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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +The Beast in the Jungle + +by Henry James + + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +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. + +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 WAS 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. + +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 HE 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. + +He accepted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the +moral of them was, she pointed out, that he REALLY 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. THEN 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 HAD 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. + +"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?" + +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." + +"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." + +"Ah if YOU haven't why should I?" he asked. + +"Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?" + +"From what 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." + +Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to +be that sort--?" + +"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I +haven't." + +"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd +remember. Not indeed that 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?" + +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. + +"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. + +"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?" + +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." + +"Is it because you've taken so many others as well?" + +"I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then." + +"So that I'm the only person who knows?" + +"The only person in the world." + +"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." + +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." + +"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then +you do still feel in the same way?" + +It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really +interested, though it all kept coining 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--?" + +"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." + +"Do you call that very simple?" John Marcher asked. + +She thought a moment. "It was perhaps because I seemed, as you +spoke, to understand it." + +"You do understand it?" he eagerly asked. + +Again she kept her kind eyes on him. "You still have the belief?" + +"Oh!" he exclaimed helplessly. There was too much to say. + +"Whatever it's to be," she clearly made out, "it hasn't yet come." + +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 +THAT. It would be much better, no doubt, if I were." + +"It's to be something you're merely to suffer?" + +"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." + +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?" + +John Marcher thought. "Did you ask me that before?" + +"No--I wasn't so free-and-easy then. But it's what strikes me +now." + +"Of course," he said after a moment, "it strikes you. Of course it +strikes ME. 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." + +"Do you mean because you've BEEN 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?" + +"Here I am, you see. It hasn't been overwhelming." + +"Then it hasn't been love," said May Bartram. + +"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." + +"You want something all to yourself--something that nobody else +knows or HAS known?" + +"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." + +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. + +"Is it a sense of coming violence?" + +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 THE thing. THE thing will of itself appear natural." + +"Then how will it appear strange?" + +Marcher bethought himself. "It won't--to ME." + +"To whom then?" + +"Well," he replied, smiling at last, "say to you." + +"Oh then I'm to be present?" + +"Why you are present--since you know." + +"I see." She turned it over. "But I mean at the catastrophe." + +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." + +"Are you afraid?" she asked. + +"Don't leave me now," he went on. + +"Are you afraid?" she repeated. + +"Do you think me simply out of my mind?" he pursued instead of +answering. "Do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic?" + +"No," said May Bartram. "I understand you. I believe you." + +"You mean you feel how my obsession--poor old thing--may correspond +to some possible reality?" + +"To some possible reality." + +"Then you WILL watch with me?" + +She hesitated, then for the third time put her question. "Are you +afraid?" + +"Did I tell you I was--at Naples?" + +"No, you said nothing about it." + +"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." + +"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. + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +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 +Mss 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. + +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 SHOULD 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 HER, 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. + +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 Mss 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. + +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 LIKE 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. + +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. SHE 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. + +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 HER 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." + +"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 YOU? +I often think, you know, of that." + +She looked as if she sometimes thought of that too, but rather in a +different way. "Where other people, you mean, are concerned?" + +"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." + +"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." + +"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?" + +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." + +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 CHOOSE, I can +decide for a change. It isn't one as to which there CAN 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." + +"Yes," Miss Bartram replied; "of course one's fate's coming, of +course it HAS 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 YOUR own." + +Something in this made him look at her with suspicion. "You say +'were to HAVE been,' as if in your heart you had begun to doubt." + +"Oh!" she vaguely protested. + +"As if you believed," he went on, "that nothing will now take +place." + +She shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. "You're far from +my thought." + +He continued to look at her. "What then is the matter with you?" + +"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." + +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?" + +"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 ME long ago--that first day at Weatherend." + +"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." + +"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 AM afraid. For then," he said, "we shouldn't, +should we? quite know what to do." + +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." + +"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." + +"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." + +John Marcher faintly smiled. "It's heroic?" + +"Certainly--call it that." + +It was what he would have liked indeed to call it. "I AM then a +man of courage?" + +"That's what you were to show me." + +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 THAT, you see. +I don't focus it. I can't name it. I only know I'm exposed." + +"Yes, but exposed--how shall I say?--so directly. So intimately. +That's surely enough." + +"Enough to make you feel then--as what we may call the end and the +upshot of our watch--that I'm not afraid?" + +"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." + +"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." + +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." + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +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 +YOU?"