The Ambassadors, Henry James [short novels in english .txt] 📗

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 anyone 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