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DEATH OF THE LION.TXT-Part3_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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mine had been - the overclouding of his passionate desire to be

left to finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but he had



the finest conception of being let alone that I've ever met. For

the time, none the less, he took his profit where it seemed most to



crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries about

the nature of the artist's task. Observation too was a kind of



work and experience a kind of success; London dinners were all

material and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the



faintest conception of what I'm trying for," he said to me, "and

not many have read three pages that I've written; but I must dine



with them first - they'll find out why when they've time." It was

rather rude justice perhaps; but the fatigue had the merit of being



a new sort, while the phantasmagoric town was probably after all

less of a battlefield than the haunted study. He once told me that



he had had no personal life to speak of since his fortieth year,

but had had more than was good for him before. London closed the



parenthesis and exhibited him in relations; one of the most

inevitable of these being that in which he found himself to Mrs.



Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless brewer and proprietress of the

universal menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody knows, on



occasions when the crush is great, the animals rub shoulders freely

with the spectators and the lions sit down for whole evenings with



the lambs.

It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil



Paraday this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous

fun, considered that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature



of almost heraldic oddity. Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm

over her capture, and nothing could exceed the confused



apprehensions it excited in me. I had an instinctive fear of her

which I tried without effect to conceal from her victim, but which



I let her notice with perfect impunity. Paraday heeded it, but she

never did, for her conscience was that of a romping child. She was



a blind violent force to which I could attach no more idea of

responsibility than to the creaking of a sign in the wind. It was



difficult to say what she conduced to but circulation. She was

constructed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her for our



tractable friend was not to do him to death. He had consented for

a time to be of india-rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day



he should resume his shape or at least get back into his box. It

was evidently all right, but I should be glad when it was well



over. I had a special fear - the impression was ineffaceable of

the hour when, after Mr. Morrow's departure, I had found him on the



sofa in his study. That pretext of indisposition had not in the

least been meant as a snub to the envoy of THE TATLER - he had gone



to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his old pain, the

result of the agitationwrought in him by this forcing open of a



new period. His old programme, his old ideal even had to be

changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and



recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious

illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the



gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it

required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had



passed a bargain, my part of which was that I should make it my

business to take care of him. Let whoever would represent the



interest in his presence (I must have had a mystical prevision of

Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the interest in his work -



or otherwise expressed in his absence. These two interests were in

their essence opposed; and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I



shall ever again know the intensity of joy with which I felt that

in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.



One day in Sloane Street I found myself questioning Paraday's

landlord, who had come to the door in answer to my knock. Two



vehicles, a barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the

house.






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