--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? + +"I never said," May Bartram replied, "that it hadn't made me a good +deal talked about." + +"Ah well then you're not 'saved.'" + +"It hasn't been a question for me. If you've had your woman I've +had," she said, "my man." + +"And you mean that makes you all right?" + +Oh it was always as if there were so much to say! + +"I don't know why it shouldn't make me--humanly, which is what +we're speaking of--as right as it makes you." + +"I see," Marcher returned. "'Humanly,' no doubt, as showing that +you're living for something. Not, that is, just for me and my +secret." + +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." + +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 AM, as I understand you, you're not compromised. +Is that it?" + +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." + +He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. "How kind, +how beautiful, you are to me! How shall I ever repay you?" + +She had her last grave pause, as if there might be a choice of +ways. But she chose. "By going on as you are." + +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. + +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 BE 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 WAS 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. + +One of them was that he should have caught himself--for he HAD so +done--REALLY 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 it 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 +SHE 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 HE 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 he 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." + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +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 CAN happen to +me?" + +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." + +"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." + +"They were too, too dreadful?" + +"Too, too dreadful--some of them." + +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." + +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. + +But she had now a soft smile. "Oh far--!" + +It was oddly ironic. "Do you mean you're prepared to go further?" + +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?" + +"Why I thought it the point you were just making--that we HAD +looked most things in the face." + +"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." + +"Then the worst--we haven't faced that. I COULD 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." + +"Then why do you assume," she asked, "that mine isn't?" + +"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." + +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." + +He shook his head. "You can't hide it." + +"Oh, oh!" May Bartram sounded over what she couldn't hide. It was +almost a smothered groan. + +"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." + +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 WOULD be the worst," she finally let herself say. +"I mean the thing I've never said." + +It hushed him a moment. "More monstrous than all the monstrosities +we've named?" + +"More monstrous. Isn't that what you sufficiently express," she +asked, "in calling it the worst?" + +Marcher thought. "Assuredly--if you mean, as I do, something that +includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable." + +"It would if it SHOULD happen," said May Bartram. "What we're +speaking of, remember, is only my idea." + +"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." + +"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." + +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." + +She promptly shook her head. "Never!" + +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?" + +"You think nothing is better?" she asked. + +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 KNOW?" 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!" + +In her own look, however, was doubt. "You see what?" + +"Why what you mean--what you've always meant." + +She again shook her head. "What I mean isn't what I've always +meant. It's different." + +"It's something new?" + +She hung back from it a little. "Something new. It's not what you +think. I see what you think." + +His divination drew breath then; only her correction might be +wrong. "It isn't that I AM a blockhead?" he asked between +faintness and grimness. "It isn't that it's all a mistake?" + +"A mistake?" she pityingly echoed. THAT 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." + +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 HAVEN'T lived with a vain imagination, in the most +besotted illusion? I haven't waited but to see the door shut in my +face?" + +She shook her head again. "However the case stands THAT isn't the +truth. Whatever the reality, it IS a reality. The door isn't +shut. The door's open," said May Bartram. + +"Then something's to come?" + +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. + +"Well, you don't say--?" + +She had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk +back strangely pale. "I'm afraid I'm too ill." + +"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. + +"Don't you know--now?" + +"'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. + +"Oh!" said May Bartram. + +"Are you in pain?" he asked as the woman went to her. + +"No," said May Bartram. + +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. + +"What then has happened?" + +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 WAS to," she said. + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +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 BEEN, 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? + +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 HAS come." + +Oh how he looked at her! "Really?" + +"Really." + +"The thing that, as you said, WAS to?" + +"The thing that we began in our youth to watch for." + +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?" + +"Positive. Definite. I don't know about the 'name,' but, oh with +a date!" + +He found himself again too helplessly at sea. "But come in the +night--come and passed me by?" + +May Bartram had her strange faint smile. "Oh no, it hasn't passed +you by!" + +"But if I haven't been aware of it and it hasn't touched me--?" + +"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 OF 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 HAS touched you," she went on. +"It has done its office. It has made you all its own." + +"So utterly without my knowing it?" + +"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 know it." + +"Oh!" he confusedly breathed, as she herself of late so often had +done. + +"What I long ago said is true. You'll never know now, and I think +you ought to be content. You've HAD it," said May Bartram. + +"But had what?" + +"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 NOT." + +He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it +was all beyond him, and that SHE 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?" + +She turned her eyes away, she looked straight before her; with +which after a moment: "Well, you know our fears." + +He wondered. "It's something then we never feared?" + +On this slowly she turned to him. "Did we ever dream, with all our +dreams, that we should sit and talk of it thus?" + +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." + +"Well"--she did her best for him--"not from this side. This, you +see," she said, "is the OTHER side." + +"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--?" + +"To where we are--no. We're HERE"--she made her weak emphasis. + +"And much good does it do us!" was her friend's frank comment. + +"It does us the good it can. It does us the good that IT isn't +here. It's past. It's behind," said May Bartram. "Before--" but +her voice dropped. + +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. + +"Before you see, it was always to COME. That kept it present." + +"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 YOUR absence." + +"Oh mine!"--and her pale hands made light of it. + +"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. NOTHING, for me, is past; nothing WILL 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?" + +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." + +"How in the world--when what is such knowledge but suffering?" + +She looked up at him a while in silence. "No--you don't +understand." + +"I suffer," said John Marcher. + +"Don't, don't!" + +"How can I help at least THAT?" + +"DON'T!" May Bartram repeated. + +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--?" + +"Don't KNOW--when you needn't," she mercifully urged. "You +needn't--for we shouldn't." + +"Shouldn't?" If he could but know what she meant! + +"No--it's too much." + +"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 ALL, 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?" + +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. + +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 HIS, 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 BEEN 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 MIGHT 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. + +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 HER?) +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. + +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. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +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 HE 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. + +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, WHAT?" 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 HAD +lived, and dependent on it not alone for a support but for an +identity. + +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. + +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 SHOWED 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 +HAD, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live? + +Something--and this reached him with a pang--that HE, 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 HIS +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 OUTSIDE 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, THE 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 SHE 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. + +The escape would have been to love her; then, THEN he would have +lived. SHE 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 WAS 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--THIS 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James + diff --git a/old/bstjg10.zip b/old/bstjg10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9258f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/bstjg10.zip |