DOI article:
James, Henry: The Coxon Fund
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0342
338 The Coxon Fund
I'm afraid that at this my levity increased. " Oh, that's a
happiness almost too great to wish a person ! " I saw she had not
yet in her mind what I had in mine, and at any rate the visitor's
actual bliss was limited to a walk in the garden with Kent Mul-
ville. Later in the afternoon I also took one, and I saw nothing
of Miss Anvoy tili dinner, at which we were without the Company
of Saltram, who had caused it to be reported that he was out of
sorts and lying down. This made us, most of us—for there were
other friends present—convey to each other in silence some of the
unutterable things which in those years our eyes had inevitably
acquired the art of expressing. If an American inquirer had not
been there we would have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide
would have pretended not to hear. I had seen her, before the
very fact, abstract herseif nobly ; and I knew that more than once,
to keep it from the servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly, she
had helped her husband to carry him bodily to his room. Just
recently he had been so wise and so deep and so high that I had
begun to be nervous—to wonder if by chance there were some-
thing behind it, if he were kept straight, for instance, by the know-
ledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to teil us if they
chose. He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common
knowledge with us that the biggest splashes took place in the
quietest pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the
splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were
even then to feel about our ears. Kent Mulville had been up to
his room, but had come back with afacial inscrutability that I had
seen him achieve in equal measure only on the evening I waited in
the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to myself that our
friend had gone out, but I was glad that the presence of a com-
parative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of suggesting to
each other, in respect of his errand, edifying possibilities in which
we
I'm afraid that at this my levity increased. " Oh, that's a
happiness almost too great to wish a person ! " I saw she had not
yet in her mind what I had in mine, and at any rate the visitor's
actual bliss was limited to a walk in the garden with Kent Mul-
ville. Later in the afternoon I also took one, and I saw nothing
of Miss Anvoy tili dinner, at which we were without the Company
of Saltram, who had caused it to be reported that he was out of
sorts and lying down. This made us, most of us—for there were
other friends present—convey to each other in silence some of the
unutterable things which in those years our eyes had inevitably
acquired the art of expressing. If an American inquirer had not
been there we would have expressed them otherwise, and Adelaide
would have pretended not to hear. I had seen her, before the
very fact, abstract herseif nobly ; and I knew that more than once,
to keep it from the servants, managing, dissimulating cleverly, she
had helped her husband to carry him bodily to his room. Just
recently he had been so wise and so deep and so high that I had
begun to be nervous—to wonder if by chance there were some-
thing behind it, if he were kept straight, for instance, by the know-
ledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to teil us if they
chose. He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common
knowledge with us that the biggest splashes took place in the
quietest pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the
splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were
even then to feel about our ears. Kent Mulville had been up to
his room, but had come back with afacial inscrutability that I had
seen him achieve in equal measure only on the evening I waited in
the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to myself that our
friend had gone out, but I was glad that the presence of a com-
parative stranger deprived us of the dreary duty of suggesting to
each other, in respect of his errand, edifying possibilities in which
we