Glasses by Henry James (read me like a book txt) đ
- Author: Henry James
- Performer: -
Book online «Glasses by Henry James (read me like a book txt) đ». Author Henry James
Mrs. Meldrum had held her breath; she gave out a long moan. âWell, thatâs exactly what I came here to tell him.â
âThen here he is.â Our host, all unprepared, his latchkey still in his hand, had just pushed open the door and, startled at finding us, turned a frightened look from one to the other, wondering what disaster we were there to announce or avert.
Mrs. Meldrum was on the spot all gaiety. âIâve come to return your sweet visit. Ah,â she laughed, âI mean to keep up the acquaintance!â
âDoâdo,â he murmured mechanically and absently, continuing to look at us. Then he broke out: âHeâs going to marry her.â
I was surprised. âYou already know?â
He produced an evening paper, which he tossed down on the table.
âItâs in that.â
âPublishedâalready?â I was still more surprised.
âOh Flora canât keep a secret!ââMrs. Meldrum made it light. She went up to poor Dawling and laid a motherly hand upon him.
âItâs all rightâitâs just as it ought to be: donât think about her ever any more.â Then as he met this adjuration with a stare from which thought, and of the most defiant and dismal, fairly protruded, the excellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on the cheek.
I have spoken of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads, and I confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I am rather proud of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I saidâthey slip along the string in their small smooth roundness.
Geoffrey Dawling accepted as a gentleman the event his evening paper had proclaimed; in view of which I snatched a moment to nudge him a hint that he might offer Mrs. Meldrum his hand. He returned me a heavy head-shake, and I judged that marriage would henceforth strike him very much as the traffic of the street may strike some poor incurable at the window of an hospital. Circumstances arising at this time led to my making an absence from England, and circumstances already existing offered him a firm basis for similar action. He had after all the usual resource of a Britonâhe could take to his boats, always drawn up in our background. He started on a journey round the globe, and I was left with nothing but my inference as to what might have happened. Later observation however only confirmed my belief that if at any time during the couple of months after Flora Sauntâs brilliant engagement he had made up, as they say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good lady would not have pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was to behold I knew of cases in which she had been obliged to administer that shove. I went to New York to paint a couple of portraits; but I found, once on the spot, that I had counted without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out this harsh discrimination by the production of some dozen. I spent a year in America and should probably have spent a second had I not been summoned back to England by alarming news from my mother. Her strength had failed, and as soon as I reached London I hurried down to Folkestone, arriving just at the moment to offer a welcome to some slight symptom of a rally. She had been much worse but was now a little better; and though I found nothing but satisfaction in having come to her I saw after a few hours that my London studio, where arrears of work had already met me, would be my place to await whatever might next occur. Yet before returning to town I called on Mrs. Meldrum, from whom I had not had a line, and my view of whom, with the adjacent objects, as I had left them, had been intercepted by a luxuriant foreground.
Before I had gained her house I met her, as I supposed, coming toward me across the down, greeting me from afar with the familiar twinkle of her great vitreous badge; and as it was late in the autumn and the esplanade a blank I was free to acknowledge this signal by cutting a caper on the grass. My enthusiasm dropped indeed the next moment, for I had seen in a few more seconds that the person thus assaulted had by no means the figure of my military friend. I felt a shock much greater than any I should have thought possible when on this personâs drawing near I knew her for poor little Flora Saunt. At what moment she had recognised me belonged to an order of mysteries over which, it quickly came home to me, one would never linger again: once we were face to face it so chiefly mattered that I should succeed in looking entirely unastonished. All I at first saw was the big gold bar crossing each of her lenses, over which something convex and grotesque, like the eyes of a large insect, something that now represented her whole personality, seemed, as out of the orifice of a prison, to strain forward and press. The face had shrunk away: it looked smaller, appeared even to look plain; it was at all events, so far as the effect on a spectator was concerned, wholly sacrificed to this huge apparatus of sight. There was no smile in it, and she made no motion to take my offered hand.
âI had no idea you were down here!â I said and I wondered whether she didnât know me at all or knew me only by my voice.
âYou thought I was Mrs. Meldrum,â she ever so quietly answered.
It was just this low pitch that made me protest with laughter. âOh yes, you have a tremendous deal in common with Mrs. Meldrum! Iâve just returned to England after a long absence and Iâm on my way to see her. Wonât you come with me?â It struck me that her old reason for keeping clear of our friend was well disposed of now.
âIâve just left her. Iâm staying with her.â She stood solemnly fixing me with her goggles. âWould you like to paint me now?â she asked. She seemed to speak, with intense gravity, from behind a mask or a cage.
There was nothing to do but treat the question still with high spirits. âIt would be a fascinating little artistic problem!â
That something was wrong it wasnât difficult to see, but a good deal more than met the eye might be presumed to be wrong if Flora was under Mrs. Meldrumâs roof. I hadnât for a year had much time to think of her, but my imagination had had ground for lodging her in more gilded halls. One of the last things I had heard before leaving England was that in commemoration of the new relationship she had gone to stay with Lady Considine. This had made me take everything else for granted, and the noisy American world had deafened my care to possible contradictions. Her spectacles were at present a direct contradiction; they seemed a negation not only of new relationships but of every old one as well. I remember nevertheless that when after a moment she walked beside me on the grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldnât as yet at any rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave off this danger I harried her with questions about Mrs. Meldrum and, without waiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own doings. My companion was finely silent, and I felt both as if she were watching my nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as if I were talking to some different and strange person. Flora plain and obscure and dumb was no Flora at all. At Mrs. Meldrumâs door she turned off with the observation that as there was certainly a great deal I should have to say to our friend she had better not go in with me. I looked at her againâI had been keeping my eyes away from herâbut only to meet her magnified stare. I greatly desired in truth to see Mrs. Meldrum alone, but there was something so grim in the girlâs trouble that I hesitated to fall in with this idea of dropping her. Yet one couldnât express a compassion without seeming to take for granted more trouble than there actually might have been. I reflected that I must really figure to her as a fool, which was an entertainment I had never expected to give her. It rolled over me there for the first timeâit has come back to me sinceâthat there is, wondrously, in very deep and even in very foolish misfortune a dignity still finer than in the most inveterate habit of being all right. I couldnât have to her the manner of treating it as a mere detail that I was face to face with a part of what, at our last meeting, we had had such a scene about; but while I was trying to think of some manner that I COULD have she said quite colourlessly, though somehow as if she might never see me again: âGood-bye. Iâm going to take my walk.â
âAll alone?â
She looked round the great bleak cliff-top. âWith whom should I go? Besides I like to be aloneâfor the present.â
This gave me the glimmer of a vision that she regarded her disfigurement as temporary, and the confidence came to me that she would never, for her happiness, cease to be a creature of illusions. It enabled me to exclaim, smiling brightly and feeling indeed idiotic: âOh I shall see you again! But I hope youâll have a very pleasant walk.â
âAll my walks are pleasant, thank youâthey do me such a lot of good.â She was as quiet as
Comments (0)