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@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@ *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 209 *** + + + + The Turn of the Screw by Henry James @@ -1423,7 +1427,7 @@ told me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the -morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly read into the fact before us +morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly read into the facts before us almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man—the dead one would keep awhile!—and of the @@ -3498,7 +3502,7 @@ to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.” Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really _talk_ of them?” -“I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard +I could meet this with a confidence! “They say things that, if we heard them, would simply appall us.” “And if she _is_ there—” diff --git a/209-h/209-h.htm b/209-h/209-h.htm index a52b6dc..ecfc25f 100644 --- a/209-h/209-h.htm +++ b/209-h/209-h.htm @@ -1,12 +1,10 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" -"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> <head> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<meta charset="utf-8"> <title>The Turn of the Screw | Project Gutenberg</title> -<style type="text/css"> +<style> body { margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%; @@ -52,11 +50,11 @@ a:hover {color:red} <h2 class="no-break">by Henry James</h2> -<hr /> +<hr > <h2>Contents</h2> -<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> +<table style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> <tr> <td> <a href="#intro01">THE TURN OF THE SCREW</a></td> @@ -162,7 +160,7 @@ a:hover {color:red} <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="intro01"></a>THE TURN OF THE SCREW</h2> +<h2><a id="intro01"></a>THE TURN OF THE SCREW</h2> <p> The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the @@ -566,7 +564,7 @@ beauty of his author’s hand. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I</h2> +<h2><a id="chap01"></a>I</h2> <p> I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little @@ -749,7 +747,7 @@ helm! <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II</h2> +<h2><a id="chap02"></a>II</h2> <p> This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to meet, as @@ -1029,7 +1027,7 @@ must get to my work.” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III</h2> +<h2><a id="chap03"></a>III</h2> <p> Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just @@ -1251,7 +1249,7 @@ still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV</h2> +<h2><a id="chap04"></a>IV</h2> <p> It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was @@ -1429,7 +1427,7 @@ space to mention. I wondered why <i>she</i> should be scared. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V</h2> +<h2><a id="chap05"></a>V</h2> <p> Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed again @@ -1825,7 +1823,7 @@ wonder of it. “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI</h2> +<h2><a id="chap06"></a>VI</h2> <p> It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together in @@ -2061,7 +2059,7 @@ myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly -read into the fact before us almost all the meaning they were to receive from +read into the facts before us almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man—the dead one would keep awhile!—and of the months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added @@ -2180,7 +2178,7 @@ ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes—I faced what I had to face. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap07"></a>VII</h2> <p> I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no @@ -2531,7 +2529,7 @@ dreamed—they’re lost!” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap08"></a>VIII</h2> <p> What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter I had @@ -2802,7 +2800,7 @@ wait,” I wound up. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX</h2> +<h2><a id="chap09"></a>IX</h2> <p> I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from my @@ -2976,7 +2974,7 @@ lost. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X</h2> +<h2><a id="chap10"></a>X</h2> <p> I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently of @@ -3147,7 +3145,7 @@ Miles himself. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI</h2> +<h2><a id="chap11"></a>XI</h2> <p> It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with which @@ -3319,7 +3317,7 @@ able to draw upon. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap12"></a>XII</h2> <p> The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I repeat, @@ -3515,7 +3513,7 @@ She was really frightened. “Yes, miss?” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap13"></a>XIII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap13"></a>XIII</h2> <p> It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as @@ -3687,7 +3685,7 @@ a rush. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap14"></a>XIV</h2> +<h2><a id="chap14"></a>XIV</h2> <p> Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side and @@ -3951,7 +3949,7 @@ off alone into church. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap15"></a>XV</h2> +<h2><a id="chap15"></a>XV</h2> <p> The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him. It @@ -4058,7 +4056,7 @@ must stay. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap16"></a>XVI</h2> +<h2><a id="chap16"></a>XVI</h2> <p> I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked by a @@ -4301,7 +4299,7 @@ eyes. “Ah, miss, <i>you</i> write!” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap17"></a>XVII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap17"></a>XVII</h2> <p> I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed @@ -4588,7 +4586,7 @@ candle’s out!” I then cried. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap18"></a>XVIII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap18"></a>XVIII</h2> <p> The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly: @@ -4767,7 +4765,7 @@ meanwhile, yourself, upstairs.” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap19"></a>XIX</h2> +<h2><a id="chap19"></a>XIX</h2> <p> We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay rightly @@ -4808,7 +4806,7 @@ Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really </p> <p> -“I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard +I could meet this with a confidence! “They say things that, if we heard them, would simply appall us.” </p> @@ -4970,7 +4968,7 @@ brought the thing out handsomely. “Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap20"></a>XX</h2> +<h2><a id="chap20"></a>XX</h2> <p> Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much as I @@ -5142,7 +5140,7 @@ stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap21"></a>XXI</h2> +<h2><a id="chap21"></a>XXI</h2> <p> Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. Grose, @@ -5563,7 +5561,7 @@ went. <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap22"></a>XXII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap22"></a>XXII</h2> <p> Yet it was when she had got off—and I missed her on the spot—that @@ -5712,7 +5710,7 @@ the waiter had left us. “Well—so we’re alone!” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap23"></a>XXIII</h2> +<h2><a id="chap23"></a>XXIII</h2> <p> “Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not @@ -5918,7 +5916,7 @@ the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter.” <div class="chapter"> -<h2><a name="chap24"></a>XXIV</h2> +<h2><a id="chap24"></a>XXIV</h2> <p> My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I @@ -6248,7 +6246,3 @@ and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 209 ***</div> </body> </html> - - - - diff --git a/old/2016-09-18-209-0.txt b/old/2016-09-18-209-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3441b90..0000000 --- a/old/2016-09-18-209-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4937 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Turn of the Screw - -Author: Henry James - -Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #209] -Release Date: February, 1995 -Last Updated: September 18, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - - - - -Produced by Judith Boss - - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - -by Henry James - - -[The text is take from the first American appearance of this book.] - - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but -except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve -in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no -comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case -he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I -may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had -gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a -little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the -terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to -sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded -in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation -that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the evening--a -reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. -Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was -not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to -produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two -nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out -what was in his mind. - -“I quite agree--in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was--that -its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a -particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming -kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect -another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children--?” - -“We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two turns! Also -that we want to hear about them.” - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to -present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in -his pockets. “Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too -horrible.” This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the -thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his -triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: “It’s -beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.” - -“For sheer terror?” I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss -how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little -wincing grimace. “For dreadful--dreadfulness!” - -“Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, -he saw what he spoke of. “For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain.” - -“Well then,” I said, “just sit right down and begin.” - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an -instant. Then as he faced us again: “I can’t begin. I shall have to send -to town.” There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after -which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. “The story’s written. It’s -in a locked drawer--it has not been out for years. I could write to my -man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it.” - It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound this--appeared -almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness -of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long -silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples -that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree -with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in -question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. “Oh, thank -God, no!” - -“And is the record yours? You took the thing down?” - -“Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE”--he tapped his heart. -“I’ve never lost it.” - -“Then your manuscript--?” - -“Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung fire -again. “A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the -pages in question before she died.” They were all listening now, and -of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the -inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also -without irritation. “She was a most charming person, but she was ten -years older than I. She was my sister’s governess,” he quietly said. -“She was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; -she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this -episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on -my coming down the second summer. I was much there that year--it was a -beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in -the garden--talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh -yes; don’t grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think -she liked me, too. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had -never told anyone. It wasn’t simply that she said so, but that I knew -she hadn’t. I was sure; I could see. You’ll easily judge why when you -hear.” - -“Because the thing had been such a scare?” - -He continued to fix me. “You’ll easily judge,” he repeated: “YOU will.” - -I fixed him, too. “I see. She was in love.” - -He laughed for the first time. “You ARE acute. Yes, she was in love. -That is, she had been. That came out--she couldn’t tell her story -without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of -us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the corner of the -lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. -It wasn’t a scene for a shudder; but oh--!” He quitted the fire and -dropped back into his chair. - -“You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired. - -“Probably not till the second post.” - -“Well then; after dinner--” - -“You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. “Isn’t anybody -going?” It was almost the tone of hope. - -“Everybody will stay!” - -“_I_ will”--and “_I_ will!” cried the ladies whose departure had been -fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more -light. “Who was it she was in love with?” - -“The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply. - -“Oh, I can’t wait for the story!” - -“The story WON’T tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal, vulgar way.” - -“More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.” - -“Won’t YOU tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. “Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. -Good night.” And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly -bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on -the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t know who she -was in love with, I know who HE was.” - -“She was ten years older,” said her husband. - -“Raison de plus--at that age! But it’s rather nice, his long reticence.” - -“Forty years!” Griffin put in. - -“With this outbreak at last.” - -“The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday -night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost -all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete -and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook and -“candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first -post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps -just on account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite -let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in -fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes -were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and -indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again -before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the -previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read -us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. -Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, -from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall -presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death--when it was in -sight--committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began -to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The -departing ladies who had said they would stay didn’t, of course, thank -heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a -rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with -which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final -auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to -a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up -the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in -possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several -daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking -service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in -trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had already -placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person -proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley -Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing--this prospective patron -proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as -had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, -anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; -it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, -offhand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and -splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she -afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of -favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived him -as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--saw him all in a glow of high -fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with -women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the -spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his -country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her -immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to -a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military -brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the -strangest of chances for a man in his position--a lone man without the -right sort of experience or a grain of patience--very heavily on his -hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a -series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done -all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the -proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, -from the first, with the best people he could find to look after them, -parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down -himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward -thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his -own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, -which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their little -establishment--but below stairs only--an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, -whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been maid -to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting for the time -as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without children of her -own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were plenty of people -to help, but of course the young lady who should go down as governess -would be in supreme authority. She would also have, in holidays, to look -after the small boy, who had been for a term at school--young as he was -to be sent, but what else could be done?--and who, as the holidays were -about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had -been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the -misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifully--she was a -most respectable person--till her death, the great awkwardness of which -had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. -Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as -she could for Flora; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a -dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise -thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. -“And what did the former governess die of?--of so much respectability?” - -Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t -anticipate.” - -“Excuse me--I thought that was just what you ARE doing.” - -“In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have wished to learn -if the office brought with it--” - -“Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. “She did wish -to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. -Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was -young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little -company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated--took a couple of -days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded -her modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she -engaged.” And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of -the company, moved me to throw in-- - -“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the -splendid young man. She succumbed to it.” - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave -a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. -“She saw him only twice.” - -“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.” - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It WAS -the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who hadn’t succumbed. -He told her frankly all his difficulty--that for several applicants the -conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It -sounded dull--it sounded strange; and all the more so because of his -main condition.” - -“Which was--?” - -“That she should never trouble him--but never, never: neither appeal -nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, -receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let -him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, -for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for -the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.” - -“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked. - -“She never saw him again.” - -“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was -the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the -next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened -the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole -thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the -same lady put another question. “What is your title?” - -“I haven’t one.” - -“Oh, _I_ have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to -read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the -beauty of his author’s hand. - - - - -I - - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a -little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, -to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days--found -myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this -state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that -carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle -from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and -I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in -waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country -to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my -fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered -a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had -sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy -that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant -impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains -and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright -flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered -treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The -scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from my own scant -home, and there immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in -her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had -been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley -Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made -me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, suggested that what I -was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly -through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my -pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the -spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to -do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I -afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept -little that night--I was too much excited; and this astonished me, too, -I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality with -which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in -the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured -draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see -myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the extraordinary charm of -my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as -well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in -a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather -brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have -made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad -to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so glad--stout, -simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--as to be positively on her guard -against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she -should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion, -might of course have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection -with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the -vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to -do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times -rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; -to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such -portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, -while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the -possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, -but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I -believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been -another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, -before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked -enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, -I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come -back to me. To watch, teach, “form” little Flora would too evidently -be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us -downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter -of course at night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that -end, in my room. What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and -she had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect -of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural -timidity. In spite of this timidity--which the child herself, in the -oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave about, -allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the -deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be -discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us--I feel quite sure -she would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. -Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration -and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, -in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread -and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s presence could -pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and -roundabout allusions. - -“And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?” - -One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. If you think -well of this one!”--and she stood there with a plate in her hand, -beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with -placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - -“Yes; if I do--?” - -“You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!” - -“Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I’m -afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m rather -easily carried away. I was carried away in London!” - -I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In Harley -Street?” - -“In Harley Street.” - -“Well, miss, you’re not the first--and you won’t be the last.” - -“Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the only one. My -other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?” - -“Not tomorrow--Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under -care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.” - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an -idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took -her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, thank -heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was -glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly -called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the -most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the -scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new -circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had -not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, -a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, -certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by -the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of -knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, -to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might -show me the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and -secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and -with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. -Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little tour, with -her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers and dull -corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even on the -summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her -morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she -asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I left -it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now -appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her -hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and -pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited -by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the -young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it -just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a -big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of -a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had -the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a -great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - - - - -II - - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to -meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for -an incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply -disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have -expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. -The postbag, that evening--it came late--contained a letter for me, -which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be composed but -of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself, with a seal -still unbroken. “This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, and the -headmaster’s an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him; but mind -you don’t report. Not a word. I’m off!” I broke the seal with a great -effort--so great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the -unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just before -going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it gave me -a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next day, I -was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me that I -determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. - -“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.” - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a -quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they all--?” - -“Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back at -all.” - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take him?” - -“They absolutely decline.” - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them -fill with good tears. “What has he done?” - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter--which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put her -hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not for me, -miss.” - -My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated -as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, -faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my -pocket. “Is he really BAD?” - -The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?” - -“They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it -should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.” - Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what -this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some -coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went -on: “That he’s an injury to the others.” - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed -up. “Master Miles! HIM an injury?” - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. -I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, -sarcastically. “To his poor little innocent mates!” - -“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel things! Why, -he’s scarce ten years old.” - -“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.” - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss, first. -THEN believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was -the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen -almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had -produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. “You might as -well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added the next -moment--“LOOK at her!” - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established -in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of -nice “round o’s,” now presented herself to view at the open door. -She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from -disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish -light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had -conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should -follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of -Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her -with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. - -Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to -approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy -she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the -staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, -holding her there with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me at -noon as a declaration that YOU’VE never known him to be bad.” - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very -honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him--I don’t pretend -THAT!” - -I was upset again. “Then you HAVE known him--?” - -“Yes indeed, miss, thank God!” - -On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never is--?” - -“Is no boy for ME!” - -I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?” Then, -keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought out. “But not -to the degree to contaminate--” - -“To contaminate?”--my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. “To -corrupt.” - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. -“Are you afraid he’ll corrupt YOU?” She put the question with such a -fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match -her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in -another place. “What was the lady who was here before?” - -“The last governess? She was also young and pretty--almost as young and -almost as pretty, miss, even as you.” - -“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect -throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!” - -“Oh, he DID,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he liked everyone!” - She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. “I mean -that’s HIS way--the master’s.” - -I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?” - -She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of HIM.” - -“Of the master?” - -“Of who else?” - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I -merely asked what I wanted to know. “Did SHE see anything in the boy--?” - -“That wasn’t right? She never told me.” - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful--particular?” - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some -things--yes.” - -“But not about all?” - -Again she considered. “Well, miss--she’s gone. I won’t tell tales.” - -“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I thought -it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: “Did she -die here?” - -“No--she went off.” - -I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that struck -me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked straight out of -the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what -young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill, -you mean, and went home?” - -“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, -at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, -to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We -had then a young woman--a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good -girl and clever; and SHE took the children altogether for the interval. -But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I was -expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.” - -I turned this over. “But of what?” - -“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to my -work.” - - - - -III - - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. -We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately than ever -on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so monstrous was I -then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to -me should be under an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and -I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of the -inn at which the coach had put him down, that I had seen him, on the -instant, without and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same -positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, -seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had -put her finger on it: everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for -him was swept away by his presence. What I then and there took him to -my heart for was something divine that I have never found to the same -degree in any child--his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in -the world but love. It would have been impossible to carry a bad name -with a greater sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to -Bly with him I remained merely bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not -outraged--by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in -a drawer. As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I -declared to her that it was grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. “You mean the cruel charge--?” - -“It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!” - -She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. “I assure -you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?” she immediately -added. - -“In answer to the letter?” I had made up my mind. “Nothing.” - -“And to his uncle?” - -I was incisive. “Nothing.” - -“And to the boy himself?” - -I was wonderful. “Nothing.” - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. “Then I’ll stand by -you. We’ll see it out.” - -“We’ll see it out!” I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a -vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. “Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom--” - -“To kiss me? No!” I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had -embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall -the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a -little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I -accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was -under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the -far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a -great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, -my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with -a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning. -I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the -end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, -indeed, that charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; -but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my -own. I learned something--at first, certainly--that had not been one -of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and -even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, in -a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music -of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was -consideration--and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap--not -designed, but deep--to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my -vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture -it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so little -trouble--they were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to -speculate--but even this with a dim disconnectedness--as to how the -rough future (for all futures are rough!) would handle them and might -bruise them. They had the bloom of health and happiness; and yet, as -if I had been in charge of a pair of little grandees, of princes of the -blood, for whom everything, to be right, would have to be enclosed and -protected, the only form that, in my fancy, the afteryears could take -for them was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden -and the park. It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke -into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness--that hush in -which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the -spring of a beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final -retirement, a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this -hour was the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all -when, as the light faded--or rather, I should say, the day lingered and -the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the -old trees--I could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with -a sense of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity -of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself -tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my -discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving -pleasure--if he ever thought of it!--to the person to whose pressure -I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and -directly asked of me, and that I COULD, after all, do it proved even a -greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, -a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would -more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front -to the remarkable things that presently gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children -were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts -that, as I don’t in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me -in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story -suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a -path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask more -than that--I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure -he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome -face. That was exactly present to me--by which I mean the face -was--when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June -day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming -into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot--and with a shock -much greater than any vision had allowed for--was the sense that my -imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!--but high -up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that -first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of -a pair--square, incongruous, crenelated structures--that were -distinguished, for some reason, though I could see little difference, -as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were -probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by -not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in -their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a -respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could -all profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, -by the grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at such an -elevation that the figure I had so often invoked seemed most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two -distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first -and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of -the mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person -I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of -vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that I can -hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object -of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me -was--a few more seconds assured me--as little anyone else I knew as -it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in -Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the -strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact of -its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement -here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, the whole -feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took in--what I did -take in--all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I can -hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening -dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly -hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no other change -in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger -sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, -and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a -picture in a frame. That’s how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, -of each person that he might have been and that he was not. We were -confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask myself -with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect of my inability -to say, a wonder that in a few instants more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard -to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, -this matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught at -a dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the better, -that I could see, in there having been in the house--and for how long, -above all?--a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I -just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there -should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this -visitant, at all events--and there was a touch of the strange freedom, -as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat--seemed -to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny -through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too -far apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at -shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have -been the right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of the -angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and -with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I -form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the -spectacle, he slowly changed his place--passed, looking at me hard -all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the -sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, -and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from -one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, but -less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned -away; that was all I knew. - - - - -IV - - -It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly--a mystery -of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected -confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in -a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my -collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had -quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and -driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three -miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this -mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular -part of it, in fact--singular as the rest had been--was the part I -became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes -back to me in the general train--the impression, as I received it on my -return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and -with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of -my friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to -me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere -relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could -bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected -in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow -measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself -hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to -me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I -may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot, -accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for -a reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward -resolution--offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea -of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as -soon as possible to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer -affair enough. There were hours, from day to day--or at least there were -moments, snatched even from clear duties--when I had to shut myself up -to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could -bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the truth -I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I could -arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been so -inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It -took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry -and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had -suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of -three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not -been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any “game.” - Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was -but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That -was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say -to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some -unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in -unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then -stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that -was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that -we should surely see no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that -what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming -work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and -through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw -myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a -constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original -fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray -prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no -long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented itself as -daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of -the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course, that we studied -only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort -of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that except by -saying that instead of growing used to them--and it’s a marvel for a -governess: I call the sisterhood to witness!--I made constant fresh -discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these -discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the -boy’s conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have noted, -to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the -truth to say that--without a word--he himself had cleared it up. He had -made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the -real rose flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the -little horrid, unclean school world, and he had paid a price for it. I -reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, such superiorities -of quality, always, on the part of the majority--which could include -even stupid, sordid headmasters--turn infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it -never made Miles a muff) that kept them--how shall I express it?--almost -impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs -of the anecdote, who had--morally, at any rate--nothing to whack! I -remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no -history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in -this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet -extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have -seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second -suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been -chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I should -have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the trace. I found -nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his -school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was -quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under the -spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly -knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any -pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of -disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But with -my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the question -I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their -loveliness. - -There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force and for so -many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence -of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, -should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late -service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, -through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter -of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, -I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that -had received them--with a publicity perhaps not edifying--while I sat -with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that -cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the “grown-up” dining room. -The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. -The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it -enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on a chair -near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but to become -aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking straight -in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; -it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had -already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say -greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that -represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met -him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same--he was the same, -and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the -window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going down -to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, -yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me how -intense the former had been. He remained but a few seconds--long enough -to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had been -looking at him for years and had known him always. Something, however, -happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, -through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but -it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it -fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the -added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He -had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood -there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because -I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the -door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the -drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned -a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now--my -visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief -of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time to reappear. I -call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak to the purpose today -of the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left me: -they couldn’t have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. The -terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I -could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were -shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt -that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not there: not -there if I didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, -instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was -confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had -stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had -looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what -his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, -came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of -what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she -pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that -I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had -blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, -and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I -should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited -I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take space to -mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared. - - - - -V - - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she -loomed again into view. “What in the name of goodness is the matter--?” - She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have made a -wonderful face. “Do I show it?” - -“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.” - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My -need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a rustle, -from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what -I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard -a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in -the shy heave of her surprise. “You came for me for church, of course, -but I can’t go.” - -“Has anything happened?” - -“Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?” - -“Through this window? Dreadful!” - -“Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened.” Mrs. Grose’s eyes expressed -plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her -place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, -it was quite settled that she MUST share! “Just what you saw from the -dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What _I_ saw--just -before--was much worse.” - -Her hand tightened. “What was it?” - -“An extraordinary man. Looking in.” - -“What extraordinary man?” - -“I haven’t the least idea.” - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. “Then where is he gone?” - -“I know still less.” - -“Have you seen him before?” - -“Yes--once. On the old tower.” - -She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a stranger?” - -“Oh, very much!” - -“Yet you didn’t tell me?” - -“No--for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed--” - -Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I haven’t -guessed!” she said very simply. “How can I if YOU don’t imagine?” - -“I don’t in the very least.” - -“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?” - -“And on this spot just now.” - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?” - -“Only standing there and looking down at me.” - -She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?” - -I found I had no need to think. “No.” She gazed in deeper wonder. “No.” - -“Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?” - -“Nobody--nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.” - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It -only went indeed a little way. “But if he isn’t a gentleman--” - -“What IS he? He’s a horror.” - -“A horror?” - -“He’s--God help me if I know WHAT he is!” - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier -distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt -inconsequence. “It’s time we should be at church.” - -“Oh, I’m not fit for church!” - -“Won’t it do you good?” - -“It won’t do THEM--! I nodded at the house. - -“The children?” - -“I can’t leave them now.” - -“You’re afraid--?” - -I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of HIM.” - -Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out -in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that -was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought -instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be -connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. “When was -it--on the tower?” - -“About the middle of the month. At this same hour.” - -“Almost at dark,” said Mrs. Grose. - -“Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.” - -“Then how did he get in?” - -“And how did he get out?” I laughed. “I had no opportunity to ask him! -This evening, you see,” I pursued, “he has not been able to get in.” - -“He only peeps?” - -“I hope it will be confined to that!” She had now let go my hand; she -turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: “Go to -church. Goodbye. I must watch.” - -Slowly she faced me again. “Do you fear for them?” - -We met in another long look. “Don’t YOU?” Instead of answering she came -nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. -“You see how he could see,” I meanwhile went on. - -She didn’t move. “How long was he here?” - -“Till I came out. I came to meet him.” - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. -“_I_ couldn’t have come out.” - -“Neither could I!” I laughed again. “But I did come. I have my duty.” - -“So have I mine,” she replied; after which she added: “What is he like?” - -“I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.” - -“Nobody?” she echoed. - -“He has no hat.” Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with -a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to -stroke. “He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long -in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers -that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they -look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes -are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly that they’re rather -small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and -except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives me a -sort of sense of looking like an actor.” - -“An actor!” It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. -Grose at that moment. - -“I’ve never seen one, but so I suppose them. He’s tall, active, erect,” - I continued, “but never--no, never!--a gentleman.” - -My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started -and her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: “a gentleman HE?” - -“You know him then?” - -She visibly tried to hold herself. “But he IS handsome?” - -I saw the way to help her. “Remarkably!” - -“And dressed--?” - -“In somebody’s clothes.” “They’re smart, but they’re not his own.” - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: “They’re the master’s!” - -I caught it up. “You DO know him?” - -She faltered but a second. “Quint!” she cried. - -“Quint?” - -“Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!” - -“When the master was?” - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. “He never wore -his hat, but he did wear--well, there were waistcoats missed. They were -both here--last year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone.” - -I followed, but halting a little. “Alone?” - -“Alone with US.” Then, as from a deeper depth, “In charge,” she added. - -“And what became of him?” - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went, too,” - she brought out at last. - -“Went where?” - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He -died.” - -“Died?” I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” - - - - -VI - - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together -in presence of what we had now to live with as we could--my dreadful -liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my -companion’s knowledge, henceforth--a knowledge half consternation and -half compassion--of that liability. There had been, this evening, after -the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for -either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of tears -and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual -challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating -together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have -everything out. The result of our having everything out was simply to -reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had -seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but -the governess was in the governess’s plight; yet she accepted without -directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by -showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression -of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very -breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, -in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I -knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable -of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly -sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so -compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--quite as queer as -the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see -how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good -fortune, COULD steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that led -me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could -take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. -Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me before -we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every feature of -what I had seen. - -“He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?” - -“He was looking for little Miles.” A portentous clearness now possessed -me. “THAT’S whom he was looking for.” - -“But how do you know?” - -“I know, I know, I know!” My exaltation grew. “And YOU know, my dear!” - -She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling -as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: “What if HE should see -him?” - -“Little Miles? That’s what he wants!” - -She looked immensely scared again. “The child?” - -“Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM.” That he might was -an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; which, -moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically -proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I -had already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself -bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by -inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim -and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, in especial, -I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of the last -things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -“It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned--” - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. “His having been here and -the time they were with him?” - -“The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, -in any way.” - -“Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or knew.” - -“The circumstances of his death?” I thought with some intensity. -“Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know.” - -“Ah, don’t try him!” broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. “Don’t be afraid.” I continued -to think. “It IS rather odd.” - -“That he has never spoken of him?” - -“Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were ‘great -friends’?” - -“Oh, it wasn’t HIM!” Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. “It was Quint’s -own fancy. To play with him, I mean--to spoil him.” She paused a moment; -then she added: “Quint was much too free.” - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!--a -sudden sickness of disgust. “Too free with MY boy?” - -“Too free with everyone!” - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by -the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of -the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our -small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the -lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, -had ever, within anyone’s memory attached to the kind old place. It had -neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only -desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the very -last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had her -hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. “I have it from you then--for -it’s of great importance--that he was definitely and admittedly bad?” - -“Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn’t.” - -“And you never told him?” - -“Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. He was terribly -short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to HIM--” - -“He wouldn’t be bothered with more?” This squared well enough with my -impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very -particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept. All the same, I -pressed my interlocutress. “I promise you _I_ would have told!” - -She felt my discrimination. “I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was -afraid.” - -“Afraid of what?” - -“Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep.” - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. “You weren’t afraid -of anything else? Not of his effect--?” - -“His effect?” she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I -faltered. - -“On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.” - -“No, they were not in mine!” she roundly and distressfully returned. -“The master believed in him and placed him here because he was supposed -not to be well and the country air so good for him. So he had everything -to say. Yes”--she let me have it--“even about THEM.” - -“Them--that creature?” I had to smother a kind of howl. “And you could -bear it!” - -“No. I couldn’t--and I can’t now!” And the poor woman burst into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; -yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together -to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, in -the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined whether I -slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me. -I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept -back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure -of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me -indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow’s sun was high I had -restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the meaning they were -to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me -above all was just the sinister figure of the living man--the dead one -would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously passed at Bly, -which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time -had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint -was found, by a laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road -from the village: a catastrophe explained--superficially at least--by a -visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced--and -as, on the final evidence, HAD been--by a fatal slip, in the dark and -after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong -path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn -mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much--practically, in -the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but -there had been matters in his life--strange passages and perils, secret -disorders, vices more than suspected--that would have accounted for a -good deal more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible -picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to -find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded -of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and -difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in -the right quarter!--that I could succeed where many another girl might -have failed. It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud -myself as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. -I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the -most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had -suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one’s own -committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in -our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It was -in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an -image richly material. I was a screen--I was to stand before them. The -more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled -suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too -long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now -see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn’t last as -suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from -the moment I really took hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the -grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, -on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a -book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young -man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His -sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with -her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the -day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of -how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing in both -children--to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany -me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet -never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them -amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed -actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked -in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever to draw -upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some -remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that -was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly -distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; -I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and -that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, -as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other -side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this -knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the -strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly -merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work--for I was something -or other that could sit--on the old stone bench which overlooked the -pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet -without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. -The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, but -it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There -was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction -I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I should -see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising -my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I -was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move -them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my -mind what to do. There was an alien object in view--a figure whose right -of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting -over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more -natural, for instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the -place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman’s boy, from the -village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude -as I was conscious--still even without looking--of its having upon the -character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than -that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were -not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as -soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right -second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I -transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was -about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the -wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I -held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden -innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, -but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something -more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had -previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also -within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. -This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the -confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal -notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to -have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea -of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make -the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was -very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. My -apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that after some -seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes--I -faced what I had to face. - - - - -VII - - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give -no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still -hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: “They KNOW--it’s -too monstrous: they know, they know!” - -“And what on earth--?” I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -“Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!” Then, as -she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with -full coherency even to myself. “Two hours ago, in the garden”--I could -scarce articulate--“Flora SAW!” - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She -has told you?” she panted. - -“Not a word--that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of -eight, THAT child!” Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of -it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. “Then how do you -know?” - -“I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware.” - -“Do you mean aware of HIM?” - -“No--of HER.” I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious -things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion’s face. -“Another person--this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror -and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also, -and such a face!--on the other side of the lake. I was there with the -child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.” - -“Came how--from where?” - -“From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but not -so near.” - -“And without coming nearer?” - -“Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as -you!” - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone -you’ve never seen?” - -“Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have.” Then, to show how I -had thought it all out: “My predecessor--the one who died.” - -“Miss Jessel?” - -“Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?” I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. “How can you be sure?” - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. -“Then ask Flora--SHE’S sure!” But I had no sooner spoken than I caught -myself up. “No, for God’s sake, DON’T! She’ll say she isn’t--she’ll -lie!” - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. “Ah, how CAN -you?” - -“Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.” - -“It’s only then to spare you.” - -“No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see -in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I -DON’T see--what I DON’T fear!” - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. “You mean you’re afraid of seeing -her again?” - -“Oh, no; that’s nothing--now!” Then I explained. “It’s of NOT seeing -her.” - -But my companion only looked wan. “I don’t understand you.” - -“Why, it’s that the child may keep it up--and that the child assuredly -WILL--without my knowing it.” - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force -of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to -give way to. “Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! And after all, if she -doesn’t mind it--!” She even tried a grim joke. “Perhaps she likes it!” - -“Likes SUCH things--a scrap of an infant!” - -“Isn’t it just a proof of her blessed innocence?” my friend bravely -inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. “Oh, we must clutch at -THAT--we must cling to it! If it isn’t a proof of what you say, it’s a -proof of--God knows what! For the woman’s a horror of horrors.” - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last -raising them, “Tell me how you know,” she said. - -“Then you admit it’s what she was?” I cried. - -“Tell me how you know,” my friend simply repeated. - -“Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.” - -“At you, do you mean--so wickedly?” - -“Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She -only fixed the child.” - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. “Fixed her?” - -“Ah, with such awful eyes!” - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. “Do you -mean of dislike?” - -“God help us, no. Of something much worse.” - -“Worse than dislike?”--this left her indeed at a loss. - -“With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention.” - -I made her turn pale. “Intention?” - -“To get hold of her.” Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering on mine--gave -a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking -out I completed my statement. “THAT’S what Flora knows.” - -After a little she turned round. “The person was in black, you say?” - -“In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with extraordinary -beauty.” I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, -brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed -this. “Oh, handsome--very, very,” I insisted; “wonderfully handsome. But -infamous.” - -She slowly came back to me. “Miss Jessel--WAS infamous.” She once more -took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me -against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. “They -were both infamous,” she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely -a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. “I appreciate,” I said, -“the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has -certainly come to give me the whole thing.” She appeared to assent to -this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: “I must have it -now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them.” - -“There was everything.” - -“In spite of the difference--?” - -“Oh, of their rank, their condition”--she brought it woefully out. “SHE -was a lady.” - -I turned it over; I again saw. “Yes--she was a lady.” - -“And he so dreadfully below,” said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such company, on the -place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an -acceptance of my companion’s own measure of my predecessor’s abasement. -There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for -my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer’s late clever, -good-looking “own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. “The -fellow was a hound.” - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense -of shades. “I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he wished.” - -“With HER?” - -“With them all.” - -It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. -I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her -as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with -decision: “It must have been also what SHE wished!” - -Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the -same time: “Poor woman--she paid for it!” - -“Then you do know what she died of?” I asked. - -“No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn’t; -and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!” - -“Yet you had, then, your idea--” - -“Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn’t have -stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterward I imagined--and I -still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.” - -“Not so dreadful as what _I_ do,” I replied; on which I must have shown -her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable defeat. It -brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch of -her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other -time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, -and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!” I sobbed in despair; “I -don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed--they’re lost!” - - - - -VIII - - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter -I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution -to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a -common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were -to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else--difficult indeed as -that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was -least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had -another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its -being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her -perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if -I had “made it up,” I came to be able to give, of each of the persons -appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their -special marks--a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly -recognized and named them. She wished of course--small blame to her!--to -sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own -interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way -to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that -with recurrence--for recurrence we took for granted--I should get -used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure had -suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion -that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours -of the day had brought a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my -pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of -their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively -cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other -words, plunged afresh into Flora’s special society and there become -aware--it was almost a luxury!--that she could put her little conscious -hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet -speculation and then had accused me to my face of having “cried.” I had -supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally--for -the time, at all events--rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that -they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of -the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature -cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I -naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my -agitation. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat -to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in the small hours--that -with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their -fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but -their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to -settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of -subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my -show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate -the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as -a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a -matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had -to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, -so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I -actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as -she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, -without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! -It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little -activity by which she sought to divert my attention--the perceptible -increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the -gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this -review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort -that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to -asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was so much to the -good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been -prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind--I scarce know what -to call it--to invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring -from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by -bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong -side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; -and I remember how on this occasion--for the sleeping house and the -concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help--I felt -the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. “I don’t -believe anything so horrible,” I recollect saying; “no, let us put it -definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I did, you know, there’s -a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit -more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get out of you. What was it you had in -mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter from -his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn’t pretend for -him that he had not literally EVER been ‘bad’? He has NOT literally -‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely -watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, -lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for -him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was -your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him -did you refer?” - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, -at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got -my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the -purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for -a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually -together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had -ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of -so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank -overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, -directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I -pressed, was that SHE liked to see young gentlemen not forget their -station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. “You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?” - -“As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad.” - -“And for another thing?” I waited. “He repeated your words to Quint?” - -“No, not that. It’s just what he WOULDN’T!” she could still impress upon -me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, “that he didn’t. But he denied -certain occasions.” - -“What occasions?” - -“When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor--and -a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had -gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.” - -“He then prevaricated about it--he said he hadn’t?” Her assent was clear -enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He lied.” - -“Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn’t matter; -which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You see, after all, -Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid him.” - -I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification?” - -At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke of it.” - -“Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?” - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t show -anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.” - -Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?” - -“I don’t know--I don’t know!” the poor woman groaned. - -“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful -boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and -delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without -my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. -But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that -suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed their -relation.” - -“Oh, he couldn’t prevent--” - -“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with -vehemence, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, -have succeeded in making of him!” - -“Ah, nothing that’s not nice NOW!” Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. - -“I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I mentioned to you -the letter from his school!” - -“I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely force. -“And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel -now?” - -“Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well,” - I said in my torment, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be -able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a -way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must -not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first -example--the one to which she had just previously referred--of the boy’s -happy capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint--on your remonstrance -at the time you speak of--was a base menial, one of the things Miles -said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.” Again -her admission was so adequate that I continued: “And you forgave him -that?” - -“Wouldn’t YOU?” - -“Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the -man--” - -“Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!” - -It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited -exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding -myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression -of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than -may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. -“His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging -specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of -the little natural man. Still,” I mused, “They must do, for they make me -feel more than ever that I must watch.” - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face how much -more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as -presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out -when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse -HIM--” - -“Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.” Then, before -shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, “I must -just wait,” I wound up. - - - - -IX - - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from -my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant -sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to -grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the -sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish -grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if -I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it -would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to -struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, -a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought -strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only -made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping -them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they WERE so -immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, -as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could -only be--blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I -found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as -I had done so I used to say to myself: “What will they think of that? -Doesn’t it betray too much?” It would have been easy to get into a sad, -wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, -of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate -charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the -shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me -that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my -sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightn’t see -a queerness in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; -which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response -in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they -were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if -I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a -purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for -their poor protectress; I mean--though they got their lessons better and -better, which was naturally what would please her most--in the way of -diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling -her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as -animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the -“pieces” they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. I -should never get to the bottom--were I to let myself go even now--of the -prodigious private commentary, all under still more private correction, -with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They had shown -me from the first a facility for everything, a general faculty which, -taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little -tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance of -the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not -only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, -astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had -presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, -I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural -composure on the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember -is that I was content not, for the time, to open the question, and that -contentment must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking -show of cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a -parson’s daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest -thread in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I -might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some -influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous -incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone -school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -“kicked out” by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me -add that in their company now--and I was careful almost never to be out -of it--I could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music -and love and success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each -of the children was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a -marvelous knack of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano -broke into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were -confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going out in -the highest spirits in order to “come in” as something new. I had had -brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little girls could -be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed everything was that -there was a little boy in the world who could have for the inferior age, -sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. They were extraordinarily -at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or complained is -to make the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. -Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across -traces of little understandings between them by which one of them should -keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There is a naive side, -I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was -surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter -that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on -with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the -most liberal faith--for which I little care; but--and this is another -matter--I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it -to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the -affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at least -reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to -advance. One evening--with nothing to lead up or to prepare it--I felt -the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of -my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should -probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been -less agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of -candles. There was a roomful of old books at Bly--last-century fiction, -some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, -but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached the -sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I -remember that the book I had in my hand was Fielding’s Amelia; also that -I was wholly awake. I recall further both a general conviction that it -was horribly late and a particular objection to looking at my watch. I -figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, in the fashion of those -days, the head of Flora’s little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself -long before, the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, -though I was deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn -of a page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from -him and hard at the door of my room. There was a moment during which -I listened, reminded of the faint sense I had had, the first night, of -there being something undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft -breath of the open casement just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with -all the marks of a deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had -there been anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, -and, taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the -passage, on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed -and locked the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went -straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within -sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the -staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware of three -things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of -succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, -by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning -rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that there -was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse -of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The -apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the -spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and -fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. -He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, -with a glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the -oak stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He was -absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence. -But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this distinction for -quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had unmistakably -quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that didn’t meet and -measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, -thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not--I found myself at the end -of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of -confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease--for -the time, at least--to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, -accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it WAS human, as human as to have met alone, in -the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, -some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close -quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of -the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an -hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, -in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. -The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to -make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can’t express what followed it -save by saying that the silence itself--which was indeed in a manner -an attestation of my strength--became the element into which I saw the -figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have -seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an -order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch could -have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into the darkness -in which the next bend was lost. - - - - -X - - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently -of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: then I -returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the -candle I had left burning was that Flora’s little bed was empty; and on -this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, -I had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her -lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were -disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; -then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I -perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, ducking down, -emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of -her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and -the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had -never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill -of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that -she addressed me with a reproach. “You naughty: where HAVE you -been?”--instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with -the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay -there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back -into my chair--feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had -pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself -to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little -face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an -instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of something -beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You were looking for -me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I might be walking in the -grounds?” - -“Well, you know, I thought someone was”--she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?” - -“Ah, NO!” she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish -inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little -drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she -lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the -three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, -for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand -it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, -she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out -at her on the spot and have it all over?--give it to her straight in her -lovely little lighted face? “You see, you see, you KNOW that you do and -that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly -confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it together and -learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what -it means?” This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came: if I could -immediately have succumbed to it I might have spared myself--well, -you’ll see what. Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, -looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. “Why did you pull the -curtain over the place to make me think you were still there?” - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -“Because I don’t like to frighten you!” - -“But if I had, by your idea, gone out--?” - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as -impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. “Oh, but you know,” she -quite adequately answered, “that you might come back, you dear, and that -you HAVE!” And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a -long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I -recognized the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. -I repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I selected moments when my -roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in -the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But -I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no -other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, -on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from the top I -once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps -with her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and her head, in an -attitude of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an instant, however, -when she vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, -exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if -instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for going -up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to -be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest -encounter with that gentleman--they were all numbered now--I had an -alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the particular -quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was -precisely the first night during this series that, weary with watching, -I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself down at my -old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till about one -o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused -as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now -out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had extinguished it. -This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, -which I found she had left. A glance at the window enlightened me -further, and the striking of a match completed the picture. - -The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--as she -had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved to me by -the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the -haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, -absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill--the casement opened -forward--and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, -and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face -with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate -with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to -care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some -other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing -me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for -some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her -brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, -produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke -of as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to HIS -window?--what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of -my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter -of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and -pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might -portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were -secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which -my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was -hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a figure -prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it -was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but -on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. -There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing -the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the -lower one--though high above the gardens--in the solid corner of the -house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square -chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of -which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by -Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and -I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the first -chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I -could one of the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the -glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able, the -darkness without being much less than within, to see that I commanded -the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon made the -night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person, -diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, -looking up to where I had appeared--looking, that is, not so much -straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. There was -clearly another person above me--there was a person on the tower; but -the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived and -had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn--I felt sick -as I made it out--was poor little Miles himself. - - - - -XI - - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with -which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet -her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not -provoking--on the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the -children--any suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of -mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others -my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if she -hadn’t I don’t know what would have become of me, for I couldn’t have -borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the -blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our little -charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and -cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of my -trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would -doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match them; -as matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed them, -with her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all her -look, thank the Lord’s mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would -still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady -fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how, with the -development of the conviction that--as time went on without a public -accident--our young things could, after all, look out for themselves, -she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented by their -instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification: I could -engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, but it would -have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain to find myself -anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the -terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now -agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, -but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one -of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, -over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and -passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose -watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed -intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me -a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of -lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority--my -accomplishments and my function--in her patience under my pain. She -offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch’s -broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large -clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time -that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point of -what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a monstrous -hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, I had gone -down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a concentrated -need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a signal more -resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of -representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense of the -real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him -into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge. As soon as I -appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come to me as straight -as possible; on which I had taken his hand without a word and led him, -through the dark spaces, up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily -hovered for him, along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and -so to his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered--oh, -HOW I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his little mind for -something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious -thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn’t -play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? -There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an -equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. I was confronted at -last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding my -own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed into his little -chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all and the window, -uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no -need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank upon -the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must know how he -really, as they say, “had” me. He could do what he liked, with all his -cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue to defer to the -old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who -minister to superstitions and fears. He “had” me indeed, and in a cleft -stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go -unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to -introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it -was useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely -less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in -the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly -kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders -hands of such tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the -bed, I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form -at least, to put it to him. - -“You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out for? What -were you doing there?” - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. “If I -tell you why, will you understand?” My heart, at this, leaped into my -mouth. WOULD he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, -and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. -He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood -there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed -that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really going to -tell me? “Well,” he said at last, “just exactly in order that you should -do this.” - -“Do what?” - -“Think me--for a change--BAD!” I shall never forget the sweetness and -gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he -bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. -I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my -arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the -account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it -was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I -presently glanced about the room, I could say-- - -“Then you didn’t undress at all?” - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. “Not at all. I sat up and read.” - -“And when did you go down?” - -“At midnight. When I’m bad I AM bad!” - -“I see, I see--it’s charming. But how could you be sure I would know -it?” - -“Oh, I arranged that with Flora.” His answers rang out with a readiness! -“She was to get up and look out.” - -“Which is what she did do.” It was I who fell into the trap! - -“So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked--you saw.” - -“While you,” I concurred, “caught your death in the night air!” - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly -to assent. “How otherwise should I have been bad enough?” he asked. -Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my -recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had -been able to draw upon. - - - - -XII - - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, -I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I -reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made -before we separated. “It all lies in half a dozen words,” I said to her, -“words that really settle the matter. ‘Think, you know, what I MIGHT -do!’ He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to -the ground what he ‘might’ do. That’s what he gave them a taste of at -school.” - -“Lord, you do change!” cried my friend. - -“I don’t change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I’ve watched -and waited the more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make it -sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a -slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old -friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, -we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us there to -their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale -they’re steeped in their vision of the dead restored. He’s not reading -to her,” I declared; “they’re talking of THEM--they’re talking horrors! -I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder I’m not. What -I’ve seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made me more lucid, -made me get hold of still other things.” - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were -victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, -gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held -as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still -with her eyes. “Of what other things have you got hold?” - -“Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at -bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their more -than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It’s a game,” - I went on; “it’s a policy and a fraud!” - -“On the part of little darlings--?” - -“As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!” The very act of -bringing it out really helped me to trace it--follow it all up and piece -it all together. “They haven’t been good--they’ve only been absent. It -has been easy to live with them, because they’re simply leading a -life of their own. They’re not mine--they’re not ours. They’re his and -they’re hers!” - -“Quint’s and that woman’s?” - -“Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.” - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! “But for -what?” - -“For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put -into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of -demons, is what brings the others back.” - -“Laws!” said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but -it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad -time--for there had been a worse even than this!--must have occurred. -There could have been no such justification for me as the plain assent -of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in -our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she -brought out after a moment: “They WERE rascals! But what can they now -do?” she pursued. - -“Do?” I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at their -distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. “Don’t -they do enough?” I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, having -smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We -were held by it a minute; then I answered: “They can destroy them!” At -this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent -one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. “They don’t know, -as yet, quite how--but they’re trying hard. They’re seen only across, -as it were, and beyond--in strange places and on high places, the top of -towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further edge -of pools; but there’s a deep design, on either side, to shorten the -distance and overcome the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is -only a question of time. They’ve only to keep to their suggestions of -danger.” - -“For the children to come?” - -“And perish in the attempt!” Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: “Unless, of course, we can prevent!” - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned things -over. “Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them away.” - -“And who’s to make him?” - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish -face. “You, miss.” - -“By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and -niece mad?” - -“But if they ARE, miss?” - -“And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be sent him by a -governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry.” - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. “Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason--” - -“Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his indifference -must have been awful. As I’m not a fiend, at any rate, I shouldn’t take -him in.” - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and -grasped my arm. “Make him at any rate come to you.” - -I stared. “To ME?” I had a sudden fear of what she might do. “‘Him’?” - -“He ought to BE here--he ought to help.” - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than -ever yet. “You see me asking him for a visit?” No, with her eyes on -my face she evidently couldn’t. Instead of it even--as a woman reads -another--she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, -his contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and -for the fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to -my slighted charms. She didn’t know--no one knew--how proud I had been -to serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the -measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. “If you should so lose -your head as to appeal to him for me--” - -She was really frightened. “Yes, miss?” - -“I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.” - - - - -XIII - - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as -much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a -month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above -all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part -of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere -infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they were aware -of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a manner, for -a long time, the air in which we moved. I don’t mean that they had their -tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that was not one -of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the -unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and -that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully effected -without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if, at moments, we -were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop -short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, -closing with a little bang that made us look at each other--for, like -all bangs, it was something louder than we had intended--the doors we -had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times -when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or -subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was -the question of the return of the dead in general and of whatever, in -especial, might survive, in memory, of the friends little children had -lost. There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had, with -a small invisible nudge, said to the other: “She thinks she’ll do it -this time--but she WON’T!” To “do it” would have been to indulge for -instance--and for once in a way--in some direct reference to the lady -who had prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless -appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again and -again treated them; they were in possession of everything that had -ever happened to me, had had, with every circumstance the story of my -smallest adventures and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the -cat and the dog at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric -nature of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house, and -of the conversation of the old women of our village. There were things -enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, if one went very fast -and knew by instinct when to go round. They pulled with an art of their -own the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, -when I thought of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion -of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, MY -past, and MY friends alone that we could take anything like our ease--a -state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence -to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited--with no visible -connection--to repeat afresh Goody Gosling’s celebrated mot or to -confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the -vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different -ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I -have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for -me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done -something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that second -night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the foot of -the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, that one -had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which I expected -to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, -would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, -the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out -half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, -its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after -the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly -states of the air, conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable -impressions of the KIND of ministering moment, that brought back to me, -long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June -evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, -too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him through the -window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. I recognized -the signs, the portents--I recognized the moment, the spot. But they -remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; if -unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in the -most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my -talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora’s by the lake--and -had perplexed her by so saying--that it would from that moment distress -me much more to lose my power than to keep it. I had then expressed what -was vividly in my mind: the truth that, whether the children really -saw or not--since, that is, it was not yet definitely proved--I greatly -preferred, as a safeguard, the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready -to know the very worst that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly -glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were -most opened. Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present--a -consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There -was, alas, a difficulty about that: I would have thanked him with all -my soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this conviction of the -secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were -times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, -literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they -had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I -not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might prove -greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken -out. “They’re here, they’re here, you little wretches,” I would have -cried, “and you can’t deny it now!” The little wretches denied it with -all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just -the crystal depths of which--like the flash of a fish in a stream--the -mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into -me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either -Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over -whose rest I watched and who had immediately brought in with him--had -straightway, there, turned it on me--the lovely upward look with which, -from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had -played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion -had scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition of nerves -produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They harassed me so -that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to rehearse--it -was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed despair--the manner in -which I might come to the point. I approached it from one side and the -other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I always broke down -in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on my lips, I -said to myself that I should indeed help them to represent something -infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little -case of instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever -known. When I said to myself: “THEY have the manners to be silent, and -you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak!” I felt myself crimson -and I covered my face with my hands. After these secret scenes I -chattered more than ever, going on volubly enough till one of our -prodigious, palpable hushes occurred--I can call them nothing else--the -strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause -of all life, that had nothing to do with the more or less noise that at -the moment we might be engaged in making and that I could hear through -any deepened exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the -piano. Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. Though -they were not angels, they “passed,” as the French say, causing me, -while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their addressing to their -younger victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image than -they had thought good enough for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE--things terrible and -unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the -past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill -which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all three, with -repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each time, -almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, through the -very same movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, -to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to -fail--one or the other--of the precious question that had helped us -through many a peril. “When do you think he WILL come? Don’t you think -we OUGHT to write?”