Transcript for:
Exploring Themes in The Beast in the Jungle

chapter 1 of the beast in the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the beast in the jungle by Henry James chapter 1 what determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters being probably but some words have spoken by himself quite without intention spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance he had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying the party of visitors at the other house of whom 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 interest of the original motive a view of whether End 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 so numerous that guests could wander at their we'll hang back from the principal group and in cases where they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves up to mysterious appreciations and measurements there were persons to be observed singly or in couples bending toward objects in out-of-the-way corners with their hands on their knees and their heads nodding quite as with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell when they were too they either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of even deeper import so that there were aspects of the occasion that gave it form Archer much the air of the look round previous to a sail highly advertised that excites or quenches as may be the dream of acquisition the dream of acquisition at whether end would have had to be wild indeed and John marcher found himself among such suggestions disconcerted almost equally by the presence of those who knew too much and by that of those who knew nothing the great rooms caused so much poetry in history to press upon him that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them though this impulse was not as happened like the gloating of some of his companions to be compared to the movements of a dog sniffing a cupboard it had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to have been calculated 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 of which 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 also somehow aware yet without a direct sign from her that the young woman herself hadn't lost the thread she hadn't lost it but she wouldn't give it back to him he saw without some putting forth of his hand for it and he not only saw that but saw several things more things odd enough in light of the fact that at the moment some accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would have had no importance if it had had no importance he scarcely knew why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much the answer to which however was that in such a life as they all appeared to be leading for the moment one could but take things as they came he was satisfied without in the least being able to say why that this young lady might roughly have ranked in the house as a poor relation satisfied also that she was not there on a brief visit but was more or less a part of the establishment almost a working a remunerated part didn't she enjoy at periods of protection that she paid for by helping among other services to show the place and explain it deal with the tiresome people answer questions about the dates of the building the styles of the furniture the authorship of the pictures the favorite haunts of the ghosts it wasn't that she looked as if you could have given her Skilling's it was impossible to look less so yet when she finally drifted toward him distinctly handsome though ever so much older older than when he had seen her before it might have been as an effect of her guessing that he had within the couple of hours devoted more imagination to her than to all the others put together and had thereby penetrated to a kind of truth that the others were too stupid for she was there on harder terms than anyone she was there as a consequence of things suffered one way in another in the interval of years and she remembered him very much as she was remembered only a good deal better by the time they at last thus came to speech they were alone in one of the rooms remarkable for a fine portrait over the chimney place out of which their friends had passed and the charm of it was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged with each other to stay behind for talk the charm happily was in other things too partly and there being scarce a spot at weather end without something to stay behind for it was in the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned the way the red light breaking at the clothes from under a low somber sky reached out in a long shaft and played over old Wayne Scott's old tapestry old gold old color it was most of all perhaps in the way she came to him as if since she had been turned on to deal with the simpler sort he might should he choose to keep the whole thing down just take her mild attention for a part of her general business as soon as he heard her voice however the gap was filled up and the missing link supplied the slight irony he divined in her attitude lost its advantage he almost jumped at it to get there before her I met you years and years ago in Rome I remember all about it she confessed to disappointment she had been so sure he didn't and to prove how well he did he began to pour forth the particular recollections that popped up as he called for them her face and her voice all at his service now worked the miracle the impression operating like the torch of a lamp lighter who touches into flame one by one a long row of gas jets marcher flattered himself the illumination was brilliant yet he was really still more pleased on her showing him with amusement than in his haste to make everything right he had got most things rather wrong it hadn't been at Rome it had been in Naples and it hadn't been eight years before it had been more nearly ten she hadn't been either with her uncle and aunt but with her mother and brother in addition to which it was not with the pimples he had been but with the boyars coming down in their company from Rome a point on which she insisted a little to his confusion and has to which she had her evidence in hand the boyars she had known but didn't know the pimples though she had heard of them and it was the people he was with who had made them acquainted the incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round them with such violence as to drive them for refuge into an excavation this incident had not occurred at the palace of the Caesars but at Pompeii on an occasion when they had been present there at an important find he accepted her amendments he enjoyed her Corrections though the morale of them was she pointed out that he really didn't remember the least thing about her and he only felt it as a drawback that when all was made strictly historic there didn't appear much of anything left they lingered together still she neglecting her office for from the moment he was so clever she had no proper right to him and both neglecting the house just waiting as to see if a memory or two more wouldn't agree again breathe on them it hadn't taken them many minutes after all to put down on the table like the cards of a pack those that constituted their respective hands only what came out was that the pack was unfortunately not perfect that the past invoked invited encouraged could give them naturally no more than it had it had made them anciently meet her at 20 him at 25 but nothing was so strange they seemed to say to each other as that while so occupied it hadn't done a little more for them they looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed the present would have been so much better if the other in the far distance in the foreign land haven't been so stupidly meagre there weren't apparently all counted more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them trivialities of youth simplicity's of freshness stupidities of ignorance small possible germs but too deeply buried too deeply didn't it seem to sprout after so many years marcher could only feel he ought to have strenght 'red her some service saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing bag filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lot Cerrone a with a stiletto or it would have been nice if he could have taken with Fever all alone at his hotel and she could have come to look after him to write to his people to drive him out in convalescence then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack it yet somehow presented itself this show is too good to be spoiled so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people their reunion had been so long averted they didn't use that name for it but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession that they didn't quite want it to be a failure their attempted supposition of reasons for their not having met but showed how little they knew of each other there came in fact a moment when marcher felt a positive pang it was vain to pretend she was an old friend for all the communities were wanting in spite of which it was as an old friend that he saw she would have suited him he had new ones enough was surrounded by them for instance on the stage of the other house as a new one he probably wouldn't have so much as noticed her he would have liked to invent something get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred he was really almost reaching out in imagination as against time for something that would do and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh start would show for quite awkward ly bungled they would separate and now for no second or no third chance they would have tried and not succeeded then it was just at the turn as he afterwards made it out to himself that everything else failing she herself decided to take up the case and as it were saved the situation he felt as soon as she spoke that she had been consciously keeping back what she said and hoping to get on without it a scruple in her that immensely touched him when by the end of three or four minutes more he was able to measure it what she brought out at any rate quite cleared the air and supplied the link the link it was so odd he should frivolously have managed to lose you know you told me something I've never forgotten and that again and again has made me think of you since it was that tremendously hot day when we went to sorrento across the bay for the breeze what i allude to was what you said to me on the way back as we sat under the awning of the boat enjoying the cool have you forgotten he had forgotten and was even more surprised than ashamed but the great thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any sweet speech the vanity of women had long memories but she was making no claim on him of a compliment or a mistake with another woman a totally different one he might have feared the recall possibly even some imbecile offer so in having to say that he had indeed forgotten he was conscious rather of a loss than of a gain he already saw an interest in the matter of her mention I try to think but I give it up yet I remember the Sorento day I'm not very sure you do may borrow for a moment said and I'm not very sure I ought to want you to it's dreadful to bring a person back at any time to what he was 10 years before if you've lived away from it she smiled so much the better ah if you haven't why should I he asked lived away you mean from what I myself was from what I was I was of course an ass marcher went on but I would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was then from the moment you have something in your mind not know anything still however she hesitated but if you've completely ceased to be that sort why I can then all the more bear to know for besides perhaps I haven't perhaps yet if you haven't she added I should suppose you'd remember not indeed that I in the least connect with my impression the invidious name you use if I had only thought you foolish she explained the thing I speak of wouldn't so have remained with me it was about yourself she waited