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The Beast in the Jungle-Part1_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 vulgarreminder 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






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