The Ambassadors (18 page)

Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung
fire. He had felt at the same time, however, that nothing could
less become him than that it should hang fire too long. "Yes," he
said brightly, "it was on the happy settlement of the question that
I started. You see therefore to what tune I'm in your family.
Moreover," he added, "I've been supposing you'd suppose it."

"Oh I've been supposing it for a long time, and what you tell me
helps me to understand that you should want to do something. To do
something, I mean," said Chad, "to commemorate an event so—what do
they call it?—so auspicious. I see you make out, and not
unnaturally," he continued, "that bringing me home in triumph as a
sort of wedding-present to Mother would commemorate it better than
anything else. You want to make a bonfire in fact," he laughed,
"and you pitch me on. Thank you, thank you!" he laughed again.

He was altogether easy about it, and this made Strether now see
how at bottom, and in spite of the shade of shyness that really
cost him nothing, he had from the first moment been easy about
everything. The shade of shyness was mere good taste. People with
manners formed could apparently have, as one of their best cards,
the shade of shyness too. He had leaned a little forward to speak;
his elbows were on the table; and the inscrutable new face that he
had got somewhere and somehow was brought by the movement nearer to
his critics There was a fascination for that critic in its not
being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that, under observation at
least, he had originally carried away from Woollett. Strether found
a certain freedom on his own side in defining it as that of a man
of the world—a formula that indeed seemed to come now in some
degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had happened and
were variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did perhaps
peep out of it; but such lights were faint and instantly merged.
Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been
rough. Was all the difference therefore that he was actually
smooth? Possibly; for that he WAS smooth was as marked as in the
taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand. The effect of it was
general—it had retouched his features, drawn them with a cleaner
line. It had cleared his eyes and settled his colour and polished
his fine square teeth—the main ornament of his face; and at the
same time that it had given him a form and a surface, almost a
design, it had toned his voice, established his accent, encouraged
his smile to more play and his other motions to less. He had
formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very little; and
he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost none at all. It
was as if in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeless,
been put into a firm mould and turned successfully out. The
phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an eminent
case—was marked enough to be touched by the finger. He finally put
his hand across the table and laid it on Chad's arm. "If you'll
promise me—here on the spot and giving me your word of honour—to
break straight off, you'll make the future the real right thing for
all of us alike. You'll ease off the strain of this decent but none
the less acute suspense in which I've for so many days been waiting
for you, and let me turn in to rest. I shall leave you with my
blessing and go to bed in peace."

Chad again fell back at this and, his hands pocketed, settled
himself a little; in which posture he looked, though he rather
anxiously smiled, only the more earnest. Then Strether seemed to
see that he was really nervous, and he took that as what he would
have called a wholesome sign. The only mark of it hitherto had been
his more than once taking off and putting on his wide-brimmed crush
hat. He had at this moment made the motion again to remove it, then
had only pushed it back, so that it hung informally on his strong
young grizzled crop. It was a touch that gave the note of the
familiar—the intimate and the belated—to their quiet colloquy; and
it was indeed by some such trivial aid that Strether became aware
at the same moment of something else. The observation was at any
rate determined in him by some light too fine to distinguish from
so many others, but it was none the less sharply determined. Chad
looked unmistakeably during these instants—well, as Strether put it
to himself, all he was worth. Our friend had a sudden apprehension
of what that would on certain sides be. He saw him in a flash as
the young man marked out by women; and for a concentrated minute
the dignity, the comparative austerity, as he funnily fancied it,
of this character affected him almost with awe. There was an
experience on his interlocutor's part that looked out at him from
under the displaced hat, and that looked out moreover by a force of
its own, the deep fact of its quantity and quality, and not through
Chad's intending bravado or swagger. That was then the way men
marked out by women WERE—and also the men by whom the women were
doubtless in turn sufficiently distinguished. It affected Strether
for thirty seconds as a relevant truth, a truth which, however, the
next minute, had fallen into its relation. "Can't you imagine there
being some questions," Chad asked, "that a fellow—however much
impressed by your charming way of stating things—would like to put
to you first?"

"Oh yes—easily. I'm here to answer everything. I think I can
even tell you things, of the greatest interest to you, that you
won't know enough to ask me. We'll take as many days to it as you
like. But I want," Strether wound up, "to go to bed now."

"Really?"

Chad had spoken in such surprise that he was amused. "Can't you
believe it?—with what you put me through?"

The young man seemed to consider. "Oh I haven't put you through
much—yet."

"Do you mean there's so much more to come?" Strether laughed.
"All the more reason then that I should gird myself." And as if to
mark what he felt he could by this time count on he was already on
his feet.

Chad, still seated, stayed him, with a hand against him, as he
passed between their table and the next. "Oh we shall get on!"

The tone was, as who should say, everything Strether could have
desired; and quite as good the expression of face with which the
speaker had looked up at him and kindly held him. All these things
lacked was their not showing quite so much as the fruit of
experience. Yes, experience was what Chad did play on him, if he
didn't play any grossness of defiance. Of course experience was in
a manner defiance; but it wasn't, at any rate—rather indeed quite
the contrary!—grossness; which was so much gained. He fairly grew
older, Strether thought, while he himself so reasoned. Then with
his mature pat of his visitor's arm he also got up; and there had
been enough of it all by this time to make the visitor feel that
something WAS settled. Wasn't it settled that he had at least the
testimony of Chad's own belief in a settlement? Strether found
himself treating Chad's profession that they would get on as a
sufficient basis for going to bed. He hadn't nevertheless after
this gone to bed directly; for when they had again passed out
together into the mild bright night a check had virtually sprung
from nothing more than a small circumstance which might have acted
only as confirming quiescence. There were people, expressive sound,
projected light, still abroad, and after they had taken in for a
moment, through everything, the great clear architectural street,
they turned off in tacit union to the quarter of Strether's hotel.
"Of course," Chad here abruptly began, "of course Mother's making
things out with you about me has been natural—and of course also
you've had a good deal to go upon. Still, you must have filled
out."

