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diff --git a/1093-h/1093-h.htm b/1093-h/1093-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7d926f --- /dev/null +++ b/1093-h/1093-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2093 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Beast in the Jungle</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Beast in the Jungle + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: February 6, 2005 [eBook #1093] +[This file last updated November 30, 2010] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE</h1> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p>What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their +encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by +himself quite without intention—spoken as they lingered and slowly +moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been +conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she +was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, of whom he was +one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost +in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon. There had been +after luncheon much dispersal, all in the interest of the original motive, +a view of Weatherend itself and the fine things, intrinsic features, +pictures, heirlooms, treasures of all the arts, that made the place +almost famous; and the great rooms were so numerous that guests could +wander at their will, hang back from the principal group and in cases +where they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves +up to mysterious appreciations and measurements. There were persons +to be observed, singly or in couples, bending toward objects in out-of-the-way +corners with their hands on their knees and their heads nodding quite +as with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When they were +two they either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences +of even deeper import, so that there were aspects of the occasion that +gave it for Marcher much the air of the “look round,” previous +to a sale highly advertised, that excites or quenches, as may be, the +dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisition at Weatherend would +have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself, among such +suggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence of those who +knew too much and by that of those who knew nothing. The great +rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him that he needed +some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them, though this +impulse was not, as happened, like the gloating of some of his companions, +to be compared to the movements of a dog sniffing a cupboard. +It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have +been calculated.</p> +<p>It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer +meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, +as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by +troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the sequel +of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and +for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn’t +know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater +as he was also somehow aware—yet without a direct sign from her—that +the young woman herself hadn’t lost the thread. She hadn’t +lost it, but she wouldn’t give it back to him, he saw, without +some putting forth of his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but +saw several things more, things odd enough in the light of the fact +that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face +he was still merely fumbling with the idea that any contact between +them in the past would have had no importance. If it had had no +importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should +so seem to have so much; the answer to which, however, was that in such +a life as they all appeared to be leading for the moment one could but +take things as they came. He was satisfied, without in the least +being able to say why, that this young lady might roughly have ranked +in the house as a poor relation; satisfied also that she was not there +on a brief visit, but was more or less a part of the establishment—almost +a working, a remunerated part. Didn’t she enjoy at periods +a protection that she paid for by helping, among other services, to +show the place and explain it, deal with the tiresome people, answer +questions about the dates of the building, the styles of the furniture, +the authorship of the pictures, the favourite haunts of the ghost? +It wasn’t that she looked as if you could have given her shillings—it +was impossible to look less so. Yet when she finally drifted toward +him, distinctly handsome, though ever so much older—older than +when he had seen her before—it might have been as an effect of +her guessing that he had, within the couple of hours, devoted more imagination +to her than to all the others put together, and had thereby penetrated +to a kind of truth that the others were too stupid for. She <i>was</i> +there on harder terms than any one; she was there as a consequence of +things suffered, one way and another, in the interval of years; and +she remembered him very much as she was remembered—only a good +deal better.</p> +<p>By the time they at last thus came to speech they were alone in one +of the rooms—remarkable for a fine portrait over the chimney-place—out +of which their friends had passed, and the charm of it was that even +before they had spoken they had practically arranged with each other +to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was in other things +too—partly in there being scarce a spot at Weatherend without +something to stay behind for. It was in the way the autumn day +looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking +at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft +and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour. +It was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if, since she +had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort, he might, should he +choose to keep the whole thing down, just take her mild attention for +a part of her general business. As soon as he heard her voice, +however, the gap was filled up and the missing link supplied; the slight +irony he divined in her attitude lost its advantage. He almost +jumped at it to get there before her. “I met you years and +years ago in Rome. I remember all about it.” She confessed +to disappointment—she had been so sure he didn’t; and to +prove how well he did he began to pour forth the particular recollections +that popped up as he called for them. Her face and her voice, +all at his service now, worked the miracle—the impression operating +like the torch of a lamplighter who touches into flame, one by one, +a long row of gas-jets. Marcher flattered himself the illumination +was brilliant, yet he was really still more pleased on her showing him, +with amusement, that in his haste to make everything right he had got +most things rather wrong. It hadn’t been at Rome—it +had been at Naples; and it hadn’t been eight years before—it +had been more nearly ten. She hadn’t been, either, with +her uncle and aunt, but with her mother and brother; in addition to +which it was not with the Pembles <i>he</i> had been, but with the Boyers, +coming down in their company from Rome—a point on which she insisted, +a little to his confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. +The Boyers she had known, but didn’t know the Pembles, though +she had heard of them, and it was the people he was with who had made +them acquainted. The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged +round them with such violence as to drive them for refuge into an excavation—this +incident had not occurred at the Palace of the Caesars, but at Pompeii, +on an occasion when they had been present there at an important find.</p> +<p>He accepted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the +moral of them was, she pointed out, that he <i>really</i> didn’t +remember the least thing about her; and he only felt it as a drawback +that when all was made strictly historic there didn’t appear much +of anything left. They lingered together still, she neglecting +her office—for from the moment he was so clever she had no proper +right to him—and both neglecting the house, just waiting as to +see if a memory or two more wouldn’t again breathe on them. +It hadn’t taken them many minutes, after all, to put down on the +table, like the cards of a pack, those that constituted their respective +hands; only what came out was that the pack was unfortunately not perfect—that +the past, invoked, invited, encouraged, could give them, naturally, +no more than it had. It had made them anciently meet—her +at twenty, him at twenty-five; but nothing was so strange, they seemed +to say to each other, as that, while so occupied, it hadn’t done +a little more for them. They looked at each other as with the +feeling of an occasion missed; the present would have been so much better +if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn’t +been so stupidly meagre. There weren’t, apparently, all +counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming +to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities of freshness, +stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried—too +deeply (didn’t it seem?) to sprout after so many years. +Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved +her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, +filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a +stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken +with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after +him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. +<i>Then</i> they would be in possession of the something or other that +their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, +this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for +a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why—since +they seemed to know a certain number of the same people—their +reunion had been so long averted. They didn’t use that name +for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was +a kind of confession that they didn’t quite want it to be a failure. +Their attempted supposition of reasons for their not having met but +showed how little they knew of each other. There came in fact +a moment when Marcher felt a positive pang. It was vain to pretend +she was an old friend, for all the communities were wanting, in spite +of which it was as an old friend that he saw she would have suited him. +He had new ones enough—was surrounded with them for instance on +the stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn’t +have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, +get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or +critical kind <i>had</i> originally occurred. He was really almost +reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something +that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn’t come this +sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. +They would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. +They would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at +the turn, as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything +else failing, she herself decided to take up the case and, as it were, +save the situation. He felt as soon as she spoke that she had +been consciously keeping back what she said and hoping to get on without +it; a scruple in her that immensely touched him when, by the end of +three or four minutes more, he was able to measure it. What she +brought out, at any rate, quite cleared the air and supplied the link—the +link it was so odd he should frivolously have managed to lose.</p> +<p>“You know you told me something I’ve never forgotten +and that again and again has made me think of you since; it was that +tremendously hot day when we went to Sorrento, across the bay, for the +breeze. What I allude to was what you said to me, on the way back, +as we sat under the awning of the boat enjoying the cool. Have +you forgotten?”</p> +<p>He had forgotten, and was even more surprised than ashamed. +But the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any +“sweet” speech. The vanity of women had long memories, +but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake. +With another woman, a totally different one, he might have feared the +recall possibly even some imbecile “offer.” So, in +having to say that he had indeed forgotten, he was conscious rather +of a loss than of a gain; he already saw an interest in the matter of +her mention. “I try to think—but I give it up. +Yet I remember the Sorrento day.”</p> +<p>“I’m not very sure you do,” May Bartram after a +moment said; “and I’m not very sure I ought to want you +to. It’s dreadful to bring a person back at any time to +what he was ten years before. If you’ve lived away from +it,” she smiled, “so much the better.”