Henry James (1843-1915)
Henry James, JR., was born in New York City in 1843. He was educated for the most part abroad. A good deal of his early writing was done in America, but early in the seventies he settled in England, and except for a few short trips to the States, he spent his life here. A short time before his death he became an English subject.
James was one of the most remarkable literary artists this country has produced. His earlier short stories are related with an extraordinary power and a fine command of English. They are chiefly studies in character. His later stories, shorter and far more compact, are masterly technical achievements.
The Story in It appeared in the collection entitled The Better Sort, copyright, 1903, by Methuen and Co., by whose permission it is here reprinted.
The Story in it
The weather had turned so much worse that the rest of the day was certainly lost. The wind had risen and the storm gathered force; they gave from time to time a thump at the firm windows and dashed even against those protected by the veranda their vicious splotches of rain. Beyond the lawn, beyond the cliff, the great wet brush of the sky dipped deep into the sea.
But the lawn, already vivid with the touch of May, showed a violence of watered green; the budding shrubs and trees repeated the note as they tossed their thick masses, and the cold, troubled light, filling the pretty drawing-room, marked the spring afternoon as sufficiently young. The two ladies seated there in silence could pursue without difficulty -as well as, clearly, without interruption their respective tasks; a confidence expressed, when the noise of the wind allowed it to be heard, by the sharp scratch of Mrs. Dyott`s pen at the table where she was busy with letters.
Her visitor, settled on a small sofa that, with a palm-tree, a screen, a stool, a stand, a bowl of flowers and three photographs in silver frames, had been arranged near the light wood-fire as a choice “corner” Maud Blessingbourne, her guest, turned audibly, though at intervals neither brief nor regular, the leaves of a book, covered in lemon-colored paper and not yet despoiled of a certain fresh crispness.
This effect of the volume, for the eye, would have made it, as presumably the newest French novel and evidently, from the attitude of the reader, “good” consort happily with the special tone of the room, a consistent air of selection and suppression, one of the finer aesthetic evolutions. If Mrs. Dyott was fond of ancient French furniture, and distinctly difficult about it, her inmates could be fond with whatever critical cocks of charming dark braided heads over slender sloping shoulders of modern French authors.
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