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In the Cage-Part11_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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She considered her lover. "He'd never find YOU, my dear!"

Her lover, still on his seat, appealed to her in something of the



attitude in which she had last left Captain Everard, but the

impression was not the same. "Then where do I come in?"



"You don't come in at all. That's just the beauty of it!"--and

with this she turned to mingle with the multitude collected round



the band. Mr. Mudge presentlyovertake的过去式">overtook her and drew her arm into

his own with a quiet force that expressed the serenity of



possession; in consonance with which it was only when they parted

for the night at her door that he referred again to what she had



told him.

"Have you seen him since?"



"Since the night in the Park? No, not once."

"Oh, what a cad!" said Mr. Mudge.



CHAPTER XX

It was not till the end of October that she saw Captain Everard



again, and on that occasion--the only one of all the series on

which hindrance had been so utter--no communication with him proved



possible. She had made out even from the cage that it was a

charming golden day: a patch of hazy autumn sunlight lay across



the sanded floor and also, higher up, quickened into brightness a

row of ruddy bottled syrups. Work was slack and the place in



general empty; the town, as they said in the cage, had not waked

up, and the feeling of the day likened itself to something than in



happier conditions she would have thought of romantically as Saint

Martin's summer. The counter-clerk had gone to his dinner; she



herself was busy with arrears of postal jobs, in the midst of which

she became aware that Captain Everard had apparently been in the



shop a minute and that Mr. Buckton had already seized him.

He had as usual half a dozen telegrams; and when he saw that she



saw him and their eyes met he gave, on bowing to her, an

exaggerated laugh in which she read a new consciousness. It was a



confession of awkwardness; it seemed to tell her that of course he

knew he ought better to have kept his head, ought to have been



clever enough to wait, on some pretext, till he should have found

her free. Mr. Buckton was a long time with him, and her attention



was soon demanded by other visitors; so that nothing passed between

them but the fulness of their silence. The look she took from him



was his greeting, and the other one a simple sign of the eyes sent

her before going out. The only token they exchanged therefore was



his tacit assent to her wish that since they couldn't attempt a

certain frankness they should attempt nothing at all. This was her



intensepreference; she could be as still and cold as any one when

that was the sole solution.



Yet more than any contacthitherto achieved these counted instants

struck her as marking a step: they were built so--just in the mere



flash--on the recognition of his now definitelyknowing what it was

she would do for him. The "anything, anything" she had uttered in



the Park went to and fro between them and under the poked-out china

that interposed. It had all at last even put on the air of their



not needing now clumsily to manoeuvre to converse: their former

little postal make-believes, the intense implications of questions



and answers and change, had become in the light of the personal

fact, of their having had their moment, a possibility comparatively



poor. It was as if they had met for all time--it exerted on their

being in presence again an influence so prodigious. When she



watched herself, in the memory of that night, walk away from him as

if she were making an end, she found something too pitiful in the



primness of such a gait. Hadn't she precisely established on the

part of each a consciousness that could end only with death?



It must be admitted that in spite of this brave margin an

irritation, after he had gone, remained with her; a sense that



presently became one with a still sharper hatred of Mr. Buckton,

who, on her friend's withdrawal, had retired with the telegrams to



the sounder and left her the other work. She knew indeed she

should have a chance to see them, when she would, on file; and she



was divided, as the day went on, between the two impressions of all

that was lost and all that was re-asserted. What beset her above



all, and as she had almost never known it before, was the desire to

bound straight out, to overtake the autumn afternoon before it



passed away for ever and hurry off to the Park and perhaps be with

him there again on a bench. It became for an hour a fantastic



vision with her that he might just have gone to sit and wait for

her. She could almost hear him, through the tick of the sounder,



scatter with his stick, in his impatience, the fallen leaves of

October. Why should such a vision seize her at this particular






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