The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
Book online «The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ». Author Henry James
âOh!â Sir Luke Strett returned, and made no more of it; so that the thing was splendid, Densher fairly thought, as an inscrutability quite inevitable and unconscious. His friend appeared not even to make of it that he supposed it might be for respect to the crisis. He didnât moreover afterwards make much more of anythingâ âafter the classic craft, that is, obeying in the main Pasqualeâs inimitable stroke from the poop, had performed the manoeuvre by which it presented, receding, a back, so to speak, rendered positively graceful by the high black hump of its felze. Densher watched the gondola out of sightâ âhe heard Pasqualeâs cry, borne to him across the water, for the sharp firm swerve into a side-canal, a shortcut to the palace. He had no gondola of his own; it was his habit never to take one; and he humblyâ âas in Venice it is humbleâ âwalked away, though not without having for some time longer stood as if fixed where the guest of the palace had left him. It was strange enough, but he found himself as never yet, and as he couldnât have reckoned, in presence of the truth that was the truest about Milly. He couldnât have reckoned on the force of the difference instantly madeâ âfor it was all in the air as he heard Pasqualeâs cry and saw the boat disappearâ âby the mere visibility, on the spot, of the personage summoned to her aid. He hadnât only never been near the facts of her conditionâ âwhich counted so as a blessing for him; he hadnât only, with all the world, hovered outside an impenetrable ring fence, within which there reigned a kind of expensive vagueness made up of smiles and silences and beautiful fictions and priceless arrangements, all strained to breaking; but he had also, with everyone else, as he now felt, actively fostered suppressions which were in the direct interest of everyoneâs good manner, everyoneâs pity, everyoneâs really quite generous ideal. It was a conspiracy of silence, as the clichĂ© went, to which no one had made an exception, the great smudge of mortality across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, finding in no quarter a surface of spirit or of speech that consented to reflect it. âThe mere aesthetic instinct of mankindâ â!â our young man had more than once, in the connection, said to himself; letting the rest of the proposition drop, but touching again thus sufficiently on the outrage even to taste involved in oneâs having to see. So then it had beenâ âa general conscious foolâs paradise, from which the specified had been chased like a dangerous animal. What therefore had at present befallen was that the specified, standing all the while at the gate, had now crossed the threshold as in Sir Luke Strettâs person and quite on such a scale as to fill out the whole precinct. Densherâs nerves, absolutely his heartbeats too, had measured the change before he on this occasion moved away.
The facts of physical suffering, of incurable pain, of the chance grimly narrowed, had been made, at a stroke, intense, and this was to be the way he was now to feel them. The clearance of the air, in short, making vision not only possible but inevitable, the one thing left to be thankful for was the breadth of Sir Lukeâs shoulders, which, should one be able to keep in line with them, might in some degree interpose. It was, however, far from plain to Densher for the first day or two that he was again to see his distinguished friend at all. That he couldnât, on any basis actually serving, return to the palaceâ âthis was as solid to him, every whit, as the other feature of his case, the fact of the publicity attaching to his proscription through his not having taken himself off. He had been seen often enough in the Leporelli gondola. As, accordingly, he was not on any presumption destined to meet Sir Luke about the town, where the latter would have neither time nor taste to lounge, nothing more would occur between them unless the great man should surprisingly wait upon him. His doing that, Densher further reflected, wouldnât even simply depend on Mrs. Stringhamâs having decided toâ âas they might sayâ âturn him on. It would depend as wellâ âfor there would be practically some difference to herâ âon her actually attempting it; and it would depend above all on what Sir Luke would make of such an overture. Densher had for that matter his own view of the amount, to say nothing of the particular sort, of response it might expect from him. He had his own view of the ability of such a personage even to understand such an appeal. To what extent could he be prepared, and what importance in fine could he attach? Densher asked himself these questions, in truth, to put his own position at the worst. He should miss the great man completely unless the great man should come to see him, and the great man
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