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 fail; it would 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 world that 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 Madame de Vionnet
and little Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all
with Chad Newsome himself.
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