Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/277

Rh Ah, how much, as it was, for all her bridling brightness—which was merely general and noticed nothing—would they work together? Strether knew he was unreasonable; he set it down to his being nervous; people couldn't notice everything and speak of everything in a quarter of an hour. Possibly, no doubt, also, he made too much of Chad's display. Yet, none the less, when, at the end of five minutes, in the cab, Jim Pocock had said nothing either—hadn't said, that is, what Strether wanted, though he had said much else—it all suddenly bounced back to their being either stupid or wilful. It was more probably, on the whole, the former, so that that would be the drawback of the bridling brightness. Yes, they would bridle and be bright; they would make the best of what was before them, but their observation would nevertheless fail; it would all be beyond them; they simply wouldn't understand. Of what use would it be then that they had come—if they weren't to be intelligent up to that point—unless indeed he himself were utterly deluded and extravagant? Was he, on this question of Chad's improvement, fantastic and away from the truth? Did he live in a false world, a rank world that he had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation—in the face, now, of Jim's silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks? Had they come to make the work of observation as he had practised observation crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come, in short, to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only been silly?

He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Mme. de Vionnet and little Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and, above all, with Chad Newsome himself. Wouldn't it be found to have made more for reality to be silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim? Jim, in fact, he presently made up his mind, was individually out of it; Jim didn't care; Jim