betrayed timidity. It registered in a single brief insistence the fact that he was master, and when he now almost waved in the air his light, of which the wax hadn't time to melt, it was in sign--tremble though his hand still might--of a confidence sharply gained. The impression was strong with him of having traversed a crisis--served, and all in half an hour, one of those concentrated terms of pious self-dedication or whatever by which the aspirants of the ages of faith used to earn their knighthood. What was it he had emerged from after this fashion of the accepted probationer? He had had his idea of testing the house, and lo it was the house that by a turn of the tables had tested him. He had at all events grasped his candle as if it had been sword or cross, and his attitude may pass for us as sufficiently his answer or his vow. It had already occurred to him that, so completely consecrated, he must make one more round. He moved to the end of the room and then moved back; it had begun to give him extraordinary pleasure thus to march with his light. He marched out to the lobby and the staircase and then down, slow and solemn, to the hall he had supposed Jacobean and in which, illumined, he could once more, by the mere play of his arm, make due amends for his mistake. He came up again to the landing by the great room and, after a slight hesitation, continued his ascent. He revolved through the chambers above and amused himself, at successive windows, with the thought of the observation possibly incurred, out in the square, by such a wandering twinkle from floor to floor and in the small hours on the part of some soaked and sleepy policeman not already, in respect to the old house, without a working hypothesis. On his return to the level of the drawing rooms he had another of his pauses; he stood with his candle aloft and his eyes attached a minute to the door that, open at the end of the passage, would have admitted him straight to the panelled parlour.

The effect of this consideration was that he went roundabout, turning directly again to the front and the row of dark windows lashed afresh by a great gust of the rain. It was as if the wind had of a sudden grown wild in order to emphasise with its violence all the elements of his case. It was somehow too by this time--with such a stride--two o'clock in the morning and terrible weather. The forward exposure most met the assault, the small square black panes rattled in their tall white sashes, the objects around him creaked, and his candle came as near going out as if a window had blown through. The commotion was in fact so great, shaking all the place, that under the sense of the draught he wasn't for the moment sure something hadn't somewhere been forced open. He instinctively moved, half for inquiry, half for shelter, to the inner room, the second; which brought him, still with his clutched and raised light, to view of the other door of the panelled parlour, the access independent of the hall. He had after this an instant of confusion, an instant during which he struck himself as catching at a distance the chance reflection of his candle-flame on some polished surface. If the flame was there, however, where was the surface?--the duplication of his light showing, he quickly perceived, in the doorway itself. He received in those instants an amazing impression--knew himself convinced that in his absence the thing he had thought of and put away had taken place. Somebody was in the room more prodigiously still than he had dreamed--on his level, on the floor itself and but ten yards off, and now, all intelligence and response, vividly aware of him, fixed him across the space with eyes of life. It was like the miracle prayed for in the church--the figure in the picture had turned; but from the moment it had done so this tremendous action, this descent, this advance, an advance, and as for recognition, upon his solitary self, had almost the effect at first of crushing recognition, in other words of crushing presumption, by their immeasurable weight. The huge strangeness, that of a gentleman there, a gentleman from head to foot, to meet him and share his disconnection, stopped everything; yet it was in nothing stranger than in the association that they already, they unmistakeably felt they had enjoyed. With this last apprehension at any rate the full prodigy was there, for what he most sharply knew while he turned colder still was that what he had taken for a reflection of his light was only another candle. He knew, though out of his eye's range any assurance, that the second of the pair on the shelf below the portrait was now not in its place. He raised his own still higher to be sure, and the young man in the doorway made a movement that answered; but so, while almost as with brandished weapons they faced each other, he saw what was indeed beyond sense. He was staring at the answer to the riddle that had been his obsession, but this answer was a wonder of wonders. The young man above the mantel, the young man brown-haired, pale, erect, with the high-collared dark blue coat, the young man revealed, responsible, conscious, quite shining out of the darkness, presented him the face he had prayed to reward his vigil; but the face--miracle of miracles, yes--confounded him as his own.

BOOK THIRD

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."

Ralph watched him a moment. "You think I _will_ tell somebody else?"

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?"