--there was nothing like that inquiry, we found by -experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. “He” of course was their -uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion of theory that he -might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to -have given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but -if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have -deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to -them--that may have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of -his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to -a woman is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the -sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of -the pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand -that their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were -too beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this -hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of -my being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among -us. It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward than -anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, as -I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere fact -that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience -with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I -didn’t in these days hate them! Would exasperation, however, if relief -had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, -for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only the relief that -a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of -suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush. - - - - -XIV - - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my -side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s, well in -sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; -the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright -and sharp, made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of -thought that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly -and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why -did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or -other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy to -my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before me, -I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I -was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all -this belonged--I mean their magnificent little surrender--just to the -special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday -by his uncle’s tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of -pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miles’s whole title to -independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon -him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I should have had nothing -to say. I was by the strangest of chances wondering how I should meet -him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution -because I now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the -last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated. -“Look here, my dear, you know,” he charmingly said, “when in the world, -please, am I going back to school?” - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly -as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all -interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off -intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in -them that always made one “catch,” and I caught, at any rate, now so -effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the -park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, -between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, -to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and -charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at -first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I -was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute, -to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: “You know, my -dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS--!” His “my dear” was -constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have expressed more the -exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire my pupils -than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I -remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in -the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. -“And always with the same lady?” I returned. - -He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. “Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ lady; but, after -all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? that’s--well, getting on.” - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. “Yes, you’re -getting on.” Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed -to know that and to play with it. “And you can’t say I’ve not been -awfully good, can you?” - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it -would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. “No, I can’t say -that, Miles.” - -“Except just that one night, you know--!” - -“That one night?” I couldn’t look as straight as he. - -“Why, when I went down--went out of the house.” - -“Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.” - -“You forget?”--he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish -reproach. “Why, it was to show you I could!” - -“Oh, yes, you could.” - -“And I can again.” - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits -about me. “Certainly. But you won’t.” - -“No, not THAT again. It was nothing.” - -“It was nothing,” I said. “But we must go on.” - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. “Then when AM -I going back?” - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. “Were you very -happy at school?” - -He just considered. “Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!” - -“Well, then,” I quavered, “if you’re just as happy here--!” - -“Ah, but that isn’t everything! Of course YOU know a lot--” - -“But you hint that you know almost as much?” I risked as he paused. - -“Not half I want to!” Miles honestly professed. “But it isn’t so much -that.” - -“What is it, then?” - -“Well--I want to see more life.” - -“I see; I see.” We had arrived within sight of the church and of various -persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their way to it -and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our step; -I wanted to get there before the question between us opened up much -further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he would have -to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew -and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend -my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion -to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in first -when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw out-- - -“I want my own sort!” - -It literally made me bound forward. “There are not many of your own -sort, Miles!” I laughed. “Unless perhaps dear little Flora!” - -“You really compare me to a baby girl?” - -This found me singularly weak. “Don’t you, then, LOVE our sweet Flora?” - -“If I didn’t--and you, too; if I didn’t--!” he repeated as if retreating -for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, after we had -come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by the pressure -of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into -the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we were, for the -minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path -from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -“Yes, if you didn’t--?” - -He looked, while I waited, at the graves. “Well, you know what!” But -he didn’t move, and he presently produced something that made me drop -straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. “Does my uncle -think what YOU think?” - -I markedly rested. “How do you know what I think?” - -“Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. But I -mean does HE know?” - -“Know what, Miles?” - -“Why, the way I’m going on.” - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer -that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it -appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make -that venial. “I don’t think your uncle much cares.” - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can be -made to?” - -“In what way?” - -“Why, by his coming down.” - -“But who’ll get him to come down?” - -“_I_ will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He -gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off -alone into church. - - - - -XV - - -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed -him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this -had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read -into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; -by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for -absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest -of the congregation such an example of delay. What I said to myself -above all was that Miles had got something out of me and that the proof -of it, for him, would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out -of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he should -probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, -more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable -question of the grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was -really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle -should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that, -strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I -could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply -procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep -discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say -to me: “Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you -a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.” What was so unnatural for the -particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a -consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked -round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, -with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up nothing, -and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: he -would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make -me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary -on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away -from him. As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the -sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might master me, -I felt, completely should I give it the least encouragement. I might -easily put an end to my predicament by getting away altogether. Here -was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I could give the whole thing -up--turn my back and retreat. It was only a question of hurrying again, -for a few preparations, to the house which the attendance at church of -so many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, -in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. What -was it to get away if I got away only till dinner? That would be in -a couple of hours, at the end of which--I had the acute prevision--my -little pupils would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in -their train. - -“What DID you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to worry us -so--and take our thoughts off, too, don’t you know?--did you desert us -at the very door?” I couldn’t meet such questions nor, as they asked -them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so exactly what I -should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last -let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came -straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps -through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house -I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the -approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited -me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I -should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have -to be remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the -great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties -and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the -staircase--suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a -revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, -in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had -seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able -to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my -bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging to -me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, in a -flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight -back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush -for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place -and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the -schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the -considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort -in the way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands with -evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I took this in -I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance, her attitude -strangely persisted. Then it was--with the very act of its announcing -itself--that her identity flared up in a change of posture. She rose, -not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy -of indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood -there as my vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before -me; but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image -passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and -her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say -that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. -While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of -feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest -against it that, actually addressing her--“You terrible, miserable -woman!”--I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang -through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if -she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was -nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I -must stay. - - - - -XVI - - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked -by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into -account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily -denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed -them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said -nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s odd face. I did this to such purpose that -I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, -however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity. -This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes with her in the -housekeeper’s room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked -bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting -in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her -best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining -room, a large clean image of the “put away”--of drawers closed and -locked and rest without a remedy. - -“Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long as -they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to you?” - -“I only went with you for the walk,” I said. “I had then to come back to -meet a friend.” - -She showed her surprise. “A friend--YOU?” - -“Oh, yes, I have a couple!” I laughed. “But did the children give you a -reason?” - -“For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it -better. Do you like it better?” - -My face had made her rueful. “No, I like it worse!” But after an instant -I added: “Did they say why I should like it better?” - -“No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what she likes!’” - -“I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?” - -“Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of course!’--and I -said the same.” - -I thought a moment. “You were too sweet, too--I can hear you all. But -nonetheless, between Miles and me, it’s now all out.” - -“All out?” My companion stared. “But what, miss?” - -“Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came home, my -dear,” I went on, “for a talk with Miss Jessel.” - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well -in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as -she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her -comparatively firm. “A talk! Do you mean she spoke?” - -“It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom.” - -“And what did she say?” I can hear the good woman still, and the candor -of her stupefaction. - -“That she suffers the torments--!” - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, -gape. “Do you mean,” she faltered, “--of the lost?” - -“Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them-” I faltered -myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share them--?” - -“She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have -fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to -show I was. “As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.” - -“Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?” - -“To everything.” - -“And what do you call ‘everything’?” - -“Why, sending for their uncle.” - -“Oh, miss, in pity do,” my friend broke out. “ah, but I will, I WILL! I -see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ as I told you, with Miles is that -if he thinks I’m afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he -shall see he’s mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me -on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I’m to be -reproached with having done nothing again about more school--” - -“Yes, miss--” my companion pressed me. - -“Well, there’s that awful reason.” - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. “But--a--which?” - -“Why, the letter from his old place.” - -“You’ll show it to the master?” - -“I ought to have done so on the instant.” - -“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -“I’ll put it before him,” I went on inexorably, “that I can’t undertake -to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--” - -“For we’ve never in the least known what!” Mrs. Grose declared. - -“For wickedness. For what else--when he’s so clever and beautiful and -perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? -He’s exquisite--so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole -thing. After all,” I said, “it’s their uncle’s fault. If he left here -such people--!” - -“He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.” She had -turned quite pale. - -“Well, you shan’t suffer,” I answered. - -“The children shan’t!” she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. “Then what am I to tell -him?” - -“You needn’t tell him anything. _I_‘ll tell him.” - -I measured this. “Do you mean you’ll write--?” Remembering she couldn’t, -I caught myself up. “How do you communicate?” - -“I tell the bailiff. HE writes.” - -“And should you like him to write our story?” - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and -it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were -again in her eyes. “Ah, miss, YOU write!” - -“Well--tonight,” I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - - - -XVII - - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had -changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, -with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank -sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of -the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage -and listened a minute at Miles’s door. What, under my endless obsession, -I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at -rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. -His voice tinkled out. “I say, you there--come in.” It was a gaiety in -the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very -much at his ease. “Well, what are YOU up to?” he asked with a grace of -sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been -present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was “out.” - -I stood over him with my candle. “How did you know I was there?” - -“Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You’re -like a troop of cavalry!” he beautifully laughed. - -“Then you weren’t asleep?” - -“Not much! I lie awake and think.” - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held -out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. -“What is it,” I asked, “that you think of?” - -“What in the world, my dear, but YOU?” - -“Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on that! I had -so far rather you slept.” - -“Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.” - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. “Of what queer business, -Miles?” - -“Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!” - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. -“What do you mean by all the rest?” - -“Oh, you know, you know!” - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and -our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting -his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at -that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. “Certainly you shall go -back to school,” I said, “if it be that that troubles you. But not to -the old place--we must find another, a better. How could I know it did -trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it -at all?” His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made -him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children’s -hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I -possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who -might have helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might -help! “Do you know you’ve never said a word to me about your school--I -mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way?” - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly -gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It wasn’t -for ME to help him--it was for the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from -him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; -so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his -little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part -of innocence and consistency. “No, never--from the hour you came back. -You’ve never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, -nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, -little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of anything that -MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I’m in the -dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the -first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your -previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present.” It was -extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or -whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I dared but half -to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, -appear as accessible as an older person--imposed him almost as an -intellectual equal. “I thought you wanted to go on as you are.” - -It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, -like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. “I -don’t--I don’t. I want to get away.” - -“You’re tired of Bly?” - -“Oh, no, I like Bly.” - -“Well, then--?” - -“Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!” - -I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. -“You want to go to your uncle?” - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the -pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!” - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. -“My dear, I don’t want to get off!” - -“You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”--he lay beautifully -staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle -things.” - -“If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to -take you quite away.” - -“Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for? -You’ll have to tell him--about the way you’ve let it all drop: you’ll -have to tell him a tremendous lot!” - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the -instant, to meet him rather more. “And how much will YOU, Miles, have to -tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!” - -He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?” - -“The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with -you. He can’t send you back--” - -“Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.” - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable -gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the -poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance -at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more -dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear -that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the -tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles--!” - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?” - -“Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?” - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his -hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you--I -told you this morning.” - -Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?” - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; -then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me -release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows -I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn -my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. -“I’ve just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said. - -“Well, then, finish it!” - -I waited a minute. “What happened before?” - -He gazed up at me again. “Before what?” - -“Before you came back. And before you went away.” - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What -happened?” - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that -I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting -consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize -once more the chance of possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles, if you KNEW how I want to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing -but that, and I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong--I’d -rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles”--oh, I brought it -out now even if I SHOULD go too far--“I just want you to help me to save -you!” But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The -answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an -extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the -room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The -boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of -sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, -a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and -was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared -about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window -tight. “Why, the candle’s out!” I then cried. - -“It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles. - - - - -XVIII - - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me -quietly: “Have you written, miss?” - -“Yes--I’ve written.” But I didn’t add--for the hour--that my letter, -sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough -to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile -there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more -exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to -gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats -of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated, -in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was -conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to -show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really -lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; -there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never -was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and -freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had -perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my -initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged -sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of -what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. -Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD -been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof -that it could ever have flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after -our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if -I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing -to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was -literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite -tantamount to his saying outright: “The true knights we love to read -about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you -mean that--to be let alone yourself and not followed up--you’ll cease to -worry and spy upon me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go -and come. Well, I ‘come,’ you see--but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of -time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to -show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether I -resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, to -the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never -played; and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking -a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at the -end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to measure, I -started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It -was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn’t -really, in the least, slept: I had only done something much worse--I had -forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to -Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: -“Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?”--breaking moreover into a happy laugh -which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he -prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before -going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere -about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that -theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had -found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with blank, -scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had -carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, -for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my -sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she might be -with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for her without -an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but when, ten -minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, -it was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries we -had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, apart from -observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with what high -interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first given her. - -“She’ll be above,” she presently said--“in one of the rooms you haven’t -searched.” - -“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She has gone out.” - -Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?” - -I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without one?” - -“She’s with HER?” - -“She’s with HER!” I declared. “We must find them.” - -My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my -pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her -uneasiness. “And where’s Master Miles?” - -“Oh, HE’S with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.” - -“Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware--and therefore I suppose my -tone--had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -“The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their -plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she -went off.” - -“‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -“Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for -himself as well. But come!” - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him--?” - -“So long with Quint? Yes--I don’t mind that now.” - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, -and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping -an instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” she -eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it -up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. -“Luke will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door and -opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to -the drive while she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?” - -“What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to dress,” I -cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, -upstairs.” - -“With THEM?” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - - - -XIX - - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My -acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all -events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection of -my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat moored -there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its -agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the -house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might -be, she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small -adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had shared -with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to -which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose’s -steps so marked a direction--a direction that made her, when she -perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly -mystified. “You’re going to the water, Miss?--you think she’s IN--?” - -“She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But -what I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from which, the other -day, we saw together what I told you.” - -“When she pretended not to see--?” - -“With that astounding self-possession? I’ve always been sure she wanted -to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.” - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really -TALK of them?” - -“I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard -them, would simply appall us.” - -“And if she IS there--” - -“Yes?” - -“Then Miss Jessel is?” - -“Beyond a doubt. You shall see.” - -“Oh, thank you!” my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I -went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, -she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, -might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least -danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the -greater part of the water without a sight of the child. There was no -trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of -her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save -for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. -The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared to its length -that, with its ends out of view, it might have been taken for a scant -river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion -of my friend’s eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative -headshake. - -“No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.” - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across -the lake. “Then where is it?” - -“Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it.” - -“All alone--that child?” - -“She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an old, -old woman.” I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, -into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; -then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge -formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for -the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees -growing close to the water. - -“But if the boat’s there, where on earth’s SHE?” my colleague anxiously -asked. - -“That’s exactly what we must learn.” And I started to walk further. - -“By going all the way round?” - -“Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it’s -far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over.” - -“Laws!” cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too -much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got -halfway round--a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by -a path choked with overgrowth--I paused to give her breath. I sustained -her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and -this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we -reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed -it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and -was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to -the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. I recognized, -as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the -prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by -this time, too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier -measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and -that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. Then, -“There she is!” we both exclaimed at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if -her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was -to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it were all she was there -for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she -had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a -step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently -approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done -in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first -to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the -child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, -yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch -it--which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face peep at me -over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now--the flicker had left -it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. -Grose the simplicity of HER relation. Still, all this while, nothing -more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again -drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was -that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept -the child’s hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular -reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank look she -launched me. “I’ll be hanged,” it said, “if _I_‘ll speak!” - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. -She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. “Why, where are your things?” - -“Where yours are, my dear!” I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an -answer quite sufficient. “And where’s Miles?” she went on. - -There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: -these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn -blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had -held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt -overflow in a deluge. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell ME--” I heard myself -say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. - -“Well, what?” - -Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. “Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?” - - - - -XX - - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much -as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, -been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child’s face now -received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a -pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, -that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence--the -shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a -few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleague’s -arm. “She’s there, she’s there!” - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had -stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling -now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She -was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel -nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there -most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so -extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her--with -the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and -understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on -the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all -the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This -first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, -during which Mrs. Grose’s dazed blink across to where I pointed struck -me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my -own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner -in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it -would have done to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay -was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our -pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I -was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the particular -one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a convulsion of -her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the -prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression -of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented -and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me--this was a stroke -that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence -that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that -she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the -immediate need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. -“She’s there, you little unhappy thing--there, there, THERE, and you see -her as well as you see me!” I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose -that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that -description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in -the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without -a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and -deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this -time--if I can put the whole thing at all together--more appalled at -what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was -simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose -also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next -moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and -her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. “What a dreadful -turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?” - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the -hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already -lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, -quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my -pointing hand. “You don’t see her exactly as WE see?--you mean to say -you don’t now--NOW? She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest -woman, LOOK--!” She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep -groan of negation, repulsion, compassion--the mixture with her pity of -her relief at her exemption--a sense, touching to me even then, that she -would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, for -with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed -I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt--I saw--my livid -predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, -more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in -the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose -immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced -through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless -reassurance. - -“She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there--and you never see -nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel--when poor Miss Jessel’s -dead and buried? WE know, don’t we, love?”--and she appealed, blundering -in, to the child. “It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke--and -we’ll go home as fast as we can!” - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of -propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as -it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with -her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to -forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight -to our friend’s dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly -failed, had quite vanished. I’ve said it already--she was literally, -she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. “I don’t -know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never HAVE. I think -you’re cruel. I don’t like you!” Then, after this deliverance, which -might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she -hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful -little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. “Take -me away, take me away--oh, take me away from HER!” - -“From ME?” I panted. - -“From you--from you!” she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to -do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, -without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the -interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not -there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she -had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and -I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly -shake my head at her. “If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at -present have gone. I’ve been living with the miserable truth, and now -it has only too much closed round me. Of course I’ve lost you: I’ve -interfered, and you’ve seen--under HER dictation”--with which I faced, -over the pool again, our infernal witness--“the easy and perfect way to -meet it. I’ve done my best, but I’ve lost you. Goodbye.” For Mrs. -Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic “Go, go!” before which, in -infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly -convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred -and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as -fast as she could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. -I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an -odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had -made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the -ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long -and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. -I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and -its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary -and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, -to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on -Flora’s extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that night, -by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a -false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw -neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous -compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw--I can use no other -phrase--so much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever -been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of -this one; in spite of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of -consternation that had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, in -the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the -house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone -straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at -a glance, much material testimony to Flora’s rupture. Her little -belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I -was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my -other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom now--he might -have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it consisted--in part at -least--of his coming in at about eight o’clock and sitting down with me -in silence. On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles -and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness and felt -as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was sitting -in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as if to -look at me; then--as if to share them--came to the other side of the -hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he -wanted, I felt, to be with me. - - - - -XXI - - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. -Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly -feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of -extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had for their -subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, governess. -It was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene -that she protested--it was conspicuously and passionately against mine. -I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; -the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me -once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of -her sense of the child’s sincerity as against my own. “She persists in -denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?” - -My visitor’s trouble, truly, was great. “Ah, miss, it isn’t a matter -on which I can push her! Yet it isn’t either, I must say, as if I much -needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old.” - -“Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like -some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, -as it were, her respectability. ‘Miss Jessel indeed--SHE!’ Ah, she’s -‘respectable,’ the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, -I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the -others. I DID put my foot in it! She’ll never speak to me again.” - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more -behind it. “I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand -manner about it!” - -“And that manner”--I summed it up--“is practically what’s the matter -with her now!” - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor’s face, and not a little else -besides! “She asks me every three minutes if I think you’re coming in.” - -“I see--I see.” I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it -out. “Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her -familiarity with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss -Jessel?” - -“Not one, miss. And of course you know,” my friend added, “I took it -from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there WAS -nobody.” - -“Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still.” - -“I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?” - -“Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to deal with. -They’ve made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer even than -nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her -grievance, and she’ll work it to the end.” - -“Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?” - -“Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She’ll make me out to him -the lowest creature--!” - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose’s face; she looked -for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. “And him who thinks so -well of you!” - -“He has an odd way--it comes over me now,” I laughed,”--of proving it! -But that doesn’t matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of -me.” - -My companion bravely concurred. “Never again to so much as look at you.” - -“So that what you’ve come to me now for,” I asked, “is to speed me on my -way?” Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. “I’ve a -better idea--the result of my reflections. My going WOULD seem the right -thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won’t do. It’s YOU -who must go. You must take Flora.” - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. “But where in the world--?” - -“Away from here. Away from THEM. Away, even most of all, now, from me. -Straight to her uncle.” - -“Only to tell on you--?” - -“No, not ‘only’! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy.” - -She was still vague. “And what IS your remedy?” - -“Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.” - -She looked at me hard. “Do you think he--?” - -“Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think -it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as -possible and leave me with him alone.” I was amazed, myself, at the -spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more -disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, -she hesitated. “There’s one thing, of course,” I went on: “they mustn’t, -before she goes, see each other for three seconds.” Then it came over me -that, in spite of Flora’s presumable sequestration from the instant of -her return from the pool, it might already be too late. “Do you mean,” I -anxiously asked, “that they HAVE met?” - -At this she quite flushed. “Ah, miss, I’m not such a fool as that! If -I’ve been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each -time with one of the maids, and at present, though she’s alone, she’s -locked in safe. And yet--and yet!” There were too many things. - -“And yet what?” - -“Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?” - -“I’m not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last evening, a new -hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe that--poor -little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last evening, in the -firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were -just coming.” - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. -“And did it come?” - -“No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was without -a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sister’s -condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the -same,” I continued, “I can’t, if her uncle sees her, consent to his -seeing her brother without my having given the boy--and most of all -because things have got so bad--a little more time.” - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite -understand. “What do you mean by more time?” - -“Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He’ll then be on MY -side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only -fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your -arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible.” So I put it -before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed -that I came again to her aid. “Unless, indeed,” I wound up, “you really -want NOT to go.” - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand -to me as a pledge. “I’ll go--I’ll go. I’ll go this morning.” - -I wanted to be very just. “If you SHOULD wish still to wait, I would -engage she shouldn’t see me.” - -“No, no: it’s the place itself. She must leave it.” She held me a moment -with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. “Your idea’s the right one. -I myself, miss--” - -“Well?” - -“I can’t stay.” - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. “You mean -that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen--?” - -She shook her head with dignity. “I’ve HEARD--!” - -“Heard?” - -“From that child--horrors! There!” she sighed with tragic relief. “On my -honor, miss, she says things--!” But at this evocation she broke down; -she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do -before, gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. “Oh, -thank God!” - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. “‘Thank -God’?” - -“It so justifies me!” - -“It does that, miss!” - -I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. “She’s so -horrible?” - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.” - -“And about me?” - -“About you, miss--since you must have it. It’s beyond everything, for a -young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have picked up--” - -“The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in with -a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I -ought to also--since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,” - the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my -dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go back.” - -I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it--!” - -“How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that: to get her away. -Far from this,” she pursued, “far from THEM-” - -“She may be different? She may be free?” I seized her almost with joy. -“Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE--” - -“In such doings?” Her simple description of them required, in the light -of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole -thing as she had never done. “I believe.” - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My -support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been -in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my -honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave -of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. “There’s one -thing, of course--it occurs to me--to remember. My letter, giving the -alarm, will have reached town before you.” - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and -how weary at last it had made her. “Your letter won’t have got there. -Your letter never went.” - -“What then became of it?” - -“Goodness knows! Master Miles--” - -“Do you mean HE took it?” I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. “I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t where you -had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and -he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it.” We could only -exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. -Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated “You see!” - -“Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it -and destroyed it.” - -“And don’t you see anything else?” - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. “It strikes me that by this time -your eyes are open even wider than mine.” - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show -it. “I make out now what he must have done at school.” And she gave, in -her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. “He stole!” - -I turned it over--I tried to be more judicial. “Well--perhaps.” - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. “He stole LETTERS!” - -She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so -I showed them off as I might. “I hope then it was to more purpose than -in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday,” - I pursued, “will have given him so scant an advantage--for it contained -only the bare demand for an interview--that he is already much ashamed -of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind -last evening was precisely the need of confession.” I seemed to myself, -for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. “Leave us, leave -us”--I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. “I’ll get it out of -him. He’ll meet me--he’ll confess. If he confesses, he’s saved. And if -he’s saved--” - -“Then YOU are?” The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her -farewell. “I’ll save you without him!” she cried as she went. - - - - -XXII - - -Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--that the -great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to -find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it -would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed -with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage -containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the -gates. Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, and -for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness, I could -consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still -than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for the first time, -I could see in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. -What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too -little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness -of my colleague’s act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect -of which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of -making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching -the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up -at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the -consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be -known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I -wandered with that manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place -and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for -the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, -little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no -glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change -taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the -piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora’s interest, so beguiled and -befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her -confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in -by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had -already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and -I learned below that he had breakfasted--in the presence of a couple of -the maids--with Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he -said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have -expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What -he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled: -there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean for myself in -especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung -to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had -perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction -that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, -by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the -care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining -to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate -his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, -moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, -I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither -challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. -Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the -accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the -beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the -eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my -meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so -that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside -of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared -Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. -Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again--how my -equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut -my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with -was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking -“nature” into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous -ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but -demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw -of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require -more tact than just this attempt to supply, one’s self, ALL the nature. -How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of -reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make -reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort -of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as -that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare -in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found even now--as he -had so often found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me -off. Wasn’t there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, -broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?--the fact -that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it -would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one -might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been -given him for but to save him? Mightn’t one, to reach his mind, risk the -stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were -face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. -The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. -Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets -and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some -humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: “I say, my dear, -is she really very awfully ill?” - -“Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better. London -will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take -your mutton.” - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, -when he was established, went on. “Did Bly disagree with her so terribly -suddenly?” - -“Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on.” - -“Then why didn’t you get her off before?” - -“Before what?” - -“Before she became too ill to travel.” - -I found myself prompt. “She’s NOT too ill to travel: she only might -have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The -journey will dissipate the influence”--oh, I was grand!--“and carry it -off.” - -“I see, I see”--Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to -his repast with the charming little “table manner” that, from the day of -his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever -he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He -was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more -conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things -than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into -peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the -briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately -removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his -little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of the wide -window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We -continued silent while the maid was with us--as silent, it whimsically -occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at -the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only -when the waiter had left us. “Well--so we’re alone!” - - - - -XXIII - - -“Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not absolutely. We -shouldn’t like that!” I went on. - -“No--I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.” - -“We have the others--we have indeed the others,” I concurred. - -“Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in -his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, do -they?” - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on what you call -‘much’!” - -“Yes”--with all accommodation--“everything depends!” On this, however, -he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, -restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead -against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the -dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of “work,” behind -which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had -repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the -moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which -I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the -worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a -meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back--none other than the impression -that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp -intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was -positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a -kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at -any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I -took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted -pane, for something he couldn’t see?--and wasn’t it the first time in -the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very -first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he -watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his -usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small -strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet -me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. “Well, I think I’m -glad Bly agrees with ME!” - -“You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good -deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,” I went on bravely, -“that you’ve been enjoying yourself.” - -“Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles away. -I’ve never been so free.” - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with -him. “Well, do you like it?” - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--“Do -YOU?”