DOI article:
James, Henry: The next time
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0041
By Henry James 37
watched him as I should have watched a long race or a long chase,
irresistibly siding with him, but much occupied with the calcula-
tion of odds. I confess indeed that my heart, for the endless
stretch that he covered so fast, was often in my throat. I
saw him peg away over the sun-dappled plain, I saw him double
and wind and gain and lose ; and all the while I secretly enter-
tained a conviction. I wanted him to feed his many mouths, but
at the bottom of all things was my sense that if he should succeed
in doing so in this particular way I should think less well of
him, and I had an absolute terror of that. Meanwhile, so far as I
could, I backed him up, I helped him : all the more that I had
warned him immensely at first, smiled with a compassion it was
very good of him not to have found exasperating, over the com-
placency of his assumption that a man could escape from himself.
Ray Limbert, at all events, would certainly never escape ; but one
could make believe for him, make believe very hard—an under-
taking in which, at first, Mr. Bousefield was visibly a blessing.
Limbert was delightful on the business of this being at last my
chance too—my chance, so miraculously vouchsafed, to appear
with a certain luxuriance. He didn’t care how often he printed
me, for wasn’t it exactly in my direction Mr. Bousefield held that
the cat was going to jump ? This was the least he could do for
me. I might write on anything I liked—on anything at least
but Mr. Limbert’s second manner. He didn’t wish attention
strikingly called to his second manner ; it was to operate in-
sidiously ; people were to be left to believe they had discovered it
long ago. “Ralph Limbert ?—why, when did we ever live with-
out him ? ”—that’s what he wanted them to say. Besides, they
hated manners—let sleeping dogs lie. His understanding with
Mr. Bousefield—on which he had had not at all to insist ; it was
the excellent man who insisted—was that he should run one of his
beautiful
watched him as I should have watched a long race or a long chase,
irresistibly siding with him, but much occupied with the calcula-
tion of odds. I confess indeed that my heart, for the endless
stretch that he covered so fast, was often in my throat. I
saw him peg away over the sun-dappled plain, I saw him double
and wind and gain and lose ; and all the while I secretly enter-
tained a conviction. I wanted him to feed his many mouths, but
at the bottom of all things was my sense that if he should succeed
in doing so in this particular way I should think less well of
him, and I had an absolute terror of that. Meanwhile, so far as I
could, I backed him up, I helped him : all the more that I had
warned him immensely at first, smiled with a compassion it was
very good of him not to have found exasperating, over the com-
placency of his assumption that a man could escape from himself.
Ray Limbert, at all events, would certainly never escape ; but one
could make believe for him, make believe very hard—an under-
taking in which, at first, Mr. Bousefield was visibly a blessing.
Limbert was delightful on the business of this being at last my
chance too—my chance, so miraculously vouchsafed, to appear
with a certain luxuriance. He didn’t care how often he printed
me, for wasn’t it exactly in my direction Mr. Bousefield held that
the cat was going to jump ? This was the least he could do for
me. I might write on anything I liked—on anything at least
but Mr. Limbert’s second manner. He didn’t wish attention
strikingly called to his second manner ; it was to operate in-
sidiously ; people were to be left to believe they had discovered it
long ago. “Ralph Limbert ?—why, when did we ever live with-
out him ? ”—that’s what he wanted them to say. Besides, they
hated manners—let sleeping dogs lie. His understanding with
Mr. Bousefield—on which he had had not at all to insist ; it was
the excellent man who insisted—was that he should run one of his
beautiful