He wanted to feel right
about it, but could only, at the best, for the time, feel vague.
"I shall look to you, you know, immensely," our friend had said,
"to help me with them," and he had been quite conscious of the
effect of the remark, and of others of the same sort, on his
comrade's sombre sensibility. He had insisted on the fact that
Waymarsh would quite like Mrs. Pocock--one could be certain he
would: he would be with her about everything, and she would also be
with HIM, and Miss Barrace's nose, in short, would find itself out
of joint.
Strether had woven this web of cheerfulness while they waited in
the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself
quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and
turned before him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he
arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition at this particular
hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with
him and with Strether to the street and stood there with a face
half-wistful and half-rueful. They talked of him, the two others, as
they drove, and Strether put Chad in possession of much of his own
strained sense of things. He had already, a few days before, named
to him the wire he was convinced their friend had pulled--a
confidence that had made on the young man's part quite hugely for
curiosity and diversion.
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