as if it might come to him but as only meeting her eyes and wonder he gave no sign she burnt her ships has it ever happened then it was that while he continued to stare a light broke for him and the blood slowly came to his face which began to burn with recognition do you mean I told you but he faltered lest what came to him shouldn't be right lest he should only give himself away it was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn't forget that is if one remembered you at all that's why I asked you she smiled if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass oh then he saw but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed this he also saw made her sorry for him as if her illusion had been a mistake it took him but a moment however to feel it hadn't been much as it had been a surprise after the first little shock of it her knowledge on the contrary began even if rather strangely to taste sweet to him she was the only other person in the world then who would have it and she had had it all these years while the fact of his having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him no wonder they couldn't have met as if nothing had happened I judge he finally said that I know what you mean only I had strangely enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my confidence is it because you've taken so many others as well I've taken nobody not a creature since then so that I'm the only person who knows the only person in the world well she quickly replied I myself have never spoken I've never never repeated of you what you told me she looked at him so that he perfectly believed her their eyes met over it in such a way that he was without a doubt and I never will she spoke with an earnestness that as if almost excessive put him at ease about her possible derision somehow the whole question was a new luxury to him that is from the moment she was in possession if she didn't take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic and that was what he had had in all the long time from no one whomsoever what he felt was that he couldn't at present have begun to tell her and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely by the accident of having done so of old please don't then were just right as it is oh I am she laughed if you are to which she added then do you still feel in the same way it was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really interested though it all kept coming as a perfect surprise he had thought of himself so long as abominably alone and lo he wasn't alone a bit he hadn't been it appeared for an hour since those moments on the Sorrento boat it was she who had been he seemed to see as he looked at her she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his lapse of fidelity to tell her what he had told her what had it been but to ask something of her something that she had given in her charity without his having by a remembrance by a return of the spirit failing another encounter so much as thanked her what he had asked of her had been simply at first not to laugh at him she had beautifully not done so for ten years and she was not doing so now so he had endless gratitude to make up only for that he must see just how he had figured to her what exactly was the account I gave of the way you did feel well it was very simple you said you had had from your earliest time as the deepest thing within you the sense of being kept for something rare and strange possibly prodigious and terrible the was sooner or later to happen to you that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of and that would perhaps overwhelm you do you call that very simple john marcher asked she thought a moment it was perhaps because i seemed as you spoke to understand it you do understand it he eagerly asked again she kept her kind eyes on him you still have the belief oh he exclaimed helplessly there was too much to say whatever its to be she clearly made out it hasn't yet come he shook his head in complete surrender now it hasn't yet come only you know it isn't anything I'm to do to achieve in the world to be distinguished or admired for I'm not such an ass as that it would be much better no doubt if I were its to be something you're merely to suffer well say to wait for to have to meet to face to see suddenly break out in my life possibly destroying all further consciousness possibly annihilating me possibly on the other hand only altering everything striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences however they shape themselves she took this in but the light in her eyes continued for him not to be that of mockery isn't what you described perhaps but the expectation or at any rate the sense of danger familiar to so many people of falling in love john marcher thought did you ask me that before no I wasn't so free and easy then but it's what strikes me now of course he said after a moment it strikes you of course it strikes me of course what's in store for me maybe no more than that the only thing is he went on that I think if it had been that I should by this time know do you mean because you've been in love and then as he but looked at her in silence you've been in love and it hasn't met such a cataclysm hasn't proved the great affair Here I am you see it hasn't been overwhelming then it hasn't been love said may Bartram well I at least thought it was I took it for that I've taken it till now it was agreeable it was delightful it was miserable he explained but it wasn't strange it wasn't what my affairs to be you want something all to yourself something that nobody else knows or has known it isn't a question of what I want God knows I don't want anything it's only a question of the apprehension that haunts me that I live with day by day he said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it further impose itself if she hadn't been interested before she'd have been interested now is it a sense of coming violence evidently now to again he liked to talk of it I don't think of it as when it does come necessarily violent I only think of it as natural and as of course above all unmistakable I think of it simply as the thing the thing will of itself appear natural then how will it appear strange marcher bethought himself it won't to me to whom then well he replied smiling at last say to you oh then I'm to be present why you are present since you know I see she turned it over but I mean at the catastrophe at this for a moment their lightness gave way to their gravity It was as if the long look they exchanged held them together it will only depend on yourself if you'll watch with me are you afraid she asked don't leave me now he went on are you afraid she repeated do you think me simply out of my mind he pursued instead of answering do I merely strike you as a harmless lunatic no said Mei Bartram I understand you I believe you you mean you feel how my obsession poor old thing may correspond to some possible reality to some possible reality then you will watch with me she hesitated then for the third time put her question are you afraid did I tell you I was at Naples no you said nothing about it then I don't know and I should like to know said John marcher you'll tell me yourself whether you think so if you'll watch with me you'll see very good then they had been moving by this time across the room and at the door before passing out they paused as for the full wind-up of their understanding I'll watch with you said Mei Bartram end of chapter one of the beast in the jungle by Henry James chapter 2 of the beast in the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org the beast in the jungle by Henry James chapter 2 the fact that she knew knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayed him had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond which became more marked when within the year that followed there were afternoon at whether end that opportunities for meeting multiplied the event that thus promoted these occasions was the death of the ancient lady her great-aunt under whose wings since losing her mother she had to such an extent found shelter and who though but the widowed mother of the new successor to the property had succeeded thanks to a high tone and a high temper in not forfeiting the supreme position at the great house the deposition of this personage arrived but with her death which followed by many changes made in particular a difference for the young woman in whom archers expert attention had recognized from the first a dependent with a pride that my take though it didn't bristle nothing for a long time had made him easier than the thought that the aching must have been much soothed by Miss Bertram's now finding herself able to set up a small home in London she had acquired property to an amount that made that luxury just possible under her aunt's extremely complicated will and when the whole matter began to be straightened out which indeed took time she let him know that the happy issue was at last in view he had seen her again before that day both because she had more than once accompany the ancient lady to town and because he had paid another visit to the friends who so conveniently made of weather end one of the charms of their own hospitality these friends had taken him back there he had achieved their again with Miss Bartram some quiet detachment and he had in London succeeded in persuading her to more than one brief absence from her aunt they went together on these latter occasions to the National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum where among vivid reminders they talked of Italy at large not now attempting to recover as at first the taste of their youth and their ignorance that recovery the first day at weather End had served its purpose well had given them quite enough so that they were to march her sense no longer hovering about the headwaters of their stream but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current they were literally afloat together for our gentlemen this was marked quite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buried treasure of her knowledge he had with his own hands dug up this little hoard brought to light that is to within reach of the dim day constituted by their discretions and privacy's the object of value the hiding-place of which he had after putting it into the ground himself so strangely so long-forgotten the rare luck of his having again just stumbled on the spot made him indifferent to any other question he would doubtless have devoted more time to the odd accident of his lapse of memory if he hadn't been moved to devote so much to the sweetness the comfort as he felt for the future that this accident itself had helped to keep fresh it had never entered into his plan that anyone should know and mainly for the reason that it wasn't in him to tell anyone that would have been impossible for nothing but the amusement of a cold world would have waited on it since however a mysterious fate had opened his mouth the times in spite of him he would count that a compensation and profit by it to the utmost that the right person should know tempered the asperity of his secret more even than his shyness had permitted him to imagine and may Bartram was clearly right because well because there she was her knowledge simply settled it he would have been sure enough by this time had she been wrong there was that in his situation no doubt that disposed him too much to see her as a mere confidant taking all her light for him from the fact the fact only of her interest in his predicament from her mercy sympathy seriousness her consent not to regard him as the funniest of the funny aware in fine that her price for him was just in her giving him this constant sense of his being admirably spared he was careful to remember that she also had a life of her own with things that might happen to her things that in friendship one should likewise take account of something fairly remarkable came to pass with him for that matter in this