The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) š
- Author: Henry James
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āDo I strike you as improved?ā Strether was to recall that Chad had at this point enquired.
He was likewise to recallā āand it had to count for some time as his greatest comfortā āthat it had been āgivenā him, as they said at Woollett, to reply with some presence of mind: āI havenāt the least idea.ā 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 unmistakeablyā āand wasnāt it a matter of the confounded grey hair again?ā āhandsomer 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 wouldnāt 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 didnāt, 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 ofā āeverything 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 companionās nose. It gave him really almost the sense of having already acted his part. The momentary reliefā āas if from the knowledge that nothing of that at least could be undoneā āsprang from a particular cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostreyās 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 couldnāt 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 beforeā āit 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 companionās face and air as soon as it was made. āYour engagement to my mother has become then what they call here a fait accompli?āā āit 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. āYes,ā he said brightly, āit was on the happy settlement of the question that I started. You see therefore to what tune Iām in your family. Moreover,ā he added, āIāve been supposing youād suppose it.ā
āOh Iāve 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,ā said Chad, āto commemorate an event soā āwhat do they call it?ā āso auspicious. I see you make out, and not unnaturally,ā he continued, āthat bringing me home in triumph
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