Henry James

The Beast in the Jungle Henry James

What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention-spoken as they lingeredand slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been conveyed by friends anhour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, ofwhom he was one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon. There had been after luncheon much dispersal, all in the interestof the original motive, a view of Weatherend itself and the fine things, intrinsic features, pictures, heirlooms, treasures of all the arts, that made the place almost famous; and the great rooms were sonumerous that guests could wander at their will, hang back from the principal group and in caseswhere they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves up to mysteriousappreciations and measurements. There were persons to be observed, singly or in couples, bendingtoward objects in out-of-the-way corners with their hands on their knees and their heads noddingquite as with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When they were two they either mingledtheir sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of even deeper import, so that there were aspects ofthe occasion that gave it for Marcher much the air of the "look round," previous to a sale highlyadvertised, that excites or quenches, as may be, the dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisitionat Weatherend would have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself, among suchsuggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence of those who knew too much and by thatof those who knew nothing. The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon himthat he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them, though this impulse wasnot, as happened, like the gloating of some of his companions, to be compared to the movements ofa dog sniffing a cupboard. It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have beencalculated. It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the sequel of something ofwhich he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn't know what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was alsosomehow aware-yet without a direct sign from her-that the young woman herself hadn't lost thethread. She hadn't lost it, but she wouldn't give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forthof his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more, things odd enough in thelight of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was stillmerely fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had noimportance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her shouldso seem to have so much; the answer to which, however, was that in such a life as they all appearedto be leading for the moment one could but take things as they