connection something represented by a certain passage of his consciousness in the suddenness Tway from one extreme to the other he had thought himself so long as nobody knew the most disinterested person in the world carrying his concentrated burden his perpetual suspense ever so quietly holding his tongue about it giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his life asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all those that were asked he hadn't disturbed people with the queerness of their having to know a haunted man though he had had moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were for sooth unsettled if they were as unsettled as he was he who had never been settled for an hour in his life they would know what it meant yet it wasn't all the same for him to make them and he listened to them civilly enough this is why he had such good though possibly such rather colourless manners this was why above all he could regard himself in a greedy world as decently as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely unselfish our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite sufficiently to measure his present danger of letting it lapse against which he promised himself to be much on his guard he was quite ready nonetheless to be selfish just a little since surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him just a little in a word was just as much as miss Bartram taking one day with another would let him he never would be in the least coercive and would keep well before him the lines on which consideration for her the very highest ought to proceed he would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs her requirements her peculiarities he went so far as to give them the latitude of that name would come into their intercourse all this naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for granted there was nothing more to be done about that it simply existed had sprung into being with her first penetrating question to him in the autumn light there at whether end the real form it should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of their marrying but the devil in this was that the very basis itself put marrying of the question his conviction his apprehension his obsession in short wasn't a privilege he could invite a woman to share and that consequence of it was precisely what was the matter with him something or other lay and wait for him amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years like a crouching beast in the jungle it signified little whether the crouching beasts were destined to slay him or to be slain the definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature and the definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger hunt such was the image under which he had ended by figuring his life they had at first nonetheless in the scattered hours spent together made no allusion to that view of it which was a sign he was handsomely alert to give that he didn't expect that he in fact didn't care always to be talking about it such a feature in one's outlook was really like a hump on one's back the difference it made every minute of the day existed quite independently of discussion one discussed of course like a hunchback for there was always if nothing else the hunchback face that remained and she was watching him but people watched best as a general thing in silence so that such would be predominantly the manner of their vigil yet he didn't want at the same time to be tense and solemn tense and solemn was what he imagined he too much showed for with other people the thing to be with the one person who knew was easy and natural to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoid it to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it and to keep it in any case familiar facetious even rather than pedantic and portent some such consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote pleasantly to miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this circumstance which touched him so nearly of her acquiring a house in London it was the first illusion they had yet again made needing any other hitherto so little but when she replied after having given him the news that she was by no means satisfied with such a trifle as the climax to so special a suspense she almost set him wondering if she hadn't even a larger conception of singularity for him than he had for himself he was at all events destined to become aware little by little as time went by that she was all the while looking at his life judging it measuring it in the light of the things she knew which grew to be at last with the consecration of the years never mentioned between them save as the real truth about him that had always been his own form of reference to it but she adopted the form so quietly that looking back at the end of a period he knew there was no moment at which it was traceable that she had as he might say got inside his idea or exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still more beautifully believing him it was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the most harmless of maniacs and this in the long run since it's covered so much ground was his easiest description of their friendship he had a screw loose for her but she liked him in spite of it and was practically against the rest of the world his kind wise keeper unremunerative but fairly amused and in the absence of other near ties not dis reputably occupied the rest of the world of course thought him queer but she she only knew how and above all why queer which was precisely what enabled her to dispose the concealing veil in the right folds she took his gaiety from him since it had to pass with them for gaiety as she took everything else but she certainly so far justified by her unerring touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincing her she at least never spoke of the secret of his life except as the real truth about you and she had in fact a wonderful way of making it seem as such the secret of her own life to that was in fine how he so constantly felt her as allowing for him he couldn't on the whole call it anything else he allowed for himself but she exactly allowed still more partly because that are placed for a site of the matter she traced his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into which Heath could scarce follow it he knew how he felt but besides knowing that she knew how he looked as well he knew each of the things of importance he was insidiously kept from doing but she could add up the amount they made understand how much with a lighter weight on his spirit he might have done and thereby established how clever as he was he fell short above all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he went through those of his little office under government those of caring for his modest patrimony for his library for his garden in the country for the people in London whose invitations he accepted and repaid and the detachment that reigned beneath them and that made of all behavior all that could in the least be called behavior a long act of diss simulation what had come to was that he wore a mask painted with the social simper out of the eyeholes of which there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features this the stupid world even after years had never more than half discovered it was only May Bartram who had and she achieved by an art indescribable the feat of at once or perhaps it was only alternately meeting the eyes from in front and mingling her own vision as from over his shoulder with their peep through the apertures so while they grew older together she did watch with him and so she let this association give shape and color to her own existence beneath her forms as well detachment had learned to sit and behavior had become for her in the social sense a false account of herself there was but one account of her that would have been true all the while and that she could give straight to nobody least of all to John marcher her whole attitude was a virtual statement but the perception of that only seemed called to take its place for him as one of the many things necessarily crowded out of his consciousness if she had moreover like himself to make sacrifices to their real truth it was to be granted that her compensation might have affected her as more prompt and more natural they had long periods in this London time during which when they were together a stranger might have listened to them without in the least pricking up his ears on the other hand the real truth was equally liable at any moment to rise to the surface and the auditor would then have wondered indeed what they were talking about they had from an early hour made up their mind that society was luckily unintelligent and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of their common places yet there were still moments when the situation turned almost fresh usually under the effect of some expression drawn from herself her expressions doubtless repeated themselves but her intervals were generous what saves us you know is that we answer so completely - so usual and appearance that of the man and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit or almost as to be at last indispensable that for instance was a remark she had frequently enough had occasion to make though she had given it at different times different developments what we are especially concerned with is the turn it happened to take from her one afternoon when he had come to see her in honor of her birthday this anniversary had fallen on a Sunday at a season of thick fog and general outward gloom but he had brought her his customary offering having known her now long enough to have established a hundred small traditions it was one of his proofs to himself the present he made her on her birthday that he hadn't sunk into real selfishness it was mostly nothing more than a small trinket but it was always fine of its kind and he was regularly earful to pay for it more than he thought he could afford our habit saves you at least don't you see because it makes you after all for the vulgar indistinguishable from other men what's the most inveterate mark of men in general why the capacity to spend endless time with dull women to spend it I won't say without being bored but without minding that they are without being driven off at a tangent by it which comes to the same thing I'm your dull woman a part of the daily bread for which you pray at church that covers your tracks more than anything and what covers yours asked marcher whom his dull woman could mostly to this extent amuse I see of course what you mean by you're saving me in this way in that so far as other people are concerned I've seen it all along only what is it that saves you i oughtn't think you know of that she looked as if she sometimes thought of that too but rather in a different way where other people you mean are concerned well you're really so in with me you know as a sort of result of my being so in with yourself I mean of my having such an immense regard for you being so tremendously mindful of all you've done for me I sometimes ask myself if it's quite fair fair I mean to have so involved and since one may say it interested you I almost feel as if you haven't really had time to do anything else anything else but be interested she asked ah what else does one ever want to be if I've been watching with you as we long ago agreed I was to do watching is always in itself an absorption Oh certainly John marcher said if you hadn't had your curiosity only doesn't it sometimes come to you as time goes on that your curiosity isn't being particularly repaid may Bartram had a pause do you ask that by any chance because you feel at all that yours isn't I mean because you have to wait so long oh he understood what she meant for the thing to happen that never does happen for the Beast to jump out no I'm just where I was about it it isn't a matter as to which I can choose I can decide for