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The Altar of the Dead-Part2_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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lights had a name for him, and from time to time a new light was

kindled. This was what he had fundamentally agreed for, that there



should always be room for them all. What those who passed or

lingered saw was simply the most resplendent of the altars called



suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly man, for whom

it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in a maze or a



doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious and

fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there,



and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the

conquests, if there had been such, a record of that adventurous



journey in which the beginnings and the endings of human relations

are the lettered mile-stones. He had in general little taste for



the past as a part of his own history; at other times and in other

places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to consider and impossible



to repair; but on these occasions he accepted it with something of

that positivegladness with which one adjusts one's self to an ache



that begins to succumb to treatment. To the treatment of time the

malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and these were



doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to him. The

day was written for him there on which he had first become



acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the

acquaintance were marked each with a flame.



The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had

entered that dark defile of our earthlydescent in which some one



dies every day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had

flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars



ablaze on the tips of the tapers. Various persons in whom his

interest had not been intense drew closer to him by entering this



company. He went over it, head by head, till he felt like the

shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a shepherd's vision of



differences imperceptible. He knew his candles apart, up to the

colour of the flame, and would still have known them had their



positions all been changed. To other imaginations they might stand

for other things - that they should stand for something to be



hushed before was all he desired; but he was intensely" target="_blank" title="ad.激烈地；热切地">intenselyconscious of

the personal note of each and of the distinguishable way it



contributed to the concert. There were hours at which he almost

caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now die,



that he might establish with them in this manner a connexion more

charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them



in life. In regard to those from whom one was separated by the

long curves of the globe such a connexion could only be an



improvement: it brought them instantly within reach. Of course

there were gaps in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could



only pretend to act for his own, and it wasn't every figure passing

before his eyes into the great obscure that was entitled to a



memorial. There was a strange sanctification in death, but some

characters were more sanctified by being forgotten than by being



remembered. The greatest blank in the shining page was the memory

of Acton Hague, of which he inveterately tried to rid himself. For



Acton Hague no flame could ever rise on any altar of his.

CHAPTER IV.



EVERY year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he

went to church as he had done the day his idea was born. It was on



this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he

began to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least



as frequent as himself. Others of the faithful, and in the rest of

the church, came and went, appealing sometimes, when they



disappeared, to a vague or to a particular recognition; but this

unfailing presence was always to be observed when he arrived and



still in possession when he departed. He was surprised, the first

time, at the promptitude with which it assumed an identity for him



- the identity of the lady whom two years before, on his




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