酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

The Jolly Corner-Part1_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
but still unobscured, still exposed and cherished, under that pious

visitation of the spirit from which she had never been diverted.



She had come with him one day to see how his "apartment-house" was

rising; he had helped her over gaps and explained to her plans, and



while they were there had happened to have, before her, a brief but

livelydiscussion with the man in charge, the representative of the



building firm that had undertaken his work. He had found himself

quite "standing up" to this personage over a failure on the



latter's part to observe some detail of one of their noted

conditions, and had so lucidly argued his case that, besides ever



so prettily flushing, at the time, for sympathy in his triumph, she

had afterwards said to him (though to a slightly greater effect of



irony) that he had clearly for too many years neglected a real

gift. If he had but stayed at home he would have anticipated the



inventor of the sky-scraper. If he had but stayed at home he would

have discovered his genius in time really to start some new variety



of awful architectural hare and run it till it burrowed in a gold

mine. He was to remember these words, while the weeks elapsed, for



the small silver ring they had sounded over the queerest and

deepest of his own lately most disguised and most muffled



vibrations.

It had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight, it had



broken out with the oddest abruptness, this particular wanton

wonderment: it met him there - and this was the image under which



he himself judged the matter, or at least, not a little, thrilled

and flushed with it - very much as he might have been met by some



strange figure, some unexpectedoccupant, at a turn of one of the

dim passages of an empty house. The quaintanalogy quite



hauntingly remained with him, when he didn't indeed rather improve

it by a still intenser form: that of his opening a door behind



which he would have made sure of finding nothing, a door into a

room shuttered and void, and yet so coming, with a great suppressed



start, on some quite erect confronting presence, something planted

in the middle of the place and facing him through the dusk. After



that visit to the house in construction he walked with his

companion to see the other and always so much the better one, which



in the eastward direction formed one of the corners, - the "jolly"

one precisely, of the street now so generally dishonoured and



disfigured in its westward reaches, and of the comparatively

conservative Avenue. The Avenue still had pretensions, as Miss



Staverton said, to decency; the old people had mostly gone, the old

names were unknown, and here and there an old association seemed to



stray, all vaguely, like some very aged person, out too late, whom

you might meet and feel the impulse to watch or follow, in



kindness, for safe restoration to shelter.

They went in together, our friends; he admitted himself with his



key, as he kept no one there, he explained, preferring, for his

reasons, to leave the place empty, under a simple arrangement with



a good woman living in the neighbourhood and who came for a daily

hour to open windows and dust and sweep. Spencer Brydon had his



reasons and was growingly aware of them; they seemed to him better

each time he was there, though he didn't name them all to his



companion, any more than he told her as yet how often, how quite

absurdly often, he himself came. He only let her see for the



present, while they walked through the great blank rooms, that

absolute vacancy reigned and that, from top to bottom, there was



nothing but Mrs. Muldoon's broomstick, in a corner, to tempt the

burglar. Mrs. Muldoon was then on the premises, and she



loquaciously attended the visitors, preceding them from room to

room and pushing back shutters and throwing up sashes - all to show



them, as she remarked, how little there was to see. There was

little indeed to see in the great gaunt shell where the main



dispositions and the general apportionment of space, the style of

an age of ampler allowances, had nevertheless for its master their






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号