a change it isn't one as to which there can be a change it's in the lap of the gods one's in the hands of one's law there one is as to the form the law will take the way it will operate that's its own affair yes miss Bartram replied of course one's fates coming of course it has come in its own form and its own way all the while only you know the form and the way in your case were to have been well something so exceptional and as one may say so particularly your own something in this made him look at her with suspicion you say were to have been as if in your heart you had begun to doubt oh she vaguely protested as if you believed he went on that nothing will now take place she shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably your bar from I thought he continued to look at her what then is the matter with you well she said after another wait the matter with me is simply that I'm more sure than ever my curiosity as you call it will be but too well repaid they were frankly grave now he had got up from his seat had turned once more about the little drawing room to which year after year he brought his inevitable topic in which he had as he might have said tasted their intimate community with every sauce where every object was as familiar to him as the things of his own house and the very carpets were worn with his fitful walk very much as the desks in old Counting houses are worn by the elbows of generations of clerks the generations of his nervous moods had been at work there and the place was the written history of his whole middle life under the impression of what his friend had just said he knew himself for some reason more aware of these things which made him after a moment stopped again before her is it possibly that you've grown afraid afraid he thought as she repeated the word that his question had made her a little change color so that lest he should have touched on a truth he explained very kindly you remember that was what you asked me long ago that first day at whether end oh yes and you told me you didn't know that I was to see for myself we've said little about it since even in so long a time precisely marcher interposed quite as if it were too delicate a matter for us to make free with quite as if we might find on pressure that I am afraid for then he said we shouldn't should we quite know what to do she had for the time no answer to this question there have been days when I thought you were only of course she added there have been days when we have thought almost anything everything Oh marcher softly groaned as with a gasp half spent at the face more uncovered just then than it had been for a long while of the imagination always with them it had always had its incalculable moments of glaring out quite as with the very eyes of very beast and used as he was to them they could still draw from him the tribute of a sigh that rose from the depths of his being all they had thought first and last rolled over him the past seemed to have been reduced to mere barren speculation this in fact was what the place had just struck him as so full of the simplification of everything but the state of suspense that remained only by seeming to hang in the void surrounding it even his original fear if fear it as had been had lost itself in the desert I judge however he continued that you see I'm not afraid now what I see as I make it out is that you've achieved something almost unprecedented in the way of getting used to danger living with it so long and so closely you've lost your sense of it you know it's there but you're indifferent and you cease even as of old to have to whistle in the dark considering what the danger is may Bartram wound up I'm bound to say I don't think your attitude could well be surpassed John marcher faintly smiled it's heroic certainly call it that it was what he would have liked indeed to call it I am then a man of courage that's what you were to show me he still however wondered but doesn't the man of courage know what he's afraid of or not afraid of I don't know that you see I don't focus it I can't name it I only know I'm exposed yes but exposed how shall I say so directly so intimately that's surely enough enough to make you feel then as what we may call the end and the upshot of our watch that I'm not afraid you're not afraid but it isn't she said the end of our watch that is it isn't the end of yours you've everything still to see then why haven't you he asked he had had all along today the sense of her keeping something back and he still had it as this was his first impression of that it made quite a date the case was the more marked as she didn't at first answer which in turn made him go on you know something I don't then his voice for that of a man of courage trembled a little you know what's to happen her silence with the face she showed was almost a confession it made him sure you know and you're afraid to tell me it's so bad that you're afraid I'll find out all this might be true for she did look as if unexpectedly to her he had crossed some mystic line that she had secretly drawn round her yet she might after all not have worried and the real climax was that he himself at all events needn't you'll never find out end of chapter two of the beast in the jungle by Henry James Chapter three of the beast and the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org chapter three of the beast in the jungle by Henry James it was all to have made nonetheless as I have said a date which came out in the fact that again and again even after long intervals other things that passed between them were in relation to this hour but the character of recalls and results its immediate effect had been indeed rather to lighten insistence almost to provoke a reaction as if their topic had dropped by its own weight and is if moreover for that matter marcher had been visited by one of his occasional warnings against egotism he had kept up he felt and very decently on the whole his consciousness of the importance of not being selfish and it was true that he had never sinned in that direction without promptly enough trying to press the scales the other way he often repaired his fault the season permitting by inviting his friend to accompany him to the Opera and it not infrequently thus happened that to show he didn't wish her to have but one sort of food for her mind he was the cause of her appearing there with him a dozen nights in the month it even happened that seeing her home at such times he went in with her to finish as he called it the evening and the better to make his point sat down to the frugal but always careful little supper that awaited his pleasure his point was made he thought by his not internally insisting with her on himself made for instance at such hours when it befell that her piano at hand and each of them familiar with it they went over passages of the Opera together it chanced to be on one of these occasions however that he reminded her of her not having answered certain question he had put to her during the talk that had taken place between them on her last birthday what is it that saves you saved her he meant from that appearance of variation from the usual human type if he had practically escaped remarked as she pretended by doing in the most important particular what most men do find the answer to life in patching up an alliance of the sort with a woman no better than himself how had she escaped it and how could the Alliance such as it was since they must suppose it had been more or less noticed have failed to make her rather positively talked about I never said may Bartram replied that it hadn't made me a good deal talked about well then you're not saved it hasn't been a question for me if you've had your woman I've had she said my man and you mean that makes you alright oh it was always as if there was so much to say I don't know why it shouldn't make me humanely which is what we're speaking of as right as it makes you I see marcher returned humanely no doubt as showing that you're living for something not that is just for me and my secret may Bartram smiled I don't pretend it exactly shows that I'm not living for you it's my intimacy with you that's in question he laughed as he saw what she meant yes but since as you say I'm only so far as people make out ordinary your aren't you no more than ordinary either you helped me to pass for a man like another so if I am as I understand you you're not compromised is that it she had another of her waits but she spoke clearly enough that's it it's all that concerns me to help you to pass for a man like another he was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely how kind how beautiful you are to me how shall I ever repay you she had her last grave pause as if there might be a choice of ways but she chose by going on as you are it was into this going on as he was that they relapsed and really for so long a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of their depths these depths constantly bridged over by a structure firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat for dizziness air invited on occasion in the interest of their nerves a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss a difference had been made moreover once for all by the fact that she had all the while not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn't dare to express a charge uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended it had come up for him then that she knew something and that what she knew was bad too bad to tell him when he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet form archers special sensibility almost too formidable again to touch he circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn't much affected by the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could know after all any better than he did she had no source of knowledge he hadn't equally except of course that she might have finer nerves that was what women had where they were interested they made out things where people were concerned that the people often couldn't have made out for themselves their nerves their sensibility their imagination were conductors and revealer and the beauty of May Bartram was in particular that she had given herself so to his case he felt in these days what oddly enough he had never felt before the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe some catastrophe that yet wouldn't it all be the catastrophe partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful to him than ever yet and partly by reason of an appearance of uncertainty and her health coincident and equally new it was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is a reference it was characteristic that his complications such as they were had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him even to the point of making him ask himself if he were by any chance of a truth within sight or sound within touch or reach within the immediate jurisdiction of the thing that waited when the day came has come it had to that his friend confessed to him her fear of a deep disorder in her blood he felt somehow the shadow of a change and the chill of a shock he immediately began to imagine aggravations and disasters and above all to think of her peril as the direct Menace for himself of personal privation this indeed gave him one of those partial recoveries of equanimity that were agreeable to him it showed him that what was still first in his mind was the loss she herself might suffer what if she should have to die before knowing before seeing it would have been brutal in the early stages of her trouble to put that question to her but it had immediately sounded for him to his own concern and the possibility was what most made him sorry for her if she didn't know moreover in the sense of her having had some what should he think mystical irresistible light this would make the matter not better but worse in as much as her original adoption of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life