The Aspern Papers and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry James

Author:Henry James [James, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-01-28T21:00:00+00:00

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‘IT has not been recovered,’ I wrote early the next day, ‘and I’m moreover much troubled about our friend. He came back from Bigwood with a chill and, being allowed to have a fire in his room, lay down a while before dinner. I tried to send him to bed and indeed thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had gone to dress Mrs Wimbush came up to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him under arms and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him for his buttonhole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. Today he’s in great pain, and the advent of ces dames*—I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes—doesn’t at all console me. It does Mrs Wimbush, however, for she has consented to his remaining in bed so that he may be all right tomorrow for the listening circle. Guy Walsingham’s already on the scene, and the doctor for Paraday also arrived early. I haven’t yet seen the author of “Obsessions”, but of course I’ve had a moment by myself with the Doctor. I tried to get him to say that our invalid must go straight home—I mean tomorrow or next day; but he quite refuses to talk about the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and the regular administration of an important remedy are the points he mainly insists on. He returns this afternoon, and I’m to go back to see the patient at one o’clock, when he next takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly won’t be able to read—an exertion he was already more than unfit for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring me her first care would be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shocking busybody and doesn’t understand my alarm, but she’ll do what she can, for she’s a good-natured woman. “So are they all honourable men.”* That was precisely what made her give the thing to Lord Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it. What use he has for it God only knows. I’ve the worst forebodings, but somehow I’m strangely without passion—desperately calm. As I consider the unconscious, the well-meaning ravages of our appreciative circle I bow my head in submission to some great natural, some universal accident; I’m rendered almost indifferent in fact quite gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of immitigable fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace the precious object and let me have it through the post by the time Paraday’s well enough to play his part with it. The last evidence is that her maid did give it to his lordship’s valet. One would suppose it some thrilling number of The Family Budget. Mrs Wimbush, who’s aware of the accident, is much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were she not for the hour inevitably engrossed with Guy Walsingham.

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