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The Coxon Fund-Part5_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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a third; but this didn't matter, for it was through Adelaide

Mulville that the side-wind of the comedy, though I was at first



unwitting, began to reach me. I went to Wimbledon at times because

Saltram was there, and I went at others because he wasn't. The



Pudneys, who had taken him to Birmingham, had already got rid of

him, and we had a horribleconsciousness of his wandering roofless,



in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear

wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been



lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the

difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted



genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was

sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide



and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in

silence, talked about when we didn't speak. When we spoke it was



only about the brilliant girl George Gravener was to marry and whom

he had brought out the other Sunday. I could see that this



presentation had been happy, for Mrs. Mulville commemorated it

after her sole fashion of showing confidence in a new relation.



"She likes me--she likes me": her native humility exulted in that

measure of success. We all knew for ourselves how she liked those



who liked her, and as regards Ruth Anvoy she was more easily won

over than Lady Maddock.



CHAPTER VII

One of the consequences, for the Mulvilles, of the sacrifices they



made for Frank Saltram was that they had to give up their carriage.

Adelaide drove gently into London in a one-horse greenish thing, an



early Victorian landau, hired, near at hand, imaginatively, from a

broken-down jobmaster whose wife was in consumption--a vehicle that



made people turn round all the more when her pensioner sat beside

her in a soft white hat and a shawl, one of the dear woman's own.



This was his position and I dare say his costume when on an

afternoon in July she went to return Miss Anvoy's visit. The wheel



of fate had now revolved, and amid silences deep and exhaustive,

compunctions and condonations alike unutterable, Saltram was



reinstated. Was it in pride or in penance that Mrs. Mulville had

begun immediately to drive him about? If he was ashamed of his



ingratitude she might have been ashamed of her forgiveness; but she

was incorrigibly capable of liking him to be conspicuous in the



landau while she was in shops or with her acquaintance. However,

if he was in the pillory for twenty minutes in the Regent's Park--I



mean at Lady Coxon's door while his companion paid her call--it

wasn't to the further humiliation of any one concerned that she



presently came out for him in person, not even to show either of

them what a fool she was that she drew him in to be introduced to



the bright young American. Her account of the introduction I had

in its order, but before that, very late in the season, under



Gravener's auspices, I met Miss Anvoy at tea at the House of

Commons. The member for Clockborough had gathered a group of



pretty ladies, and the Mulvilles were not of the party. On the

great terrace, as I strolled off with her a little, the guest of



honour immediately exclaimed to me: "I've seen him, you know--I've

seen him!" She told me about Saltram's call.



"And how did you find him?"

"Oh so strange!"



"You didn't like him?"

"I can't tell till I see him again."



"You want to do that?"

She had a pause. "Immensely."



We went no further; I fancied she had become aware Gravener was

looking at us. She turned back toward the knot of the others, and



I said: "Dislike him as much as you will--I see you're bitten."

"Bitten?" I thought she coloured a little.



"Oh it doesn't matter!" I laughed; "one doesn't die of it."

"I hope I shan't die of anything before I've seen more of Mrs.



Mulville." I rejoiced with her over plain Adelaide, whom she

pronounced the loveliest woman she had met in England; but before



we separated I remarked to her that it was an act of mere humanity

to warn her that if she should see more of Frank Saltram--which



would be likely to follow on any increase of acquaintance with Mrs.

Mulville--she might find herself flattening her nose against the



clear hard pane of an eternal question--that of the relative, that

of the opposed, importances of virtue and brains. She replied that



this was surely a subject on which one took everything for granted;

whereupon I admitted that I had perhaps expressed myself ill. What






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