she had been living to see what would be to be seen and it would quite lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the vision these reflections as I say quickened his generosity yet make them as he might he saw himself with the lapse of the period more and more disconcerted it lapsed for him with a strange steady sweep and the oddest oddity was that it gave him independently of the threat of much inconvenience almost the only positive surprise his career if career it could be called had yet offered him she kept the house as she had never done he had to go to her to see her she could meet him nowhere now though there was scarce a corner of their loved old London in which she hadn't in the past at one time or another done so and he found her always seated by her fire in the deep old-fashioned chair she was less and less able to leave he had been struck one day after an absence exceeding his usual measure with her suddenly looking much older to him than he had ever thought of her being then he recognized that the suddenness was all on his side he had just simply and suddenly noticed she looked older because inevitably after so many years she was old or almost which was of course true and still greater measure of her companion if she was old or almost John marcher assuredly was and yet it was her showing of the lesson not his own that brought the truth home to him his surprises began here when once they had begun they multiplied they came rather with a rush It was as if in the oddest way of the world they had all been kept back sown in a thick cluster for the late afternoon of life the time at which for peep in general the unexpected has died out one of them was that he should have caught himself for he had so done really wondering if the great accident would take form now as nothing more than his being condemned to see this charming woman this admirable friend pass away from him he had never so unreservedly qualified her as while confronted and thought with such a possibility in spite of which there was small doubt for him that as an answer to his long griddle the mirror Faceman of even so fine a feature of his situation would be an abject anticlimax it would represent as connected with his past attitude a drop of dignity under the shadow of which his existence could only become the most grotesque of failures he had been far from holding it a failure long as he had waited for the appearance that was to make it a success he had waited for quite another thing not for such a thing as that the breath of his good faith came short however as he recognised how long he had waited or how long at least his companion had that she at all events might be recorded as having waited in vain this affected him sharply and all the more because of his it first having done little more than amuse himself with the idea it grew more grave as the gravity of her condition grew and the state of mind it produced in him which he himself ended by watching as if it had been some definite disfigurement of his outer person may pass for another of his surprises this conjoined itself still with another the really stupefying consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape itself had he dared what did everything mean what that is did she mean she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the soundless admonition of it all unless that at this time of day it was simply overwhelmingly too late he had never at any stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a correction he had never till within these last few months been so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him had time whether he struck himself as having it or not that at last at last he certainly hadn't it to speak of or had it but in the scanty astir such soon enough as things went with him became the inference with which his old obsession had to reckon and this it was not helped to do by the more and more confirmed appearance that the great vagueness casting the long shadow in which he had lived had to attest itself almost no margin left since it was in time that he was to have met his fate so it was in time that his fate was to have acted and as he waked up to the sense of no longer being young which was exactly the sense of being stale just as that in turn was the sense of being weak he waked up to another matter beside it all hung together they were subject he and the great vagueness to an equal and indivisible law when the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale when the secret of the gods had grown faint had perhaps even quite evaporated that and that only was failure it wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt dishonoured pilloried hanged it was failure not to be anything and so in the dark valley into which his path had taken its unlooked-for twists he wondered not a little as he groped he didn't care what awful crash might overtake him with what ignominy or what monstrosity he might yet be associated since he wasn't after all too utterly old to suffer if it would only be decently proportionate to the posture he had kept all his life in the threatened presence of it he had but one desire left that he shouldn't have been sold end of chapter 3 of the beast in the jungle by Henry James chapter four of the beast in the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org chapter four of the beast in the jungle by Henry James then it was that one afternoon while the spring of the year was young and new she met all in her own way his Franca's betrayal of these alarms he had gone in late to see her but evening hadn't settled and she was presented to him in that long fresh light of waning April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greatest hours of autumn the week had been warm the spring was supposed to have begun early and May Bartram sat for the first time in the year without a fire a fact that to marcher sense gave the scene of which she formed part a smooth and ultimate look an air of knowing in its immaculate order and cold meaningless cheer that it would never see a fire again her own aspect he could scarce have said why intensified this note almost as white as wax with the marks and signs in her face as a numerous and as fine as if they had been etched by a needle with soft white draperies relieved by a faded green scarf on the delicate tone of which the years had further refined she was the picture of a serene and exquisite but in penetrable sphinx whose head or indeed all whose person might have been powdered with silver she was a sphinx yet with her white petals and green fronds she might have been a lily to only an artificial lily wonderfully imitated and constantly kept without dust or stain though not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint creases under some clear glass bell the perfection of household care of high polish and finish always reigned in her rooms but they now looked most as if everything had been wound up tucked in put away so that she might sit with folded hands and with nothing more to do she was out of it two marchers vision her work was over she communicated with him as across some Gulf or from some island of rest that she had already reached and it made him feel strangely abandoned was it or rather wasn't it that if for so long she had been watching with him the answer to their question must have swum into her Ken and taken on its name so that her occupation was verily gone he had as much as charged her with this in saying her many months before that she even then knew something she was keeping from him it was a point he had never since ventured to press vaguely fearing as he did that it might become a difference perhaps a disagreement between them he had in this later time turned to nervous which was what he and all the other years had never been and the oddity was that his nervousness should have waited till he had begun to doubt should have held off so long as he was sure there was something it seemed to him that the wrong word would bring down on his head something that would so at least ease off his tension but he wanted not to speak the wrong word that would make everything ugly he wanted the knowledge he lacked to drop on him if drop it could by its own August wait if she was to forsake him it was surely for her to take leave this was why he didn't directly ask her again what she knew but it was also why approaching the matter from another side he said to her in the course of his visit what do you regard as the very worst that at this time of day can happen to me he had asked her that in the past often enough they had with the ah dear rhythm of their intensities and avoidances exchanged ideas about it and then had seen the ideas washed away by cool intervals washed like figures traced in sea sand it had ever been the mark of their talk that the oldest illusions in it required but a little dismissal and reaction to come out again sounding for the hour as a new she could thus at present meet his enquiry quite freshly and patiently oh yes I've repeatedly thought only it always seemed to me of old that I couldn't quite make up my mind I thought of dreadful things between which it was difficult to choose and so must you have done rather I feel now as if I had scarce done anything else I appear to myself to have spent my life in thinking of nothing but dreadful things a great many of them I've at different times named to you but there were others I couldn't name they were too too dreadful too too dreadful some of them she looked at him a minute and there came to him as he met at an inn consequent sense that her eyes when one got their full clearness were still as beautiful as they had been in youth only beautiful with a strange cold light a light that somehow was a part of the effect if it wasn't rather a part of the cause of the pale hard sweetness of the season and the hour and yet she said at last there are Horrors we've mentioned it deepened the strangeness to see her as such a figure in such a picture talk of Horrors but she was to do in a few minutes something stranger yet though even of this he was to take the full measure but afterwards and the note of it already trembled it was for the matter of that one of the signs that her eyes were having again the high flicker of their prime he had to admit however what she said oh yes there were times when we did go far he caught himself in the act of speaking as if it were all over well he wished it were and the consummation depended for him clearly more and more on his friend but she had now a soft smile Oh far it was oddly ironic do you mean were prepared to go further she was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at him yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread do you consider that we went far why I thought at the point you were just making that we had looked most things in the face including each other she still smiled but you're quite right we've had together great imaginations often great fears but some of them have been unspoken then the worst we haven't faced that I could face it I believe if I knew what you think it I feel he explained as if I had lost my power to conceive such things and he wondered if he looked as blank as he sounded it's spent then why do you assume she said that mine isn't because you've given me signs to the contrary it isn't a question for you of conceiving imagining comparing it isn't a question now of choosing at last he came out with it you know something I don't you've shown me that before these last words had affected her he made out in a moment exceedingly and she spoke with firmness I've shown you my dear nothing he shook his head you can't hide it oh oh may Bartram sounded over what she couldn't hide it was almost a smothered groan you admitted at months ago when I spoke of it to you as of something you were afraid I should find out your answer was that I couldn't that I wouldn't and I don't pretend I have but you had something therefore in mind and I see now how it must have been how it still is