--more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. -Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with -the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. “Nothing could -be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone -together now it’s you that are alone most. But I hope,” he threw in, -“you don’t particularly mind!” - -“Having to do with you?” I asked. “My dear child, how can I help -minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your company--you’re so -beyond me--I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?” - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver -now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. “You stay -on just for THAT?” - -“Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest -I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth -your while. That needn’t surprise you.” My voice trembled so that I felt -it impossible to suppress the shake. “Don’t you remember how I told you, -when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was -nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you?” - -“Yes, yes!” He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone -to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out -through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. “Only -that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!” - -“It was partly to get you to do something,” I conceded. “But, you know, -you didn’t do it.” - -“Oh, yes,” he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, “you wanted -me to tell you something.” - -“That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know.” - -“Ah, then, is THAT what you’ve stayed over for?” - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to express the -effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as -if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. “Well, -yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for -that.” - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the -assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said -was: “Do you mean now--here?” - -“There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round him -uneasily, and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very -first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. -It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me--which struck me indeed as -perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort -I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so -gentle as to be almost grotesque. “You want so to go out again?” - -“Awfully!” He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery -of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up -his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that -gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of -what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what -did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt -on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the -possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn’t it base to create for a -being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into -our situation a clearness it couldn’t have had at the time, for I seem -to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision -of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and -scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other -we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. “I’ll -tell you everything,” Miles said--“I mean I’ll tell you anything you -like. You’ll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I WILL -tell you--I WILL. But not now.” - -“Why not now?” - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. -Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, -someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. “I have to see -Luke.” - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my -truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, -go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for -that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request.” - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a -little to bargain. “Very much smaller--?” - -“Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me”--oh, my work preoccupied -me, and I was offhand!--“if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the -hall, you took, you know, my letter.” - - - - -XXIV - - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke -that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind -movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just -fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively -keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us -that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view -like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from -outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the -glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his -white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place -within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time -recovered her grasp of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the -immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw -and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I can -call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how -transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon for a -human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human -soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm’s length--had a -perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was -close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it -presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further -away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -“Yes--I took it.” - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while -I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his -little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on -the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have -likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather -the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was -such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, -my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the -scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that -I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, -of the child’s unconsciousness, that made me go on. “What did you take -it for?” - -“To see what you said about me.” - -“You opened the letter?” - -“I opened it.” - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s own face, -in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage -of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his -sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in -presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and -that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes -went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again and--by -my personal triumph--the influence quenched? There was nothing there. I -felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. “And you -found nothing!”--I let my elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.” - -“Nothing, nothing!” I almost shouted in my joy. - -“Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. “So what have you done with it?” - -“I’ve burned it.” - -“Burned it?” It was now or never. “Is that what you did at school?” - -Oh, what this brought up! “At school?” - -“Did you take letters?--or other things?” - -“Other things?” He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and -that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did -reach him. “Did I STEAL?” - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it -were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him -take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the -world. “Was it for that you mightn’t go back?” - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. “Did you -know I mightn’t go back?” - -“I know everything.” - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. “Everything?” - -“Everything. Therefore DID you--?” But I couldn’t say it again. - -Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.” - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but it -was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all -for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. “What then did -you do?” - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his -breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have -been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some -faint green twilight. “Well--I said things.” - -“Only that?” - -“They thought it was enough!” - -“To turn you out for?” - -Never, truly, had a person “turned out” shown so little to explain it -as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner -quite detached and almost helpless. “Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.” - -“But to whom did you say them?” - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. “I don’t -know!” - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was -indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left -it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even -then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was -already that of added separation. “Was it to everyone?” I asked. - -“No; it was only to--” But he gave a sick little headshake. “I don’t -remember their names.” - -“Were they then so many?” - -“No--only a few. Those I liked.” - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity -the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the -instant confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then -on earth was _I_? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the -question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he -turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, -I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. “And -did they repeat what you said?” I went on after a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again -with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against -his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim -day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an -unspeakable anxiety. “Oh, yes,” he nevertheless replied--“they must have -repeated them. To those THEY liked,” he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it -over. “And these things came round--?” - -“To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered very simply. “But I didn’t know -they’d tell.” - -“The masters? They didn’t--they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.” - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was -too bad.” - -“Too bad?” - -“What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.” - -I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such -a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard -myself throw off with homely force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next -after that I must have sounded stern enough. “What WERE these things?” - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and -an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against -the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the -hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I felt a sick -swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that -the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I -saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the -perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still -to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax -of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. “No more, no -more, no more!” I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my -visitant. - -“Is she HERE?” Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the -direction of my words. Then as his strange “she” staggered me and, with -a gasp, I echoed it, “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he with a sudden fury -gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to -Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still -than that. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window--straight -before us. It’s THERE--the coward horror, there for the last time!” - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled -dog’s on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, -he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place -and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the -taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. “It’s HE?” - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to -challenge him. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” - -“Peter Quint--you devil!” His face gave again, round the room, its -convulsed supplication. “WHERE?” - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his -tribute to my devotion. “What does he matter now, my own?--what will he -EVER matter? _I_ have you,” I launched at the beast, “but he has lost -you forever!” Then, for the demonstration of my work, “There, THERE!” I -said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and -seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he -uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with -which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. -I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a passion; -but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that -I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - -***** This file should be named 209-0.txt or 209-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/209/ - -Produced by Judith Boss - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/2016-09-18-209-h.htm b/old/2016-09-18-209-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 11ef5bb..0000000 --- a/old/2016-09-18-209-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5910 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> - -<!DOCTYPE html - PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <title> - The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - </title> - <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> - - body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} - P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } - H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } - hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} - .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } - blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} - .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} - .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} - .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} - div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } - div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } - .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} - .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} - .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; - margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; - text-align: right;} - pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} - -</style> - </head> - <body> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Turn of the Screw - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #209] -Last Updated: September 18, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - - - - -Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger - - - - - -</pre> - - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <h1> - THE TURN OF THE SCREW - </h1> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <h2> - by Henry James - </h2> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <h4> - [The text is take from the first American appearance of this book.] - </h4> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <blockquote> - <p class="toc"> - <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>THE TURN OF THE SCREW</b> </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XX </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXI </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIII </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXIV </a> - </p> - </blockquote> - <p> - <br /> <br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <h2> - THE TURN OF THE SCREW - </h2> - <p> - The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except - the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old - house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered - till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in - which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, - was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for - the occasion—an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy - sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of - it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, - but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, the - same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation that drew from - Douglas—not immediately, but later in the evening—a reply that - had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. Someone else - told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was not following. - This I took for a sign that he had himself something to produce and that - we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights later; but - that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in his - mind. - </p> - <p> - “I quite agree—in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was—that - its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a - particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming kind - that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect - another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children—?” - </p> - <p> - “We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two turns! Also - that we want to hear about them.” - </p> - <p> - I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present - his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. - “Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too horrible.” This, - naturally, was declared by several voices to give the thing the utmost - price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his - eyes over the rest of us and going on: “It’s beyond everything. Nothing at - all that I know touches it.” - </p> - <p> - “For sheer terror?” I remember asking. - </p> - <p> - He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how - to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing - grimace. “For dreadful—dreadfulness!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women. - </p> - <p> - He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he - saw what he spoke of. “For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain.” - </p> - <p> - “Well then,” I said, “just sit right down and begin.” - </p> - <p> - He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant. - Then as he faced us again: “I can’t begin. I shall have to send to town.” - There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after which, in - his preoccupied way, he explained. “The story’s written. It’s in a locked - drawer—it has not been out for years. I could write to my man and - enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it.” It was to - me in particular that he appeared to propound this—appeared almost - to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the - formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The - others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed - me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an - early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his - own. To this his answer was prompt. “Oh, thank God, no!” - </p> - <p> - “And is the record yours? You took the thing down?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE”—he tapped his heart. - “I’ve never lost it.” - </p> - <p> - “Then your manuscript—?” - </p> - <p> - “Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung fire - again. “A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the - pages in question before she died.” They were all listening now, and of - course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the - inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also - without irritation. “She was a most charming person, but she was ten years - older than I. She was my sister’s governess,” he quietly said. “She was - the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would have - been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long - before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the - second summer. I was much there that year—it was a beautiful one; - and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden—talks - in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don’t grin: I - liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If - she hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had never told anyone. It wasn’t - simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn’t. I was sure; I could - see. You’ll easily judge why when you hear.” - </p> - <p> - “Because the thing had been such a scare?” - </p> - <p> - He continued to fix me. “You’ll easily judge,” he repeated: “YOU will.” - </p> - <p> - I fixed him, too. “I see. She was in love.” - </p> - <p> - He laughed for the first time. “You ARE acute. Yes, she was in love. That - is, she had been. That came out—she couldn’t tell her story without - its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of - it. I remember the time and the place—the corner of the lawn, the - shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. It wasn’t a - scene for a shudder; but oh—!” He quitted the fire and dropped back - into his chair. - </p> - <p> - “You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired. - </p> - <p> - “Probably not till the second post.” - </p> - <p> - “Well then; after dinner—” - </p> - <p> - “You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. “Isn’t anybody - going?” It was almost the tone of hope. - </p> - <p> - “Everybody will stay!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>I</i> will”—and “<i>I</i> will!” cried the ladies whose - departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a - little more light. “Who was it she was in love with?” - </p> - <p> - “The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I can’t wait for the story!” - </p> - <p> - “The story WON’T tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal, vulgar way.” - </p> - <p> - “More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.” - </p> - <p> - “Won’t YOU tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired. - </p> - <p> - He sprang to his feet again. “Yes—tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. - Good night.” And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly - bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the - stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t know who she was in - love with, I know who HE was.” - </p> - <p> - “She was ten years older,” said her husband. - </p> - <p> - “Raison de plus—at that age! But it’s rather nice, his long - reticence.” - </p> - <p> - “Forty years!” Griffin put in. - </p> - <p> - “With this outbreak at last.” - </p> - <p> - “The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday - night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost - all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete and - like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook and - “candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed. - </p> - <p> - I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first - post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of—or perhaps - just on account of—the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite - let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in - fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes - were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and indeed - gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again before the - fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. It - appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really required for - a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. Let me say here distinctly, - to have done with it, that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my - own made much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before - his death—when it was in sight—committed to me the manuscript - that reached him on the third of these days and that, on the same spot, - with immense effect, he began to read to our hushed little circle on the - night of the fourth. The departing ladies who had said they would stay - didn’t, of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of - arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by - the touches with which he had already worked us up. But that only made his - little final auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, - subject to a common thrill. - </p> - <p> - The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the - tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in - possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several - daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking - service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in - trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had already placed - her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on - her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley Street, that - impressed her as vast and imposing—this prospective patron proved a - gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as had never - risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl - out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it never, - happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, offhand and gay - and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what - took her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward showed was - that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of favor, an obligation he - should gratefully incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully - extravagant—saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of - expensive habits, of charming ways with women. He had for his own town - residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of - the chase; but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, - that he wished her immediately to proceed. - </p> - <p> - He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to a - small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military brother, - whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the strangest - of chances for a man in his position—a lone man without the right - sort of experience or a grain of patience—very heavily on his hands. - It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of - blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done all he - could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the proper - place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, from the - first, with the best people he could find to look after them, parting even - with his own servants to wait on them and going down himself, whenever he - might, to see how they were doing. The awkward thing was that they had - practically no other relations and that his own affairs took up all his - time. He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, - and had placed at the head of their little establishment—but below - stairs only—an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his - visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was - now housekeeper and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the - little girl, of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, - extremely fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the - young lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. - She would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had - been for a term at school—young as he was to be sent, but what else - could be done?—and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would - be back from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at - first a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done - for them quite beautifully—she was a most respectable person—till - her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no - alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in - the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and there - were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, an old - groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. - </p> - <p> - So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. “And - what did the former governess die of?—of so much respectability?” - </p> - <p> - Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t anticipate.” - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me—I thought that was just what you ARE doing.” - </p> - <p> - “In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have wished to learn if - the office brought with it—” - </p> - <p> - “Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. “She did wish to - learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. - Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was - young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little - company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated—took a couple of - days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her - modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she - engaged.” And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of - the company, moved me to throw in— - </p> - <p> - “The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid - young man. She succumbed to it.” - </p> - <p> - He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a - stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. “She - saw him only twice.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.” - </p> - <p> - A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It WAS the - beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who hadn’t succumbed. He - told her frankly all his difficulty—that for several applicants the - conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It - sounded dull—it sounded strange; and all the more so because of his - main condition.” - </p> - <p> - “Which was—?” - </p> - <p> - “That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal - nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, - receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let - him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for - a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the - sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.” - </p> - <p> - “But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked. - </p> - <p> - “She never saw him again.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was - the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the - next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened the - faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole thing - took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the same lady - put another question. “What is your title?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t one.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, <i>I</i> have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to - read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the - beauty of his author’s hand. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I - </h2> - <p> - I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a - little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to - meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found - myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this - state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that - carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle - from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I - found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting - for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which - the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude - mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve - that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose - I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what greeted - me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression the - broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of - maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the - crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which - the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness - that made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there - immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil - person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or - a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion - of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor - still more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be - something beyond his promise. - </p> - <p> - I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly - through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my - pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the - spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to do - with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I - afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept - little that night—I was too much excited; and this astonished me, - too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality - with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in - the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured - draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see - myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the extraordinary charm - of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as - well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a - relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. - The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have made me shrink - again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad to see me. I - perceived within half an hour that she was so glad—stout, simple, - plain, clean, wholesome woman—as to be positively on her guard - against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she should - wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion, might of - course have made me uneasy. - </p> - <p> - But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection - with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the - vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to do - with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times rise and - wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, - from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of - the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the - fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence - of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had - fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I believed I recognized, - faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found - myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a - light footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown - off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of - other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me. To watch, - teach, “form” little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy - and useful life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this - first occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small - white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had - undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last - time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my - inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this timidity—which - the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had been perfectly - frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable - consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael’s - holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us—I - feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was part of what I already - liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my - admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with - my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, - over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s presence - could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and - roundabout allusions. - </p> - <p> - “And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very - remarkable?” - </p> - <p> - One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. If you think - well of this one!”—and she stood there with a plate in her hand, - beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with - placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - </p> - <p> - “Yes; if I do—?” - </p> - <p> - “You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, that, I think, is what I came for—to be carried away. I’m - afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m rather - easily carried away. I was carried away in London!” - </p> - <p> - I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In Harley - Street?” - </p> - <p> - “In Harley Street.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, miss, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the last.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the only one. My other - pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?” - </p> - <p> - “Not tomorrow—Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, - under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.” - </p> - <p> - I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and friendly - thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public conveyance I - should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an idea in which Mrs. - Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took her manner as a kind of - comforting pledge—never falsified, thank heaven!—that we - should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was there! - </p> - <p> - What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly - called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the - most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the scale, - as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new - circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had - not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, a - little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, - certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by the - gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing - me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, to her - great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might show me the - place. She showed it step by step and room by room and secret by secret, - with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and with the result, in - half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was - struck, throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage with - the way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that - made me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower - that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many - more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly - since the day I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed - eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little - conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me - round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of - romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for - diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and - fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and - adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a - few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, - in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of - passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II - </h2> - <p> - This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to - meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for an - incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply - disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have - expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. - The postbag, that evening—it came late—contained a letter for - me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be composed but - of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself, with a seal still - unbroken. “This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, and the headmaster’s - an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him; but mind you don’t report. - Not a word. I’m off!” I broke the seal with a great effort—so great - a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the unopened missive at - last up to my room and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had - better have let it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless - night. With no counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and - it finally got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at - least to Mrs. Grose. - </p> - <p> - “What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.” - </p> - <p> - She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a - quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they all—?” - </p> - <p> - “Sent home—yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back - at all.” - </p> - <p> - Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take him?” - </p> - <p> - “They absolutely decline.” - </p> - <p> - At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them fill - with good tears. “What has he done?” - </p> - <p> - I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter—which, - however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put her - hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not for me, - miss.” - </p> - <p> - My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as - I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering - in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my pocket. “Is he - really BAD?” - </p> - <p> - The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?” - </p> - <p> - “They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it - should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.” Mrs. - Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning - might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and - with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: “That he’s an - injury to the others.” - </p> - <p> - At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed - up. “Master Miles! HIM an injury?” - </p> - <p> - There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet seen - the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. I - found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, - sarcastically. “To his poor little innocent mates!” - </p> - <p> - “It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel things! Why, - he’s scarce ten years old.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, yes; it would be incredible.” - </p> - <p> - She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss, first. - THEN believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was the - beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen - almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had - produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. “You might as well - believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added the next moment—“LOOK - at her!” - </p> - <p> - I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established - in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of - nice “round o’s,” now presented herself to view at the open door. She - expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable - duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to - offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my - person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. I needed - nothing more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Grose’s comparison, - and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there - was a sob of atonement. - </p> - <p> - Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to - approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she - rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; - we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there - with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me at noon as a - declaration that YOU’VE never known him to be bad.” - </p> - <p> - She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very honestly, - adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him—I don’t pretend THAT!” - </p> - <p> - I was upset again. “Then you HAVE known him—?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes indeed, miss, thank God!” - </p> - <p> - On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never is—?” - </p> - <p> - “Is no boy for ME!” - </p> - <p> - I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?” Then, - keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought out. “But not - to the degree to contaminate—” - </p> - <p> - “To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. - “To corrupt.” - </p> - <p> - She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. - “Are you afraid he’ll corrupt YOU?” She put the question with such a fine - bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own, - I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. - </p> - <p> - But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in - another place. “What was the lady who was here before?” - </p> - <p> - “The last governess? She was also young and pretty—almost as young - and almost as pretty, miss, even as you.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect - throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he DID,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he liked everyone!” She - had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. “I mean that’s HIS - way—the master’s.” - </p> - <p> - I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?” - </p> - <p> - She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of HIM.” - </p> - <p> - “Of the master?” - </p> - <p> - “Of who else?” - </p> - <p> - There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my - impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I - merely asked what I wanted to know. “Did SHE see anything in the boy—?” - </p> - <p> - “That wasn’t right? She never told me.” - </p> - <p> - I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful—particular?” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some things—yes.” - </p> - <p> - “But not about all?” - </p> - <p> - Again she considered. “Well, miss—she’s gone. I won’t tell tales.” - </p> - <p> - “I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I thought it, - after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: “Did she die - here?” - </p> - <p> - “No—she went off.” - </p> - <p> - I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that struck me - as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked straight out of the - window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what young - persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill, you mean, - and went home?” - </p> - <p> - “She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, at - the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to - which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We had then - a young woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl - and clever; and SHE took the children altogether for the interval. But our - young lady never came back, and at the very moment I was expecting her I - heard from the master that she was dead.” - </p> - <p> - I turned this over. “But of what?” - </p> - <p> - “He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to my - work.” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III - </h2> - <p> - Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just - preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. - We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately than ever - on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so monstrous was I - then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to - me should be under an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and I - felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of the inn - at which the coach had put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, - without and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same positive - fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, seen his - little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had put her - finger on it: everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for him was - swept away by his presence. What I then and there took him to my heart for - was something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any - child—his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world - but love. It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater - sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I - remained merely bewildered—so far, that is, as I was not outraged—by - the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As - soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her - that it was grotesque. - </p> - <p> - She promptly understood me. “You mean the cruel charge—?” - </p> - <p> - “It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!” - </p> - <p> - She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. “I assure you, - miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?” she immediately added. - </p> - <p> - “In answer to the letter?” I had made up my mind. “Nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “And to his uncle?” - </p> - <p> - I was incisive. “Nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “And to the boy himself?” - </p> - <p> - I was wonderful. “Nothing.” - </p> - <p> - She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. “Then I’ll stand by - you. We’ll see it out.” - </p> - <p> - “We’ll see it out!” I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a - vow. - </p> - <p> - She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her - detached hand. “Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom—” - </p> - <p> - “To kiss me? No!” I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had - embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - </p> - <p> - This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall - the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a - little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I - accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was - under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the far - and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great - wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, my - confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy - whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning. I am - unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the end of - his holidays and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, - that charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; but I now - feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my own. I learned - something—at first, certainly—that had not been one of the - teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and even - amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, in a - manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music of - summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was consideration—and - consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap—not designed, but deep—to - my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; to whatever, in me, - was most excitable. The best way to picture it all is to say that I was - off my guard. They gave me so little trouble—they were of a - gentleness so extraordinary. I used to speculate—but even this with - a dim disconnectedness—as to how the rough future (for all futures - are rough!) would handle them and might bruise them. They had the bloom of - health and happiness; and yet, as if I had been in charge of a pair of - little grandees, of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be - right, would have to be enclosed and protected, the only form that, in my - fancy, the afteryears could take for them was that of a romantic, a really - royal extension of the garden and the park. It may be, of course, above - all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of - stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches. The - change was actually like the spring of a beast. - </p> - <p> - In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, gave - me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, teatime - and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final retirement, a - small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this hour was the - thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all when, as the - light faded—or rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last - calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees—I - could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of - property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity of the - place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself tranquil and - justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my discretion, my - quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving pleasure—if - he ever thought of it!—to the person to whose pressure I had - responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and directly - asked of me, and that I COULD, after all, do it proved even a greater joy - than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable - young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly - appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable - things that presently gave their first sign. - </p> - <p> - It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children - were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts - that, as I don’t in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me - in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story - suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path - and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask more than - that—I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure - he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome - face. That was exactly present to me—by which I mean the face was—when, - on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped - short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the - house. What arrested me on the spot—and with a shock much greater - than any vision had allowed for—was the sense that my imagination - had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!—but high up, - beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first - morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of a pair—square, - incongruous, crenelated structures—that were distinguished, for some - reason, though I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They - flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural - absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged - nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, - from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I admired - them, had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, - especially when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their - actual battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I - had so often invoked seemed most in place. - </p> - <p> - It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two - distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first and - that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of the - mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person I had - precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of - which, after these years, there is no living view that I can hope to give. - An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young - woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me was—a few more - seconds assured me—as little anyone else I knew as it was the image - that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley Street—I had - not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the - world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance, become - a solitude. To me at least, making my statement here with a deliberation - with which I have never made it, the whole feeling of the moment returns. - It was as if, while I took in—what I did take in—all the rest - of the scene had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write, - the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped - cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all - its voice. But there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were - a change that I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the - sky, the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the - battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame. That’s how I thought, - with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and - that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long enough - for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an - effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants more became - intense. - </p> - <p> - The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard to - certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, this - matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught at a - dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the better, that - I could see, in there having been in the house—and for how long, - above all?—a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I - just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there - should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this - visitant, at all events—and there was a touch of the strange - freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat—seemed - to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny - through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too far - apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at shorter - range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have been the - right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, - the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and with both - hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; - then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly - changed his place—passed, looking at me hard all the while, to the - opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during - this transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment - the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the - next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he turned - away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV - </h2> - <p> - It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was - rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly—a - mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in - unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how - long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my - collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had - quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and - driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three - miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this mere - dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular part of - it, in fact—singular as the rest had been—was the part I - became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes - back to me in the general train—the impression, as I received it on - my return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and - with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of my - friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me - straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved - anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could bear upon - the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected in advance - that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow measured the - importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to - mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd as - this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may say, with the - instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in the - pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn’t - then have phrased, achieved an inward resolution—offered a vague - pretext for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night and - of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible to my room. - </p> - <p> - Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer - affair enough. There were hours, from day to day—or at least there - were moments, snatched even from clear duties—when I had to shut - myself up to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I - could bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the - truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I - could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been so - inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took - little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry and without - exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had suffered must - have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of three days and as - the result of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced upon by - the servants nor made the object of any “game.” Of whatever it was that I - knew, nothing was known around me. There was but one sane inference: - someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I - dipped into my room and locked the door to say to myself. We had been, - collectively, subject to an intrusion; some unscrupulous traveler, curious - in old houses, had made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from - the best point of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me - such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good - thing, after all, was that we should surely see no more of him. - </p> - <p> - This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that - what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming - work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through - nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw myself - into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, - leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the - distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose of my - office. There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so - how could work not be charming that presented itself as daily beauty? It - was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom. I - don’t mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction and verse; I - mean I can express no otherwise the sort of interest my companions - inspired. How can I describe that except by saying that instead of growing - used to them—and it’s a marvel for a governess: I call the - sisterhood to witness!—I made constant fresh discoveries. There was - one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped: deep - obscurity continued to cover the region of the boy’s conduct at school. It - had been promptly given me, I have noted, to face that mystery without a - pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say that—without - a word—he himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge - absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his - innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean - school world, and he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that the - sense of such differences, such superiorities of quality, always, on the - part of the majority—which could include even stupid, sordid - headmasters—turn infallibly to the vindictive. - </p> - <p> - Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it never - made Miles a muff) that kept them—how shall I express it?—almost - impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of - the anecdote, who had—morally, at any rate—nothing to whack! I - remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no - history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this - beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet - extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have - seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second - suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been - chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I should - have caught it by the rebound—I should have found the trace. I found - nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his - school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was - quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under the - spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew - I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I - had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing - letters from home, where things were not going well. But with my children, - what things in the world mattered? That was the question I used to put to - my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness. - </p> - <p> - There was a Sunday—to get on—when it rained with such force - and for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; in - consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose - that, should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the - late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, - which, through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a - matter of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the - hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and - that had received them—with a publicity perhaps not edifying—while - I sat with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in - that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the “grown-up” dining room. - The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. The - day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it - enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on a chair - near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but to become - aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking straight in. - One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was - all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had already - appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater - distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that - represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, - catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same—he was the same, and - seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the - window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going down to - the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, yet the - effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me how intense the - former had been. He remained but a few seconds—long enough to - convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had been - looking at him for years and had known him always. Something, however, - happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, - through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but - it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it fix - successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the added - shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He had come - for someone else. - </p> - <p> - The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in the midst of - dread—produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I - stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because - I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the - door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, - and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner - and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now—my - visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of - this; but I took in the whole scene—I gave him time to reappear. I - call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak to the purpose today of - the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left me: they - couldn’t have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. The terrace - and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of - the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were shrubberies and - big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt that none of them - concealed him. He was there or was not there: not there if I didn’t see - him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I - had come, went to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought - to place myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the - pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, - to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for - himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image - of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my - own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of - the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask - myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on - just MY lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and - that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I - waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take - space to mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V - </h2> - <p> - Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed - again into view. “What in the name of goodness is the matter—?” She - was now flushed and out of breath. - </p> - <p> - I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have made a - wonderful face. “Do I show it?” - </p> - <p> - “You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.” - </p> - <p> - I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My - need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a rustle, - from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I - kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a - little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in the - shy heave of her surprise. “You came for me for church, of course, but I - can’t go.” - </p> - <p> - “Has anything happened?