Henry James

In the Cage Henry James

It had occurred to her early that in her position-that of a young person spending, inframed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie-she should know agreat many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotionthe more lively-though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still verymuch smothered-to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any onewho could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sit there withtwo young men-the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the "sounder,"which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupidquestions, give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words as numberless asthe sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust, from morning to night, through thegap left in the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached withrubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of thenarrow counter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervadednot a little, in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the presence ofhams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluids that she came toknow perfectly by their smells without consenting to know them by their names. The barrier that divided the little post-and-telegraph-office from the grocery was a frailstructure of wood and wire; but the social, the professional separation was a gulf thatfortune, by a stroke quite remarkable, had spared her the necessity of contributing at allpublicly to bridge. When Mr. Cocker's young men stepped over from behind the othercounter to change a five-pound note-and Mr. Cocker's situation, with the cream of the"Court Guide" and the dearest furnished apartments, Simpkin's, Ladle's, Thrupp's, justround the corner, was so select that his place was quite pervaded by the crisp rustle ofthese emblems-she pushed out the sovereigns as if the applicant were no more to herthan one of the momentary, the practically featureless, appearances in the greatprocession; and this perhaps all the more from the very fact of the connexion (onlyrecognised outside indeed) to which she had lent herself with ridiculousinconsequence. She recognised the others the less because she had at last so unreservedly, so irredeemably, recognised Mr. Mudge. However that might be, she was a little ashamedof having to admit to herself that Mr. Mudge's removal to a higher sphere-to a morecommanding position, that is, though to a much lower neighbourhood-would have beendescribed still better as a luxury than as the mere simplification, the correctedawkwardness, that she contented herself with calling it. He had at any rate ceased to be allday long in her eyes, and this left something a little fresh for them to rest on of aSunday. During the three months of his happy survival at Cocker's after her consent totheir engagement she had often asked herself what it was marriage would be able to add to 5a familiarity that seemed already to have scraped the platter so clean. Opposite there, behind the counter of which his superior stature, his whiter apron, his more clusteringcurls and more present, too present, h's had been for a couple of years the principalornament, he had moved to and fro before her as on the small sanded floor of theircontracted future. She was conscious now of the improvement of not having to take herpresent and her future at once. They were about as much as she could manage when takenseparat