the possibility that of all possibilities has settled itself for you is the worst this he went on is why I appeal to you I'm only afraid of ignorance today I'm not afraid of knowledge and then as for awhile she said nothing what makes me sure is that I see in your face and feel here in this air and amid these appearances that you're out of it you've done you've had your experience you leave me to my fate well she listened motionless and white in her chair as on a decision to be made so that her manner was fairly an avowal though still with a small fine in her stiffness an imperfect surrender it would be the worst she finally let herself say I mean the thing I've never said it hushed him a moment more monstrous than all the monstrosity 'he's we've named more monstrous isn't that what you sufficiently express she asked in calling it the worst March or thought assuredly if you mean as I do something that includes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable it would if it should happen said may Bartram what we're speaking of remember is only my idea it's true belief marcher returned that's enough for me I feel your beliefs are right therefore if having this one you give me no more light on it you abandon me no no she repeated I'm with you don't you see still and as to make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair a movement she seldom risked in these days and showed herself all draped and all soft in her fairness and slimness I haven't forsaken you it was really in its effort against weakness a generous assurance and had the success of the impulse not happily been great it would have touched him to pain more than to pleasure but the cold charm in her eyes had spread as she hovered before him to all the rest of her person so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth he couldn't pity her for that he could only take her as she showed as capable even yet of helping him It was as if at the same time her light might at any instant go out wherefore he must make the most of it there passed before him with intensity the three or four things he wanted most to know but the question that came of itself to his lips really covered the others then tell me if I shall consciously suffer she promptly shook her head never it confirmed the authority he imputed to her and had produced on him an extraordinary effect well what's better than that do you call that the worst you think nothing is better she asked she seemed to mean something so special that he again sharply wondered though still with the dawn of a prospect of relief why not if one doesn't know after which has their eyes over his question met in a silence the dawn deepened and something to his purpose came prodigiously out of her very face his own as he took it in suddenly flushed to the forehead and he gasped with the force of a perception to which on the instant everything fitted the sound of his gasp filled the air then he became articulate I see if I don't suffer in her own look however was doubt you see what why what do you mean what you've always meant she again shook her head what I mean isn't what I've always meant it's different it's something new she hung back from it a little something new it's not what you think I see what you think his divination drew breath then only her correction might be wrong it isn't that I am a blockhead he asked between faintness and grimness it isn't that it's all a mistake a mistake she pityingly echoed that possibility for her he saw would be monstrous and if she guaranteed him the immunity from pain it would accordingly not be what she had in mind oh no she declared it's nothing of that sort you've been right yet he couldn't help asking himself if she weren't the suppressed speaking but to save him it seemed to him he should be most in a hole if his history should prove all a platitude are you telling me the truth so that I shan't have been a bigger idiot than I can bear to know I haven't lived with a vain imagination in the most besotted illusion I haven't waited but to see the door shut in my face she shook her head again however the case stands that isn't the truth whatever the reality it is a reality the door isn't shut the doors open said may Bartram then something's to come she waited once again always with her cold sweet eyes on him it's never too late she had with her gliding step diminished the distance between them and she stood nearer to him close to him a minute as if still charged with the unspoken her movement might have been for some finer emphasis of what she was at once hesitating and deciding to say he had been standing by the chimney-piece fireless and spare lee adorned a small perfect old French clock and two morsels of rosie dresden constituting all its furniture and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him waiting grasp it a little as for support and encouragement she only kept him waiting however that is he only waited it had become suddenly from her movement and attitude beautiful and vivid to him that she had something more to give him her wasted face delicately shown with it it glittered almost as with the white luster of silver and her expression she was right incontestably for what he saw and her face was the truth and strangely without consequence while there talk of it as dreadful was still in the air she appeared to present it as inordinately soft this prompting bewilderment made him but gaped the more gratefully for her revelation so that they continued for some minutes silent her face shining at him her contact in ponder ibly pressing and his stare all kind that all expectant the end nonetheless was that what he had expected failed to come to him something else took place instead which seemed to consist at first in the mirror closing of her eyes she gave way at the same instant to a slow fine shutter and though he remained staring though he stared in fact but the harder turned off and regained her chair it was the end of what she had been intending but it left him thinking only of that well you don't say she had touched in her passage a bell near the chimney and had sunk back strangely pale I'm afraid I'm too ill too ill to tell me it sprang up sharp to him and almost to his lips the fear she might die without giving him light he checked himself in time from so expressing his question but she answered as if she had heard the words don't you know now now she had spoken as if some difference had been made within the moment but her made quickly obedient to her vel was already with them I know nothing and he was afterwards to say to himself that he must have spoken with odious impatience such an impatience as to show that supremely disconcerted he washed his hands of the whole question Oh said may Bartram are you in pain he asked as the woman went to her know said may Bartram her maid who had put an arm round her as if to take her to her room fixed on him eyes that appealingly contradicted her in spite of which however he showed once more his mystification what then has happened she was once more with her companions help on her feet and feeling withdrawal imposed on him he had blankly found his hat and gloves and had reached the door yet he waited for her answer what was - she said end of chapter 4 of the beast in the jungle by Henry James Chapter five of the beast in the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org chapter five of the beast in the jungle he came back the next day but she was then unable to see him and as it was literally the first time this had occurred in the long stretch of their acquaintance he turned away defeated and sore almost angry or feeling at least that such a break in their custom was really the beginning of the end and wandered alone with his thoughts especially with the one he was least able to keep down she was dying and he would lose her she was dying and his life would end he stopped in the park in two he had passed and stared before him at his recurrent doubt away from her the doubt pressed again in her presence he had believed her but as he for the explanation nearest at hand had most of a miserable warmth for him and least of a cold torment she had deceived him to save him to put him off with something in which he should be able to rest what could the thing that was to happen to him be after all but just this thing that had began to happen her dying her death his consequent solitude that was what he had figured as the beast in the jungle that was what had been in the lap of the gods he had had her word for it as he left her what else on earth could she have meant it wasn't a thing of a monstrous order not a fate rare and distinguished not a stroke of Fortune that overwhelmed and immortalized it had only the stamp of the common doom but poor marcher at this hour judged the common doom sufficient it would serve his turn and even as the consummation of infinite waiting he would bend his pride to accept it he sat down on a bench in the Twilight he hadn't been a fool something had been as she had said to come before heroes indeed it had quite struck him that the final fact really matched with the long avenue through which he had had to reach it as sharing his suspense and is giving herself all giving her life to bring it to an end she had come with him every step of the way he had lived by her aid and to leave her behind would be cruelly damnably to miss her what could be more overwhelming than that well he was to know within the week for though she kept him awhile at they left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each of which he asked about her only again to have to turn away she ended his trial by receiving him where she had always received him yet she had been brought out at some hazard into the presence of so many of the things that were consciously vainly half their past and there was scant service left in the gentleness of her mirror desire all too visible to check his obsession and wind up his long trouble that was clearly what she wanted the one thing more for her own peace while she could still put out her hand he was so affected by her state that once seated by her chair he was moved to let everything go it was she herself therefore who brought him back took up again before she dismissed him her last word of the other time she showed how she wished to leave their business in order I'm not sure you understood you've nothing to wait for more it has come oh how he looked at her really really the thing that as you said was to the thing that we began in our youth to watch for face to face with her once more he believed her it was a claim to which he had so abject Lea little to oppose you mean that it has come as a positive definite occurrence with a name and a date positive definite I don't know about the name but Oh with the date he found himself again to helplessly at sea but come in the night come and passed me by may Bartram had her strange faint smile oh no it hasn't passed you by but if I haven't been aware of it and it hasn't touched me ah you're not being aware of it and she seemed to hesitate an instant to deal with this you're not being aware of it is the strangeness in the strangeness it's the wonder of the wonder she spoke as with the softness almost of a sick child yet now at last at the end of all with the perfect straightness of a Sibyl she visibly knew that she knew and the effect on him was of something co-ordinate in its high character with the law that had ruled him it was the true voice of the law so on her lips with the law itself have sounded it has touched you she went on it has done it's office it has made you all its own so utterly without my knowing it so utterly without your knowing it his hand as he leaned to her was on the arm of her chair and dimly smiling always now she placed her own on it it's enough if I know it oh he confusedly breathed as she herself of late so often had done what I long ago said is true you'll never know how and I think you ought to be content you've had it said may Bartram but had what why what was to have marked