</p> +<p>“Ah if <i>you</i> haven’t why should I?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?”</p> +<p>“From what <i>I</i> was. I was of course an ass,” +Marcher went on; “but I would rather know from you just the sort +of ass I was than—from the moment you have something in your mind—not +know anything.”</p> +<p>Still, however, she hesitated. “But if you’ve completely +ceased to be that sort—?”</p> +<p>“Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps +I haven’t.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps. Yet if you haven’t,” she added, +“I should suppose you’d remember. Not indeed that +<i>I</i> in the least connect with my impression the invidious name +you use. If I had only thought you foolish,” she explained, +“the thing I speak of wouldn’t so have remained with me. +It was about yourself.” She waited as if it might come to +him; but as, only meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt +her ships. “Has it ever happened?”</p> +<p>Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for +him and the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with +recognition.</p> +<p>“Do you mean I told you—?” But he faltered, +lest what came to him shouldn’t be right, lest he should only +give himself away.</p> +<p>“It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn’t +forget—that is if one remembered you at all. That’s +why I ask you,” she smiled, “if the thing you then spoke +of has ever come to pass?”</p> +<p>Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed. +This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion had been +a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel it hadn’t +been, much as it had been a surprise. After the first little shock +of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, +to taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world +then who would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the +fact of his having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from +him. No wonder they couldn’t have met as if nothing had +happened. “I judge,” he finally said, “that +I know what you mean. Only I had strangely enough lost any sense +of having taken you so far into my confidence.”</p> +<p>“Is it because you’ve taken so many others as well?”</p> +<p>“I’ve taken nobody. Not a creature since then.”</p> +<p>“So that I’m the only person who knows?”</p> +<p>“The only person in the world.”</p> +<p>“Well,” she quickly replied, “I myself have never +spoken. I’ve never, never repeated of you what you told +me.” She looked at him so that he perfectly believed her. +Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt. +“And I never will.”</p> +<p>She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him +at ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question +was a new luxury to him—that is from the moment she was in possession. +If she didn’t take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic, +and that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. +What he felt was that he couldn’t at present have begun to tell +her, and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely by the accident of having +done so of old. “Please don’t then. We’re +just right as it is.”</p> +<p>“Oh I am,” she laughed, “if you are!” +To which she added: “Then you do still feel in the same way?”</p> +<p>It was impossible he shouldn’t take to himself that she was +really interested, though it all kept coming as a perfect surprise. +He had thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasn’t +alone a bit. He hadn’t been, it appeared, for an hour—since +those moments on the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he +seemed to see as he looked at her—she who had been made so by +the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity. To tell her what +he had told her—what had it been but to ask something of her? +something that she had given, in her charity, without his having, by +a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing another encounter, +so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her had been simply +at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not done so +for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had endless +gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how he had +figured to her. “What, exactly, was the account I gave—?”</p> +<p>“Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. +You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within +you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly +prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, +that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and +that would perhaps overwhelm you.”</p> +<p>“Do you call that very simple?” John Marcher asked.</p> +<p>She thought a moment. “It was perhaps because I seemed, +as you spoke, to understand it.”</p> +<p>“You do understand it?” he eagerly asked.</p> +<p>Again she kept her kind eyes on him. “You still have +the belief?”</p> +<p>“Oh!” he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much +to say.</p> +<p>“Whatever it’s to be,” she clearly made out, “it +hasn’t yet come.”</p> +<p>He shook his head in complete surrender now. “It hasn’t +yet come. Only, you know, it isn’t anything I’m to +do, to achieve in the world, to be distinguished or admired for. +I’m not such an ass as <i>that</i>. It would be much better, +no doubt, if I were.”</p> +<p>“It’s to be something you’re merely to suffer?”</p> +<p>“Well, say to wait for—to have to meet, to face, to see +suddenly break out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, +possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering +everything, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the +consequences, however they shape themselves.”</p> +<p>She took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not +to be that of mockery. “Isn’t what you describe perhaps +but the expectation—or at any rate the sense of danger, familiar +to so many people—of falling in love?”</p> +<p>John Marcher thought. “Did you ask me that before?”</p> +<p>“No—I wasn’t so free-and-easy then. But it’s +what strikes me now.”</p> +<p>“Of course,” he said after a moment, “it strikes +you. Of course it strikes <i>me</i>. Of course what’s +in store for me may be no more than that. The only thing is,” +he went on, “that I think if it had been that I should by this +time know.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean because you’ve <i>been</i> in love?” +And then as he but looked at her in silence: “You’ve been +in love, and it hasn’t meant such a cataclysm, hasn’t proved +the great affair?”</p> +<p>“Here I am, you see. It hasn’t been overwhelming.”</p> +<p>“Then it hasn’t been love,” said May Bartram.</p> +<p>“Well, I at least thought it was. I took it for that—I’ve +taken it till now. It was agreeable, it was delightful, it was +miserable,” he explained. “But it wasn’t strange. +It wasn’t what my affair’s to be.”</p> +<p>“You want something all to yourself—something that nobody +else knows or <i>has</i> known?”</p> +<p>“It isn’t a question of what I ‘want’—God +knows I don’t want anything. It’s only a question +of the apprehension that haunts me—that I live with day by day.”</p> +<p>He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it further +impose itself. If she hadn’t been interested before she’d +have been interested now.</p> +<p>“Is it a sense of coming violence?”</p> +<p>Evidently now too again he liked to talk of it. “I don’t +think of it as—when it does come—necessarily violent. +I only think of it as natural and as of course above all unmistakeable. +I think of it simply as <i>the</i> thing. <i>The</i> thing will +of itself appear natural.”</p> +<p>“Then how will it appear strange?”</p> +<p>Marcher bethought himself. “It won’t—to <i>me</i>.”</p> +<p>“To whom then?”</p> +<p>“Well,” he replied, smiling at last, “say to you.”</p> +<p>“Oh then I’m to be present?”</p> +<p>“Why you are present—since you know.”</p> +<p>“I see.” She turned it over. “But I +mean at the catastrophe.”</p> +<p>At this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravity; +it was as if the long look they exchanged held them together. +“It will only depend on yourself—if you’ll watch with +me.”</p> +<p>“Are you afraid?” she asked.</p> +<p>“Don’t leave me now,” he went on.</p> +<p>“Are you afraid?” she repeated.</p> +<p>“Do you think me simply out of my mind?” he pursued instead +of answering. “Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?”</p> +<p>“No,” said May Bartram. “I understand you. +I believe you.”</p> +<p>“You mean you feel how my obsession—poor old thing—may +correspond to some possible reality?”</p> +<p>“To some possible reality.”</p> +<p>“Then you <i>will</i> watch with me?”</p> +<p>She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. “Are +you afraid?”</p> +<p>“Did I tell you I was—at Naples?”</p> +<p>“No, you said nothing about it.”</p> +<p>“Then I don’t know. And I should like to know,” +said John Marcher. “You’ll tell me yourself whether +you think so. If you’ll watch with me you’ll see.”</p> +<p>“Very good then.” They had been moving by this +time across the room, and at the door, before passing out, they paused +as for the full wind-up of their understanding. “I’ll +watch with you,” said May Bartram.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p>The fact that she “knew”—knew and yet neither chaffed +him nor betrayed him—had in a short time begun to constitute between +them a goodly bond, which became more marked when, within the year that +followed their afternoon at Weatherend, the opportunities for meeting +multiplied. The event that thus promoted these occasions was the +death of the ancient lady her great-aunt, under whose wing, since losing +her mother, she had to such an extent found shelter, and who, though +but the widowed mother of the new successor to the property, had succeeded—thanks +to a high tone and a high temper—in not forfeiting the supreme +position at the great house. The deposition of this personage +arrived but with her death, which, followed by many changes, made in +particular a difference for the young woman in whom Marcher’s +expert attention had recognised from the first a dependent with a pride +that might ache though it didn’t bristle. Nothing for a +long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must +have been much soothed by Miss Bartram’s now finding herself able +to set up a small home in London. She had acquired property, to +an amount that made that luxury just possible, under her aunt’s +extremely complicated will, and when the whole matter began to be straightened +out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the happy issue was +at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both because +she had more than once accompanied the ancient lady to town and because +he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made of +Weatherend one of the charms of their own hospitality. These friends +had taken him back there; he had achieved there again with Miss Bartram +some quiet detachment; and he had in London succeeded in persuading +her to more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, +on these latter occasions, to the National Gallery and the South Kensington +Museum, where, among vivid reminders, they talked of Italy at large—not +now attempting to recover, as at first, the taste of their youth and +their ignorance. That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had +served its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, +to Marcher’s sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of +their stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the +current.</p> +<p>They were literally afloat together; for our gentleman this was marked, +quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried +treasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands dug up this +little hoard, brought to light—that is to within reach of the +dim day constituted by their discretions and privacies—the object +of value the hiding-place of which he had, after putting it into the +ground himself, so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare luck +of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him indifferent to +any other question; he would doubtless have devoted more time to the +odd accident of his lapse of memory if he hadn’t been moved to +devote so much to the sweetness, the comfort, as he felt, for the future, +that this accident itself had helped to keep fresh. It had never +entered into his plan that any one should “know”, and mainly +for the reason that it wasn’t in him to tell any one. That +would have been impossible, for nothing but the amusement of a cold +world would have waited on it. Since, however, a mysterious fate +had opened his mouth betimes, in spite of him, he would count that a +compensation and profit by it to the utmost. That the right person +<i>should</i> know tempered the asperity of his secret more even than +his shyness had permitted him to imagine; and May Bartram was clearly +right, because—well, because there she was. Her knowledge +simply settled it; he would have been sure enough by this time had she +been wrong. There was that in his situation, no doubt, that disposed +him too much to see her as a mere confidant, taking all her light for +him from the fact—the fact only—of her interest in his predicament; +from her mercy, sympathy, seriousness, her consent not to regard him +as the funniest of the funny. Aware, in fine, that her price for +him was just in her giving him this constant sense of his being admirably +spared, he was careful to remember that she had also a life of her own, +with things that might happen to <i>her</i>, things that in friendship +one should likewise take account of. Something fairly remarkable +came to pass with him, for that matter, in this connexion—something +represented by a certain passage of his consciousness, in the suddenest +way, from one extreme to the other.