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?” - </p> - <p> - “Through this window? Dreadful!” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened.” Mrs. Grose’s eyes expressed - plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her - place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, it - was quite settled that she MUST share! “Just what you saw from the dining - room a minute ago was the effect of that. What <i>I</i> saw—just - before—was much worse.” - </p> - <p> - Her hand tightened. “What was it?” - </p> - <p> - “An extraordinary man. Looking in.” - </p> - <p> - “What extraordinary man?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t the least idea.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. “Then where is he gone?” - </p> - <p> - “I know still less.” - </p> - <p> - “Have you seen him before?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—once. On the old tower.” - </p> - <p> - She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a stranger?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, very much!” - </p> - <p> - “Yet you didn’t tell me?” - </p> - <p> - “No—for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed—” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I haven’t guessed!” - she said very simply. “How can I if YOU don’t imagine?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t in the very least.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?” - </p> - <p> - “And on this spot just now.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?” - </p> - <p> - “Only standing there and looking down at me.” - </p> - <p> - She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?” - </p> - <p> - I found I had no need to think. “No.” She gazed in deeper wonder. “No.” - </p> - <p> - “Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody—nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.” - </p> - <p> - She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It only - went indeed a little way. “But if he isn’t a gentleman—” - </p> - <p> - “What IS he? He’s a horror.” - </p> - <p> - “A horror?” - </p> - <p> - “He’s—God help me if I know WHAT he is!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier - distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt - inconsequence. “It’s time we should be at church.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m not fit for church!” - </p> - <p> - “Won’t it do you good?” - </p> - <p> - “It won’t do THEM—! I nodded at the house. - </p> - <p> - “The children?” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t leave them now.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re afraid—?” - </p> - <p> - I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of HIM.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the - faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out in - it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that was as - yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought instantly of - this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with - the desire she presently showed to know more. “When was it—on the - tower?” - </p> - <p> - “About the middle of the month. At this same hour.” - </p> - <p> - “Almost at dark,” said Mrs. Grose. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.” - </p> - <p> - “Then how did he get in?” - </p> - <p> - “And how did he get out?” I laughed. “I had no opportunity to ask him! - This evening, you see,” I pursued, “he has not been able to get in.” - </p> - <p> - “He only peeps?” - </p> - <p> - “I hope it will be confined to that!” She had now let go my hand; she - turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: “Go to - church. Goodbye. I must watch.” - </p> - <p> - Slowly she faced me again. “Do you fear for them?” - </p> - <p> - We met in another long look. “Don’t YOU?” Instead of answering she came - nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. - “You see how he could see,” I meanwhile went on. - </p> - <p> - She didn’t move. “How long was he here?” - </p> - <p> - “Till I came out. I came to meet him.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. “<i>I</i> - couldn’t have come out.” - </p> - <p> - “Neither could I!” I laughed again. “But I did come. I have my duty.” - </p> - <p> - “So have I mine,” she replied; after which she added: “What is he like?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody?” she echoed. - </p> - <p> - “He has no hat.” Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with a - deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. - “He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, - with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as - red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly - arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange—awfully; - but I only know clearly that they’re rather small and very fixed. His - mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers - he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an - actor.” - </p> - <p> - “An actor!” It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. - Grose at that moment. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve never seen one, but so I suppose them. He’s tall, active, erect,” I - continued, “but never—no, never!—a gentleman.” - </p> - <p> - My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and - her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, stupefied: “a - gentleman HE?” - </p> - <p> - “You know him then?” - </p> - <p> - She visibly tried to hold herself. “But he IS handsome?” - </p> - <p> - I saw the way to help her. “Remarkably!” - </p> - <p> - “And dressed—?” - </p> - <p> - “In somebody’s clothes.” “They’re smart, but they’re not his own.” - </p> - <p> - She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: “They’re the master’s!” - </p> - <p> - I caught it up. “You DO know him?” - </p> - <p> - She faltered but a second. “Quint!” she cried. - </p> - <p> - “Quint?” - </p> - <p> - “Peter Quint—his own man, his valet, when he was here!” - </p> - <p> - “When the master was?” - </p> - <p> - Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. “He never wore - his hat, but he did wear—well, there were waistcoats missed. They - were both here—last year. Then the master went, and Quint was - alone.” - </p> - <p> - I followed, but halting a little. “Alone?” - </p> - <p> - “Alone with US.” Then, as from a deeper depth, “In charge,” she added. - </p> - <p> - “And what became of him?” - </p> - <p> - She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went, too,” she - brought out at last. - </p> - <p> - “Went where?” - </p> - <p> - Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He died.” - </p> - <p> - “Died?” I almost shrieked. - </p> - <p> - She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter - the wonder of it. “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI - </h2> - <p> - It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together - in presence of what we had now to live with as we could—my dreadful - liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my - companion’s knowledge, henceforth—a knowledge half consternation and - half compassion—of that liability. There had been, this evening, - after the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostrate—there had - been, for either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service - of tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of - mutual challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our - retreating together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to - have everything out. The result of our having everything out was simply to - reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had - seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the - governess was in the governess’s plight; yet she accepted without directly - impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by showing - me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression of the sense - of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has - remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. - </p> - <p> - What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we thought - we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, in spite of - her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I knew at this - hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable of meeting to - shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly sure of what my - honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so compromising a - contract. I was queer company enough—quite as queer as the company I - received; but as I trace over what we went through I see how much common - ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD - steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out, - as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take the air in - the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. Perfectly can I - recall now the particular way strength came to me before we separated for - the night. We had gone over and over every feature of what I had seen. - </p> - <p> - “He was looking for someone else, you say—someone who was not you?” - </p> - <p> - “He was looking for little Miles.” A portentous clearness now possessed - me. “THAT’S whom he was looking for.” - </p> - <p> - “But how do you know?” - </p> - <p> - “I know, I know, I know!” My exaltation grew. “And YOU know, my dear!” - </p> - <p> - She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling as - that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: “What if HE should see him?” - </p> - <p> - “Little Miles? That’s what he wants!” - </p> - <p> - She looked immensely scared again. “The child?” - </p> - <p> - “Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM.” That he might was an - awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; which, - moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically - proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I had - already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself bravely - as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by - surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim and guard the - tranquility of my companions. The children, in especial, I should thus - fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of the last things I said - that night to Mrs. Grose. - </p> - <p> - “It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned—” - </p> - <p> - She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. “His having been here and - the time they were with him?” - </p> - <p> - “The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, in - any way.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or knew.” - </p> - <p> - “The circumstances of his death?” I thought with some intensity. “Perhaps - not. But Miles would remember—Miles would know.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, don’t try him!” broke from Mrs. Grose. - </p> - <p> - I returned her the look she had given me. “Don’t be afraid.” I continued - to think. “It IS rather odd.” - </p> - <p> - “That he has never spoken of him?” - </p> - <p> - “Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were ‘great friends’?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it wasn’t HIM!” Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. “It was Quint’s - own fancy. To play with him, I mean—to spoil him.” She paused a - moment; then she added: “Quint was much too free.” - </p> - <p> - This gave me, straight from my vision of his face—SUCH a face!—a - sudden sickness of disgust. “Too free with MY boy?” - </p> - <p> - “Too free with everyone!” - </p> - <p> - I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by the - reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of the - household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our small - colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the lucky fact - that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, had ever, - within anyone’s memory attached to the kind old place. It had neither bad - name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only desired to cling - to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the very last thing of all, - to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom - door to take leave. “I have it from you then—for it’s of great - importance—that he was definitely and admittedly bad?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, not admittedly. <i>I</i> knew it—but the master didn’t.” - </p> - <p> - “And you never told him?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing—he hated complaints. He was - terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to - HIM—” - </p> - <p> - “He wouldn’t be bothered with more?” This squared well enough with my - impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very - particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept. All the same, I - pressed my interlocutress. “I promise you <i>I</i> would have told!” - </p> - <p> - She felt my discrimination. “I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was - afraid.” - </p> - <p> - “Afraid of what?” - </p> - <p> - “Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever—he was so deep.” - </p> - <p> - I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. “You weren’t afraid of - anything else? Not of his effect—?” - </p> - <p> - “His effect?” she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I - faltered. - </p> - <p> - “On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.” - </p> - <p> - “No, they were not in mine!” she roundly and distressfully returned. “The - master believed in him and placed him here because he was supposed not to - be well and the country air so good for him. So he had everything to say. - Yes”—she let me have it—“even about THEM.” - </p> - <p> - “Them—that creature?” I had to smother a kind of howl. “And you - could bear it!” - </p> - <p> - “No. I couldn’t—and I can’t now!” And the poor woman burst into - tears. - </p> - <p> - A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; - yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together to - the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, in the - immediate later hours in especial—for it may be imagined whether I - slept—still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told - me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had - kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a - failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems - to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow’s sun was high I - had restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the meaning they - were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave - me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man—the dead - one would keep awhile!—and of the months he had continuously passed - at Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil - time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint - was found, by a laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road from - the village: a catastrophe explained—superficially at least—by - a visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced—and - as, on the final evidence, HAD been—by a fatal slip, in the dark and - after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path - altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn - mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much—practically, in - the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but - there had been matters in his life—strange passages and perils, - secret disorders, vices more than suspected—that would have - accounted for a good deal more. - </p> - <p> - I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible - picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to - find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded of - me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and difficult; - and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen—oh, in the - right quarter!—that I could succeed where many another girl might - have failed. It was an immense help to me—I confess I rather applaud - myself as I look back!—that I saw my service so strongly and so - simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the - world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose - helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache - of one’s own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were - united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I—well, I had - THEM. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself - to me in an image richly material. I was a screen—I was to stand - before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in - a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it - continued too long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, - as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn’t - last as suspense—it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I - say, yes—from the moment I really took hold. - </p> - <p> - This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the - grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, on - the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and - I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose - only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the - contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with her half an - hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the day - exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how, like - her brother, she contrived—it was the charming thing in both - children—to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to - accompany me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate - and yet never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing - them amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they - seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I - walked in a world of their invention—they had no occasion whatever - to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, - some remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and - that was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and - highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present - occasion; I only remember that I was something very important and very - quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the - lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. - </p> - <p> - Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other side - of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge - gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world—the strangest, - that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly merged itself. - I had sat down with a piece of work—for I was something or other - that could sit—on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and - in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without direct - vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. The old trees, the - thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, but it was all suffused - with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There was no ambiguity in - anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction I from one moment to - another found myself forming as to what I should see straight before me - and across the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were - attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I - can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till I should - so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There - was an alien object in view—a figure whose right of presence I - instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly - the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for - instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even - of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman’s boy, from the village. That - reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still - even without looking—of its having upon the character and attitude - of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things should be - the other things that they absolutely were not. - </p> - <p> - Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon - as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second; - meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my - eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards - away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the wonder and terror - of the question whether she too would see; and I held my breath while I - waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden innocent sign either of - interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, but nothing came; then, in - the first place—and there is something more dire in this, I feel, - than in anything I have to relate—I was determined by a sense that, - within a minute, all sounds from her had previously dropped; and, in the - second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute, she had, in her - play, turned her back to the water. This was her attitude when I at last - looked at her—looked with the confirmed conviction that we were - still, together, under direct personal notice. She had picked up a small - flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it a little hole that had - evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that - might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I - watched her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in - its place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that - after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my - eyes—I faced what I had to face. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII - </h2> - <p> - I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no - intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear - myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: “They KNOW—it’s - too monstrous: they know, they know!” - </p> - <p> - “And what on earth—?” I felt her incredulity as she held me. - </p> - <p> - “Why, all that WE know—and heaven knows what else besides!” Then, as - she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with - full coherency even to myself. “Two hours ago, in the garden”—I - could scarce articulate—“Flora SAW!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She has - told you?” she panted. - </p> - <p> - “Not a word—that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of - eight, THAT child!” Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of it. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. “Then how do you know?” - </p> - <p> - “I was there—I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean aware of HIM?” - </p> - <p> - “No—of HER.” I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious - things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion’s face. - “Another person—this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable - horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful—with such an - air also, and such a face!—on the other side of the lake. I was - there with the child—quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she - came.” - </p> - <p> - “Came how—from where?” - </p> - <p> - “From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there—but - not so near.” - </p> - <p> - “And without coming nearer?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!” - </p> - <p> - My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone you’ve - never seen?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have.” Then, to show how I - had thought it all out: “My predecessor—the one who died.” - </p> - <p> - “Miss Jessel?” - </p> - <p> - “Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?” I pressed. - </p> - <p> - She turned right and left in her distress. “How can you be sure?” - </p> - <p> - This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. “Then - ask Flora—SHE’S sure!” But I had no sooner spoken than I caught - myself up. “No, for God’s sake, DON’T! She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll - lie!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. “Ah, how CAN - you?” - </p> - <p> - “Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s only then to spare you.” - </p> - <p> - “No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I - see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I - DON’T see—what I DON’T fear!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. “You mean you’re afraid of seeing her - again?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no; that’s nothing—now!” Then I explained. “It’s of NOT seeing - her.” - </p> - <p> - But my companion only looked wan. “I don’t understand you.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, it’s that the child may keep it up—and that the child - assuredly WILL—without my knowing it.” - </p> - <p> - At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet - presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force of - the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to give - way to. “Dear, dear—we must keep our heads! And after all, if she - doesn’t mind it—!” She even tried a grim joke. “Perhaps she likes - it!” - </p> - <p> - “Likes SUCH things—a scrap of an infant!” - </p> - <p> - “Isn’t it just a proof of her blessed innocence?” my friend bravely - inquired. - </p> - <p> - She brought me, for the instant, almost round. “Oh, we must clutch at THAT—we - must cling to it! If it isn’t a proof of what you say, it’s a proof of—God - knows what! For the woman’s a horror of horrors.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last - raising them, “Tell me how you know,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “Then you admit it’s what she was?” I cried. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me how you know,” my friend simply repeated. - </p> - <p> - “Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.” - </p> - <p> - “At you, do you mean—so wickedly?” - </p> - <p> - “Dear me, no—I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. - She only fixed the child.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose tried to see it. “Fixed her?” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, with such awful eyes!” - </p> - <p> - She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. “Do you - mean of dislike?” - </p> - <p> - “God help us, no. Of something much worse.” - </p> - <p> - “Worse than dislike?”—this left her indeed at a loss. - </p> - <p> - “With a determination—indescribable. With a kind of fury of - intention.” - </p> - <p> - I made her turn pale. “Intention?” - </p> - <p> - “To get hold of her.” Mrs. Grose—her eyes just lingering on mine—gave - a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out - I completed my statement. “THAT’S what Flora knows.” - </p> - <p> - After a little she turned round. “The person was in black, you say?” - </p> - <p> - “In mourning—rather poor, almost shabby. But—yes—with - extraordinary beauty.” I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by - stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed - this. “Oh, handsome—very, very,” I insisted; “wonderfully handsome. - But infamous.” - </p> - <p> - She slowly came back to me. “Miss Jessel—WAS infamous.” She once - more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me - against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. “They - were both infamous,” she finally said. - </p> - <p> - So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely a - degree of help in seeing it now so straight. “I appreciate,” I said, “the - great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has - certainly come to give me the whole thing.” She appeared to assent to - this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: “I must have it - now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them.” - </p> - <p> - “There was everything.” - </p> - <p> - “In spite of the difference—?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, of their rank, their condition”—she brought it woefully out. - “SHE was a lady.” - </p> - <p> - I turned it over; I again saw. “Yes—she was a lady.” - </p> - <p> - “And he so dreadfully below,” said Mrs. Grose. - </p> - <p> - I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such company, on the - place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an - acceptance of my companion’s own measure of my predecessor’s abasement. - There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my - full vision—on the evidence—of our employer’s late clever, - good-looking “own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. “The fellow - was a hound.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense of - shades. “I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he wished.” - </p> - <p> - “With HER?” - </p> - <p> - “With them all.” - </p> - <p> - It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. I - seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as - distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision: - “It must have been also what SHE wished!” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the - same time: “Poor woman—she paid for it!” - </p> - <p> - “Then you do know what she died of?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “No—I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I - didn’t; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!” - </p> - <p> - “Yet you had, then, your idea—” - </p> - <p> - “Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes—as to that. She couldn’t - have stayed. Fancy it here—for a governess! And afterward I imagined—and - I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.” - </p> - <p> - “Not so dreadful as what <i>I</i> do,” I replied; on which I must have - shown her—as I was indeed but too conscious—a front of - miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at - the renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, - as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her - motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!” I sobbed - in despair; “I don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I dreamed—they’re - lost!” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII - </h2> - <p> - What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter I - had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution to - sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a - common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were - to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else—difficult indeed as - that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was least - to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had another - talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its being beyond - doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her perfectly in - the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I had “made it - up,” I came to be able to give, of each of the persons appearing to me, a - picture disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks—a - portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized and named - them. She wished of course—small blame to her!—to sink the - whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own interest in it - had now violently taken the form of a search for the way to escape from - it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that with recurrence—for - recurrence we took for granted—I should get used to my danger, - distinctly professing that my personal exposure had suddenly become the - least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and - yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought a - little ease. - </p> - <p> - On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my - pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of - their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively - cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, - plunged afresh into Flora’s special society and there become aware—it - was almost a luxury!—that she could put her little conscious hand - straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet - speculation and then had accused me to my face of having “cried.” I had - supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally—for - the time, at all events—rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that - they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of the - child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning - was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally - preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. I - couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose—as - I did there, over and over, in the small hours—that with their - voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant faces - against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity - and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for - all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the - afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. - It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the certitude of the moment - itself and repeat how it had come to me as a revelation that the - inconceivable communion I then surprised was a matter, for either party, - of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again the - reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the - little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, - and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me - suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive - at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once - more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to - divert my attention—the perceptible increase of movement, the - greater intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the - invitation to romp. - </p> - <p> - Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this - review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort that - still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to - asseverate to my friend that I was certain—which was so much to the - good—that <i>I</i> at least had not betrayed myself. I should not - have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind—I - scarce know what to call it—to invoke such further aid to - intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. - She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small - shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow - like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion—for the - sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch - seemed to help—I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the - curtain. “I don’t believe anything so horrible,” I recollect saying; “no, - let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I did, you know, - there’s a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least - bit more—oh, not a scrap, come!—to get out of you. What was it - you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the - letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn’t - pretend for him that he had not literally EVER been ‘bad’? He has NOT - literally ‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so - closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of - delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the - claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. - What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation - of him did you refer?” - </p> - <p> - It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, at - any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got my - answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the - purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a - period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. - It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to - criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an - alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss - Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested her to mind - her business, and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little - Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that SHE liked to - see young gentlemen not forget their station. - </p> - <p> - I pressed again, of course, at this. “You reminded him that Quint was only - a base menial?” - </p> - <p> - “As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad.” - </p> - <p> - “And for another thing?” I waited. “He repeated your words to Quint?” - </p> - <p> - “No, not that. It’s just what he WOULDN’T!” she could still impress upon - me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, “that he didn’t. But he denied - certain occasions.” - </p> - <p> - “What occasions?” - </p> - <p> - “When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor—and - a very grand one—and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he - had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.” - </p> - <p> - “He then prevaricated about it—he said he hadn’t?” Her assent was - clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He lied.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn’t matter; - which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You see, after all, Miss - Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid him.” - </p> - <p> - I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification?” - </p> - <p> - At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke of it.” - </p> - <p> - “Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?” - </p> - <p> - She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t show - anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.” - </p> - <p> - Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was - between the two wretches?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know—I don’t know!” the poor woman groaned. - </p> - <p> - “You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful - boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and - delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without my - aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. But I - shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that suggested - to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed their relation.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he couldn’t prevent—” - </p> - <p> - “Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with - vehemence, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, have - succeeded in making of him!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, nothing that’s not nice NOW!” Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I mentioned to you - the letter from his school!” - </p> - <p> - “I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely force. - “And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, indeed—and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well,” - I said in my torment, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be - able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a - way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must not - for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first example—the - one to which she had just previously referred—of the boy’s happy - capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint—on your remonstrance at - the time you speak of—was a base menial, one of the things Miles - said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.” Again her - admission was so adequate that I continued: “And you forgave him that?” - </p> - <p> - “Wouldn’t YOU?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the oddest - amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the man—” - </p> - <p> - “Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!” - </p> - <p> - It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited - exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding - myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of - this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be - offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. “His having - lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had - hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. - Still,” I mused, “They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that - I must watch.” - </p> - <p> - It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face how much - more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as - presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, - at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse HIM—” - </p> - <p> - “Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember - that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.” Then, before shutting - her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, “I must just wait,” I - wound up. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IX - </h2> - <p> - I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from my - consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant sight of - my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies - and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken - of the surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could - actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address - myself to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I can - express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my new lights; it - would doubtless have been, however, a greater tension still had it not - been so frequently successful. I used to wonder how my little charges - could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the - circumstances that these things only made them more interesting was not by - itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they - should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting. Putting things at - the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of - their innocence could only be—blameless and foredoomed as they were—a - reason the more for taking risks. There were moments when, by an - irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to - my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: “What will - they think of that? Doesn’t it betray too much?” It would have been easy - to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real - account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that - the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective - even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it - occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little - outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I - mightn’t see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own - demonstrations. - </p> - <p> - They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; - which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response in - children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they were - so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never - appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in - it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their poor - protectress; I mean—though they got their lessons better and better, - which was naturally what would please her most—in the way of - diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling her - stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as - animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the - “pieces” they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. I - should never get to the bottom—were I to let myself go even now—of - the prodigious private commentary, all under still more private - correction, with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They - had shown me from the first a facility for everything, a general faculty - which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their - little tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance - of the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not - only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, - astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had - presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, I am - at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural composure - on the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember is that I was - content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment must - have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. - He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson’s daughter, to spoil; - and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery I - just spoke of was the impression I might have got, if I had dared to work - it out, that he was under some influence operating in his small - intellectual life as a tremendous incitement. - </p> - <p> - If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone school, - it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been “kicked out” by - a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me add that in their - company now—and I was careful almost never to be out of it—I - could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music and love and - success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each of the children - was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a marvelous knack of - catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano broke into all gruesome - fancies; and when that failed there were confabulations in corners, with a - sequel of one of them going out in the highest spirits in order to “come - in” as something new. I had had brothers myself, and it was no revelation - to me that little girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What - surpassed everything was that there was a little boy in the world who - could have for the inferior age, sex, and intelligence so fine a - consideration. They were extraordinarily at one, and to say that they - never either quarreled or complained is to make the note of praise coarse - for their quality of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into - coarseness, I perhaps came across traces of little understandings between - them by which one of them should keep me occupied while the other slipped - away. There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils - practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all - in the other quarter that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - </p> - <p> - I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on - with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the most - liberal faith—for which I little care; but—and this is another - matter—I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through - it to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, - the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at - least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless - to advance. One evening—with nothing to lead up or to prepare it—I - felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of - my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should - probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been less - agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. - There was a roomful of old books at Bly—last-century fiction, some - of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, but never - to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached the sequestered home - and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I remember that the - book I had in my hand was Fielding’s Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. - I recall further both a general conviction that it was horribly late and a - particular objection to looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the - white curtain draping, in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora’s - little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, the perfection - of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though I was deeply - interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a page and with - his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard at the door - of my room. There was a moment during which I listened, reminded of the - faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being something - undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of the open - casement just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all the marks of a - deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had there been anyone to - admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, - went straight out of the room and, from the passage, on which my light - made little impression, noiselessly closed and locked the door. - </p> - <p> - I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went - straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within sight - of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the staircase. At - this point I precipitately found myself aware of three things. They were - practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. My candle, - under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the uncovered window, - that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. - Without it, the next instant, I saw that there was someone on the stair. I - speak of sequences, but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself - for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing - halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, where at - sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from - the tower and from the garden. He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, - in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass and another - on the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each other in our common - intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, - dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this - distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread - had unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that - didn’t meet and measure him. - </p> - <p> - I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, thank - God, no terror. And he knew I had not—I found myself at the end of - an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of - confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease—for - the time, at least—to have him to reckon with; and during the - minute, accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real - interview: hideous just because it WAS human, as human as to have met - alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some - adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at - such close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only - note of the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such - an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, - in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. - The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to - make me doubt if even <i>I</i> were in life. I can’t express what followed - it save by saying that the silence itself—which was indeed in a - manner an attestation of my strength—became the element into which I - saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might - have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of - an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch - could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into the - darkness in which the next bend was lost. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - X - </h2> - <p> - I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently - of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: then I - returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the - candle I had left burning was that Flora’s little bed was empty; and on - this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, I - had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her - lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were - disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then - my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I - perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, ducking down, - emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of - her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and the - golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had never had - such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just - been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she addressed me with a - reproach. “You naughty: where HAVE you been?”—instead of challenging - her own irregularity I found myself arraigned and explaining. She herself - explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She - had known suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had - jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her - reappearance, back into my chair—feeling then, and then only, a - little faint; and she had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself - upon my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the candle full - in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember - closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess - of something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You were - looking for me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I might be walking - in the grounds?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you know, I thought someone was”—she never blanched as she - smiled out that at me. - </p> - <p> - Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, NO!” she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish - inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little - drawl of the negative. - </p> - <p> - At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she lied; - and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or - four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, for a - moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand it, I - must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, she - submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out at her - on the spot and have it all over?—give it to her straight in her - lovely little lighted face? “You see, you see, you KNOW that you do and - that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly - confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it together and learn - perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what it means?” - This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came: if I could immediately have - succumbed to it I might have spared myself—well, you’ll see what. - Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and - took a helpless middle way. “Why did you pull the curtain over the place - to make me think you were still there?” - </p> - <p> - Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: - “Because I don’t like to frighten you!” - </p> - <p> - “But if I had, by your idea, gone out—?” - </p> - <p> - She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame of - the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as - impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. “Oh, but you know,” she - quite adequately answered, “that you might come back, you dear, and that - you HAVE!” And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a - long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I - recognized the pertinence of my return. - </p> - <p> - You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. I - repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I selected moments when my - roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in - the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I - never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no - other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, on - the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from the top I once - recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps with - her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and her head, in an attitude - of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an instant, however, when she - vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what - dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being - above I had been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I - had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for - nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman—they - were all numbered now—I had an alarm that perilously skirted it and - that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved - quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during this - series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again without - laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I - afterward knew, till about one o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit - straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a - light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that - Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the - darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the window - enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed the picture. - </p> - <p> - The child had again got up—this time blowing out the taper, and had - again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind the - blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw—as she - had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time—was proved to me - by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the - haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, - absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill—the casement opened - forward—and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help - her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face - with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate with - it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to care - for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some other - window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing me; I - got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for some - sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her - brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, - produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke of as - my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to HIS window?—what - if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I - should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter of my - boldness? - </p> - <p> - This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and - pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might - portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were - secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my - impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; - I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds—a figure prowling - for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it was not the - visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but on other - grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. There were - empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the right one. - The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one—though - high above the gardens—in the solid corner of the house that I have - spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square chamber, arranged - with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of which made it so - inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in - exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way - about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the first chill gloom of - its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the - shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound - and, applying my face to the pane, was able, the darkness without being - much less than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I - saw something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and - showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood there - motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared—looking, - that is, not so much straight at me as at something that was apparently - above me. There was clearly another person above me—there was a - person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least - what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on - the lawn—I felt sick as I made it out—was poor little Miles - himself. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XI - </h2> - <p> - It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with - which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet her - privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not provoking—on - the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the children—any - suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries. I drew - a great security in this particular from her mere smooth aspect. There was - nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others my horrible confidences. - She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if she hadn’t I don’t know what - would have become of me, for I couldn’t have borne the business alone. But - she was a magnificent monument to the blessing of a want of imagination, - and if she could see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and - amiability, their happiness and cleverness, she had no direct - communication with the sources of my trouble. If they had been at all - visibly blighted or battered, she would doubtless have grown, on tracing - it back, haggard enough to match them; as matters stood, however, I could - feel her, when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded and the - habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord’s mercy that if they - were ruined the pieces would still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in - her mind, to a steady fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive - how, with the development of the conviction that—as time went on - without a public accident—our young things could, after all, look - out for themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case - presented by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound - simplification: I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no - tales, but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain - to find myself anxious about hers. - </p> - <p> - At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the - terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now - agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, but - within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one of their - most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the - lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing - his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched - them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed intellectual - creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me a view of the - back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but - there was an odd recognition of my superiority—my accomplishments - and my function—in her patience under my pain. She offered her mind - to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch’s broth and proposed it - with assurance, she would have held out a large clean saucepan. This had - become thoroughly her attitude by the time that, in my recital of the - events of the night, I reached the point of what Miles had said to me - when, after seeing him, at such a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot - where he happened now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing - then, at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming the house, - rather that method than a signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile - in little doubt of my small hope of representing with success even to her - actual sympathy my sense of the real splendor of the little inspiration - with which, after I had got him into the house, the boy met my final - articulate challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the - terrace, he had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken - his hand without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the - staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along the lobby - where I had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. - </p> - <p> - Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered—oh, - HOW I had wondered!—if he were groping about in his little mind for - something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, - certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious - thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn’t - play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? - There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an - equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce <i>I</i> should. I was confronted at - last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding my own - horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed into his little chamber, - where the bed had not been slept in at all and the window, uncovered to - the moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no need of striking - a match—I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank upon the edge of the - bed from the force of the idea that he must know how he really, as they - say, “had” me. He could do what he liked, with all his cleverness to help - him, so long as I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the - criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions - and fears. He “had” me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever - absolve me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest - tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect - intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to - convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to suggest - here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with - admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet - had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those - with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well under - fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to him. - </p> - <p> - “You must tell me now—and all the truth. What did you go out for? - What were you doing there?” - </p> - <p> - I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, and - the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. “If I tell you - why, will you understand?” My heart, at this, leaped into my mouth. WOULD - he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, and I was aware - of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness - itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood there more than ever a - little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed that gave me a respite. - Would it be so great if he were really going to tell me? “Well,” he said - at last, “just exactly in order that you should do this.” - </p> - <p> - “Do what?” - </p> - <p> - “Think me—for a change—BAD!” I shall never forget the - sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top - of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of - everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a - minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given - exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, - and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as - I presently glanced about the room, I could say— - </p> - <p> - “Then you didn’t undress at all?” - </p> - <p> - He fairly glittered in the gloom. “Not at all. I sat up and read.” - </p> - <p> - “And when did you go down?” - </p> - <p> - “At midnight. When I’m bad I AM bad!” - </p> - <p> - “I see, I see—it’s charming. But how could you be sure I would know - it?