He had stopped, leaving his friend to wonder a little what point
he wished to make; and this it was that enabled Strether meanwhile
to make one. "Oh we've never pretended to go into detail. We
weren't in the least bound to THAT. It was 'filling out' enough to
miss you as we did."

But Chad rather oddly insisted, though under the high lamp at
their corner, where they paused, he had at first looked as if
touched by Strether's allusion to the long sense, at home, of his
absence. "What I mean is you must have imagined."

"Imagined what?"

"Well—horrors."

It affected Strether: horrors were so little—superficially at
least—in this robust and reasoning image. But he was none the less
there to be veracious. "Yes, I dare say we HAVE imagined horrors.
But where's the harm if we haven't been wrong?"

Chad raised his face to the lamp, and it was one of the moments
at which he had, in his extraordinary way, most his air of
designedly showing himself. It was as if at these instants he just
presented himself, his identity so rounded off, his palpable
presence and his massive young manhood, as such a link in the chain
as might practically amount to a kind of demonstration. It was as
if—and how but anomalously?—he couldn't after all help thinking
sufficiently well of these things to let them go for what they were
worth. What could there be in this for Strether but the hint of
some self-respect, some sense of power, oddly perverted; something
latent and beyond access, ominous and perhaps enviable? The
intimation had the next thing, in a flash, taken on a name—a name
on which our friend seized as he asked himself if he weren't
perhaps really dealing with an irreducible young Pagan. This
description—he quite jumped at it—had a sound that gratified his
mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it.
Pagan—yes, that was, wasn't it? what Chad WOULD logically be. It
was what he must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and,
instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness.
Strether made out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at
the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett.
They'd be able to do with one—a good one; he'd find an opening—yes;
and Strether's imagination even now prefigured and accompanied the
first appearance there of the rousing personage. He had only the
slight discomfort of feeling, as the young man turned away from the
lamp, that his thought had in the momentary silence possibly been
guessed. "Well, I've no doubt," said Chad, "you've come near
enough. The details, as you say, don't matter. It HAS been
generally the case that I've let myself go. But I'm coming
round—I'm not so bad now." With which they walked on again to
Strether's hotel.

"Do you mean," the latter asked as they approached the door,
"that there isn't any woman with you now?"

"But pray what has that to do with it?"

"Why it's the whole question."

"Of my going home?" Chad was clearly surprised. "Oh not much! Do
you think that when I want to go any one will have any power—"

"To keep you"—Strether took him straight up—"from carrying out
your wish? Well, our idea has been that somebody has hitherto—or a
good many persons perhaps—kept you pretty well from 'wanting.'
That's what—if you're in anybody's hands—may again happen. You
don't answer my question"—he kept it up; "but if you aren't in
anybody's hands so much the better. There's nothing then but what
makes for your going."

Chad turned this over. "I don't answer your question?" He spoke
quite without resenting it. "Well, such questions have always a
rather exaggerated side. One doesn't know quite what you mean by
being in women's 'hands.' It's all so vague. One is when one isn't.
One isn't when one is. And then one can't quite give people away."
He seemed kindly to explain. "I've NEVER got stuck—so very hard;
and, as against anything at any time really better, I don't think
I've ever been afraid." There was something in it that held
Strether to wonder, and this gave him time to go on. He broke out
as with a more helpful thought. "Don't you know how I like Paris
itself?"

The upshot was indeed to make our friend marvel. "Oh if THAT'S
all that's the matter with you—!" It was HE who almost showed
resentment.

Chad's smile of a truth more than met it. "But isn't that
enough?"

Strether hesitated, but it came out. "Not enough for your
mother!" Spoken, however, it sounded a trifle odd—the effect of
which was that Chad broke into a laugh. Strether, at this,
succumbed as well, though with extreme brevity. "Permit us to have
still our theory. But if you ARE so free and so strong you're
inexcusable. I'll write in the morning," he added with decision.
"I'll say I've got you."

This appeared to open for Chad a new interest. "How often do you
write?"

"Oh perpetually."

"And at great length?"

Strether had become a little impatient. "I hope it's not found
too great."

"Oh I'm sure not. And you hear as often?"

Again Strether paused. "As often as I deserve."

"Mother writes," said Chad, "a lovely letter."

Strether, before the closed porte-cochere, fixed him a moment.
"It's more, my boy, than YOU do! But our suppositions don't
matter," he added, "if you're actually not entangled."

Chad's pride seemed none the less a little touched. "I never WAS
that—let me insist. I always had my own way." With which he
pursued: "And I have it at present."

"Then what are you here for? What has kept you," Strether asked,
"if you HAVE been able to leave?"

It made Chad, after a stare, throw himself back. "Do you think
one's kept only by women?" His surprise and his verbal emphasis
rang out so clear in the still street that Strether winced till he
remembered the safety of their English speech. "Is that," the young
man demanded, "what they think at Woollett?" At the good faith in
the question Strether had changed colour, feeling that, as he would
have said, he had put his foot in it. He had appeared stupidly to
misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before he had time
to rectify Chad again was upon him. "I must say then you show a low
mind!"