The Wings of the Dove Henry James (android based ebook reader TXT) đ
- Author: Henry James
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It wasnât in the least that Densher invoked this violence to all probability; but it pressed on him that there were few possible diversions he could afford now to miss. Nothing in his predicament was so odd as that, incontestably afraid of himself, he was not afraid of Sir Luke. He had an impression, which he clung to, based on a previous taste of the visitorâs company, that he would somehow let him off. The truth about Milly perched on his shoulders and sounded in his tread, became by the fact of his presence the name and the form, for the time, of everything in the place; but it didnât, for the difference, sit in his face, the face so squarely and easily turned to Densher at the earlier season. His presence on the first occasion, not as the result of a summons, but as a friendly whim of his own, had had quite another value; and though our young man could scarce regard that value as recoverable he yet reached out in imagination to a renewal of the old contact. He didnât propose, as he privately and forcibly phrased the matter, to be a hog; but there was something he after all did want for himself. It was somethingâ âthis stuck to himâ âthat Sir Luke would have had for him if it hadnât been impossible. These were his worst days, the two or three; those on which even the sense of the tension at the palace didnât much help him not to feel that his destiny made but light of him. He had never been, as he judged it, so down. In mean conditions, without books, without society, almost without money, he had nothing to do but to wait. His main support really was his original idea, which didnât leave him, of waiting for the deepest depth his predicament could sink him to. Fate would invent, if he but gave it time, some refinement of the horrible. It was just inventing meanwhile this suppression of Sir Luke. When the third day came without a sign he knew what to think. He had given Mrs. Stringham during her call on him no such answer as would have armed her faith, and the ultimatum she had described as ready for him when he should be ready was thereforeâ âif on no other ground than her want of this power to answer for himâ ânot to be presented. The presentation, heaven knew, was not what he desired.
That was not, either, we hasten to declareâ âas Densher then soon enough sawâ âthe idea with which Sir Luke finally stood before him again. For stand before him again he finally did; just when our friend had gloomily embraced the belief that the limit of his power to absent himself from London obligations would have been reached. Four or five days, exclusive of journeys, represented the largest supposable sacrificeâ âto a head not crownedâ âon the part of one of the highest medical lights in the world; so that really when the personage in question, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in the doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision that for the instant cut like a knife. It spoke, the fact, and in a single dreadful word, of the magnitudeâ âhe shrank from calling it anything elseâ âof Millyâs case. The great man had not gone then, and an immense surrender to her immense need was so expressed in it that some effect, some help, some hope, were flagrantly part of the expression. It was for Densher, with his reaction from disappointment, as if he were conscious of ten things at onceâ âthe foremost being that just conceivably, since Sir Luke was still there, she had been saved. Close upon its heels, however, and quite as sharply, came the sense that the crisisâ âplainly even now to be prolonged for himâ âwas to have none of that sound simplicity. Not only had his visitor not dropped in to gossip about Milly, he hadnât dropped in to mention her at all; he had dropped in fairly to show that during the brief remainder of his stay, the end of which was now in sight, as little as possible of that was to be looked for. The demonstration, such as it was, was in the key of their previous acquaintance, and it was their previous acquaintance that had made him come. He was not to stop longer than the Saturday next at hand, but there were things of interest he should like to see again meanwhile. It was for these things of interest, for Venice and the opportunity of Venice, for a prowl or two, as he called it, and a turn about, that he had looked his young man upâ âproducing on the latterâs part, as soon as the case had, with the lapse of a further twenty-four hours, so defined itself, the most incongruous, yet most beneficent revulsion. Nothing could in fact have been more monstrous on the surfaceâ âand Densher was well aware of itâ âthan the relief he found during this short period in the tacit drop of all reference to the palace, in neither hearing news nor asking for it. That was what had come out for him, on his visitorâs entrance, even in the very seconds of suspense that were connecting the fact also directly and intensely with Millyâs state. He had come to say he had saved herâ âhe had come, as from Mrs. Stringham, to say how she might be savedâ âhe had come, in spite of Mrs. Stringham, to say she was lost: the distinct throbs of hope, of fear, simultaneous for all their distinctness, merged their identity in a bound of the heart just as immediate and which remained after they had passed. It simply did wonders for himâ âthis was the truthâ âthat Sir Luke was, as he would have said, quiet.
The result of it was the oddest consciousness as
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