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I arranged that with Flora.” His answers rang out with a readiness! - “She was to get up and look out.” - </p> - <p> - “Which is what she did do.” It was I who fell into the trap! - </p> - <p> - “So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also - looked—you saw.” - </p> - <p> - “While you,” I concurred, “caught your death in the night air!” - </p> - <p> - He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly - to assent. “How otherwise should I have been bad enough?” he asked. Then, - after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my - recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had - been able to draw upon. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XII - </h2> - <p> - The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I - repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I - reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made - before we separated. “It all lies in half a dozen words,” I said to her, - “words that really settle the matter. ‘Think, you know, what I MIGHT do!’ - He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to the ground - what he ‘might’ do. That’s what he gave them a taste of at school.” - </p> - <p> - “Lord, you do change!” cried my friend. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t change—I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, - perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with - either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I’ve watched and - waited the more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make it sure - it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a slip of - the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old friends, - any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, we may sit here - and look at them, and they may show off to us there to their fill; but - even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale they’re steeped in - their vision of the dead restored. He’s not reading to her,” I declared; - “they’re talking of THEM—they’re talking horrors! I go on, I know, - as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder I’m not. What I’ve seen would have - made YOU so; but it has only made me more lucid, made me get hold of still - other things.” - </p> - <p> - My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were - victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave - my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held as, - without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still with - her eyes. “Of what other things have you got hold?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at - bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their more - than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It’s a game,” I - went on; “it’s a policy and a fraud!” - </p> - <p> - “On the part of little darlings—?” - </p> - <p> - “As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!” The very act of - bringing it out really helped me to trace it—follow it all up and - piece it all together. “They haven’t been good—they’ve only been - absent. It has been easy to live with them, because they’re simply leading - a life of their own. They’re not mine—they’re not ours. They’re his - and they’re hers!” - </p> - <p> - “Quint’s and that woman’s?” - </p> - <p> - “Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.” - </p> - <p> - Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! “But for what?” - </p> - <p> - “For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put - into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of - demons, is what brings the others back.” - </p> - <p> - “Laws!” said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but - it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad time—for - there had been a worse even than this!—must have occurred. There - could have been no such justification for me as the plain assent of her - experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our brace of - scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she brought out - after a moment: “They WERE rascals! But what can they now do?” she - pursued. - </p> - <p> - “Do?” I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at their - distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. “Don’t they do - enough?” I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, having smiled and - nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We were held by - it a minute; then I answered: “They can destroy them!” At this my - companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent one, the - effect of which was to make me more explicit. “They don’t know, as yet, - quite how—but they’re trying hard. They’re seen only across, as it - were, and beyond—in strange places and on high places, the top of - towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further edge of - pools; but there’s a deep design, on either side, to shorten the distance - and overcome the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is only a - question of time. They’ve only to keep to their suggestions of danger.” - </p> - <p> - “For the children to come?” - </p> - <p> - “And perish in the attempt!” Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I scrupulously - added: “Unless, of course, we can prevent!” - </p> - <p> - Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned things - over. “Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them away.” - </p> - <p> - “And who’s to make him?” - </p> - <p> - She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish - face. “You, miss.” - </p> - <p> - “By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and - niece mad?” - </p> - <p> - “But if they ARE, miss?” - </p> - <p> - “And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be sent him by a - governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. “Yes, he do hate - worry. That was the great reason—” - </p> - <p> - “Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his indifference - must have been awful. As I’m not a fiend, at any rate, I shouldn’t take - him in.” - </p> - <p> - My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and - grasped my arm. “Make him at any rate come to you.” - </p> - <p> - I stared. “To ME?” I had a sudden fear of what she might do. “‘Him’?” - </p> - <p> - “He ought to BE here—he ought to help.” - </p> - <p> - I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than ever - yet. “You see me asking him for a visit?” No, with her eyes on my face she - evidently couldn’t. Instead of it even—as a woman reads another—she - could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, his contempt for - the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and for the fine - machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted - charms. She didn’t know—no one knew—how proud I had been to - serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the measure, - I think, of the warning I now gave her. “If you should so lose your head - as to appeal to him for me—” - </p> - <p> - She was really frightened. “Yes, miss?” - </p> - <p> - “I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIII - </h2> - <p> - It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as - much as ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close - quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation - continued a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the - note above all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on - the part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, - my mere infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they were - aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a manner, - for a long time, the air in which we moved. I don’t mean that they had - their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that was not one - of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the - unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and that - so much avoidance could not have been so successfully effected without a - great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if, at moments, we were - perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop short, - turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with - a little bang that made us look at each other—for, like all bangs, - it was something louder than we had intended—the doors we had - indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it - might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of - conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was the question - of the return of the dead in general and of whatever, in especial, might - survive, in memory, of the friends little children had lost. There were - days when I could have sworn that one of them had, with a small invisible - nudge, said to the other: “She thinks she’ll do it this time—but she - WON’T!” To “do it” would have been to indulge for instance—and for - once in a way—in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared - them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for - passages in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them; - they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had - had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of - those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, as - well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of the - furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation of the old - women of our village. There were things enough, taking one with another, - to chatter about, if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go - round. They pulled with an art of their own the strings of my invention - and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought of such occasions - afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched from under cover. It - was in any case over MY life, MY past, and MY friends alone that we could - take anything like our ease—a state of affairs that led them - sometimes without the least pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. - I was invited—with no visible connection—to repeat afresh - Goody Gosling’s celebrated mot or to confirm the details already supplied - as to the cleverness of the vicarage pony. - </p> - <p> - It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different - ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I - have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for me - without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done - something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that second - night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the foot of the - stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, that one had - better not have seen. There was many a corner round which I expected to - come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, - would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, - the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out - half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its - bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the - performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly - states of the air, conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable - impressions of the KIND of ministering moment, that brought back to me, - long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June - evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, - too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him through the window, - looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. I recognized the signs, - the portents—I recognized the moment, the spot. But they remained - unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; if unmolested one - could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in the most extraordinary - fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose - on that horrid scene of Flora’s by the lake—and had perplexed her by - so saying—that it would from that moment distress me much more to - lose my power than to keep it. I had then expressed what was vividly in my - mind: the truth that, whether the children really saw or not—since, - that is, it was not yet definitely proved—I greatly preferred, as a - safeguard, the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very - worst that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was - that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened. Well, my - eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present—a consummation for which - it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty - about that: I would have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in a - proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of my pupils. - </p> - <p> - How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were - times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, - literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they had - visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I not been - deterred by the very chance that such an injury might prove greater than - the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken out. “They’re - here, they’re here, you little wretches,” I would have cried, “and you - can’t deny it now!” The little wretches denied it with all the added - volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just the crystal - depths of which—like the flash of a fish in a stream—the - mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into - me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either - Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest - I watched and who had immediately brought in with him—had - straightway, there, turned it on me—the lovely upward look with - which, from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had - played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion had - scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition of nerves - produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They harassed me so that - sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to rehearse—it - was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed despair—the manner in - which I might come to the point. I approached it from one side and the - other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I always broke down in - the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on my lips, I said to - myself that I should indeed help them to represent something infamous, if, - by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little case of instinctive - delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said to - myself: “THEY have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, - the baseness to speak!” I felt myself crimson and I covered my face with - my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, going on - volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes occurred—I - can call them nothing else—the strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try - for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing to do - with the more or less noise that at the moment we might be engaged in - making and that I could hear through any deepened exhilaration or - quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then it was that the - others, the outsiders, were there. Though they were not angels, they - “passed,” as the French say, causing me, while they stayed, to tremble - with the fear of their addressing to their younger victims some yet more - infernal message or more vivid image than they had thought good enough for - myself. - </p> - <p> - What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, - whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE—things terrible and - unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the - past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill - which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all three, with - repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each time, - almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, through the very - same movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss me - inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to fail—one - or the other—of the precious question that had helped us through - many a peril. “When do you think he WILL come? Don’t you think we OUGHT to - write?”—there was nothing like that inquiry, we found by experience, - for carrying off an awkwardness. “He” of course was their uncle in Harley - Street; and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any - moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have given - less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not - had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other of - some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them—that may have - been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of me; for - the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be - but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his - comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not - to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that their own letters - were but charming literary exercises. They were too beautiful to be - posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this hour. This was a rule - indeed which only added to the satiric effect of my being plied with the - supposition that he might at any moment be among us. It was exactly as if - my charges knew how almost more awkward than anything else that might be - for me. There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all this - more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of - their triumph, I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in - truth have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them! - Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally - have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, - though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst - of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it - came with a rush. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIV - </h2> - <p> - Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side - and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s, well in sight. It - was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; the night - had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp, made - the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of thought that I - should have happened at such a moment to be particularly and very - gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why did they - never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or other had - brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy to my shawl - and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before me, I might have - appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I was like a gaoler - with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all this belonged—I - mean their magnificent little surrender—just to the special array of - the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday by his uncle’s - tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of pretty waistcoats and of - his grand little air, Miles’s whole title to independence, the rights of - his sex and situation, were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly - struck for freedom I should have had nothing to say. I was by the - strangest of chances wondering how I should meet him when the revolution - unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see how, with - the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, - and the catastrophe was precipitated. “Look here, my dear, you know,” he - charmingly said, “when in the world, please, am I going back to school?” - </p> - <p> - Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly as - uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all interlocutors, - but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off intonations as if he - were tossing roses. There was something in them that always made one - “catch,” and I caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as - short as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road. There - was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was perfectly aware - that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do so, he had no need to - look a whit less candid and charming than usual. I could feel in him how - he already, from my at first finding nothing to reply, perceived the - advantage he had gained. I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty - of time, after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive - smile: “You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS—!” - His “my dear” was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have - expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to - inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. - </p> - <p> - But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I remember - that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in the beautiful - face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. “And always - with the same lady?” I returned. - </p> - <p> - He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out between - us. “Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ lady; but, after all, I’m a - fellow, don’t you see? that’s—well, getting on.” - </p> - <p> - I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. “Yes, you’re getting - on.” Oh, but I felt helpless! - </p> - <p> - I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed to - know that and to play with it. “And you can’t say I’ve not been awfully - good, can you?” - </p> - <p> - I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it - would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. “No, I can’t say - that, Miles.” - </p> - <p> - “Except just that one night, you know—!” - </p> - <p> - “That one night?” I couldn’t look as straight as he. - </p> - <p> - “Why, when I went down—went out of the house.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.” - </p> - <p> - “You forget?”—he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish - reproach. “Why, it was to show you I could!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, you could.” - </p> - <p> - “And I can again.” - </p> - <p> - I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits about - me. “Certainly. But you won’t.” - </p> - <p> - “No, not THAT again. It was nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “It was nothing,” I said. “But we must go on.” - </p> - <p> - He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. “Then when AM I - going back?” - </p> - <p> - I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. “Were you very happy - at school?” - </p> - <p> - He just considered. “Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then,” I quavered, “if you’re just as happy here—!” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, but that isn’t everything! Of course YOU know a lot—” - </p> - <p> - “But you hint that you know almost as much?” I risked as he paused. - </p> - <p> - “Not half I want to!” Miles honestly professed. “But it isn’t so much - that.” - </p> - <p> - “What is it, then?” - </p> - <p> - “Well—I want to see more life.” - </p> - <p> - “I see; I see.” We had arrived within sight of the church and of various - persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their way to it and - clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our step; I wanted - to get there before the question between us opened up much further; I - reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he would have to be - silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew and of - the almost spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend my knees. I - seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion to which he was - about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in first when, before we - had even entered the churchyard, he threw out— - </p> - <p> - “I want my own sort!” - </p> - <p> - It literally made me bound forward. “There are not many of your own sort, - Miles!” I laughed. “Unless perhaps dear little Flora!” - </p> - <p> - “You really compare me to a baby girl?” - </p> - <p> - This found me singularly weak. “Don’t you, then, LOVE our sweet Flora?” - </p> - <p> - “If I didn’t—and you, too; if I didn’t—!” he repeated as if - retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, after - we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by the - pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had - passed into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we were, - for the minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the - path from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, if you didn’t—?” - </p> - <p> - He looked, while I waited, at the graves. “Well, you know what!” But he - didn’t move, and he presently produced something that made me drop - straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. “Does my uncle - think what YOU think?” - </p> - <p> - I markedly rested. “How do you know what I think?” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. But I - mean does HE know?” - </p> - <p> - “Know what, Miles?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, the way I’m going on.” - </p> - <p> - I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer - that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it - appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make - that venial. “I don’t think your uncle much cares.” - </p> - <p> - Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can be made - to?” - </p> - <p> - “In what way?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, by his coming down.” - </p> - <p> - “But who’ll get him to come down?” - </p> - <p> - “<i>I</i> will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. - He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off - alone into church. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XV - </h2> - <p> - The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him. - It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this had - somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read into - what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; by the - time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for absence, - the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the - congregation such an example of delay. What I said to myself above all was - that Miles had got something out of me and that the proof of it, for him, - would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out of me that there was - something I was much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make - use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of - having to deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his - dismissal from school, for that was really but the question of the horrors - gathered behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these - things was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired - to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it - that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my - deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to - me: “Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption - of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you a life that’s so - unnatural for a boy.” What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was - concerned with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan. - </p> - <p> - That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked - round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, - with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up nothing, - and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: he - would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make me - sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary on our - talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from - him. As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the sounds - of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might master me, I felt, - completely should I give it the least encouragement. I might easily put an - end to my predicament by getting away altogether. Here was my chance; - there was no one to stop me; I could give the whole thing up—turn my - back and retreat. It was only a question of hurrying again, for a few - preparations, to the house which the attendance at church of so many of - the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, in short, - could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. What was it to get - away if I got away only till dinner? That would be in a couple of hours, - at the end of which—I had the acute prevision—my little pupils - would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in their train. - </p> - <p> - “What DID you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to worry us so—and - take our thoughts off, too, don’t you know?—did you desert us at the - very door?” I couldn’t meet such questions nor, as they asked them, their - false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so exactly what I should have to - meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go. - </p> - <p> - I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came straight - out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps through the - park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up - my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of - the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of - opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get off without - a scene, without a word. My quickness would have to be remarkable, - however, and the question of a conveyance was the great one to settle. - Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember - sinking down at the foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there - on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was - exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just - so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of - women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way - up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were - objects belonging to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door - to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw - I reeled straight back upon my resistance. - </p> - <p> - Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, without - my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush for some - housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who, - availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom - table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the considerable - effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort in the way that, - while her arms rested on the table, her hands with evident weariness - supported her head; but at the moment I took this in I had already become - aware that, in spite of my entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. - Then it was—with the very act of its announcing itself—that - her identity flared up in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had - heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and - detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile - predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; but even as I - fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image passed away. Dark as - midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, - she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at - my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, - indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the - intruder. It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing - her—“You terrible, miserable woman!”—I heard myself break into - a sound that, by the open door, rang through the long passage and the - empty house. She looked at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered - myself and cleared the air. There was nothing in the room the next minute - but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVI - </h2> - <p> - I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked - by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into account - that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and - caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed them, and I was - left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. - Grose’s odd face. I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in - some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would engage to - break down on the first private opportunity. This opportunity came before - tea: I secured five minutes with her in the housekeeper’s room, where, in - the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all - swept and garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the - fire. So I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her - straight chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the “put - away”—of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them—so long - as they were there—of course I promised. But what had happened to - you?” - </p> - <p> - “I only went with you for the walk,” I said. “I had then to come back to - meet a friend.” - </p> - <p> - She showed her surprise. “A friend—YOU?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I have a couple!” I laughed. “But did the children give you a - reason?” - </p> - <p> - “For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it - better. Do you like it better?” - </p> - <p> - My face had made her rueful. “No, I like it worse!” But after an instant I - added: “Did they say why I should like it better?” - </p> - <p> - “No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what she likes!’” - </p> - <p> - “I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?” - </p> - <p> - “Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of course!’—and - I said the same.” - </p> - <p> - I thought a moment. “You were too sweet, too—I can hear you all. But - nonetheless, between Miles and me, it’s now all out.” - </p> - <p> - “All out?” My companion stared. “But what, miss?” - </p> - <p> - “Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came home, my - dear,” I went on, “for a talk with Miss Jessel.” - </p> - <p> - I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in - hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she bravely - blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. - “A talk! Do you mean she spoke?” - </p> - <p> - “It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom.” - </p> - <p> - “And what did she say?” I can hear the good woman still, and the candor of - her stupefaction. - </p> - <p> - “That she suffers the torments—!” - </p> - <p> - It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, - gape. “Do you mean,” she faltered, “—of the lost?” - </p> - <p> - “Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them-” I faltered - myself with the horror of it. - </p> - <p> - But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share them—?” - </p> - <p> - “She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have - fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to - show I was. “As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.” - </p> - <p> - “Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?” - </p> - <p> - “To everything.” - </p> - <p> - “And what do you call ‘everything’?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, sending for their uncle.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, miss, in pity do,” my friend broke out. “ah, but I will, I WILL! I - see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ as I told you, with Miles is that if - he thinks I’m afraid to—and has ideas of what he gains by that—he - shall see he’s mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on - the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I’m to be - reproached with having done nothing again about more school—” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, miss—” my companion pressed me. - </p> - <p> - “Well, there’s that awful reason.” - </p> - <p> - There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was - excusable for being vague. “But—a—which?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, the letter from his old place.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ll show it to the master?” - </p> - <p> - “I ought to have done so on the instant.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no!” said Mrs. Grose with decision. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll put it before him,” I went on inexorably, “that I can’t undertake to - work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled—” - </p> - <p> - “For we’ve never in the least known what!” Mrs. Grose declared. - </p> - <p> - “For wickedness. For what else—when he’s so clever and beautiful and - perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He’s - exquisite—so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole - thing. After all,” I said, “it’s their uncle’s fault. If he left here such - people—!” - </p> - <p> - “He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.” She had - turned quite pale. - </p> - <p> - “Well, you shan’t suffer,” I answered. - </p> - <p> - “The children shan’t!” she emphatically returned. - </p> - <p> - I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. “Then what am I to tell - him?” - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t tell him anything. <i>I</i>’ll tell him.” - </p> - <p> - I measured this. “Do you mean you’ll write—?” Remembering she - couldn’t, I caught myself up. “How do you communicate?” - </p> - <p> - “I tell the bailiff. HE writes.” - </p> - <p> - “And should you like him to write our story?” - </p> - <p> - My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it - made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again - in her eyes. “Ah, miss, YOU write!” - </p> - <p> - “Well—tonight,” I at last answered; and on this we separated. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVII - </h2> - <p> - I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had - changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, - with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank sheet - of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. - Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a - minute at Miles’s door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been - impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I - presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice - tinkled out. “I say, you there—come in.” It was a gaiety in the - gloom! - </p> - <p> - I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very - much at his ease. “Well, what are YOU up to?” he asked with a grace of - sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been - present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was “out.” - </p> - <p> - I stood over him with my candle. “How did you know I was there?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You’re like - a troop of cavalry!” he beautifully laughed. - </p> - <p> - “Then you weren’t asleep?” - </p> - <p> - “Not much! I lie awake and think.” - </p> - <p> - I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held out - his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. “What is - it,” I asked, “that you think of?” - </p> - <p> - “What in the world, my dear, but YOU?” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on that! I had - so far rather you slept.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.” - </p> - <p> - I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. “Of what queer business, - Miles?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!” - </p> - <p> - I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper there - was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. “What do - you mean by all the rest?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you know, you know!” - </p> - <p> - I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and - our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting - his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at - that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. “Certainly you shall go - back to school,” I said, “if it be that that troubles you. But not to the - old place—we must find another, a better. How could I know it did - trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it - at all?” His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made - him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children’s - hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I - possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who - might have helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might help! - “Do you know you’ve never said a word to me about your school—I mean - the old one; never mentioned it in any way?” - </p> - <p> - He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly - gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It wasn’t for - ME to help him—it was for the thing I had met! - </p> - <p> - Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from - him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; so - unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his little - resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence - and consistency. “No, never—from the hour you came back. You’ve - never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the - least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, little - Miles—no, never—have you given me an inkling of anything that - MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I’m in the dark. - Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the first hour - I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life. - You seemed so perfectly to accept the present.” It was extraordinary how - my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might call - the poison of an influence that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in - spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as - an older person—imposed him almost as an intellectual equal. “I - thought you wanted to go on as you are.” - </p> - <p> - It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, - like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. “I - don’t—I don’t. I want to get away.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re tired of Bly?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, no, I like Bly.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then—?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!” - </p> - <p> - I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. - “You want to go to your uncle?” - </p> - <p> - Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the - pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!” - </p> - <p> - I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. “My - dear, I don’t want to get off!” - </p> - <p> - “You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”—he lay - beautifully staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely - settle things.” - </p> - <p> - “If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to - take you quite away.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for? - You’ll have to tell him—about the way you’ve let it all drop: you’ll - have to tell him a tremendous lot!” - </p> - <p> - The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the - instant, to meet him rather more. “And how much will YOU, Miles, have to - tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!” - </p> - <p> - He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?” - </p> - <p> - “The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you. - He can’t send you back—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.” - </p> - <p> - He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; - and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, - the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of - three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed - me now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself - go. I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced - him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles—!” - </p> - <p> - My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with - indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?” - </p> - <p> - “Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?” - </p> - <p> - He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his - hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you—I - told you this morning.” - </p> - <p> - Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?” - </p> - <p> - He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; - then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied. - </p> - <p> - There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me - release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows I - never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn my - back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. “I’ve - just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Well, then, finish it!” - </p> - <p> - I waited a minute. “What happened before?” - </p> - <p> - He gazed up at me again. “Before what?” - </p> - <p> - “Before you came back. And before you went away.” - </p> - <p> - For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What - happened?” - </p> - <p> - It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I caught - for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting consciousness—it - made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once more the chance of - possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you KNEW how I - want to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing but that, and I’d rather - die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—I’d rather die than hurt - a hair of you. Dear little Miles”—oh, I brought it out now even if I - SHOULD go too far—“I just want you to help me to save you!” But I - knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my - appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary - blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room as great as - if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, - high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have - seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of - jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of - darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw - that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. “Why, the - candle’s out!” I then cried. - </p> - <p> - “It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVIII - </h2> - <p> - The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me - quietly: “Have you written, miss?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for the hour—that - my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be - time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village. - Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, - more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to - gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats - of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated, in - higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was - conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to - show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really - lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; there - was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never was a - small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, - a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually - to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view - betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I - constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little - gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark - prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD been opened up to him: all - the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have flowered - into an act. - </p> - <p> - He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after our - early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I - shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul - could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was literally a - charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his - saying outright: “The true knights we love to read about never push an - advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you mean that—to be let - alone yourself and not followed up—you’ll cease to worry and spy - upon me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. Well, I - ‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of time for that. - I do really delight in your society, and I only want to show you that I - contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether I resisted this - appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom. - He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played; and if - there are those who think he had better have been kicking a football I can - only say that I wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that - under his influence I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a - strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, - and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn’t really, in the least, slept: - I had only done something much worse—I had forgotten. Where, all - this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles, he played on a - minute before answering and then could only say: “Why, my dear, how do <i>I</i> - know?”—breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately - after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, - extravagant song. - </p> - <p> - I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before - going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere about - she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that theory, - I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had found her the - evening before, but she met my quick challenge with blank, scared - ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had carried off - both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, for it was the - very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my sight without some - special provision. Of course now indeed she might be with the maids, so - that the immediate thing was to look for her without an air of alarm. This - we promptly arranged between us; but when, ten minutes later and in - pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, it was only to report on - either side that after guarded inquiries we had altogether failed to trace - her. For a minute there, apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, - and I could feel with what high interest my friend returned me all those I - had from the first given her. - </p> - <p> - “She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of the rooms you - haven’t searched.” - </p> - <p> - “No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She has gone out.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?” - </p> - <p> - I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without one?” - </p> - <p> - “She’s with HER?” - </p> - <p> - “She’s with HER!” I declared. “We must find them.” - </p> - <p> - My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment, confronted - with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. She - communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. “And where’s - Master Miles?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, HE’S with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.” - </p> - <p> - “Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I suppose my - tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - </p> - <p> - “The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their plan. - He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off.” - </p> - <p> - “‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - </p> - <p> - “Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for - himself as well. But come!” - </p> - <p> - She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him—?” - </p> - <p> - “So long with Quint? Yes—I don’t mind that now.” - </p> - <p> - She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, and - in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping an - instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” she eagerly - brought out. - </p> - <p> - I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it - up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. - “Luke will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door and - opened it; I was already on the steps. - </p> - <p> - My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early morning - had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to the drive - while she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?” - </p> - <p> - “What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to dress,” I - cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, - upstairs.” - </p> - <p> - “With THEM?” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIX - </h2> - <p> - We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay - rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet of - water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My - acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all - events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection of my - pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat moored there - for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its agitation. The - usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the house, but I had an - intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, she was not near home. - She had not given me the slip for any small adventure, and, since the day - of the very great one that I had shared with her by the pond, I had been - aware, in our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined. This was - why I had now given to Mrs. Grose’s steps so marked a direction—a - direction that made her, when she perceived it, oppose a resistance that - showed me she was freshly mystified. “You’re going to the water, Miss?—you - think she’s IN—?” - </p> - <p> - “She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But what - I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from which, the other day, - we saw together what I told you.” - </p> - <p> - “When she pretended not to see—?” - </p> - <p> - “With that astounding self-possession? I’ve always been sure she wanted to - go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really - TALK of them?” - </p> - <p> - “I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard - them, would simply appall us.” - </p> - <p> - “And if she IS there—” - </p> - <p> - “Yes?” - </p> - <p> - “Then Miss Jessel is?” - </p> - <p> - “Beyond a doubt. You shall see.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, thank you!” my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I - went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, she - was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, might - befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least danger. She - exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the greater part - of the water without a sight of the child. There was no trace of Flora on - that nearer side of the bank where my observation of her had been most - startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some - twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in - shape, had a width so scant compared to its length that, with its ends out - of view, it might have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the - empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion of my friend’s eyes. I knew - what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake. - </p> - <p> - “No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.” - </p> - <p> - My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across the - lake. “Then where is it?” - </p> - <p> - “Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go over, - and then has managed to hide it.” - </p> - <p> - “All alone—that child?” - </p> - <p> - “She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an old, old - woman.” I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, into - the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; then I - pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge formed by - one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for the hither - side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing close to - the water. - </p> - <p> - “But if the boat’s there, where on earth’s SHE?” my colleague anxiously - asked. - </p> - <p> - “That’s exactly what we must learn.” And I started to walk further. - </p> - <p> - “By going all the way round?” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it’s far - enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight over.” - </p> - <p> - “Laws!” cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too much for - her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got halfway - round—a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by a - path choked with overgrowth—I paused to give her breath. I sustained - her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and - this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we - reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed - it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and - was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to - the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. I recognized, - as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the - prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by - this time, too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier - measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and that - brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. Then, “There - she is!” we both exclaimed at once. - </p> - <p> - Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her - performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was to - stoop straight down and pluck—quite as if it were all she was there - for—a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she - had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a - step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently - approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done in - a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to - break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the child to - her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, yielding body. - While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch it—which I did - the more intently when I saw Flora’s face peep at me over our companion’s - shoulder. It was serious now—the flicker had left it; but it - strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the - simplicity of HER relation. Still, all this while, nothing more passed - between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the - ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was that pretexts - were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept the child’s - hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular reticence of - our communion was even more marked in the frank look she launched me. - “I’ll be hanged,” it said, “if <i>I</i>’ll speak!” - </p> - <p> - It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. She - was struck with our bareheaded aspect. “Why, where are your things?” - </p> - <p> - “Where yours are, my dear!” I promptly returned. - </p> - <p> - She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an - answer quite sufficient. “And where’s Miles?” she went on. - </p> - <p> - There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: these - three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn blade, - the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had held high and - full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow in a - deluge. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell ME—” I heard myself say, then - heard the tremor in which it broke. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what?” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I brought - the thing out handsomely. “Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XX - </h2> - <p> - Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much as - I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, been - sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child’s face now received - it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of - glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. - Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence—the shriek of a - creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few seconds, - was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleague’s arm. “She’s - there, she’s there!” - </p> - <p> - Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood - the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now - produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was - there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor - mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for - Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as - that in which I consciously threw out to her—with the sense that, - pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and understand it—an - inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on the spot my friend - and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all the long reach of her - desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This first vividness of - vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, during which Mrs. Grose’s - dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that - she too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the - child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was affected - startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done to find her also - merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course not what I had expected. - Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she would - repress every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my - first glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see - her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance - in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, - turn at ME an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely - new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me—this - was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very - presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that - she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the - immediate need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. - “She’s there, you little unhappy thing—there, there, THERE, and you - see her as well as you see me!” I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose - that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that - description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in - the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a - concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, - of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time—if I - can put the whole thing at all together—more appalled at what I may - properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was - simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, - and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, - at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, - shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. “What a dreadful turn, to be - sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?” - </p> - <p> - I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the - hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted - a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite - thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing - hand. “You don’t see her exactly as WE see?—you mean to say you - don’t now—NOW? She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest - woman, LOOK—!” She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep - groan of negation, repulsion, compassion—the mixture with her pity - of her relief at her exemption—a sense, touching to me even then, - that she would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed - that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly - sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt—I saw—my - livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was - conscious, more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal - with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. - Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there - pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into - breathless reassurance. - </p> - <p> - “She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there—and you never see - nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel—when poor Miss Jessel’s - dead and buried? WE know, don’t we, love?”—and she appealed, - blundering in, to the child. “It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a - joke—and we’ll go home as fast as we can!” - </p> - <p> - Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of - propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as it - were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small - mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me - for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend’s - dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite - vanished. I’ve said it already—she was literally, she was hideously, - hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. “I don’t know what you mean. - I see nobody. I see nothing. I never HAVE. I think you’re cruel. I don’t - like you!” Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a - vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more - closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this - position she produced an almost furious wail. “Take me away, take me away—oh, - take me away from HER!” - </p> - <p> - “From ME?” I panted. - </p> - <p> - “From you—from you!” she cried. - </p> - <p> - Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do - but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without - a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our - voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my - service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some - outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, - in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at - her. “If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone. I’ve - been living with the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed - round me. Of course I’ve lost you: I’ve interfered, and you’ve seen—under - HER dictation”—with which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal - witness—“the easy and perfect way to meet it. I’ve done my best, but - I’ve lost you. Goodbye.” For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, an almost - frantic “Go, go!” before which, in infinite distress, but mutely possessed - of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that - something awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, - by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. - </p> - <p> - Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I - only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous - dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me - understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and - given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long and cried - and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. I got up - and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, - haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult - course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was - gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Flora’s extraordinary - command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I - should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of - arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my return, but, on - the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of - Miles. I saw—I can use no other phrase—so much of him that it - was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at - Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in - spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath - my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an - extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much - as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change - what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to - Flora’s rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, - by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I - indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had - his freedom now—he might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; - and it consisted—in part at least—of his coming in at about - eight o’clock and sitting down with me in silence. On the removal of the - tea things I had blown out the candles and drawn my chair closer: I was - conscious of a mortal coldness and felt as if I should never again be - warm. So, when he appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He - paused a moment by the door as if to look at me; then—as if to share - them—came to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. We - sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXI - </h2> - <p> - Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. - Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly - feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of - extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had for their - subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, governess. It - was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that - she protested—it was conspicuously and passionately against mine. I - was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; the - more that my friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me once - more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of her sense of - the child’s sincerity as against my own. “She persists in denying to you - that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?” - </p> - <p> - My visitor’s trouble, truly, was great. “Ah, miss, it isn’t a matter on - which I can push her! Yet it isn’t either, I must say, as if I much needed - to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like - some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as it - were, her respectability. ‘Miss Jessel indeed—SHE!’ Ah, she’s - ‘respectable,’ the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, I - assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the - others. I DID put my foot in it! She’ll never speak to me again.” - </p> - <p> - Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; then - she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more behind - it. “I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand manner - about it!” - </p> - <p> - “And that manner”—I summed it up—“is practically what’s the - matter with her now!” - </p> - <p> - Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor’s face, and not a little else - besides! “She asks me every three minutes if I think you’re coming in.” - </p> - <p> - “I see—I see.” I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it - out. “Has she said to you since yesterday—except to repudiate her - familiarity with anything so dreadful—a single other word about Miss - Jessel?” - </p> - <p> - “Not one, miss. And of course you know,” my friend added, “I took it from - her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there WAS nobody.” - </p> - <p> - “Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to deal with. - They’ve made them—their two friends, I mean—still cleverer - even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has - now her grievance, and she’ll work it to the end.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She’ll make me out to him the - lowest creature—!” - </p> - <p> - I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose’s face; she looked - for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. “And him who thinks so - well of you!” - </p> - <p> - “He has an odd way—it comes over me now,” I laughed,”—of - proving it! But that doesn’t matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to - get rid of me.” - </p> - <p> - My companion bravely concurred. “Never again to so much as look at you.” - </p> - <p> - “So that what you’ve come to me now for,” I asked, “is to speed me on my - way?” Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. “I’ve a - better idea—the result of my reflections. My going WOULD seem the - right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won’t do. It’s - YOU who must go. You must take Flora.” - </p> - <p> - My visitor, at this, did speculate. “But where in the world—?” - </p> - <p> - “Away from here. Away from THEM. Away, even most of all, now, from me. - Straight to her uncle.” - </p> - <p> - “Only to tell on you—?” - </p> - <p> - “No, not ‘only’! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy.” - </p> - <p> - She was still vague. “And what IS your remedy?” - </p> - <p> - “Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.” - </p> - <p> - She looked at me hard. “Do you think he—?” - </p> - <p> - “Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think - it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as - possible and leave me with him alone.” I was amazed, myself, at the spirit - I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more - disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, she - hesitated. “There’s one thing, of course,” I went on: “they mustn’t, - before she goes, see each other for three seconds.” Then it came over me - that, in spite of Flora’s presumable sequestration from the instant of her - return from the pool, it might already be too late. “Do you mean,” I - anxiously asked, “that they HAVE met?” - </p> - <p> - At this she quite flushed. “Ah, miss, I’m not such a fool as that! If I’ve - been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each time with - one of the maids, and at present, though she’s alone, she’s locked in - safe. And yet—and yet!” There were too many things. - </p> - <p> - “And yet what?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last evening, a new - hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe that—poor - little exquisite wretch!—he wants to speak. Last evening, in the - firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were just - coming.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. - “And did it come?” - </p> - <p> - “No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was without a - breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sister’s - condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the - same,” I continued, “I can’t, if her uncle sees her, consent to his seeing - her brother without my having given the boy—and most of all because - things have got so bad—a little more time.” - </p> - <p> - My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite - understand. “What do you mean by more time?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, a day or two—really to bring it out. He’ll then be on MY side—of - which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only fail, and you - will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival in town, - whatever you may have found possible.” So I put it before her, but she - continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her - aid. “Unless, indeed,” I wound up, “you really want NOT to go.” - </p> - <p> - I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to - me as a pledge. “I’ll go—I’ll go. I’ll go this morning.” - </p> - <p> - I wanted to be very just. “If you SHOULD wish still to wait, I would - engage she shouldn’t see me.” - </p> - <p> - “No, no: it’s the place itself. She must leave it.” She held me a moment - with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. “Your idea’s the right one. I - myself, miss—” - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t stay.” - </p> - <p> - The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. “You mean - that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen—?” - </p> - <p> - She shook her head with dignity. “I’ve HEARD—!” - </p> - <p> - “Heard?” - </p> - <p> - “From that child—horrors! There!” she sighed with tragic relief. “On - my honor, miss, she says things—!” But at this evocation she broke - down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her - do before, gave way to all the grief of it. - </p> - <p> - It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. “Oh, - thank God!” - </p> - <p> - She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. “‘Thank God’?” - </p> - <p> - “It so justifies me!” - </p> - <p> - “It does that, miss!” - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. “She’s so - horrible?” - </p> - <p> - I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.” - </p> - <p> - “And about me?” - </p> - <p> - “About you, miss—since you must have it. It’s beyond everything, for - a young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have picked up—” - </p> - <p> - “The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in with a - laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - </p> - <p> - It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I ought - to also—since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,” - the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my - dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go back.” - </p> - <p> - I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it—!” - </p> - <p> - “How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that: to get her away. - Far from this,” she pursued, “far from THEM-” - </p> - <p> - “She may be different? She may be free?” I seized her almost with joy. - “Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE—” - </p> - <p> - “In such doings?” Her simple description of them required, in the light of - her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole thing - as she had never done. “I believe.” - </p> - <p> - Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might - continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My - support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been in my - early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my honesty, I - would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave of her, - nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. “There’s one thing, of - course—it occurs to me—to remember. My letter, giving the - alarm, will have reached town before you.” - </p> - <p> - I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and how - weary at last it had made her. “Your letter won’t have got there. Your - letter never went.” - </p> - <p> - “What then became of it?” - </p> - <p> - “Goodness knows! Master Miles—” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean HE took it?” I gasped. - </p> - <p> - She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. “I mean that I saw - yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t where you had - put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he - declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it.” We could only - exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. - Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated “You see!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it - and destroyed it.” - </p> - <p> - “And don’t you see anything else?” - </p> - <p> - I faced her a moment with a sad smile. “It strikes me that by this time - your eyes are open even wider than mine.” - </p> - <p> - They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show - it. “I make out now what he must have done at school.” And she gave, in - her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. “He stole!” - </p> - <p> - I turned it over—I tried to be more judicial. “Well—perhaps.” - </p> - <p> - She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. “He stole LETTERS!” - </p> - <p> - She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so I - showed them off as I might. “I hope then it was to more purpose than in - this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday,” I - pursued, “will have given him so scant an advantage—for it contained - only the bare demand for an interview—that he is already much - ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his - mind last evening was precisely the need of confession.” I seemed to - myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. “Leave us, - leave us”—I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. “I’ll get it - out of him. He’ll meet me—he’ll confess. If he confesses, he’s - saved. And if he’s saved—” - </p> - <p> - “Then YOU are?” The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her farewell. - “I’ll save you without him!” she cried as she went. - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXII - </h2> - <p> - Yet it was when she had got off—and I missed her on the spot—that - the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to - find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it - would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with - apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage - containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the - gates. Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, and - for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness, I could - consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still than - I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for the first time, I could - see in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. What had - happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too little of the - explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness of my - colleague’s act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect of which - on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of making it a - positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching the helm that - I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, - that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I - was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, - left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that - manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no - doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it - might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. - </p> - <p> - The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, little - Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no glimpse of - him, but they had tended to make more public the change taking place in - our relation as a consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, - kept me, in Flora’s interest, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of - publicity had of course been fully given by her confinement and departure, - and the change itself was now ushered in by our nonobservance of the - regular custom of the schoolroom. He had already disappeared when, on my - way down, I pushed open his door, and I learned below that he had - breakfasted—in the presence of a couple of the maids—with Mrs. - Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he said, for a stroll; than - which nothing, I reflected, could better have expressed his frank view of - the abrupt transformation of my office. What he would not permit this - office to consist of was yet to be settled: there was a queer relief, at - all events—I mean for myself in especial—in the renouncement - of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it - too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the - absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach - him. It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even - more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to - appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his - true capacity. He had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it - again; as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the - schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the - interval just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from - this moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty - of applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight - home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had - as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - </p> - <p> - To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my - meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so that - I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the - window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my - flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. Here at - present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my - equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my - eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with was, - revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking “nature” - into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous ordeal as a - push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but demanding, - after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw of ordinary - human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than - just this attempt to supply, one’s self, ALL the nature. How could I put - even a little of that article into a suppression of reference to what had - occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make reference without a new - plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had - come to me, and it was so far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, - by the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion. It was - indeed as if he had found even now—as he had so often found at - lessons—still some other delicate way to ease me off. Wasn’t there - light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a - specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?—the fact that - (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it would be - preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one might wrest - from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been given him for - but to save him? Mightn’t one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an - angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face to face in - the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. The roast mutton was - on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. Miles, before he sat - down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets and looked at the - joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment. - But what he presently produced was: “I say, my dear, is she really very - awfully ill?” - </p> - <p> - “Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better. London will - set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take your - mutton.” - </p> - <p> - He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, when - he was established, went on. “Did Bly disagree with her so terribly - suddenly?” - </p> - <p> - “Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on.” - </p> - <p> - “Then why didn’t you get her off before?” - </p> - <p> - “Before what?” - </p> - <p> - “Before she became too ill to travel.” - </p> - <p> - I found myself prompt. “She’s NOT too ill to travel: she only might have - become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The - journey will dissipate the influence”—oh, I was grand!—“and - carry it off.” - </p> - <p> - “I see, I see”—Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to - his repast with the charming little “table manner” that, from the day of - his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever he - had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He was - irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. - He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, - without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while - he felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefest—mine a vain - pretense, and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done - Miles stood again with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me—stood - and looked out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had - seen what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us—as - silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their - wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He - turned round only when the waiter had left us. “Well—so we’re - alone!” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIII - </h2> - <p> - “Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not absolutely. We - shouldn’t like that!” I went on. - </p> - <p> - “No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.” - </p> - <p> - “We have the others—we have indeed the others,” I concurred. - </p> - <p> - “Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in his - pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, do - they?” - </p> - <p> - I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on what you call - ‘much’!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes”—with all accommodation—“everything depends!” On this, - however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his - vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his - forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew - and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of “work,” - behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I - had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as - the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which - I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the - worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a - meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back—none other than the - impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes - to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it - was positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great window were - a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at - any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I - took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted - pane, for something he couldn’t see?—and wasn’t it the first time in - the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very - first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he - watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual - sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange - genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was - almost as if this genius had succumbed. “Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees - with ME!” - </p> - <p> - “You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good - deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,” I went on bravely, - “that you’ve been enjoying yourself.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about—miles and miles - away. I’ve never been so free.” - </p> - <p> - He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with - him. “Well, do you like it?” - </p> - <p> - He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words—“Do YOU?”—more - discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time - to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this - was an impertinence to be softened. “Nothing could be more charming than - the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone together now it’s you - that are alone most. But I hope,” he threw in, “you don’t particularly - mind!” - </p> - <p> - “Having to do with you?” I asked. “My dear child, how can I help minding? - Though I’ve renounced all claim to your company—you’re so beyond me—I - at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?” - </p> - <p> - He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, - struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. “You stay on just - for THAT?” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I - take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your - while. That needn’t surprise you.” My voice trembled so that I felt it - impossible to suppress the shake. “Don’t you remember how I told you, when - I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing - in the world I wouldn’t do for you?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, yes!” He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone to - master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out - through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. “Only - that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!” - </p> - <p> - “It was partly to get you to do something,” I conceded. “But, you know, - you didn’t do it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, yes,” he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, “you wanted - me to tell you something.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know.” - </p> - <p> - “Ah, then, is THAT what you’ve stayed over for?” - </p> - <p> - He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest little - quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to express the effect upon - me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as if what I had - yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. “Well, yes—I may - as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for that.” - </p> - <p> - He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the - assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said - was: “Do you mean now—here?” - </p> - <p> - “There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round him uneasily, - and I had the rare—oh, the queer!—impression of the very first - symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if - he were suddenly afraid of me—which struck me indeed as perhaps the - best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain - to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be - almost grotesque. “You want so to go out again?” - </p> - <p> - “Awfully!” He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery of - it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up his - hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, - even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was - doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what did it consist - of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small - helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of - beautiful intercourse? Wasn’t it base to create for a being so exquisite a - mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a - clearness it couldn’t have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor - eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that - was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters - not daring to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a - little longer suspended and unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles - said—“I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll stay on with - me, and we shall both be all right, and I WILL tell you—I WILL. But - not now.” - </p> - <p> - “Why not now?” - </p> - <p> - My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window in a - silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. Then he - was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, someone - who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. “I have to see Luke.” - </p> - <p> - I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt - proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my - truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, go - to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, - satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request.” - </p> - <p> - He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a little - to bargain. “Very much smaller—?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me”—oh, my work preoccupied - me, and I was offhand!—“if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in - the hall, you took, you know, my letter.” - </p> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> - <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIV - </h2> - <p> - My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that - I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention—a stroke that - at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement - of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for - support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him - with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had - already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a - sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he - had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the glass and - glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his white face of - damnation. It represents but grossly what took place within me at the - sight to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that - no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp of the - ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the - act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy - himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was - that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like - fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised - it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at - arm’s length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish - forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against - the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as - if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - </p> - <p> - “Yes—I took it.” - </p> - <p> - At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I - held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his - little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on - the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have - likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the - prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was such - that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my - flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the - scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that I - might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, of - the child’s unconsciousness, that made me go on. “What did you take it - for?” - </p> - <p> - “To see what you said about me.” - </p> - <p> - “You opened the letter?” - </p> - <p> - “I opened it.” - </p> - <p> - My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s own face, - in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of - uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his sense - was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, - but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did - know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to - the window only to see that the air was clear again and—by my - personal triumph—the influence quenched? There was nothing there. I - felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. “And you - found nothing!”—I let my elation out. - </p> - <p> - He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing, nothing!” I almost shouted in my joy. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated. - </p> - <p> - I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. “So what have you done with it?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve burned it.” - </p> - <p> - “Burned it?” It was now or never. “Is that what you did at school?” - </p> - <p> - Oh, what this brought up! “At school?” - </p> - <p> - “Did you take letters?—or other things?” - </p> - <p> - “Other things?” He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and - that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did - reach him. “Did I STEAL?” - </p> - <p> - I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were - more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it - with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. “Was - it for that you mightn’t go back?” - </p> - <p> - The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. “Did you know - I mightn’t go back?” - </p> - <p> - “I know everything.” - </p> - <p> - He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. “Everything?” - </p> - <p> - “Everything. Therefore DID you—?” But I couldn’t say it again. - </p> - <p> - Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.” - </p> - <p> - My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands—but - it was for pure tenderness—shook him as if to ask him why, if it was - all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. “What then did - you do?” - </p> - <p> - He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, - two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been - standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green - twilight. “Well—I said things.” - </p> - <p> - “Only that?” - </p> - <p> - “They thought it was enough!” - </p> - <p> - “To turn you out for?” - </p> - <p> - Never, truly, had a person “turned out” shown so little to explain it as - this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner - quite detached and almost helpless. “Well, I suppose I oughtn’t.” - </p> - <p> - “But to whom did you say them?” - </p> - <p> - He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped—he had lost it. “I - don’t know!” - </p> - <p> - He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was - indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it - there. But I was infatuated—I was blind with victory, though even - then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was - already that of added separation. “Was it to everyone?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “No; it was only to—” But he gave a sick little headshake. “I don’t - remember their names.” - </p> - <p> - “Were they then so many?” - </p> - <p> - “No—only a few. Those I liked.” - </p> - <p> - Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker - obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the - appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant - confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then on earth - was <i>I</i>? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the - question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he - turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I - suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. “And did - they repeat what you said?” I went on after a moment. - </p> - <p> - He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with - the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his - will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, - of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable - anxiety. “Oh, yes,” he nevertheless replied—“they must have repeated - them. To those THEY liked,” he added. - </p> - <p> - There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. - “And these things came round—?” - </p> - <p> - “To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered very simply. “But I didn’t know - they’d tell.” - </p> - <p> - “The masters? They didn’t—they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.” - </p> - <p> - He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was too - bad.” - </p> - <p> - “Too bad?” - </p> - <p> - “What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.” - </p> - <p> - I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a - speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself - throw off with homely force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next after that - I must have sounded stern enough. “What WERE these things?” - </p> - <p> - My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert - himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and an - irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the - glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous - author of our woe—the white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at - the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the - wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, - from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the perception - that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still to his own - eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax of his dismay - into the very proof of his liberation. “No more, no more, no more!” I - shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my visitant. - </p> - <p> - “Is she HERE?” Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the - direction of my words. Then as his strange “she” staggered me and, with a - gasp, I echoed it, “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he with a sudden fury gave - me back. - </p> - <p> - I seized, stupefied, his supposition—some sequel to what we had done - to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still - than that. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window—straight - before us. It’s THERE—the coward horror, there for the last time!” - </p> - <p> - At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled - dog’s on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, - he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place - and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the - taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. “It’s HE?” - </p> - <p> - I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to - challenge him. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” - </p> - <p> - “Peter Quint—you devil!” His face gave again, round the room, its - convulsed supplication. “WHERE?” - </p> - <p> - They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his - tribute to my devotion. “What does he matter now, my own?—what will - he EVER matter? <i>I</i> have you,” I launched at the beast, “but he has - lost you forever!” Then, for the demonstration of my work, “There, THERE!” - I said to Miles. - </p> - <p> - But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen - but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he - uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with - which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I - caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a passion; - but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. - We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had - stopped. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - -***** This file should be named 209-h.htm or 209-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/209/ - -Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Turn of the Screw - -Author: Henry James - -Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #209] -Release Date: February, 1995 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - - - - -Produced by Judith Boss - - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - -by Henry James - - -[The text is take from the first American appearance of this book.] - - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but -except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve -in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no -comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case -he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I -may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had -gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a -little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the -terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to -sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded -in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation -that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the evening--a -reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. -Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he was -not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to -produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two -nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out -what was in his mind. - -"I quite agree--in regard to Griffin's ghost, or whatever it was--that -its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a -particular touch. But it's not the first occurrence of its charming -kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect -another turn of the screw, what do you say to TWO children--?" - -"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, "that they give two turns! Also -that we want to hear about them." - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to -present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in -his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite too -horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the -thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his -triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: "It's -beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it." - -"For sheer terror?" I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss -how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little -wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!" - -"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, -he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain." - -"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an -instant. Then as he faced us again: "I can't begin. I shall have to send -to town." There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after -which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. "The story's written. It's -in a locked drawer--it has not been out for years. I could write to my -man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it." -It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound this--appeared -almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a thickness -of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a long -silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples -that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree -with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in -question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. "Oh, thank -God, no!" - -"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?" - -"Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE"--he tapped his heart. -"I've never lost it." - -"Then your manuscript--?" - -"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung fire -again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me the -pages in question before she died." They were all listening now, and -of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the -inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also -without irritation. "She was a most charming person, but she was ten -years older than I. She was my sister's governess," he quietly said. -"She was the most agreeable woman I've ever known in her position; -she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this -episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on -my coming down the second summer. I was much there that year--it was a -beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in -the garden--talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh -yes; don't grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think -she liked me, too. If she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. She had -never told anyone. It wasn't simply that she said so, but that I knew -she hadn't. I was sure; I could see. You'll easily judge why when you -hear." - -"Because the thing had been such a scare?" - -He continued to fix me. "You'll easily judge," he repeated: "YOU will." - -I fixed him, too. "I see. She was in love." - -He laughed for the first time. "You ARE acute. Yes, she was in love. -That is, she had been. That came out--she couldn't tell her story -without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of -us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the corner of the -lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. -It wasn't a scene for a shudder; but oh--!" He quitted the fire and -dropped back into his chair. - -"You'll receive the packet Thursday morning?" I inquired. - -"Probably not till the second post." - -"Well then; after dinner--" - -"You'll all meet me here?" He looked us round again. "Isn't anybody -going?" It was almost the tone of hope. - -"Everybody will stay!" - -"_I_ will"--and "_I_ will!" cried the ladies whose departure had been -fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more -light. "Who was it she was in love with?" - -"The story will tell," I took upon myself to reply. - -"Oh, I can't wait for the story!" - -"The story WON'T tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, vulgar way." - -"More's the pity, then. That's the only way I ever understand." - -"Won't YOU tell, Douglas?" somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. "Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. -Good night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly -bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on -the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. "Well, if I don't know who she -was in love with, I know who HE was." - -"She was ten years older," said her husband. - -"Raison de plus--at that age! But it's rather nice, his long reticence." - -"Forty years!" Griffin put in. - -"With this outbreak at last." - -"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tremendous occasion of Thursday -night;" and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of it, we lost -all attention for everything else. The last story, however incomplete -and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook and -"candlestuck," as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first -post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps -just on account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite -let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in -fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes -were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and -indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again -before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the -previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read -us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. -Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, -from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall -presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death--when it was in -sight--committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began -to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The -departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't, of course, thank -heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a -rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with -which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final -auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to -a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up -the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in -possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several -daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking -service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to London, in -trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had already -placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This person -proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley -Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing--this prospective patron -proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a figure as -had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, -anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; -it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, -offhand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and -splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she -afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of -favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived him -as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--saw him all in a glow of high -fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming ways with -women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the -spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his -country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her -immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to -a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military -brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the -strangest of chances for a man in his position--a lone man without the -right sort of experience or a grain of patience--very heavily on his -hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a -series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had done -all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, the -proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them there, -from the first, with the best people he could find to look after them, -parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down -himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward -thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his -own affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, -which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their little -establishment--but below stairs only--an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, -whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been maid -to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting for the time -as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without children of her -own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were plenty of people -to help, but of course the young lady who should go down as governess -would be in supreme authority. She would also have, in holidays, to look -after the small boy, who had been for a term at school--young as he was -to be sent, but what else could be done?--and who, as the holidays were -about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. There had -been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had had the -misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifully--she was a -most respectable person--till her death, the great awkwardness of which -had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. -Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as -she could for Flora; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a -dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise -thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. -"And what did the former governess die of?--of so much respectability?" - -Our friend's answer was prompt. "That will come out. I don't -anticipate." - -"Excuse me--I thought that was just what you ARE doing." - -"In her successor's place," I suggested, "I should have wished to learn -if the office brought with it--" - -"Necessary danger to life?" Douglas completed my thought. "She did wish -to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. -Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was -young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little -company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated--took a couple of -days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded -her modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she -engaged." And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of -the company, moved me to throw in-- - -"The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the -splendid young man. She succumbed to it." - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave -a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. -"She saw him only twice." - -"Yes, but that's just the beauty of her passion." - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. "It WAS -the beauty of it. There were others," he went on, "who hadn't succumbed. -He told her frankly all his difficulty--that for several applicants the -conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, simply afraid. It -sounded dull--it sounded strange; and all the more so because of his -main condition." - -"Which was--?" - -"That she should never trouble him--but never, never: neither appeal -nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, -receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let -him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, -for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for -the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded." - -"But was that all her reward?" one of the ladies asked. - -"She never saw him again." - -"Oh!" said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, was -the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, the -next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened -the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole -thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the -same lady put another question. "What is your title?" - -"I haven't one." - -"Oh, _I_ have!" I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to -read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the -beauty of his author's hand. - - - - -I - - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a -little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, -to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days--found -myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this -state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that -carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle -from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and -I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in -waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country -to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my -fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered -a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had -sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy -that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant -impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains -and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright -flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered -treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The -scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from my own scant -home, and there immediately appeared at the door, with a little girl in -her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had -been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I had received in Harley -Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, as I recalled it, made -me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, suggested that what I -was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly -through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my -pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the -spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have to -do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I -afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I slept -little that night--I was too much excited; and this astonished me, too, -I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the liberality with -which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of the best in -the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured -draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see -myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the extraordinary charm of -my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as -well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in -a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather -brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have -made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being so glad -to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so glad--stout, -simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--as to be positively on her guard -against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little why she -should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with suspicion, -might of course have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection -with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the -vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to -do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times -rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; -to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such -portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, -while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the -possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, -but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I -believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been -another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, -before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked -enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, -I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come -back to me. To watch, teach, "form" little Flora would too evidently -be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us -downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter -of course at night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that -end, in my room. What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and -she had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect -of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural -timidity. In spite of this timidity--which the child herself, in the -oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave about, -allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the -deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael's holy infants, to be -discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us--I feel quite sure -she would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. -Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration -and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, -in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread -and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora's presence could -pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and -roundabout allusions. - -"And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?" - -One wouldn't flatter a child. "Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. If you think -well of this one!"--and she stood there with a plate in her hand, -beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with -placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - -"Yes; if I do--?" - -"You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!" - -"Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I'm -afraid, however," I remember feeling the impulse to add, "I'm rather -easily carried away. I was carried away in London!" - -I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she took this in. "In Harley -Street?" - -"In Harley Street." - -"Well, miss, you're not the first--and you won't be the last." - -"Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, "to being the only one. My -other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?" - -"Not tomorrow--Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under -care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage." - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an -idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took -her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, thank -heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was -glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly -called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the -most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the -scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new -circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had -not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, freshly, -a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this agitation, -certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first duty was, by -the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into the sense of -knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, -to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might -show me the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and -secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and -with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming immense friends. -Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little tour, with -her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers and dull -corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even on the -summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her -morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she -asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I left -it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now -appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her -hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and -pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited -by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the -young idea, take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn't it -just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a -big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of -a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized, in which I had -the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a -great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - - - - -II - - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to -meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for -an incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply -disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have -expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. -The postbag, that evening--it came late--contained a letter for me, -which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be composed but -of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself, with a seal -still unbroken. "This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, and the -headmaster's an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him; but mind -you don't report. Not a word. I'm off!" I broke the seal with a great -effort--so great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took the -unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just before -going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it gave me -a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next day, I -was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me that I -determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. - -"What does it mean? The child's dismissed his school." - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a -quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. "But aren't they all--?" - -"Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back at -all." - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. "They won't take him?" - -"They absolutely decline." - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them -fill with good tears. "What has he done?" - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter--which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put her -hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. "Such things are not for me, -miss." - -My counselor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated -as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, -faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my -pocket. "Is he really BAD?" - -The tears were still in her eyes. "Do the gentlemen say so?" - -"They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it -should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." -Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what -this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some -coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went -on: "That he's an injury to the others." - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed -up. "Master Miles! HIM an injury?" - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. -I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, -sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!" - -"It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel things! Why, -he's scarce ten years old." - -"Yes, yes; it would be incredible." - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, miss, first. -THEN believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it was -the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen -almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had -produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. "You might as -well believe it of the little lady. Bless her," she added the next -moment--"LOOK at her!" - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established -in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of -nice "round o's," now presented herself to view at the open door. -She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from -disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish -light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had -conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should -follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of -Mrs. Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her -with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. - -Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to -approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy -she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the -staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, -holding her there with a hand on her arm. "I take what you said to me at -noon as a declaration that YOU'VE never known him to be bad." - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very -honestly, adopted an attitude. "Oh, never known him--I don't pretend -THAT!" - -I was upset again. "Then you HAVE known him--?" - -"Yes indeed, miss, thank God!" - -On reflection I accepted this. "You mean that a boy who never is--?" - -"Is no boy for ME!" - -I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" Then, -keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought out. "But not -to the degree to contaminate--" - -"To contaminate?"