The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (2.1894)

By Henry James 339

We didn't ourselves believe. At ten o'clock he came into the
drawing-room with his waistcoat much awry but his eyes sending
out great signals. It was precisely with his entrance that I ceased
to be vividly conscious of him. I saw that the crystal, as I had
called it, had begun to swing, and I had need of my immediate
attention for Miss Anvoy.

Even when I was told afterwards that he had, as we might have
said to-day, broken the record, the manner in which that attention
had been rewarded relieved me of a sense of loss. I had of course
a perfect general consciousness that something great was
going on : it was a little like having been etherised to hear Herr
Joachim play. The old music was in the air ; I feit the strong
pulse of thought, the sink and swell, the flight, the poise, the plunge;
but I knew something about one of the listeners that nobody eise
knew, and Saltram's monologue could reach me only through that
medium. To this hour I'm of no use when, as a witness, I'm
appealed to (for they still absurdly contend about it), as to whether
or no on that historic night he was drunk ; and my position is
slightly ridiculous, for I have never cared to teil them what it
really was I was taken up with. What I got out of it is the only
morsel of the total experience that is quite my own. The others
were shared, but this is incommunicable. I feel that now, I'm
bound to say, in even thus roughly evoking the occasion, and it
takes something from my pride of clearness. However, I shall
perhaps be as clear as is absolutely necessary if I remark that she
was too much given up to her own intensity of Observation to be
sensible of mine. It was plainly not thequestion of her marriage
that had brought her back. I greatly enjoyed this discovery and
Was sure that had that question alone been involved she would
have remained away. In this case doubtless Gravener would, in
spite of the House of Commons, have found means to rejoin her.

It