you out the proof of your law it has acted I'm too glad she then bravely added to have been able to see what it's not he continued to attach his eyes to her and with the sense that it was all beyond him and that she was too he would still have sharply challenged her hadn't he so felt it an abuse of her weakness to do more than take devoutly what she gave him take it hushed as to a revelation if he did speak it was out of the foreknowledge of his loneliness to come if you're glad of what it's not it might then have been worse she turned her eyes away she looked straight before her with which after a moment well you know our fears he wondered it's something then we never feared on this slowly she turned to him did we ever dream with all our dreams that we should sit and talk of it thus he tried for a little to make out that they had but it was as if their dreams numberless enough were in solution in some thick cold mist through which thought lost itself it might have been that we couldn't talk well she did her best for him not from this side this you see she said is the other side I think poor marcher returned that all sides are the same to me then however as she gently shook her head in correction we might and as it were have got across to where we are no were here she made her weak emphasis and much good does it do us was her friends Frank comment it does us the good it can it does us the good that it it isn't here it's past it's behind said may Bartram before but her voice dropped he had got up not to tire her but it was hard to combat his yearning she after all told him nothing but that his light had failed which he knew well enough without her before he blankly echoed before you see it was always to come that kept it present oh I don't care what comes now besides March are added it seems to me I liked it better present as you say then I can like it absent with your absence o mine and her pale hands made light of it with the absence of everything he had a dreadful sense of standing there before her for so far as anything but this proved this bottomless drop was concerned the last time of their life it rested on him with a weight he felt he could scarce bear and this weight it apparently was that still pressed out what remained in him of speakable protest I believe you but I can't begin to pretend I understand nothing for me is past nothing will pass till I pass myself which I pray my stars may be as soon as possible say however he added that I've eaten my cake as you contend to the last crumb how can the thing I've never felt at all be the thing I was marked out to feel she met him perhaps less directly but she met him unperturbed you take your feelings for granted you were to suffer your fate that was not necessarily to know it how in the world when what is such knowledge but suffering she looked up at him awhile in silence no you don't understand I suffer said John marcha don't don't how can I help at least that don't may bark room repeated she spoke it in a tone so special in spite of her weakness that he stared an instant stared as if some light hitherto hidden had shimmered across his vision darkness again closed over it but the gleam had already become for him an idea because I haven't the right don't know when you needn't she mercifully urged you needn't for we shouldn't shouldn't if he could but know what she meant no it's too much too much he still asked but with a mystification that was the next moment of a sudden to give way her words if they meant something affected him in this light the light also of her wasted face as meaning all and the sense of what knowledge had been for herself came over him with a rush which broke through into a question is it of that then you're dying she but watched him gravely at first as to see with this where he was and she might have seen something or feared something that moved her sympathy I would live for you still if I could her eyes closed for a little as if withdrawn into herself she were for our last time trying but I can't she said as she raised them again to take leave of him she couldn't indeed as but to promptly and sharply appeared and he had no vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom they had parted forever in that strange talk access to her chamber of pain rigidly guarded was almost wholly forbidden him he was feeling now moreover in the face of doctors nurses the two or three relatives attracted doubtless by the presumption of what she had to leave how few were the rights as they were called in such cases that he had to put forward and how odd it might even seem that their intimacy shouldn't have given him more of them the stupidest fourth cousin had more even though she had been nothing in such a person's life she had been a feature of features in his for what else was it to have been so indispensable strange beyond saying were the ways of existence baffling for him the anomaly of his lack as he felt it to be of producible claim a woman might have been as it were everything to him and yet it might present him in no connection that anyone seemed held to recognize if this was the case in these closing weeks it was the case more sharply on the occasion of the last offices rendered in the great gray London cemetery to what had been mortal to what had been precious in his friend the concourse at her grave was not numerous but he saw himself treated as scarce more nearly concerned with it than if there had been a thousand others he was in short from this moment face to face with the fact that he was to profit extraordinarily little by the interest may Bartram had taken in him he couldn't quite have said what he expected but he hadn't surely expected this approach to a double privation not only at her interest failed him but he seemed to feel himself unattended and for a reason he couldn't seize by the distinction the dignity the propriety if nothing else of the man markedly bereaved It was as if in the view of society he had not been markedly bereaved as if there still failed some sign or proof of it and as if nonetheless his character could never be affirmed nor the deficiency ever made up there were moments as the week's went by when he would have liked by some almost aggressive act to take his stand on the intimacy of his loss in order that it might be questioned and his retort to the relief of his spirit so recorded but the moments of an irritation more helpless followed fast on these the moments during which turning things over with a good conscience but with a bare horizon he found himself wondering if he oughtn't to have begun so to speak further back he found himself wondering indeed at many things and this last speculation had others to keep it company what could he have done after all in her lifetime without giving them both as it were away he couldn't have made known she was watching him for that would have published the superstition of the beast this was what closed his mouth now now that the jungle had been thrashed to vacancy and that the beast had stolen away it sounded too foolish and too flat the difference for him in this particular the extinction in his life of the element of suspense was such as in fact of her surprise him he could scarce have said what the effect resembled the abrupt cessation the positive prohibition of music perhaps more than anything else in some place all adjusted and all accustomed to sonority and to attention if he could at any rate have conceived lifting the veil from his image at some moment of the past what had he done after all if not lifted to her so to do this today to talk to people at large of the jungle cleared and confide to them that he now felt it as safe would have been not only to see them listened as to a good wife's tale but really to hear himself tell one what it presently came to in truth was that poor marcher waded through his beaten grass where no life stirred where no breath sounded where no evil eye seemed to gleam from a possible lair very much as if vaguely looking for the beast and still more as if acutely missing it he walked about in an existence that had grown strangely more spacious and stopping fitfully in places where the undergrowth of life struck him as closer asked himself yearningly wondered secretly and sorely if it would have lurked here or there it would have at all events sprung what was at least complete was his belief in the truth itself of the assurance given him the change from his old sense to his new was absolute and final what was to happen had so absolutely and finally happened that he was as little able to know a fear for his future as to know a hope so absent in short was any question of anything still to come he was to live entirely with the other question that of his unidentified past that of his having to see his fortune in penetrable muffled and masked the torment of this vision became then his occupation he couldn't perhaps have consented to live but for the possibility of guessing she had told him his friend not to guess she had forbidden him so far as he might to know and she had even in a sort denied the power in him to learn which were so many things precisely to deprive him of rest it wasn't that he wanted he argued for fairness that anything past and done should repeat itself it was only that he shouldn't as an anti-climax have been taken sleeping so sound as not to be able to win back by an effort of thought the lost stuff of consciousness he declared to himself at moments that he would either win it back or have done with consciousness forever he made this idea his one motive in fine made it so much his passion that none other to compare with it seemed ever to have touched him the lost stuff of consciousness became thus for him as he strayed or stolen child to a nun appeasable father he hunted it up and down very much as if he were knocking at doors and inquiring of the police this was the spirit in which inevitably he set himself to travel he started on a journey that was to be as long as he could make it it danced before him that as the other side of the globe couldn't possibly have less to say to him it might by a possibility of suggestion have more before he quitted London however he made a pilgrimage to may Bartram grave took his way to it through the endless avenues of the grim suburban necropolis sought it out in the wilderness of tombs and though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell found himself when he had at last stood by it beguiled into long intensities he stood for an hour powerless to turn away and yet powerless to penetrate the darkness of death fixing with his eyes her inscribed name and date beating his forehead against the fact of the secret they kept drawing his breath while he waited as if some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones he kneeled on the stones however in vain they kept what they concealed and if the face of the tomb did become for a face for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn't know him he gave them a last long look but no palest like broke end of chapter 5 of the beast in the jungle by Henry James Chapter six of the beast in the jungle by Henry James this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org chapter six of the beast in the jungle he stayed away after this for a year he visited the depths of Asia spending himself on scenes of romantic interest of superlative sanctity but what was present to him everywhere was that for a man who had known what he had known the world was vulgar and vain the state of mind in which he had lived for so many years shone out to him in reflection as a light that coloured and refined a light beside which the glow of the East was garish cheap and then the terrible truth was that he had lost with everything else a distinction as well the things he saw couldn't help being common when he had become common to look at them he was simply now one of them himself he was in the dust without a peg for the sense of difference and there were hours when before the temples of gods and the sepulchers