The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) đ
- Author: Henry James
Book online «The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) đ». Author Henry James
âAnd where the devil is he?â
She passed it on with a laugh. âWhere the devil, Strether, are you?â
He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. âWell, quite already in Chadâs hands, it would seem.â And he had had with this another thought. âWill that beâ âjust all through Bilhamâ âthe way heâs going to work it? It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an ideaâ â!â
âWell?â she asked while the image held him.
âWell, is Chadâ âwhat shall I say?â âmonstrous?â
âOh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of,â she said, âwonât have been his best. Heâll have a better. It wonât be all through little Bilham that heâll work it.â
This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. âThrough whom else then?â
âThatâs what we shall see!â But quite as she spoke she turned, and Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of the ouvreuse from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, had come in with a quick step. The door closed behind him, and, though their faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was all good confidence. The curtain had just again arisen, and, in the hush of the general attention, Stretherâs challenge was tacit, as was also the greeting, with a quickly deprecating hand and smile, of the unannounced visitor. He discreetly signed that he would wait, would stand, and these things and his face, one look from which she had caught, had suddenly worked for Miss Gostrey. She fitted to them all an answer for Stretherâs last question. The solid stranger was simply the answerâ âas she now, turning to her friend, indicated. She brought it straight out for himâ âit presented the intruder. âWhy, through this gentleman!â The gentleman indeed, at the same time, though sounding for Strether a very short name, did practically as much to explain. Strether gasped the name backâ âthen only had he seen Miss Gostrey had said more than she knew. They were in presence of Chad himself.
Our friend was to go over it afterwards again and againâ âhe was going over it much of the time that they were together, and they were together constantly for three or four days: the note had been so strongly struck during that first half-hour that everything happening since was comparatively a minor development. The fact was that his perception of the young manâs identityâ âso absolutely checked for a minuteâ âhad been quite one of the sensations that count in life; he certainly had never known one that had acted, as he might have said, with more of a crowded rush. And the rush though both vague and multitudinous, had lasted a long time, protected, as it were, yet at the same time aggravated, by the circumstance of its coinciding with a stretch of decorous silence. They couldnât talk without disturbing the spectators in the part of the balcony just below them; and it, for that matter, came to Stretherâ âbeing a thing of the sort that did come to himâ âthat these were the accidents of a high civilisation; the imposed tribute to propriety, the frequent exposure to conditions, usually brilliant, in which relief has to await its time. Relief was never quite near at hand for kings, queens, comedians and other such people, and though you might be yourself not exactly one of those, you could yet, in leading the life of high pressure, guess a little how they sometimes felt. It was truly the life of high pressure that Strether had seemed to feel himself lead while he sat there, close to Chad, during the long tension of the act. He was in presence of a fact that occupied his whole mind, that occupied for the half-hour his senses themselves all together; but he couldnât without inconvenience show anythingâ âwhich moreover might count really as luck. What he might have shown, had he shown at all, was exactly the kind of emotionâ âthe emotion of bewildermentâ âthat he had proposed to himself from the first, whatever should occur, to show least. The phenomenon that had suddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete that his imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in the connection, without margin or allowance. It had faced every contingency but that Chad should not be Chad, and this was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.
He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision, might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was too remarkable, the truth; for what could be more remarkable than this sharp rupture of an identity? You could deal with a man as himselfâ âyou couldnât deal with him as somebody else. It was a small source of peace moreover to be reduced to wondering how little he might know in such an event what a sum he was setting you. He couldnât absolutely not know, for you couldnât absolutely not let him. It was a case then simply, a strong case, as people nowadays called such things, a case of transformation unsurpassed, and the hope was but in the general law that strong cases were liable to control from without. Perhaps he, Strether himself, was the only person after all aware of it. Even Miss Gostrey, with all her science, wouldnât be, would she?â âand he had never seen anyone less aware of anything than Waymarsh as he glowered at Chad. The social sightlessness of his old friendâs survey marked for him afresh, and almost in an humiliating way, the inevitable limits of direct aid from this source. He was not certain, however, of not drawing a shade of compensation from the privilege, as yet untasted, of knowing more about something in particular than
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