The Beast in the Jungle

The Beast in the Jungle, by
Henry James

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Title: The Beast in the Jungle
Author: Henry James
Release Date: February 6, 2005 [eBook #1093]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAST
IN THE JUNGLE***

Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE
CHAPTER I
What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their
encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by
himself quite without intention--spoken as they lingered and slowly
moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been
conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she
was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, of whom he was
one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost
in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon. There had been after
luncheon much dispersal, all in the interest of the original motive, a
view of Weatherend itself and the fine things, intrinsic features,
pictures, heirlooms, treasures of all the arts, that made the place almost
famous; and the great rooms were so numerous that guests could
wander at their will, hang back from the principal group and in cases
where they took such matters with the last seriousness give themselves
up to mysterious appreciations and measurements. There were persons
to be observed, singly or in couples, bending toward objects in
out-of-the-way corners with their hands on their knees and their heads
nodding quite as with the emphasis of an excited sense of smell. When
they were two they either mingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted
into silences of even deeper import, so that there were aspects of the
occasion that gave it for Marcher much the air of the "look round,"
previous to a sale highly advertised, that excites or quenches, as may be,
the dream of acquisition. The dream of acquisition at Weatherend
would have had to be wild indeed, and John Marcher found himself,
among such suggestions, disconcerted almost equally by the presence
of those who knew too much and by that of those who knew nothing.
The great rooms caused so much poetry and history to press upon him
that he needed some straying apart to feel in a proper relation with them,
though this impulse was not, as happened, like the gloating of some of
his companions, to be compared to the movements of a dog sniffing a
cupboard. It had an issue promptly enough in a direction that was not to
have been calculated.

It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer
meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a
remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had
begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly. It affected him as the
sequel of something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it,
and for the time quite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didn't know
what it continued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as
he was also somehow aware--yet without a direct sign from her--that
the young woman herself hadn't lost the thread. She hadn't lost it, but
she wouldn't give it back to him, he saw, without some putting forth of
his hand for it; and he not only saw that, but saw several things more,
things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment some
accident of grouping brought them face to face he was still merely
fumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the past would
have had no importance. If it had had no importance he scarcely knew
why his actual impression of her should so seem to have so much; the
answer to which, however, was that in such a life as they all appeared
to be leading for the moment one could but take things as they came.
He was satisfied, without in the least being able to say why, that this
young lady might roughly have ranked in the house as a poor relation;
satisfied also that she was not there on a brief visit, but was more or
less a part of the establishment--almost a working, a remunerated part.
Didn't she enjoy at periods a protection that she paid for by helping,
among other services, to show