DOI Artikel:
James, Henry: The next time
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0018
The Next Time
H
against mine. It was not that when she tried to be what she
called subtle (for wasn’t Limbert subtle, and wasn’t I ?) her fond
consumers, bless them, didn’t suspect the trick nor show what
they thought of it: they straightway rose, on the contrary, to the
morsel she had hoped to hold too high, and, making but a big,
cheerful bite of it, wagged their great collective tail artlessly for
more. It was not given to her not to please, nor granted even to
her best refinements to affright. I have always respected the
mystery of those humiliations, but I was fully aware this morning
that they were practically the reason why she had come to me.
Therefore when she said, with the flush of a bold joke in her kind,
coarse face, “ What I feel is, you know, that you could settle me if
you only would,” I knew quite well what she meant. She meant
that of old it had always appeared to be the fine blade, as some
one had hyperbolically called it, of my particular opinion that
snapped the silken thread by which Limbert’s chance in the market
was wont to hang. She meant that my favour was compromising,
that my praise indeed was fatal. I had made myself a little specialty
of seeing nothing in certain celebrities, of seeing overmuch in an
occasional nobody, and of judging from a point of view that, say
what I would for it (and I had a monstrous deal to say) remained
perverse and obscure. Mine was in short the love that killed, for
my subtlety, unlike Mrs. Highmore’s, produced no tremor of the
public tail. She had not forgotten how, toward the end, when his
case was worst, Limbert would absolutely come to me with a funny,
shy pathos in his eyes and say : “ My dear fellow, I think I’ve done
it this time if you’ll only keep quiet.” If my keeping quiet, in
those days, was to help him to appear to have hit the usual taste, for
the want of which he was starving, so now my breaking out was to
help Mrs. Highmore to appear to have hit the unusual.
The moral of all this was that I had frightened the public too
much
H
against mine. It was not that when she tried to be what she
called subtle (for wasn’t Limbert subtle, and wasn’t I ?) her fond
consumers, bless them, didn’t suspect the trick nor show what
they thought of it: they straightway rose, on the contrary, to the
morsel she had hoped to hold too high, and, making but a big,
cheerful bite of it, wagged their great collective tail artlessly for
more. It was not given to her not to please, nor granted even to
her best refinements to affright. I have always respected the
mystery of those humiliations, but I was fully aware this morning
that they were practically the reason why she had come to me.
Therefore when she said, with the flush of a bold joke in her kind,
coarse face, “ What I feel is, you know, that you could settle me if
you only would,” I knew quite well what she meant. She meant
that of old it had always appeared to be the fine blade, as some
one had hyperbolically called it, of my particular opinion that
snapped the silken thread by which Limbert’s chance in the market
was wont to hang. She meant that my favour was compromising,
that my praise indeed was fatal. I had made myself a little specialty
of seeing nothing in certain celebrities, of seeing overmuch in an
occasional nobody, and of judging from a point of view that, say
what I would for it (and I had a monstrous deal to say) remained
perverse and obscure. Mine was in short the love that killed, for
my subtlety, unlike Mrs. Highmore’s, produced no tremor of the
public tail. She had not forgotten how, toward the end, when his
case was worst, Limbert would absolutely come to me with a funny,
shy pathos in his eyes and say : “ My dear fellow, I think I’ve done
it this time if you’ll only keep quiet.” If my keeping quiet, in
those days, was to help him to appear to have hit the usual taste, for
the want of which he was starving, so now my breaking out was to
help Mrs. Highmore to appear to have hit the unusual.
The moral of all this was that I had frightened the public too
much