</p> +<p>He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested +person in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his perpetual +suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others +no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life, asking of them no +allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. +He hadn’t disturbed people with the queerness of their having +to know a haunted man, though he had had moments of rather special temptation +on hearing them say they were forsooth “unsettled.” +If they were as unsettled as he was—he who had never been settled +for an hour in his life—they would know what it meant. Yet +it wasn’t, all the same, for him to make them, and he listened +to them civilly enough. This was why he had such good—though +possibly such rather colourless—manners; this was why, above all, +he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as decently—as in +fact perhaps even a little sublimely—unselfish. Our point +is accordingly that he valued this character quite sufficiently to measure +his present danger of letting it lapse, against which he promised himself +to be much on his guard. He was quite ready, none the less, to +be selfish just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for +it had come to him. “Just a little,” in a word, was +just as much as Miss Bartram, taking one day with another, would let +him. He never would be in the least coercive, and would keep well +before him the lines on which consideration for her—the very highest—ought +to proceed. He would thoroughly establish the heads under which +her affairs, her requirements, her peculiarities—he went so far +as to give them the latitude of that name—would come into their +intercourse. All this naturally was a sign of how much he took +the intercourse itself for granted. There was nothing more to +be done about that. It simply existed; had sprung into being with +her first penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. +The real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large +was the form of their marrying. But the devil in this was that +the very basis itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, +his apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn’t a privilege +he could invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely +what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for +him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, like +a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether the +crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The +definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the definite +lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn’t cause himself +to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt. Such was the image +under which he had ended by figuring his life.</p> +<p>They had at first, none the less, in the scattered hours spent together, +made no allusion to that view of it; which was a sign he was handsomely +alert to give that he didn’t expect, that he in fact didn’t +care, always to be talking about it. Such a feature in one’s +outlook was really like a hump on one’s back. The difference +it made every minute of the day existed quite independently of discussion. +One discussed of course <i>like</i> a hunchback, for there was always, +if nothing else, the hunchback face. That remained, and she was +watching him; but people watched best, as a general thing, in silence, +so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil. +Yet he didn’t want, at the same time, to be tense and solemn; +tense and solemn was what he imagined he too much showed for with other +people. The thing to be, with the one person who knew, was easy +and natural—to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid +it, to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it, and to keep it, in +any case, familiar, facetious even, rather than pedantic and portentous. +Some such consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for +instance when he wrote pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great +thing he had so long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than +this circumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acquiring a house +in London. It was the first allusion they had yet again made, +needing any other hitherto so little; but when she replied, after having +given him the news, that she was by no means satisfied with such a trifle +as the climax to so special a suspense, she almost set him wondering +if she hadn’t even a larger conception of singularity for him +than he had for himself. He was at all events destined to become +aware little by little, as time went by, that she was all the while +looking at his life, judging it, measuring it, in the light of the thing +she knew, which grew to be at last, with the consecration of the years, +never mentioned between them save as “the real truth” about +him. That had always been his own form of reference to it, but +she adopted the form so quietly that, looking back at the end of a period, +he knew there was no moment at which it was traceable that she had, +as he might say, got inside his idea, or exchanged the attitude of beautifully +indulging for that of still more beautifully believing him.</p> +<p>It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the +most harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run—since it covered +so much ground—was his easiest description of their friendship. +He had a screw loose for her but she liked him in spite of it and was +practically, against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated +but fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably +occupied. The rest of the world of course thought him queer, but +she, she only, knew how, and above all why, queer; which was precisely +what enabled her to dispose the concealing veil in the right folds. +She took his gaiety from him—since it had to pass with them for +gaiety—as she took everything else; but she certainly so far justified +by her unerring touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had +ended by convincing her. <i>She</i> at least never spoke of the +secret of his life except as “the real truth about you,” +and she had in fact a wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the +secret of her own life too. That was in fine how he so constantly +felt her as allowing for him; he couldn’t on the whole call it +anything else. He allowed for himself, but she, exactly, allowed +still more; partly because, better placed for a sight of the matter, +she traced his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into +which he could scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides +knowing that, she knew how he looked as well; he knew each of the things +of importance he was insidiously kept from doing, but she could add +up the amount they made, understand how much, with a lighter weight +on his spirit, he might have done, and thereby establish how, clever +as he was, he fell short. Above all she was in the secret of the +difference between the forms he went through—those of his little +office under Government, those of caring for his modest patrimony, for +his library, for his garden in the country, for the people in London +whose invitations he accepted and repaid—and the detachment that +reigned beneath them and that made of all behaviour, all that could +in the least be called behaviour, a long act of dissimulation. +What it had come to was that he wore a mask painted with the social +simper, out of the eye-holes of which there looked eyes of an expression +not in the least matching the other features. This the stupid +world, even after years, had never more than half discovered. +It was only May Bartram who had, and she achieved, by an art indescribable, +the feat of at once—or perhaps it was only alternately—meeting +the eyes from in front and mingling her own vision, as from over his +shoulder, with their peep through the apertures.</p> +<p>So while they grew older together she did watch with him, and so +she let this association give shape and colour to her own existence. +Beneath <i>her</i> forms as well detachment had learned to sit, and +behaviour had become for her, in the social sense, a false account of +herself. There was but one account of her that would have been +true all the while and that she could give straight to nobody, least +of all to John Marcher. Her whole attitude was a virtual statement, +but the perception of that only seemed called to take its place for +him as one of the many things necessarily crowded out of his consciousness. +If she had moreover, like himself, to make sacrifices to their real +truth, it was to be granted that her compensation might have affected +her as more prompt and more natural. They had long periods, in +this London time, during which, when they were together, a stranger +might have listened to them without in the least pricking up his ears; +on the other hand the real truth was equally liable at any moment to +rise to the surface, and the auditor would then have wondered indeed +what they were talking about. They had from an early hour made +up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the margin +allowed them by this had fairly become one of their commonplaces. +Yet there were still moments when the situation turned almost fresh—usually +under the effect of some expression drawn from herself. Her expressions +doubtless repeated themselves, but her intervals were generous. +“What saves us, you know, is that we answer so completely to so +usual an appearance: that of the man and woman whose friendship has +become such a daily habit—or almost—as to be at last indispensable.” +That for instance was a remark she had frequently enough had occasion +to make, though she had given it at different times different developments. +What we are especially concerned with is the turn it happened to take +from her one afternoon when he had come to see her in honour of her +birthday. This anniversary had fallen on a Sunday, at a season +of thick fog and general outward gloom; but he had brought her his customary +offering, having known her now long enough to have established a hundred +small traditions. It was one of his proofs to himself, the present +he made her on her birthday, that he hadn’t sunk into real selfishness. +It was mostly nothing more than a small trinket, but it was always fine +of its kind, and he was regularly careful to pay for it more than he +thought he could afford. “Our habit saves you, at least, +don’t you see? because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar, +indistinguishable from other men. What’s the most inveterate +mark of men in general? Why the capacity to spend endless time +with dull women—to spend it I won’t say without being bored, +but without minding that they are, without being driven off at a tangent +by it; which comes to the same thing. I’m your dull woman, +a part of the daily bread for which you pray at church. That covers +your tracks more than anything.”</p> +<p>“And what covers yours?” asked Marcher, whom his dull +woman could mostly to this extent amuse. “I see of course +what you mean by your saving me, in this way and that, so far as other +people are concerned—I’ve seen it all along. Only +what is it that saves <i>you</i>? I often think, you know, of +that.”</p> +<p>She looked as if she sometimes thought of that too, but rather in +a different way. “Where other people, you mean, are concerned?”</p> +<p>“Well, you’re really so in with me, you know—as +a sort of result of my being so in with yourself. I mean of my +having such an immense regard for you, being so tremendously mindful +of all you’ve done for me. I sometimes ask myself if it’s +quite fair. Fair I mean to have so involved and—since one +may say it—interested you. I almost feel as if you hadn’t +really had time to do anything else.”</p> +<p>“Anything else but be interested?” she asked. “Ah +what else does one ever want to be? If I’ve been ‘watching’ +with you, as we long ago agreed I was to do, watching’s always +in itself an absorption.”