The Altar of the Dead

The Altar of the Dead

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Altar of the Dead, by Henry
James (#10 in our series by Henry James)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Altar of the Dead
Author: Henry James
Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #642] [This file was first
posted on September 10, 1996] [Most recently updated: September 2,
2002]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
ALTAR OF THE DEAD ***

Transcribed from the 1916 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD


CHAPTER I.

He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and
loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure.
Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one
of the former found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own
fashion the date of Mary Antrim's death. It would be more to the point
perhaps to say that this occasion kept HIM: it kept him at least
effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of him again and
again with a hand of which time had softened but never loosened the
touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously as he would
have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had of old but too little
to say to the matter: for the girl who was to have been his bride there
had been no bridal embrace. She had died of a malignant fever after the
wedding-day had been fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an
affection that promised to fill his life to the brim.
Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this life
could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost, still ordered
by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of numerous passions,

and even in all these years no sense had grown stronger with him than
the sense of being bereft. He had needed no priest and no altar to make
him for ever widowed. He had done many things in the world--he had
done almost all but one: he had never, never forgotten. He had tried to
put into his existence whatever else might take up room in it, but had
failed to make it more than a house of which the mistress was eternally
absent. She was most absent of all on the recurrent December day that
his tenacity set apart. He had no arranged observance of it, but his
nerves made it all their own. They drove him forth without mercy, and
the goal of his pilgrimage was far. She had been buried in a London
suburb, a part then of Nature's breast, but which he had seen lose one
after another every feature of freshness. It was in truth during the
moments he stood there that his eyes beheld the place least. They
looked at another image, they opened to another light. Was it a credible
future? Was it an incredible past? Whatever the answer it was an
immense escape from the actual.
It's true that if there weren't other dates than this there were other
memories; and by the time George Stransom was fifty-five such
memories had greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts in his life
than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had perhaps not had more losses
than most men, but he had counted his losses more; he hadn't seen
death more closely, but had in a manner felt it more deeply. He had
formed little by little the habit of numbering his Dead: it had come to
him early in life that there was something one had to do for them. They
were there in their simplified intensified essence, their conscious
absence and expressive patience, as personally there as if they had only
been stricken dumb. When all sense of