of kings his spirit turned for nobleness of association to the barely discriminated slab in the London suburb that had become for him and more intensely with time and distance his one witness of a past glory it was all that was left to him for proof or pride yet the past glories of Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thought of it small wonder then that he came back to it on the morrow of his return he was drawn there this time as irresistible as the other yet with a confidence almost that was doubtless the effect of the many months that had elapsed he had lived in spite of himself into his change of feeling and in wandering over the earth had wandered as might be said from the circumference to the center of his desert he had settled to his safety and accepted perforce his extinction figuring to himself with some color in the likeness of certain little old men he remembered to have seen of whom all meagre and wizened as they might look it was related that they had in their time fought 20 duels or been loved by ten princesses they indeed had been wondrous for others while he was but wondrous for himself which however was exactly the cause of his haste to renew the wonder by getting back as he might put it into his own presence that had quickened his steps and checked his delay if his visit was prompt it was because he had been separated so long from the part of himself that alone he now valued its accordingly not false to say that he reached his goal with a certain elation and stood there again with a certain assurance the creature beneath the sod knew of his rare experience so that strangely now the place had lost for him its mere blankness of expression it met him in mildness not as before in mockery it wore for him the air of conscious greeting that we find after absence in things that have closely belonged to us and which seemed to confess of themselves to the connection the plot of ground the graven tablet the tended flowers affected him so as belonging to him that he resembled for the hour a contented landlord reviewing a piece of property whatever had happened well had happened he had not come back this time with the vanity of that question his former worrying what what now practically so spent yet he would nonetheless never again so cut himself off from the spot he would come back to it every month for if he did nothing else by its aid he at least held up his head it thus grew for him in the oddest way a positive resource he carried out his idea of periodical returns which took their place at last among the most inveterate of his habits what it all amounted to oddly enough was that in his finally so simplified world this garden of death gave him the few square feet of earth on which he could still most live It was as if being nothing anywhere else for anyone nothing even for himself he were just everything here and if not for a crowd of witnesses or indeed for any witness but john marcher then by clear right of the register that he could scan like an open page the open page was the tomb of his friend and there were the facts of the past there the truth of his life there the backward reaches in which he could lose himself he did this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was in the most extraordinary manner his other his younger self and to wander which was more extraordinary yet round and round a third present not wandering she but stationary still whose eyes turning with his revolution never ceased to follow him and whose seat was his point so to speak of orientation thus in short he settled to live feeding all on the sense that he once had lived and dependant on it not alone for a support but for an identity it suffice Tim in its way four months and the year elapsed it would doubtless even have carried him further but for an accident superficially slight which moved him quite in another direction with a force beyond any of his impressions of Egypt or of India it was a thing of the merest chance the turn as he afterwards felt of a hair though he was indeed to live to believe that if flight hadn't come to him in this particular fashion it would still have come in another he was to live to believe this I say though he was not to live I may not less definitely mention to do much else we allow him at any rate the benefit of the conviction struggling up for him at the end that whatever might have happened or not happened he would have come round of himself to the light the incident of an autumn day had put the match to the train laid from of old by his misery with the light before him he knew that even of late his ache had only been smothered it was strangely drugged but it throbbed at the touch it began to bleed and the touch in the event was the face of a fellow mortal this face one gray afternoon when the leaves were thick in the alleys looked into marchers own at the cemetery with an expression like the cut of a blade he felt it that is so deep down that he winced at the steady thrust the person who so mutely assaulted him was a figure he had noticed on reaching his own goal absorbed by the grave a short distance away a grave apparently fresh so that the emotion of the visitor would probably match it for frankness this fact alone for bad further attention though during the time he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his neighbor a middle-aged man apparently in mourning who's bowed back among the clustered monuments and mortuary use was constantly presented marchers theory that these were elements in contact with which he himself revived had suffered on this occasion it may be granted a marked an excessive check the autumn day was dire for him as none had recently been and he rested with a heaviness he had not yet known on the low stone table that form a Bartram name he rested without power to move as if some spring in him some spell vouchsafed had suddenly been broken forever if he could have done that moment as he wanted he would simply have stretched himself on the slab that was ready to take him treating it as a place prepared to receive his last sleep what in all the wide world had he now to keep awake for he stared before him with the question and it was then that as one of the cemetery walks past to near him he caught the shock of the face his neighbor at the other grave had withdrawn as he himself with force enough in him would have done by now and was advancing along the path on his way to one of the gates this brought him close and his pace was slow so that and all the moors there was kind of a hunger in his look the two men were for a minute directly confronted marcher knew him at once for one of the deeply stricken a perception so sharp that nothing else in the picture comparatively lived neither his dress his age nor his presumable character and class nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features that he showed he showed them that was the point he was moved as he passed by some impulse that was either a signal for sympathy or more possibly a challenge to an opposing sorrow he might already have been aware of our friend might at some previous hour of noticed in him the smooth habit of the scene with which the state of his own senses so scantly consorted and might thereby have been stirred as by an overt discord what marcher was at all events conscious of was in the first place that the image of scarred passion presented to him was conscious too of something that profaned the air and in the second that roused startled shocked he was yet the next moment looking after it as it went with envy the most extraordinary thing that had happened to him though he had given that name to other matters as well took place after his immediate vague stare as a consequence of this impression the stranger passed but the raw glare of his grief remained making our friend wonder in pity what wrong what wounded expressed what injury not to be healed what had the man had to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live something and this reached him with a pang that he John marcher hadn't the proof of which was precisely John marchers arid and no passion had ever touched him for this was what passion meant he had survived and maunder dan pined but where had been his deep ravaged the extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden rush of the result of this question the sight that had just met his eyes named to him as in letters of quick flame something he had utterly insanely missed and what he had missed made these things a train of fire made them mark themselves in an anguish of inward throbs he had seen outside of his life not learned it within the way a woman was mourned when she had been loved for herself such was the force of his conviction of the meaning of the strangers face which still flared for him as a smoky torch it hadn't come to him the knowledge on the wings of experience it had brushed him jostled him upset him with the disrespect of chance the insolence of accident now that the illumination had begun however it blazed to the zenith and what he presently stood there gazing out was the sounded void of his life he gazed he drew breath and pain he turned in his dismay and turning he had before him in sharper incision than ever the open page of his story the name on the table smote him as the passage of his neighbor had done and what it said to him fall in the face was that she was what he had missed this was the awful thought the answer to all the past the vision at the dread clearness of which he turned as cold as the stone beneath him everything fell together can fast explained overwhelmed leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished the fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance he had emptied the cup to the Lee's he had been the man of his time the man to whom nothing on earth was to have happened that was the rare stroke that was his visitation so he saw it as we say in pale horror while the pieces fitted and fitted so she had seen it while he didn't and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home it was the truth vivid and monstrous that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion this the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom one's doom however was never baffled and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him the escape would have been to love her then then he would have lived she had lived who could say now with what passion since she had loved him for himself whereas he had never thought of her how it hugely glared at him but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use her spoken words came back to him the chain stretched and stretched the Beast had lurked indeed and the Beast at its hour had sprung it had sprung in that twilight of the cold April in pale ill wasted but all beautiful and perhaps even then recoverable she had risen from her chair to stand before him and let him imaginably guess it had sprung as he didn't guess it had sprung as she hopelessly turned from him and the mark by the time he left her had fallen where it was to fall he had justified his fear and achieved his fate he had failed with the last exactitude of all he was to fail of and a moan now rose to his lips as he remembered she had prayed he might not know this horror of waking this was knowledge knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze through them nonetheless he tried to fix it and hold it he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain that at least belated and bitter had something of the taste of life but the bitterness suddenly sickened him and it was as if horribly he saw in the truth in the cruelty of his image what had been appointed and done he saw the jungle of his life and saw the lurking beasts then while he looked perceived it as by a stir of the air rise huge and hideous for the leap that was to settle him his eyes darkened it was close and in actively turning in his hallucination to avoid it he flung himself face down on the tomb end of the beast in the jungle by Henry James