The Figure in the Carpet

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Генри Джеймс. The Figure in the Carpet

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

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The effect of my visit to Bridges was to turn me out for more profundity.  Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so void of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination involved in my small precautions.  If he was in spirits it wasn’t because he had read my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt sure he hadn’t read it, though The Middle had been out three days and bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a station.  The impression he made on me personally was such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected to this end with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless conspicuity of the sheet.  I’m afraid I even watched the result of my manœuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manœuvre, at the great man’s side, the result of his affability was a still livelier desire that he shouldn’t remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I had done him.  It wasn’t that he seemed to thirst for justice; on the contrary I hadn’t yet caught in his talk the faintest grunt of a grudge—a note for which my young experience had already given me an ear.  Of late he had had more recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in The Middle, to see how it drew him out.  He wasn’t of course popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that his success was independent of that.  He had none the less become in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up with him.  We had found out at last how clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery.  I was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how much of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then appealed to him in a spirit comparatively selfish.  It was very discouraging: I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself.

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“Doesn’t see what?” my neighbour continued.

“Doesn’t see anything.”

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