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The Beast in the Jungle-Part7_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 positiveprohibition, 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






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