</p> +<p>“Oh certainly,” John Marcher said, “if you hadn’t +had your curiosity—! Only doesn’t it sometimes come +to you as time goes on that your curiosity isn’t being particularly +repaid?”</p> +<p>May Bartram had a pause. “Do you ask that, by any chance, +because you feel at all that yours isn’t? I mean because +you have to wait so long.”</p> +<p>Oh he understood what she meant! “For the thing to happen +that never does happen? For the Beast to jump out? No, I’m +just where I was about it. It isn’t a matter as to which +I can <i>choose</i>, I can decide for a change. It isn’t +one as to which there <i>can</i> be a change. It’s in the +lap of the gods. One’s in the hands of one’s law—there +one is. As to the form the law will take, the way it will operate, +that’s its own affair.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” Miss Bartram replied; “of course one’s +fate’s coming, of course it <i>has</i> come in its own form and +its own way, all the while. Only, you know, the form and the way +in your case were to have been—well, something so exceptional +and, as one may say, so particularly <i>your</i> own.”</p> +<p>Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. “You +say ‘were to <i>have</i> been,’ as if in your heart you +had begun to doubt.”</p> +<p>“Oh!” she vaguely protested.</p> +<p>“As if you believed,” he went on, “that nothing +will now take place.”</p> +<p>She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. “You’re +far from my thought.”</p> +<p>He continued to look at her. “What then is the matter +with you?”</p> +<p>“Well,” she said after another wait, “the matter +with me is simply that I’m more sure than ever my curiosity, as +you call it, will be but too well repaid.”</p> +<p>They were frankly grave now; he had got up from his seat, had turned +once more about the little drawing-room to which, year after year, he +brought his inevitable topic; in which he had, as he might have said, +tasted their intimate community with every sauce, where every object +was as familiar to him as the things of his own house and the very carpets +were worn with his fitful walk very much as the desks in old counting-houses +are worn by the elbows of generations of clerks. The generations +of his nervous moods had been at work there, and the place was the written +history of his whole middle life. Under the impression of what +his friend had just said he knew himself, for some reason, more aware +of these things; which made him, after a moment, stop again before her. +“Is it possibly that you’ve grown afraid?”</p> +<p>“Afraid?” He thought, as she repeated the word, +that his question had made her, a little, change colour; so that, lest +he should have touched on a truth, he explained very kindly: “You +remember that that was what you asked <i>me</i> long ago—that +first day at Weatherend.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes, and you told me you didn’t know—that I +was to see for myself. We’ve said little about it since, +even in so long a time.”</p> +<p>“Precisely,” Marcher interposed—“quite as +if it were too delicate a matter for us to make free with. Quite +as if we might find, on pressure, that I <i>am</i> afraid. For +then,” he said, “we shouldn’t, should we? quite know +what to do.”</p> +<p>She had for the time no answer to this question. “There +have been days when I thought you were. Only, of course,” +she added, “there have been days when we have thought almost anything.”</p> +<p>“Everything. Oh!” Marcher softly groaned, as with +a gasp, half spent, at the face, more uncovered just then than it had +been for a long while, of the imagination always with them. It +had always had it’s incalculable moments of glaring out, quite +as with the very eyes of the very Beast, and, used as he was to them, +they could still draw from him the tribute of a sigh that rose from +the depths of his being. All they had thought, first and last, +rolled over him; the past seemed to have been reduced to mere barren +speculation. This in fact was what the place had just struck him +as so full of—the simplification of everything but the state of +suspense. That remained only by seeming to hang in the void surrounding +it. Even his original fear, if fear it as had been, had lost itself +in the desert. “I judge, however,” he continued, “that +you see I’m not afraid now.”</p> +<p>“What I see, as I make it out, is that you’ve achieved +something almost unprecedented in the way of getting used to danger. +Living with it so long and so closely you’ve lost your sense of +it; you know it’s there, but you’re indifferent, and you +cease even, as of old, to have to whistle in the dark. Considering +what the danger is,” May Bartram wound up, “I’m bound +to say I don’t think your attitude could well be surpassed.”</p> +<p>John Marcher faintly smiled. “It’s heroic?”</p> +<p>“Certainly—call it that.”</p> +<p>It was what he would have liked indeed to call it. “I +<i>am</i> then a man of courage?”</p> +<p>“That’s what you were to show me.”</p> +<p>He still, however, wondered. “But doesn’t the man +of courage know what he’s afraid of—or not afraid of? +I don’t know <i>that</i>, you see. I don’t focus it. +I can’t name it. I only know I’m exposed.”</p> +<p>“Yes, but exposed—how shall I say?—so directly. +So intimately. That’s surely enough.”</p> +<p>“Enough to make you feel then—as what we may call the +end and the upshot of our watch—that I’m not afraid?”</p> +<p>“You’re not afraid. But it isn’t,” +she said, “the end of our watch. That is it isn’t +the end of yours. You’ve everything still to see.”</p> +<p>“Then why haven’t you?” he asked. He had +had, all along, to-day, the sense of her keeping something back, and +he still had it. As this was his first impression of that it quite +made a date. The case was the more marked as she didn’t +at first answer; which in turn made him go on. “You know +something I don’t.” Then his voice, for that of a +man of courage, trembled a little. “You know what’s +to happen.” Her silence, with the face she showed, was almost +a confession—it made him sure. “You know, and you’re +afraid to tell me. It’s so bad that you’re afraid +I’ll find out.”</p> +<p>All this might be true, for she did look as if, unexpectedly to her, +he had crossed some mystic line that she had secretly drawn round her. +Yet she might, after all, not have worried; and the real climax was +that he himself, at all events, needn’t. “You’ll +never find out.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p>It was all to have made, none the less, as I have said, a date; which +came out in the fact that again and again, even after long intervals, +other things that passed between them were in relation to this hour +but the character of recalls and results. Its immediate effect +had been indeed rather to lighten insistence—almost to provoke +a reaction; as if their topic had dropped by its own weight and as if +moreover, for that matter, Marcher had been visited by one of his occasional +warnings against egotism. He had kept up, he felt, and very decently +on the whole, his consciousness of the importance of not being selfish, +and it was true that he had never sinned in that direction without promptly +enough trying to press the scales the other way. He often repaired +his fault, the season permitting, by inviting his friend to accompany +him to the opera; and it not infrequently thus happened that, to show +he didn’t wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, +he was the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the +month. It even happened that, seeing her home at such times, he +occasionally went in with her to finish, as he called it, the evening, +and, the better to make his point, sat down to the frugal but always +careful little supper that awaited his pleasure. His point was +made, he thought, by his not eternally insisting with her on himself; +made for instance, at such hours, when it befell that, her piano at +hand and each of them familiar with it, they went over passages of the +opera together. It chanced to be on one of these occasions, however, +that he reminded her of her not having answered a certain question he +had put to her during the talk that had taken place between them on +her last birthday. “What is it that saves <i>you</i>?”—saved +her, he meant, from that appearance of variation from the usual human +type. If he had practically escaped remark, as she pretended, +by doing, in the most important particular, what most men do—find +the answer to life in patching up an alliance of a sort with a woman +no better than himself—how had she escaped it, and how could the +alliance, such as it was, since they must suppose it had been more or +less noticed, have failed to make her rather positively talked about?</p> +<p>“I never said,” May Bartram replied, “that it hadn’t +made me a good deal talked about.”</p> +<p>“Ah well then you’re not ‘saved.’”</p> +<p>“It hasn’t been a question for me. If you’ve +had your woman I’ve had,” she said, “my man.”</p> +<p>“And you mean that makes you all right?”</p> +<p>Oh it was always as if there were so much to say!</p> +<p>“I don’t know why it shouldn’t make me—humanly, +which is what we’re speaking of—as right as it makes you.”</p> +<p>“I see,” Marcher returned. “‘Humanly,’ +no doubt, as showing that you’re living for something. Not, +that is, just for me and my secret.”</p> +<p>May Bartram smiled. “I don’t pretend it exactly +shows that I’m not living for you. It’s my intimacy +with you that’s in question.”</p> +<p>He laughed as he saw what she meant. “Yes, but since, +as you say, I’m only, so far as people make out, ordinary, you’re—aren’t +you? no more than ordinary either. You help me to pass for a man +like another. So if I <i>am</i>, as I understand you, you’re +not compromised. Is that it?”</p> +<p>She had another of her waits, but she spoke clearly enough. +“That’s it. It’s all that concerns me—to +help you to pass for a man like another.”</p> +<p>He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. “How +kind, how beautiful, you are to me! How shall I ever repay you?”</p> +<p>She had her last grave pause, as if there might be a choice of ways. +But she chose. “By going on as you are.”</p> +<p>It was into this going on as he was that they relapsed, and really +for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding +of their depths. These depths, constantly bridged over by a structure +firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation +in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest +of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the +abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the +fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting +his charge of an idea within her that she didn’t dare to express—a +charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions +ended. It had come up for him then that she “knew” +something and that what she knew was bad—too bad to tell him. +When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might +find it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone +and yet, for Marcher’s special sensibility, almost too formidable +again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately +narrowed and widened and that still wasn’t much affected by the +consciousness in him that there was nothing she could “know,” +after all, any better than he did. She had no source of knowledge +he hadn’t equally—except of course that she might have finer +nerves. That was what women had where they were interested; they +made out things, where people were concerned, that the people often +couldn’t have made out for themselves. Their nerves, their +sensibility, their imagination, were conductors and revealers, and the +beauty of May Bartram was in particular that she had given herself so +to his case. He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had +never felt before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe—some +catastrophe that yet wouldn’t at all be the catastrophe: partly +because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful +to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an appearance of uncertainty +in her health, co-incident and equally new. It was characteristic +of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and +to which our whole account of him is a reference, it was characteristic +that his complications, such as they were, had never yet seemed so as +at this crisis to thicken about him, even to the point of making him +ask himself if he were, by any chance, of a truth, within sight or sound, +within touch or reach, within the immediate jurisdiction, of the thing +that waited.