VOLUME I - BOOK FOURTH - CHAPTER I

"I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither

more nor less, and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as

immediately and favourably to consider it!"--Strether, face to

face with Chad after the play, had sounded these words almost

breathlessly, and with an effect at first positively disconcerting

to himself alone. For Chad's receptive attitude was that of a

person who had been gracefully quiet while the messenger at last

reaching him has run a mile through the dust. During some seconds

after he had spoken Strether felt as if HE had made some such

exertion; he was not even certain that the perspiration wasn't on

his brow. It was the kind of consciousness for which he had to

thank the look that, while the strain lasted, the young man's eyes

gave him. They reflected--and the deuce of the thing was that they

reflected really with a sort of shyness of kindness--his

momentarily disordered state; which fact brought on in its turn

for our friend the dawn of a fear that Chad might simply "take it

out"--take everything out--in being sorry for him. Such a fear,

any fear, was unpleasant. But everything was unpleasant; it was

odd how everything had suddenly turned so. This however was no

reason for letting the least thing go. Strether had the next

minute proceeded as roundly as if with an advantage to follow up.

"Of course I'm a busybody, if you want to fight the case to the

death; but after all mainly in the sense of having known you and

having given you such attention as you kindly permitted when you

were in jackets and knickerbockers. Yes--it was knickerbockers,

I'm busybody enough to remember that; and that you had, for your

age--I speak of the first far-away time--tremendously stout legs.

Well, we want you to break. Your mother's heart's passionately set

upon it, but she has above and beyond that excellent arguments and

reasons. I've not put them into her head--I needn't remind you how

little she's a person who needs that. But they exist--you must

take it from me as a friend both of hers and yours--for myself as

well. I didn't invent them, I didn't originally work them out; but

I understand them, I think I can explain them--by which I mean

make you actively do them justice; and that's why you see me here.

You had better know the worst at once. It's a question of an

immediate rupture and an immediate return. I've been conceited

enough to dream I can sugar that pill. I take at any rate the

greatest interest in the question. I took it already before I left

home, and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you are, I

take it still more now that I've seen you. You're older and--I

don't know what to call it!--more of a handful; but you're by so

much the more, I seem to make out, to our purpose."

"Do I strike you as improved?" Strether was to recall that Chad

had at this point enquired.

He was likewise to recall--and it had to count for some time as

his greatest comfort--that it had been "given" him, as they said

at Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind: "I haven't the

least idea." He was really for a while to like thinking he had

been positively hard. On the point of conceding that Chad had

improved in appearance, but that to the question of appearance the

remark must be confined, he checked even that compromise and left

his reservation bare. Not only his moral, but also, as it were,

his aesthetic sense had a little to pay for this, Chad being

unmistakeably--and wasn't it a matter of the confounded grey hair

again?--handsomer than he had ever promised. That however fell in

perfectly with what Strether had said. They had no desire to keep

down his proper expansion, and he wouldn't be less to their

purpose for not looking, as he had too often done of old, only

bold and wild. There was indeed a signal particular in which he

would distinctly be more so. Strether didn't, as he talked,

absolutely follow himself; he only knew he was clutching his

thread and that he held it from moment to moment a little tighter;

his mere uninterruptedness during the few minutes helped him to do

that. He had frequently for a month, turned over what he should

say on this very occasion, and he seemed at last to have said

nothing he had thought of--everything was so totally different.

But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window. This was

what he had done, and there was a minute during which he affected

himself as having shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty

flutter, straight in front of his companion's nose. It gave him

really almost the sense of having already acted his part. The

momentary relief--as if from the knowledge that nothing of THAT

at least could be undone--sprang from a particular cause, the

cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostrey's box, with

direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and that had been

concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness. What it

came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal with one

simply couldn't know. The new quantity was represented by the fact

that Chad had been made over. That was all; whatever it was it was

everything. Strether had never seen the thing so done before--it

was perhaps a speciality of Paris. If one had been present at the

process one might little by little have mastered the result; but

he was face to face, as matters stood, with the finished business.

It had freely been noted for him that he might be received as a

dog among skittles, but that was on the basis of the old quantity.

He had originally thought of lines and tones as things to be

taken, but these possibilities had now quite melted away. There

was no computing at all what the young man before him would think

or feel or say on any subject whatever. This intelligence Strether

had afterwards, to account for his nervousness, reconstituted as

he might, just as he had also reconstituted the promptness with

which Chad had corrected his uncertainty. An extraordinarily short

time had been required for the correction, and there had ceased to

be anything negative in his companion's face and air as soon as it

was made. "Your engagement to my mother has become then what they

call here a fait accompli?"--it had consisted, the determinant

touch, in nothing more than that.

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!"

It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his

own prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard

Malesherbes, that its disconcerting force was rather unfairly

great. It was a dig that, administered by himself--and

administered even to poor Mrs. Newsome--was no more than salutary;

but administered by Chad--and quite logically--it came nearer

drawing blood. They HADn't a low mind--nor any approach to one;

yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on

a basis that might be turned against them. Chad had at any rate

pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother;

he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung

noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride. There

was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and what

he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his

manner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a

preoccupation compromising to the insisters. It was exactly as

if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere

gesture caused to fall from him. The devil of the case was that

Strether felt it, by the same stroke, as falling straight upon

himself. He had been wondering a minute ago if the boy weren't a

Pagan, and he found himself wondering now if he weren't by chance

a gentleman. It didn't in the least, on the spot, spring up

helpfully for him that a person couldn't at the same time be both.

There was nothing at this moment in the air to challenge the

combination; there was everything to give it on the contrary

something of a flourish. It struck Strether into the bargain as

doing something to meet the most difficult of the questions;

though perhaps indeed only by substituting another. Wouldn't it be

precisely by having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered

the consequent trick of looking so well that one could scarce

speak to him straight? But what in the world was the clue to such

a prime producing cause? There were too many clues then that

Strether still lacked, and these clues to clues were among them.

What it accordingly amounted to for him was that he had to take

full in the face a fresh attribution of ignorance. He had grown

used by this time to reminders, especially from his own lips, of

what he didn't know; but he had borne them because in the first

place they were private and because in the second they practically

conveyed a tribute. He didn't know what was bad, and--as others

didn't know how little he knew it--he could put up with his state.

But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what was

good, Chad at least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some

reason, affected our friend as curiously public. It was in fact an

exposed condition that the young man left him in long enough for

him to feel its chill--till he saw fit, in a word, generously

again to cover him. This last was in truth what Chad quite

gracefully did. But he did it as with a simple thought that met

the whole of the case. "Oh I'm all right!" It was what Strether

had rather bewilderedly to go to bed on.

Read next: VOLUME I#BOOK FOURTH#CHAPTER II

Read previous: VOLUME I#BOOK THIRD#CHAPTER II

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