The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (6.1895)

47

By Henry James
“ Can’t you guess ? ”
I wondered. “ No more of his fiction ? ”
“Not a line. That’s something else the magazine can’t stand.
Now that his novel has run its course, Mr. Bousefield is distinctly
disappointed.”
I fairly bounded in my place. “ Then it may do ? ”
Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. “ Why so, if he finds it
too dull ? ”
“Dull ? Ralph Limbert ? He’s as sharp as a needle ! ”
“It comes to the same thing. Mr. Bousefield had counted
on something that would have a wider acceptance.” I collapsed
again ; my flicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort ;
and after a moment’s silence I asked my neighbour if she had
herself read the work our friend had just put forth. “ No,” she
replied, “I gave him my word at the beginning, at his urgent
request, that I wouldn’t.”
“ Not even as a book ? ”
“ He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying
a low experiment. Of course I knew what he meant, and I
entreated him to let me, just for curiosity, take a peep. But he
was firm, he declared he couldn’t bear the thought that a woman
like me should see him in the depths.”
“He’s only, thank God, in the depths of distress,” I replied.
‘‘His experiment’s nothing worse than a failure.”
“ Then Bousefield is right—his circulation won’t budge ? ”
“It won’t move one, as they say in Fleet Street. The book
has extraordinary beauty.”
“Poor duck, and he tried so hard !” Jane Highmore sighed
with real indulgence. “What will, then, become of them ?”
I was silent an instant. “ You must take your mother.”
She was silent too. “ I must speak of it to Cecil ! ” she then
exclaimed.