</p> +<p>When the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to +him her fear of a deep disorder in her blood, he felt somehow the shadow +of a change and the chill of a shock. He immediately began to +imagine aggravations and disasters, and above all to think of her peril +as the direct menace for himself of personal privation. This indeed +gave him one of those partial recoveries of equanimity that were agreeable +to him—it showed him that what was still first in his mind was +the loss she herself might suffer. “What if she should have +to die before knowing, before seeing—?” It would have +been brutal, in the early stages of her trouble, to put that question +to her; but it had immediately sounded for him to his own concern, and +the possibility was what most made him sorry for her. If she did +“know,” moreover, in the sense of her having had some—what +should he think?—mystical irresistible light, this would make +the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption +of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She +had been living to see what would <i>be</i> to be seen, and it would +quite lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the +vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity; +yet, make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse of the period, +more and more disconcerted. It lapsed for him with a strange steady +sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him, independently of +the threat of much inconvenience, almost the only positive surprise +his career, if career it could be called, had yet offered him. +She kept the house as she had never done; he had to go to her to see +her—she could meet him nowhere now, though there was scarce a +corner of their loved old London in which she hadn’t in the past, +at one time or another, done so; and he found her always seated by her +fire in the deep old-fashioned chair she was less and less able to leave. +He had been struck one day, after an absence exceeding his usual measure, +with her suddenly looking much older to him than he had ever thought +of her being; then he recognised that the suddenness was all on his +side—he had just simply and suddenly noticed. She looked +older because inevitably, after so many years, she <i>was</i> old, or +almost; which was of course true in still greater measure of her companion. +If she was old, or almost, John Marcher assuredly was, and yet it was +her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truth home +to him. His surprises began here; when once they had begun they +multiplied; they came rather with a rush: it was as if, in the oddest +way in the world, they had all been kept back, sown in a thick cluster, +for the late afternoon of life, the time at which for people in general +the unexpected has died out.</p> +<p>One of them was that he should have caught himself—for he <i>had</i> +so done—<i>really</i> wondering if the great accident would take +form now as nothing more than his being condemned to see this charming +woman, this admirable friend, pass away from him. He had never +so unreservedly qualified her as while confronted in thought with such +a possibility; in spite of which there was small doubt for him that +as an answer to his long riddle the mere effacement of even so fine +a feature of his situation would be an abject anticlimax. It would +represent, as connected with his past attitude, a drop of dignity under +the shadow of which his existence could only become the most grotesques +of failures. He had been far from holding it a failure—long +as he had waited for the appearance that was to make it a success. +He had waited for quite another thing, not for such a thing as that. +The breath of his good faith came short, however, as he recognised how +long he had waited, or how long at least his companion had. That +she, at all events, might be recorded as having waited in vain—this +affected him sharply, and all the more because of his at first having +done little more than amuse himself with the idea. It grew more +grave as the gravity of her condition grew, and the state of mind it +produced in him, which he himself ended by watching as if it had been +some definite disfigurement of his outer person, may pass for another +of his surprises. This conjoined itself still with another, the +really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed +to shape itself had he dared. What did everything mean—what, +that is, did <i>she</i> mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable +death and the soundless admonition of it all—unless that, at this +time of day, it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He +had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper +of such a correction; he had never till within these last few months +been so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come +to him had time, whether <i>he</i> struck himself as having it or not. +That at last, at last, he certainly hadn’t it, to speak of, or +had it but in the scantiest measure—such, soon enough, as things +went with him, became the inference with which his old obsession had +to reckon: and this it was not helped to do by the more and more confirmed +appearance that the great vagueness casting the long shadow in which +he had lived had, to attest itself, almost no margin left. Since +it was in Time that he was to have met his fate, so it was in Time that +his fate was to have acted; and as he waked up to the sense of no longer +being young, which was exactly the sense of being stale, just as that, +in turn, was the sense of being weak, he waked up to another matter +beside. It all hung together; they were subject, he and the great +vagueness, to an equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities +themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods +had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, +was failure. It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, +dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything. +And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its unlooked-for +twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He didn’t +care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy or what +monstrosity he might yet be associated—since he wasn’t after +all too utterly old to suffer—if it would only be decently proportionate +to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the threatened presence +of it. He had but one desire left—that he shouldn’t +have been “sold.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p>Then it was that, one afternoon, while the spring of the year was +young and new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of these +alarms. He had gone in late to see her, but evening hadn’t +settled and she was presented to him in that long fresh light of waning +April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greyest +hours of autumn. The week had been warm, the spring was supposed +to have begun early, and May Bartram sat, for the first time in the +year, without a fire; a fact that, to Marcher’s sense, gave the +scene of which she formed part a smooth and ultimate look, an air of +knowing, in its immaculate order and cold meaningless cheer, that it +would never see a fire again. Her own aspect—he could scarce +have said why—intensified this note. Almost as white as +wax, with the marks and signs in her face as numerous and as fine as +if they had been etched by a needle, with soft white draperies relieved +by a faded green scarf on the delicate tone of which the years had further +refined, she was the picture of a serene and exquisite but impenetrable +sphinx, whose head, or indeed all whose person, might have been powdered +with silver. She was a sphinx, yet with her white petals and green +fronds she might have been a lily too—only an artificial lily, +wonderfully imitated and constantly kept, without dust or stain, though +not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint creases, under +some clear glass bell. The perfection of household care, of high +polish and finish, always reigned in her rooms, but they now looked +most as if everything had been wound up, tucked in, put away, so that +she might sit with folded hands and with nothing more to do. She +was “out of it,” to Marcher’s vision; her work was +over; she communicated with him as across some gulf or from some island +of rest that she had already reached, and it made him feel strangely +abandoned. Was it—or rather wasn’t it—that if +for so long she had been watching with him the answer to their question +must have swum into her ken and taken on its name, so that her occupation +was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with this in saying +to her, many months before, that she even then knew something she was +keeping from him. It was a point he had never since ventured to +press, vaguely fearing as he did that it might become a difference, +perhaps a disagreement, between them. He had in this later time +turned nervous, which was what he in all the other years had never been; +and the oddity was that his nervousness should have waited till he had +begun to doubt, should have held off so long as he was sure. There +was something, it seemed to him, that the wrong word would bring down +on his head, something that would so at least ease off his tension. +But he wanted not to speak the wrong word; that would make everything +ugly. He wanted the knowledge he lacked to drop on him, if drop +it could, by its own august weight. If she was to forsake him +it was surely for her to take leave. This was why he didn’t +directly ask her again what she knew; but it was also why, approaching +the matter from another side, he said to her in the course of his visit: +“What do you regard as the very worst that at this time of day +<i>can</i> happen to me?”</p> +<p>He had asked her that in the past often enough; they had, with the +odd irregular rhythm of their intensities and avoidances, exchanged +ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool intervals, +washed like figures traced in sea-sand. It had ever been the mark +of their talk that the oldest allusions in it required but a little +dismissal and reaction to come out again, sounding for the hour as new. +She could thus at present meet his enquiry quite freshly and patiently. +“Oh yes, I’ve repeatedly thought, only it always seemed +to me of old that I couldn’t quite make up my mind. I thought +of dreadful things, between which it was difficult to choose; and so +must you have done.”</p> +<p>“Rather! I feel now as if I had scarce done anything +else. I appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of +nothing but dreadful things. A great many of them I’ve at +different times named to you, but there were others I couldn’t +name.”</p> +<p>“They were too, too dreadful?”</p> +<p>“Too, too dreadful—some of them.”</p> +<p>She looked at him a minute, and there came to him as he met it, an +inconsequent sense that her eyes, when one got their full clearness, +were still as beautiful as they had been in youth, only beautiful with +a strange cold light—a light that somehow was a part of the effect, +if it wasn’t rather a part of the cause, of the pale hard sweetness +of the season and the hour. “And yet,” she said at +last, “there are horrors we’ve mentioned.”</p> +<p>It deepened the strangeness to see her, as such a figure in such +a picture, talk of “horrors,” but she was to do in a few +minutes something stranger yet—though even of this he was to take +the full measure but afterwards—and the note of it already trembled. +It was, for the matter of that, one of the signs that her eyes were +having again the high flicker of their prime. He had to admit, +however, what she said. “Oh yes, there were times when we +did go far.” He caught himself in the act of speaking as +if it all were over. Well, he wished it were; and the consummation +depended for him clearly more and more on his friend.</p> +<p>But she had now a soft smile. “Oh far—!”</p> +<p>It was oddly ironic. “Do you mean you’re prepared +to go further?”</p> +<p>She was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at +him, yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. “Do +you consider that we went far?”</p> +<p>“Why I thought it the point you were just making—that +we <i>had</i> looked most things in the face.”</p> +<p>“Including each other?” She still smiled. +“But you’re quite right. We’ve had together +great imaginations, often great fears; but some of them have been unspoken.”</p> +<p>“Then the worst—we haven’t faced that. I +<i>could</i> face it, I believe, if I knew what you think it. +I feel,” he explained, “as if I had lost my power to conceive +such things.” And he wondered if he looked as blank as he +sounded. “It’s spent.”</p> +<p>“Then why do you assume,” she asked, “that mine +isn’t?”</p> +<p>“Because you’ve given me signs to the contrary. +It isn’t a question for you of conceiving, imagining, comparing. +It isn’t a question now of choosing.” At last he came +out with it. “You know something I don’t. You’ve +shown me that before.”</p> +<p>These last words had affected her, he made out in a moment, exceedingly, +and she spoke with firmness. “I’ve shown you, my dear, +nothing.”</p> +<p>He shook his head. “You can’t hide it.”</p> +<p>“Oh, oh!” May Bartram sounded over what she couldn’t +hide. It was almost a smothered groan.</p> +<p>“You admitted it months ago, when I spoke of it to you as of +something you were afraid I should find out. Your answer was that +I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t, and I don’t pretend I +have. But you had something therefore in mind, and I see now how +it must have been, how it still is, the possibility that, of all possibilities, +has settled itself for you as the worst. This,” he went +on, “is why I appeal to you. I’m only afraid of ignorance +to-day—I’m not afraid of knowledge.” And then +as for a while she said nothing: “What makes me sure is that I +see in your face and feel here, in this air and amid these appearances, +that you’re out of it. You’ve done. You’ve +had your experience. You leave me to my fate.”</p> +<p>Well, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decision +to be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with +a small fine inner stiffness, an imperfect surrender. “It +<i>would</i> be the worst,” she finally let herself say. +“I mean the thing I’ve never said.”</p> +<p>It hushed him a moment. “More monstrous than all the +monstrosities we’ve named?”</p> +<p>“More monstrous. Isn’t that what you sufficiently +express,” she asked, “in calling it the worst?”</p> +<p>Marcher thought. “Assuredly—if you mean, as I do, +something that includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable.”</p> +<p>“It would if it <i>should</i> happen,” said May Bartram. +“What we’re speaking of, remember, is only my idea.”</p> +<p>“It’s your belief,” Marcher returned. “That’s +enough for me. I feel your beliefs are right. Therefore +if, having this one, you give me no more light on it, you abandon me.”</p> +<p>“No, no!” she repeated. “I’m with you—don’t +you see?—still.” And as to make it more vivid to him +she rose from her chair—a movement she seldom risked in these +days—and showed herself, all draped and all soft, in her fairness +and slimness. “I haven’t forsaken you.”</p> +<p>It was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, +and had the success of the impulse not, happily, been great, it would +have touched him to pain more than to pleasure. But the cold charm +in her eyes had spread, as she hovered before him, to all the rest of +her person, so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth. +He couldn’t pity her for that; he could only take her as she showed—as +capable even yet of helping him. It was as if, at the same time, +her light might at any instant go out; wherefore he must make the most +of it. There passed before him with intensity the three or four +things he wanted most to know; but the question that came of itself +to his lips really covered the others. “Then tell me if +I shall consciously suffer.”</p> +<p>She promptly shook her head. “Never!”</p> +<p>It confirmed the authority he imputed to her, and it produced on +him an extraordinary effect. “Well, what’s better +than that? Do you call that the worst?”</p> +<p>“You think nothing is better?” she asked.</p> +<p>She seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered, +though still with the dawn of a prospect of relief. “Why +not, if one doesn’t <i>know</i>?” After which, as +their eyes, over his question, met in a silence, the dawn deepened, +and something to his purpose came prodigiously out of her very face. +His own, as he took it in, suddenly flushed to the forehead, and he +gasped with the force of a perception to which, on the instant, everything +fitted. The sound of his gasp filled the air; then he became articulate. +“I see—if I don’t suffer!”</p> +<p>In her own look, however, was doubt. “You see what?”</p> +<p>“Why what you mean—what you’ve always meant.”</p> +<p>She again shook her head. “What I mean isn’t what +I’ve always meant. It’s different.”</p> +<p>“It’s something new?”</p> +<p>She hung back from it a little. “Something new. +It’s not what you think. I see what you think.”</p> +<p>His divination drew breath then; only her correction might be wrong. +“It isn’t that I <i>am</i> a blockhead?” he asked +between faintness and grimness. “It isn’t that it’s +all a mistake?”</p> +<p>“A mistake?” she pityingly echoed. <i>That</i> +possibility, for her, he saw, would be monstrous; and if she guaranteed +him the immunity from pain it would accordingly not be what she had +in mind. “Oh no,” she declared; “it’s +nothing of that sort. You’ve been right.”</p> +<p>Yet he couldn’t help asking himself if she weren’t, thus +pressed, speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should +be most in a hole if his history should prove all a platitude. +“Are you telling me the truth, so that I shan’t have been +a bigger idiot than I can bear to know? I <i>haven’t</i> +lived with a vain imagination, in the most besotted illusion? +I haven’t waited but to see the door shut in my face?”</p> +<p>She shook her head again. “However the case stands <i>that</i> +isn’t the truth. Whatever the reality, it <i>is</i> a reality. +The door isn’t shut. The door’s open,” said +May Bartram.</p> +<p>“Then something’s to come?”</p> +<p>She waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him. +“It’s never too late.” She had, with her gliding +step, diminished the distance between them, and she stood nearer to +him, close to him, a minute, as if still charged with the unspoken. +Her movement might have been for some finer emphasis of what she was +at once hesitating and deciding to say. He had been standing by +the chimney-piece, fireless and sparely adorned, a small perfect old +French clock and two morsels of rosy Dresden constituting all its furniture; +and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him waiting, grasped it +a little as for support and encouragement. She only kept him waiting, +however; that is he only waited. It had become suddenly, from +her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid to him that she had something +more to give him; her wasted face delicately shone with it—it +glittered almost as with the white lustre of silver in her expression. +She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, +and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful +was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately soft. +This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully +for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, +her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his +stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the less, was +that what he had expected failed to come to him. Something else +took place instead, which seemed to consist at first in the mere closing +of her eyes. She gave way at the same instant to a slow fine shudder, +and though he remained staring—though he stared in fact but the +harder—turned off and regained her chair. It was the end +of what she had been intending, but it left him thinking only of that.</p> +<p>“Well, you don’t say—?”</p> +<p>She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk +back strangely pale. “I’m afraid I’m too ill.”</p> +<p>“Too ill to tell me?” it sprang up sharp to him, and +almost to his lips, the fear she might die without giving him light. +He checked himself in time from so expressing his question, but she +answered as if she had heard the words.</p> +<p>“Don’t you know—now?”</p> +<p>“‘Now’—?” She had spoken +as if some difference had been made within the moment. But her +maid, quickly obedient to her bell, was already with them. “I +know nothing.” And he was afterwards to say to himself that +he must have spoken with odious impatience, such an impatience as to +show that, supremely disconcerted, he washed his hands of the whole +question.</p> +<p>“Oh!” said May Bartram.</p> +<p>“Are you in pain?” he asked as the woman went to her.</p> +<p>“No,” said May Bartram.</p> +<p>Her maid, who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her room, +fixed on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her; in spite of which, +however, he showed once more his mystification.</p> +<p>“What then has happened?”</p> +<p>She was once more, with her companion’s help, on her feet, +and, feeling withdrawal imposed on him, he had blankly found his hat +and gloves and had reached the door. Yet he waited for her answer. +“What <i>was</i> to,” she said.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p>He came back the next day, but she was then unable to see him, and +as it was literally the first time this had occurred in the long stretch +of their acquaintance he turned away, defeated and sore, almost angry—or +feeling at least that such a break in their custom was really the beginning +of the end—and wandered alone with his thoughts, especially with +the one he was least able to keep down. She was dying and he would +lose her; she was dying and his life would end. He stopped in +the Park, into which he had passed, and stared before him at his recurrent +doubt. Away from her the doubt pressed again; in her presence +he had believed her, but as he felt his forlornness he threw himself +into the explanation that, nearest at hand, had most of a miserable +warmth for him and least of a cold torment. She had deceived him +to save him—to put him off with something in which he should be +able to rest. What could the thing that was to happen to him be, +after all, but just this thing that had began to happen? Her dying, +her death, his consequent solitude—that was what he had figured +as the Beast in the Jungle, that was what had been in the lap of the +gods. He had had her word for it as he left her—what else +on earth could she have meant? It wasn’t a thing of a monstrous +order; not a fate rare and distinguished; not a stroke of fortune that +overwhelmed and immortalised; it had only the stamp of the common doom. +But poor Marcher at this hour judged the common doom sufficient. +It would serve his turn, and even as the consummation of infinite waiting +he would bend his pride to accept it. He sat down on a bench in +the twilight. He hadn’t been a fool. Something had +<i>been</i>, as she had said, to come. Before he rose indeed it +had quite struck him that the final fact really matched with the long +avenue through which he had had to reach it. As sharing his suspense +and as giving herself all, giving her life, to bring it to an end, she +had come with him every step of the way. He had lived by her aid, +and to leave her behind would be cruelly, damnably to miss her. +What could be more overwhelming than that?</p> +<p>Well, he was to know within the week, for though she kept him a while +at bay, left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each +of which he asked about her only again to have to turn away, she ended +his trial by receiving him where she had always received him. +Yet she had been brought out at some hazard into the presence of so +many of the things that were, consciously, vainly, half their past, +and there was scant service left in the gentleness of her mere desire, +all too visible, to check his obsession and wind up his long trouble. +That was clearly what she wanted; the one thing more for her own peace +while she could still put out her hand. He was so affected by +her state that, once seated by her chair, he was moved to let everything +go; it was she herself therefore who brought him back, took up again, +before she dismissed him, her last word of the other time. She +showed how she wished to leave their business in order. “I’m +not sure you understood. You’ve nothing to wait for more. +It <i>has</i> come.”</p> +<p>Oh how he looked at her! “Really?”</p> +<p>“Really.”</p> +<p>“The thing that, as you said, <i>was</i> to?”</p> +<p>“The thing that we began in our youth to watch for.”</p> +<p>Face to face with her once more he believed her; it was a claim to +which he had so abjectly little to oppose. “You mean that +it has come as a positive definite occurrence, with a name and a date?”</p> +<p>“Positive. Definite. I don’t know about the +‘name,’ but, oh with a date!”</p> +<p>He found himself again too helplessly at sea. “But come +in the night—come and passed me by?”</p> +<p>May Bartram had her strange faint smile. “Oh no, it hasn’t +passed you by!”</p> +<p>“But if I haven’t been aware of it and it hasn’t +touched me—?”</p> +<p>“Ah your not being aware of it”—and she seemed +to hesitate an instant to deal with this—“your not being +aware of it is the strangeness in the strangeness. It’s +the wonder <i>of</i> the wonder.” She spoke as with the +softness almost of a sick child, yet now at last, at the end of all, +with the perfect straightness of a sibyl. She visibly knew that +she knew, and the effect on him was of something co-ordinate, in its +high character, with the law that had ruled him. It was the true +voice of the law; so on her lips would the law itself have sounded. +“It <i>has</i> touched you,” she went on. “It +has done its office. It has made you all its own.”</p> +<p>“So utterly without my knowing it?”</p> +<p>“So utterly without your knowing it.” His hand, +as he leaned to her, was on the arm of her chair, and, dimly smiling +always now, she placed her own on it. “It’s enough +if <i>I</i> know it.”</p> +<p>“Oh!” he confusedly breathed, as she herself of late +so often had done.</p> +<p>“What I long ago said is true. You’ll never know +now, and I think you ought to be content. You’ve <i>had</i> +it,” said May Bartram.</p> +<p>“But had what?”</p> +<p>“Why what was to have marked you out. The proof of your +law. It has acted. I’m too glad,” she then bravely +added, “to have been able to see what it’s <i>not</i>.”</p> +<p>He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it +was all beyond him, and that <i>she</i> was too, he would still have +sharply challenged her hadn’t he so felt it an abuse of her weakness +to do more than take devoutly what she gave him, take it hushed as to +a revelation. If he did speak, it was out of the foreknowledge +of his loneliness to come. “If you’re glad of what +it’s ‘not’ it might then have been worse?”</p> +<p>She turned her eyes away, she looked straight before her; with which +after a moment: “Well, you know our fears.”</p> +<p>He wondered. “It’s something then we never feared?”</p> +<p>On this slowly she turned to him. “Did we ever dream, +with all our dreams, that we should sit and talk of it thus?”</p> +<p>He tried for a little to make out that they had; but it was as if +their dreams, numberless enough, were in solution in some thick cold +mist through which thought lost itself. “It might have been +that we couldn’t talk.”</p> +<p>“Well”—she did her best for him—“not +from this side. This, you see,” she said, “is the +<i>other</i> side.”</p> +<p>“I think,” poor Marcher returned, “that all sides +are the same to me.” Then, however, as she gently shook +her head in correction: “We mightn’t, as it were, have got +across—?”</p> +<p>“To where we are—no. We’re <i>here</i>”—she +made her weak emphasis.</p> +<p>“And much good does it do us!” was her friend’s +frank comment.</p> +<p>“It does us the good it can. It does us the good that +<i>it</i> isn’t here. It’s past. It’s +behind,” said May Bartram. “Before—” but +her voice dropped.</p> +<p>He had got up, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his yearning. +She after all told him nothing but that his light had failed—which +he knew well enough without her. “Before—?” +he blankly echoed.</p> +<p>“Before you see, it was always to <i>come</i>. That kept +it present.”</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t care what comes now! Besides,” +Marcher added, “it seems to me I liked it better present, as you +say, than I can like it absent with <i>your</i> absence.”</p> +<p>“Oh mine!”—and her pale hands made light of it.</p> +<p>“With the absence of everything.” He had a dreadful +sense of standing there before her for—so far as anything but +this proved, this bottomless drop was concerned—the last time +of their life. It rested on him with a weight he felt he could +scarce bear, and this weight it apparently was that still pressed out +what remained in him of speakable protest. “I believe you; +but I can’t begin to pretend I understand. <i>Nothing</i>, +for me, is past; nothing <i>will</i> pass till I pass myself, which +I pray my stars may be as soon as possible. Say, however,” +he added, “that I’ve eaten my cake, as you contend, to the +last crumb—how can the thing I’ve never felt at all be the +thing I was marked out to feel?”</p> +<p>She met him perhaps less directly, but she met him unperturbed. +“You take your ‘feelings’ for granted. You were +to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it.”</p> +<p>“How in the world—when what is such knowledge but suffering?”</p> +<p>She looked up at him a while in silence. “No—you +don’t understand.”</p> +<p>“I suffer,” said John Marcher.</p> +<p>“Don’t, don’t!”</p> +<p>“How can I help at least <i>that</i>?”</p> +<p>“<i>Don’t</i>!” May Bartram repeated.</p> +<p>She spoke it in a tone so special, in spite of her weakness, that +he stared an instant—stared as if some light, hitherto hidden, +had shimmered across his vision. Darkness again closed over it, +but the gleam had already become for him an idea. “Because +I haven’t the right—?”</p> +<p>“Don’t <i>know</i>—when you needn’t,” +she mercifully urged. “You needn’t—for we shouldn’t.”</p> +<p>“Shouldn’t?” If he could but know what she +meant!</p> +<p>“No— it’s too much.”</p> +<p>“Too much?” he still asked but with a mystification that +was the next moment of a sudden to give way. Her words, if they +meant something, affected him in this light—the light also of +her wasted face—as meaning <i>all</i>, and the sense of what knowledge +had been for herself came over him with a rush which broke through into +a question. “Is it of that then you’re dying?”</p> +<p>She but watched him, gravely at first, as to see, with this, where +he was, and she might have seen something or feared something that moved +her sympathy. “I would live for you still—if I could.” +Her eyes closed for a little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were +for a last time trying. “But I can’t!” she said +as she raised them again to take leave of him.</p> +<p>She couldn’t indeed, as but too promptly and sharply appeared, +and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness +and doom. They had parted for ever in that strange talk; access +to her chamber of pain, rigidly guarded, was almost wholly forbidden +him; he was feeling now moreover, in the face of doctors, nurses, the +two or three relatives attracted doubtless by the presumption of what +she had to “leave,” how few were the rights, as they were +called in such cases, that he had to put forward, and how odd it might +even seem that their intimacy shouldn’t have given him more of +them. The stupidest fourth cousin had more, even though she had +been nothing in such a person’s life. She had been a feature +of features in <i>his</i>, for what else was it to have been so indispensable? +Strange beyond saying were the ways of existence, baffling for him the +anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of producible claim. +A woman might have been, as it were, everything to him, and it might +yet present him, in no connexion that any one seemed held to recognise. +If this was the case in these closing weeks it was the case more sharply +on the occasion of the last offices rendered, in the great grey London +cemetery, to what had been mortal, to what had been precious, in his +friend. The concourse at her grave was not numerous, but he saw +himself treated as scarce more nearly concerned with it than if there +had been a thousand others. He was in short from this moment face +to face with the fact that he was to profit extraordinarily little by +the interest May Bartram had taken in him. He couldn’t quite +have said what he expected, but he hadn’t surely expected this +approach to a double privation. Not only had her interest failed +him, but he seemed to feel himself unattended—and for a reason +he couldn’t seize—by the distinction, the dignity, the propriety, +if nothing else, of the man markedly bereaved. It was as if, in +the view of society he had not <i>been</i> markedly bereaved, as if +there still failed some sign or proof of it, and as if none the less +his character could never be affirmed nor the deficiency ever made up. +There were moments as the weeks went by when he would have liked, by +some almost aggressive act, to take his stand on the intimacy of his +loss, in order that it <i>might</i> be questioned and his retort, to +the relief of his spirit, so recorded; but the moments of an irritation +more helpless followed fast on these, the moments during which, turning +things over with a good conscience but with a bare horizon, he found +himself wondering if he oughtn’t to have begun, so to speak, further +back.</p> +<p>He found himself wondering indeed at many things, and this last speculation +had others to keep it company. What could he have done, after +all, in her lifetime, without giving them both, as it were, away? +He couldn’t have made known she was watching him, for that would +have published the superstition of the Beast. This was what closed +his mouth now—now that the Jungle had been thrashed to vacancy +and that the Beast had stolen away. It sounded too foolish and +too flat; the difference for him in this particular, the extinction +in his life of the element of suspense, was such as in fact to surprise +him. He could scarce have said what the effect resembled; the +abrupt cessation, the positive prohibition, of music perhaps, more than +anything else, in some place all adjusted and all accustomed to sonority +and to attention. If he could at any rate have conceived lifting +the veil from his image at some moment of the past (what had he done, +after all, if not lift it to <i>her</i>?) so to do this to-day, to talk +to people at large of the Jungle cleared and confide to them that he +now felt it as safe, would have been not only to see them listen as +to a goodwife’s tale, but really to hear himself tell one. +What it presently came to in truth was that poor Marcher waded through +his beaten grass, where no life stirred, where no breath sounded, where +no evil eye seemed to gleam from a possible lair, very much as if vaguely +looking for the Beast, and still more as if acutely missing it. +He walked about in an existence that had grown strangely more spacious, +and, stopping fitfully in places where the undergrowth of life struck +him as closer, asked himself yearningly, wondered secretly and sorely, +if it would have lurked here or there. It would have at all events +sprung; what was at least complete was his belief in the truth itself +of the assurance given him. The change from his old sense to his +new was absolute and final: what was to happen had so absolutely and +finally happened that he was as little able to know a fear for his future +as to know a hope; so absent in short was any question of anything still +to come. He was to live entirely with the other question, that +of his unidentified past, that of his having to see his fortune impenetrably +muffled and masked.</p> +<p>The torment of this vision became then his occupation; he couldn’t +perhaps have consented to live but for the possibility of guessing. +She had told him, his friend, not to guess; she had forbidden him, so +far as he might, to know, and she had even in a sort denied the power +in him to learn: which were so many things, precisely, to deprive him +of rest. It wasn’t that he wanted, he argued for fairness, +that anything past and done should repeat itself; it was only that he +shouldn’t, as an anticlimax, have been taken sleeping so sound +as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the lost stuff +of consciousness. He declared to himself at moments that he would +either win it back or have done with consciousness for ever; he made +this idea his one motive in fine, made it so much his passion that none +other, to compare with it, seemed ever to have touched him. The +lost stuff of consciousness became thus for him as a strayed or stolen +child to an unappeasable father; he hunted it up and down very much +as if he were knocking at doors and enquiring of the police. This +was the spirit in which, inevitably, he set himself to travel; he started +on a journey that was to be as long as he could make it; it danced before +him that, as the other side of the globe couldn’t possibly have +less to say to him, it might, by a possibility of suggestion, have more. +Before he quitted London, however, he made a pilgrimage to May Bartram’s +grave, took his way to it through the endless avenues of the grim suburban +necropolis, sought it out in the wilderness of tombs, and, though he +had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell, found himself, +when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long intensities. +He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet powerless to penetrate +the darkness of death; fixing with his eyes her inscribed name and date, +beating his forehead against the fact of the secret they kept, drawing +his breath, while he waited, as if some sense would in pity of him rise +from the stones. He kneeled on the stones, however, in vain; they +kept what they concealed; and if the face of the tomb did become a face +for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn’t +know him. He gave them a last long look, but no palest light broke.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p>He stayed away, after this, for a year; he visited the depths of +Asia, spending himself on scenes of romantic interest, of superlative +sanctity; but what was present to him everywhere was that for a man +who had known what <i>he</i> had known the world was vulgar and vain. +The state of mind in which he had lived for so many years shone out +to him, in reflexion, as a light that coloured and refined, a light +beside which the glow of the East was garish cheap and thin. The +terrible truth was that he had lost—with everything else—a +distinction as well; the things he saw couldn’t help being common +when he had become common to look at them. He was simply now one +of them himself—he was in the dust, without a peg for the sense +of difference; and there were hours when, before the temples of gods +and the sepulchres of kings, his spirit turned for nobleness of association +to the barely discriminated slab in the London suburb. That had +become for him, and more intensely with time and distance, his one witness +of a past glory. It was all that was left to him for proof or +pride, yet the past glories of Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thought +of it. Small wonder then that he came back to it on the morrow +of his return. He was drawn there this time as irresistibly as +the other, yet with a confidence, almost, that was doubtless the effect +of the many months that had elapsed. He had lived, in spite of +himself, into his change of feeling, and in wandering over the earth +had wandered, as might be said, from the circumference to the centre +of his desert. He had settled to his safety and accepted perforce +his extinction; figuring to himself, with some colour, in the likeness +of certain little old men he remembered to have seen, of whom, all meagre +and wizened as they might look, it was related that they had in their +time fought twenty duels or been loved by ten princesses. They +indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself; +which, however, was exactly the cause of his haste to renew the wonder +by getting back, as he might put it, into his own presence. That +had quickened his steps and checked his delay. If his visit was +prompt it was because he had been separated so long from the part of +himself that alone he now valued.</p> +<p>It’s accordingly not false to say that he reached his goal +with a certain elation and stood there again with a certain assurance. +The creature beneath the sod knew of his rare experience, so that, strangely +now, the place had lost for him its mere blankness of expression. +It met him in mildness—not, as before, in mockery; it wore for +him the air of conscious greeting that we find, after absence, in things +that have closely belonged to us and which seem to confess of themselves +to the connexion. The plot of ground, the graven tablet, the tended +flowers affected him so as belonging to him that he resembled for the +hour a contented landlord reviewing a piece of property. Whatever +had happened—well, had happened. He had not come back this +time with the vanity of that question, his former worrying “What, +<i>what</i>?” now practically so spent. Yet he would none +the less never again so cut himself off from the spot; he would come +back to it every month, for if he did nothing else by its aid he at +least held up his head. It thus grew for him, in the oddest way, +a positive resource; he carried out his idea of periodical returns, +which took their place at last among the most inveterate of his habits. +What it all amounted to, oddly enough, was that in his finally so simplified +world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on +which he could still most live. It was as if, being nothing anywhere +else for any one, nothing even for himself, he were just everything +here, and if not for a crowd of witnesses or indeed for any witness +but John Marcher, then by clear right of the register that he could +scan like an open page. The open page was the tomb of his friend, +and there were the facts of the past, there the truth of his life, there +the backward reaches in which he could lose himself. He did this +from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through +the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the +most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; and to wander, +which was more extraordinary yet, round and round a third presence—not +wandering she, but stationary, still, whose eyes, turning with his revolution, +never ceased to follow him, and whose seat was his point, so to speak, +of orientation. Thus in short he settled to live—feeding +all on the sense that he once <i>had</i> lived, and dependent on it +not alone for a support but for an identity.</p> +<p>It sufficed him in its way for months and the year elapsed; it would +doubtless even have carried him further but for an accident, superficially +slight, which moved him, quite in another direction, with a force beyond +any of his impressions of Egypt or of India. It was a thing of +the merest chance—the turn, as he afterwards felt, of a hair, +though he was indeed to live to believe that if light hadn’t come +to him in this particular fashion it would still have come in another. +He was to live to believe this, I say, though he was not to live, I +may not less definitely mention, to do much else. We allow him +at any rate the benefit of the conviction, struggling up for him at +the end, that, whatever might have happened or not happened, he would +have come round of himself to the light. The incident of an autumn +day had put the match to the train laid from of old by his misery. +With the light before him he knew that even of late his ache had only +been smothered. It was strangely drugged, but it throbbed; at +the touch it began to bleed. And the touch, in the event, was +the face of a fellow-mortal. This face, one grey afternoon when +the leaves were thick in the alleys, looked into Marcher’s own, +at the cemetery, with an expression like the cut of a blade. He +felt it, that is, so deep down that he winced at the steady thrust. +The person who so mutely assaulted him was a figure he had noticed, +on reaching his own goal, absorbed by a grave a short distance away, +a grave apparently fresh, so that the emotion of the visitor would probably +match it for frankness. This fact alone forbade further attention, +though during the time he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his +neighbour, a middle-aged man apparently, in mourning, whose bowed back, +among the clustered monuments and mortuary yews, was constantly presented. +Marcher’s theory that these were elements in contact with which +he himself revived, had suffered, on this occasion, it may be granted, +a marked, an excessive check. The autumn day was dire for him +as none had recently been, and he rested with a heaviness he had not +yet known on the low stone table that bore May Bartram’s name. +He rested without power to move, as if some spring in him, some spell +vouchsafed, had suddenly been broken for ever. If he could have +done that moment as he wanted he would simply have stretched himself +on the slab that was ready to take him, treating it as a place prepared +to receive his last sleep. What in all the wide world had he now +to keep awake for? He stared before him with the question, and +it was then that, as one of the cemetery walks passed near him, he caught +the shock of the face.</p> +<p>His neighbour at the other grave had withdrawn, as he himself, with +force enough in him, would have done by now, and was advancing along +the path on his way to one of the gates. This brought him close, +and his pace, was slow, so that—and all the more as there was +a kind of hunger in his look—the two men were for a minute directly +confronted. Marcher knew him at once for one of the deeply stricken—a +perception so sharp that nothing else in the picture comparatively lived, +neither his dress, his age, nor his presumable character and class; +nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features that he showed. +He <i>showed</i> them—that was the point; he was moved, as he +passed, by some impulse that was either a signal for sympathy or, more +possibly, a challenge to an opposed sorrow. He might already have +been aware of our friend, might at some previous hour have noticed in +him the smooth habit of the scene, with which the state of his own senses +so scantly consorted, and might thereby have been stirred as by an overt +discord. What Marcher was at all events conscious of was in the +first place that the image of scarred passion presented to him was conscious +too—of something that profaned the air; and in the second that, +roused, startled, shocked, he was yet the next moment looking after +it, as it went, with envy. The most extraordinary thing that had +happened to him—though he had given that name to other matters +as well—took place, after his immediate vague stare, as a consequence +of this impression. The stranger passed, but the raw glare of +his grief remained, making our friend wonder in pity what wrong, what +wound it expressed, what injury not to be healed. What had the +man <i>had</i>, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?</p> +<p>Something—and this reached him with a pang—that <i>he</i>, +John Marcher, hadn’t; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher’s +arid end. No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion +meant; he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been <i>his</i> +deep ravage? The extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden +rush of the result of this question. The sight that had just met +his eyes named to him, as in letters of quick flame, something he had +utterly, insanely missed, and what he had missed made these things a +train of fire, made them mark themselves in an anguish of inward throbs. +He had seen <i>outside</i> of his life, not learned it within, the way +a woman was mourned when she had been loved for herself: such was the +force of his conviction of the meaning of the stranger’s face, +which still flared for him as a smoky torch. It hadn’t come +to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience; it had brushed him, +jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of chance, the insolence +of accident. Now that the illumination had begun, however, it +blazed to the zenith, and what he presently stood there gazing at was +the sounded void of his life. He gazed, he drew breath, in pain; +he turned in his dismay, and, turning, he had before him in sharper +incision than ever the open page of his story. The name on the +table smote him as the passage of his neighbour had done, and what it +said to him, full in the face, was that she was what he had missed. +This was the awful thought, the answer to all the past, the vision at +the dread clearness of which he turned as cold as the stone beneath +him. Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; +leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. +The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance—he +had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, <i>the</i> +man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the +rare stroke—that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we +say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So <i>she</i> +had seen it while he didn’t, and so she served at this hour to +drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that +all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This +the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had +then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, +however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had +come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered +him.</p> +<p>The escape would have been to love her; then, <i>then</i> he would +have lived. <i>She</i> had lived—who could say now with +what passion?—since she had loved him for himself; whereas he +had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the +chill of his egotism and the light of her use. Her spoken words +came back to him—the chain stretched and stretched. The +Beast had lurked indeed, and the Beast, at its hour, had sprung; it +had sprung in that twilight of the cold April when, pale, ill, wasted, +but all beautiful, and perhaps even then recoverable, she had risen +from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess. +It had sprung as he didn’t guess; it had sprung as she hopelessly +turned from him, and the mark, by the time he left her, had fallen where +it <i>was</i> to fall. He had justified his fear and achieved +his fate; he had failed, with the last exactitude, of all he was to +fail of; and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed +he mightn’t know. This horror of waking—<i>this</i> +was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in +his eyes seemed to freeze. Through them, none the less, he tried +to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might +feel the pain. That at least, belated and bitter, had something +of the taste of life. But the bitterness suddenly sickened him, +and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of +his image, what had been appointed and done. He saw the Jungle +of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived +it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that +was to settle him. His eyes darkened—it was close; and, +instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, +face down, on the tomb.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1093-h.htm or 1093-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/9/1093 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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