--my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. "To -corrupt." - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. -"Are you afraid he'll corrupt YOU?" She put the question with such a -fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match -her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in -another place. "What was the lady who was here before?" - -"The last governess? She was also young and pretty--almost as young and -almost as pretty, miss, even as you." - -"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!" I recollect -throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!" - -"Oh, he DID," Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the way he liked everyone!" -She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. "I mean -that's HIS way--the master's." - -I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?" - -She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM." - -"Of the master?" - -"Of who else?" - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I -merely asked what I wanted to know. "Did SHE see anything in the boy--?" - -"That wasn't right? She never told me." - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?" - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. "About some -things--yes." - -"But not about all?" - -Again she considered. "Well, miss--she's gone. I won't tell tales." - -"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I thought -it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: "Did she -die here?" - -"No--she went off." - -I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that struck -me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked straight out of -the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what -young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. "She was taken ill, -you mean, and went home?" - -"She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, -at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, -to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We -had then a young woman--a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good -girl and clever; and SHE took the children altogether for the interval. -But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I was -expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead." - -I turned this over. "But of what?" - -"He never told me! But please, miss," said Mrs. Grose, "I must get to my -work." - - - - -III - - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. -We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately than ever -on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so monstrous was I -then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to -me should be under an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and -I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me before the door of the -inn at which the coach had put him down, that I had seen him, on the -instant, without and within, in the great glow of freshness, the same -positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, -seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had -put her finger on it: everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for -him was swept away by his presence. What I then and there took him to -my heart for was something divine that I have never found to the same -degree in any child--his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in -the world but love. It would have been impossible to carry a bad name -with a greater sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to -Bly with him I remained merely bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not -outraged--by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in -a drawer. As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I -declared to her that it was grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge--?" - -"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!" - -She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. "I assure -you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?" she immediately -added. - -"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my mind. "Nothing." - -"And to his uncle?" - -I was incisive. "Nothing." - -"And to the boy himself?" - -I was wonderful. "Nothing." - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand by -you. We'll see it out." - -"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a -vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. "Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom--" - -"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had -embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall -the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a -little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I -accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was -under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the -far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a -great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, -my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with -a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of beginning. -I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed for the -end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, -indeed, that charming summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; -but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my -own. I learned something--at first, certainly--that had not been one -of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and -even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, in -a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music -of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was -consideration--and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap--not -designed, but deep--to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my -vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture -it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so little -trouble--they were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to -speculate--but even this with a dim disconnectedness--as to how the -rough future (for all futures are rough!) would handle them and might -bruise them. They had the bloom of health and happiness; and yet, as -if I had been in charge of a pair of little grandees, of princes of the -blood, for whom everything, to be right, would have to be enclosed and -protected, the only form that, in my fancy, the afteryears could take -for them was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden -and the park. It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke -into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness--that hush in -which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the -spring of a beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final -retirement, a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this -hour was the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all -when, as the light faded--or rather, I should say, the day lingered and -the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the -old trees--I could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with -a sense of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity -of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself -tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my -discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving -pleasure--if he ever thought of it!--to the person to whose pressure -I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and -directly asked of me, and that I COULD, after all, do it proved even a -greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, -a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would -more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front -to the remarkable things that presently gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children -were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts -that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me -in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story -suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a -path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn't ask more -than that--I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure -he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome -face. That was exactly present to me--by which I mean the face -was--when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June -day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming -into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot--and with a shock -much greater than any vision had allowed for--was the sense that my -imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!--but high -up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that -first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of -a pair--square, incongruous, crenelated structures--that were -distinguished, for some reason, though I could see little difference, -as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were -probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by -not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in -their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a -respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could -all profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, -by the grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at such an -elevation that the figure I had so often invoked seemed most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two -distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first -and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of -the mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person -I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of -vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that I can -hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object -of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me -was--a few more seconds assured me--as little anyone else I knew as -it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in -Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the -strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact of -its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement -here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, the whole -feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took in--what I did -take in--all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I can -hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of evening -dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly -hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no other change -in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with a stranger -sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the air, -and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a -picture in a frame. That's how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, -of each person that he might have been and that he was not. We were -confronted across our distance quite long enough for me to ask myself -with intensity who then he was and to feel, as an effect of my inability -to say, a wonder that in a few instants more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard -to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, -this matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught at -a dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the better, -that I could see, in there having been in the house--and for how long, -above all?--a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I -just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there -should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this -visitant, at all events--and there was a touch of the strange freedom, -as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat--seemed -to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny -through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too -far apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at -shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have -been the right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of the -angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, and -with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I -form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the -spectacle, he slowly changed his place--passed, looking at me hard -all the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the -sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, -and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from -one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, but -less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned -away; that was all I knew. - - - - -IV - - -It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a "secret" at Bly--a mystery -of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected -confinement? I can't say how long I turned it over, or how long, in -a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my -collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had -quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and -driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three -miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this -mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular -part of it, in fact--singular as the rest had been--was the part I -became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes -back to me in the general train--the impression, as I received it on my -return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and -with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of -my friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to -me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere -relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could -bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected -in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow -measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself -hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to -me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I -may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot, -accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for -a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, achieved an inward -resolution--offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea -of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as -soon as possible to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer -affair enough. There were hours, from day to day--or at least there were -moments, snatched even from clear duties--when I had to shut myself up -to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could -bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the truth -I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I could -arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been so -inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It -took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry -and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had -suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of -three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not -been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any "game." -Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was -but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That -was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say -to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some -unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in -unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then -stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that -was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that -we should surely see no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that -what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming -work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and -through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw -myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a -constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original -fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray -prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no -long grind; so how could work not be charming that presented itself as -daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of -the schoolroom. I don't mean by this, of course, that we studied -only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort -of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that except by -saying that instead of growing used to them--and it's a marvel for a -governess: I call the sisterhood to witness!--I made constant fresh -discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these -discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the -boy's conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have noted, -to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the -truth to say that--without a word--he himself had cleared it up. He had -made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the -real rose flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the -little horrid, unclean school world, and he had paid a price for it. I -reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, such superiorities -of quality, always, on the part of the majority--which could include -even stupid, sordid headmasters--turn infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it -never made Miles a muff) that kept them--how shall I express it?--almost -impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs -of the anecdote, who had--morally, at any rate--nothing to whack! I -remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no -history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in -this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet -extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have -seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second -suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been -chastised. If he had been wicked he would have "caught" it, and I should -have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the trace. I found -nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of his -school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, was -quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under the -spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly -knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any -pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of -disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But with -my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the question -I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by their -loveliness. - -There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force and for so -many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence -of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, -should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late -service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, -through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter -of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, -I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that -had received them--with a publicity perhaps not edifying--while I sat -with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that -cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the "grown-up" dining room. -The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. -The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, and it -enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on a chair -near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but to become -aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking straight -in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; -it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had -already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won't say -greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that -represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met -him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same--he was the same, -and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the -window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going down -to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, -yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me how -intense the former had been. He remained but a few seconds--long enough -to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was as if I had been -looking at him for years and had known him always. Something, however, -happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, -through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but -it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it -fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the -added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He -had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood -there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because -I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the -door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the -drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned -a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now--my -visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief -of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time to reappear. I -call it time, but how long was it? I can't speak to the purpose today -of the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left me: -they couldn't have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. The -terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I -could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were -shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt -that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not there: not -there if I didn't see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, -instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was -confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had -stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had -looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what -his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, -came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of -what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she -pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that -I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had -blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, -and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that I -should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited -I thought of more things than one. But there's only one I take space to -mention. I wondered why SHE should be scared. - - - - -V - - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she -loomed again into view. "What in the name of goodness is the matter--?" -She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" I must have made a -wonderful face. "Do I show it?" - -"You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My -need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a rustle, -from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what -I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard -a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in -the shy heave of her surprise. "You came for me for church, of course, -but I can't go." - -"Has anything happened?" - -"Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?" - -"Through this window? Dreadful!" - -"Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes expressed -plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well her -place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. Oh, -it was quite settled that she MUST share! "Just what you saw from the -dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What _I_ saw--just -before--was much worse." - -Her hand tightened. "What was it?" - -"An extraordinary man. Looking in." - -"What extraordinary man?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?" - -"I know still less." - -"Have you seen him before?" - -"Yes--once. On the old tower." - -She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?" - -"Oh, very much!" - -"Yet you didn't tell me?" - -"No--for reasons. But now that you've guessed--" - -Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't -guessed!" she said very simply. "How can I if YOU don't imagine?" - -"I don't in the very least." - -"You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?" - -"And on this spot just now." - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was he doing on the tower?" - -"Only standing there and looking down at me." - -She thought a minute. "Was he a gentleman?" - -I found I had no need to think. "No." She gazed in deeper wonder. "No." - -"Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?" - -"Nobody--nobody. I didn't tell you, but I made sure." - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It -only went indeed a little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman--" - -"What IS he? He's a horror." - -"A horror?" - -"He's--God help me if I know WHAT he is!" - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier -distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt -inconsequence. "It's time we should be at church." - -"Oh, I'm not fit for church!" - -"Won't it do you good?" - -"It won't do THEM--! I nodded at the house. - -"The children?" - -"I can't leave them now." - -"You're afraid--?" - -I spoke boldly. "I'm afraid of HIM." - -Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out -in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that -was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought -instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be -connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. "When was -it--on the tower?" - -"About the middle of the month. At this same hour." - -"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. - -"Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." - -"Then how did he get in?" - -"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him! -This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in." - -"He only peeps?" - -"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand; she -turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: "Go to -church. Goodbye. I must watch." - -Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?" - -We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came -nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. -"You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. - -She didn't move. "How long was he here?" - -"Till I came out. I came to meet him." - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. -"_I_ couldn't have come out." - -"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. I have my duty." - -"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: "What is he like?" - -"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody." - -"Nobody?" she echoed. - -"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with -a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to -stroke. "He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long -in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers -that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they -look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes -are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly that they're rather -small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, and his lips are thin, and -except for his little whiskers he's quite clean-shaven. He gives me a -sort of sense of looking like an actor." - -"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. -Grose at that moment. - -"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect," -I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman." - -My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started -and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: "a gentleman HE?" - -"You know him then?" - -She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?" - -I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!" - -"And dressed--?" - -"In somebody's clothes." "They're smart, but they're not his own." - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!" - -I caught it up. "You DO know him?" - -She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried. - -"Quint?" - -"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!" - -"When the master was?" - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. "He never wore -his hat, but he did wear--well, there were waistcoats missed. They were -both here--last year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone." - -I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?" - -"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added. - -"And what became of him?" - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. "He went, too," -she brought out at last. - -"Went where?" - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where! He -died." - -"Died?" I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead." - - - - -VI - - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together -in presence of what we had now to live with as we could--my dreadful -liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my -companion's knowledge, henceforth--a knowledge half consternation and -half compassion--of that liability. There had been, this evening, after -the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for -either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of tears -and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual -challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating -together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have -everything out. The result of our having everything out was simply to -reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had -seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but -the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted without -directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by -showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression -of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very -breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, -in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I -knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable -of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly -sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so -compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--quite as queer as -the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see -how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good -fortune, COULD steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that led -me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could -take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. -Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me before -we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every feature of -what I had seen. - -"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?" - -"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now possessed -me. "THAT'S whom he was looking for." - -"But how do you know?" - -"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And YOU know, my dear!" - -She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling -as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: "What if HE should see -him?" - -"Little Miles? That's what he wants!" - -She looked immensely scared again. "The child?" - -"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM." That he might was -an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; which, -moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically -proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I -had already seen, but something within me said that by offering myself -bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by -inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim -and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, in especial, -I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I recall one of the last -things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned--" - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been here and -the time they were with him?" - -"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, -in any way." - -"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew." - -"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity. -"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know." - -"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid." I continued -to think. "It IS rather odd." - -"That he has never spoken of him?" - -"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were 'great -friends'?" - -"Oh, it wasn't HIM!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. "It was Quint's -own fancy. To play with him, I mean--to spoil him." She paused a moment; -then she added: "Quint was much too free." - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!--a -sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with MY boy?" - -"Too free with everyone!" - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by -the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of -the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our -small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the -lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, -had ever, within anyone's memory attached to the kind old place. It had -neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only -desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the very -last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had her -hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. "I have it from you then--for -it's of great importance--that he was definitely and admittedly bad?" - -"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't." - -"And you never told him?" - -"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. He was terribly -short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to HIM--" - -"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough with my -impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very -particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept. All the same, I -pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_ would have told!" - -She felt my discrimination. "I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was -afraid." - -"Afraid of what?" - -"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep." - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. "You weren't afraid -of anything else? Not of his effect--?" - -"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I -faltered. - -"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge." - -"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully returned. -"The master believed in him and placed him here because he was supposed -not to be well and the country air so good for him. So he had everything -to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even about THEM." - -"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl. "And you could -bear it!" - -"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; -yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together -to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, in -the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined whether I -slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me. -I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept -back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure -of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me -indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow's sun was high I had -restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the meaning they were -to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me -above all was just the sinister figure of the living man--the dead one -would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously passed at Bly, -which, added up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time -had arrived only when, on the dawn of a winter's morning, Peter Quint -was found, by a laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road -from the village: a catastrophe explained--superficially at least--by a -visible wound to his head; such a wound as might have been produced--and -as, on the final evidence, HAD been--by a fatal slip, in the dark and -after leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong -path altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn -mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much--practically, in -the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but -there had been matters in his life--strange passages and perils, secret -disorders, vices more than suspected--that would have accounted for a -good deal more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible -picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to -find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded -of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and -difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in -the right quarter!--that I could succeed where many another girl might -have failed. It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud -myself as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. -I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the -most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness had -suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own -committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in -our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It was -in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me in an -image richly material. I was a screen--I was to stand before them. The -more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled -suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too -long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now -see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn't last as -suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from -the moment I really took hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the -grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, -on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a -book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young -man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. His -sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and I strolled with -her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was still high and the -day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of -how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing in both -children--to let me alone without appearing to drop me and to accompany -me without appearing to surround. They were never importunate and yet -never listless. My attention to them all really went to seeing them -amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed -actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked -in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever to draw -upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some -remarkable person or thing that the game of the moment required and that -was merely, thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly -distinguished sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; -I only remember that I was something very important and very quiet and -that Flora was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, -as we had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other -side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this -knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the -strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly -merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work--for I was something -or other that could sit--on the old stone bench which overlooked the -pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet -without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. -The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, but -it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. There -was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the conviction -I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I should -see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising -my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I -was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move -them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my -mind what to do. There was an alien object in view--a figure whose right -of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting -over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more -natural, for instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the -place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the -village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude -as I was conscious--still even without looking--of its having upon the -character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than -that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were -not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as -soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right -second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I -transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was -about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the -wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I -held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden -innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, -but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something -more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had -previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also -within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. -This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the -confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal -notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to -have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea -of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make -the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was -very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. My -apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that after some -seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes--I -faced what I had to face. - - - - -VII - - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give -no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still -hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: "They KNOW--it's -too monstrous: they know, they know!" - -"And what on earth--?" I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -"Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!" Then, as -she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with -full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--I could -scarce articulate--"Flora SAW!" - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. "She -has told you?" she panted. - -"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of -eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of -it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. "Then how do you -know?" - -"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware." - -"Do you mean aware of HIM?" - -"No--of HER." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious -things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion's face. -"Another person--this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror -and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also, -and such a face!--on the other side of the lake. I was there with the -child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came." - -"Came how--from where?" - -"From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but not -so near." - -"And without coming nearer?" - -"Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as -you!" - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. "Was she someone -you've never seen?" - -"Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have." Then, to show how I -had thought it all out: "My predecessor--the one who died." - -"Miss Jessel?" - -"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?" - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. -"Then ask Flora--SHE'S sure!" But I had no sooner spoken than I caught -myself up. "No, for God's sake, DON'T! She'll say she isn't--she'll -lie!" - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. "Ah, how CAN -you?" - -"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know." - -"It's only then to spare you." - -"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see -in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don't know what I -DON'T see--what I DON'T fear!" - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid of seeing -her again?" - -"Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained. "It's of NOT seeing -her." - -But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you." - -"Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child assuredly -WILL--without my knowing it." - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force -of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to -give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! And after all, if she -doesn't mind it--!" She even tried a grim joke. "Perhaps she likes it!" - -"Likes SUCH things--a scrap of an infant!" - -"Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend bravely -inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. "Oh, we must clutch at -THAT--we must cling to it! If it isn't a proof of what you say, it's a -proof of--God knows what! For the woman's a horror of horrors." - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last -raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said. - -"Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried. - -"Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated. - -"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked." - -"At you, do you mean--so wickedly?" - -"Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She -only fixed the child." - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" - -"Ah, with such awful eyes!" - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. "Do you -mean of dislike?" - -"God help us, no. Of something much worse." - -"Worse than dislike?--this left her indeed at a loss. - -"With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention." - -I made her turn pale. "Intention?" - -"To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering on mine--gave -a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking -out I completed my statement. "THAT'S what Flora knows." - -After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you say?" - -"In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with extraordinary -beauty." I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, -brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed -this. "Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted; "wonderfully handsome. But -infamous." - -She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--WAS infamous." She once more -took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me -against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. "They -were both infamous," she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely -a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I appreciate," I said, -"the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has -certainly come to give me the whole thing." She appeared to assent to -this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: "I must have it -now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them." - -"There was everything." - -"In spite of the difference--?" - -"Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully out. "SHE -was a lady." - -I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady." - -"And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, on the -place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an -acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement. -There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for -my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's late clever, -good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. "The -fellow was a hound." - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense -of shades. "I've never seen one like him. He did what he wished." - -"With HER?" - -"With them all." - -It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. -I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her -as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with -decision: "It must have been also what SHE wished!" - -Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the -same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!" - -"Then you do know what she died of?" I asked. - -"No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn't; -and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!" - -"Yet you had, then, your idea--" - -"Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn't have -stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterward I imagined--and I -still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful." - -"Not so dreadful as what _I_ do," I replied; on which I must have shown -her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable defeat. It -brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch of -her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other -time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, -and my lamentation overflowed. "I don't do it!" I sobbed in despair; "I -don't save or shield them! It's far worse than I dreamed--they're lost!" - - - - -VIII - - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter -I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution -to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a -common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were -to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else--difficult indeed as -that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was -least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had -another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its -being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her -perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if -I had "made it up," I came to be able to give, of each of the persons -appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their -special marks--a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly -recognized and named them. She wished of course--small blame to her!--to -sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own -interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way -to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that -with recurrence--for recurrence we took for granted--I should get -used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure had -suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion -that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours -of the day had brought a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my -pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of -their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively -cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other -words, plunged afresh into Flora's special society and there become -aware--it was almost a luxury!--that she could put her little conscious -hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet -speculation and then had accused me to my face of having "cried." I had -supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally--for -the time, at all events--rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that -they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of -the child's eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature -cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I -naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my -agitation. I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat -to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in the small hours--that -with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart, and their -fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell to the ground but -their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to -settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of -subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my -show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate -the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as -a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a -matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had -to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, -so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I -actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as -she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn't, and at the same time, -without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! -It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little -activity by which she sought to divert my attention--the perceptible -increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the -gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this -review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort -that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to -asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was so much to the -good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been -prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind--I scarce know what -to call it--to invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring -from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by -bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong -side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; -and I remember how on this occasion--for the sleeping house and the -concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help--I felt -the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. "I don't -believe anything so horrible," I recollect saying; "no, let us put it -definitely, my dear, that I don't. But if I did, you know, there's -a thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit -more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get out of you. What was it you had in -mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter from -his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn't pretend for -him that he had not literally EVER been 'bad'? He has NOT literally -'ever,' in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely -watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, -lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for -him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was -your exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him -did you refer?" - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, -at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got -my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the -purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for -a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually -together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had -ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of -so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank -overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, -directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I -pressed, was that SHE liked to see young gentlemen not forget their -station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. "You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?" - -"As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad." - -"And for another thing?" I waited. "He repeated your words to Quint?" - -"No, not that. It's just what he WOULDN'T!" she could still impress upon -me. "I was sure, at any rate," she added, "that he didn't. But he denied -certain occasions." - -"What occasions?" - -"When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor--and -a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had -gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him." - -"He then prevaricated about it--he said he hadn't?" Her assent was clear -enough to cause me to add in a moment: "I see. He lied." - -"Oh!" Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn't matter; -which indeed she backed up by a further remark. "You see, after all, -Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't forbid him." - -I considered. "Did he put that to you as a justification?" - -At this she dropped again. "No, he never spoke of it." - -"Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?" - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. "Well, he didn't show -anything. He denied," she repeated; "he denied." - -Lord, how I pressed her now! "So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?" - -"I don't know--I don't know!" the poor woman groaned. - -"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't my dreadful -boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and -delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without -my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. -But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that -suggested to you," I continued, "that he covered and concealed their -relation." - -"Oh, he couldn't prevent--" - -"Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens," I fell, with -vehemence, athinking, "what it shows that they must, to that extent, -have succeeded in making of him!" - -"Ah, nothing that's not nice NOW!" Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. - -"I don't wonder you looked queer," I persisted, "when I mentioned to you -the letter from his school!" - -"I doubt if I looked as queer as you!" she retorted with homely force. -"And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel -now?" - -"Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well," -I said in my torment, "you must put it to me again, but I shall not be -able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!" I cried in a -way that made my friend stare. "There are directions in which I must -not for the present let myself go." Meanwhile I returned to her first -example--the one to which she had just previously referred--of the boy's -happy capacity for an occasional slip. "If Quint--on your remonstrance -at the time you speak of--was a base menial, one of the things Miles -said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another." Again -her admission was so adequate that I continued: "And you forgave him -that?" - -"Wouldn't YOU?" - -"Oh, yes!" And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: "At all events, while he was with the -man--" - -"Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!" - -It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited -exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding -myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression -of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than -may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. -"His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging -specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of -the little natural man. Still," I mused, "They must do, for they make me -feel more than ever that I must watch." - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face how much -more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as -presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out -when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you don't accuse -HIM--" - -"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before -shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, "I must -just wait," I wound up. - - - - -IX - - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from -my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant -sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to -grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the -sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish -grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if -I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it -would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to -struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, -a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought -strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only -made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping -them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they WERE so -immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, -as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could -only be--blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I -found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as -I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they think of that? -Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been easy to get into a sad, -wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, -of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate -charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the -shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me -that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my -sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see -a queerness in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; -which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response -in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they -were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if -I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a -purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for -their poor protectress; I mean--though they got their lessons better and -better, which was naturally what would please her most--in the way of -diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling -her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as -animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the -"pieces" they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. I -should never get to the bottom--were I to let myself go even now--of the -prodigious private commentary, all under still more private correction, -with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They had shown -me from the first a facility for everything, a general faculty which, -taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little -tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance of -the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not -only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, -astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had -presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, -I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural -composure on the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember -is that I was content not, for the time, to open the question, and that -contentment must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking -show of cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a -parson's daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest -thread in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I -might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some -influence operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous -incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone -school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -"kicked out" by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me -add that in their company now--and I was careful almost never to be out -of it--I could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music -and love and success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each -of the children was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a -marvelous knack of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano -broke into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were -confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going out in -the highest spirits in order to "come in" as something new. I had had -brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little girls could -be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed everything was that -there was a little boy in the world who could have for the inferior age, -sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. They were extraordinarily -at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or complained is -to make the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. -Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across -traces of little understandings between them by which one of them should -keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There is a naive side, -I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was -surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter -that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on -with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the -most liberal faith--for which I little care; but--and this is another -matter--I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it -to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the -affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at least -reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to -advance. One evening--with nothing to lead up or to prepare it--I felt -the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of -my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should -probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been -less agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of -candles. There was a roomful of old books at Bly--last-century fiction, -some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, -but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached the -sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my youth. I -remember that the book I had in my hand was Fielding's Amelia; also that -I was wholly awake. I recall further both a general conviction that it -was horribly late and a particular objection to looking at my watch. I -figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, in the fashion of those -days, the head of Flora's little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself -long before, the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, -though I was deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn -of a page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from -him and hard at the door of my room. There was a moment during which -I listened, reminded of the faint sense I had had, the first night, of -there being something undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft -breath of the open casement just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with -all the marks of a deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had -there been anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, -and, taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the -passage, on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed -and locked the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went -straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within -sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the -staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware of three -things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of -succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, -by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning -rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that there -was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse -of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The -apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the -spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and -fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. -He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, -with a glimmer in the high glass and another on the polish of the -oak stair below, we faced each other in our common intensity. He was -absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, dangerous presence. -But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this distinction for -quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had unmistakably -quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that didn't meet and -measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, -thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not--I found myself at the end -of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of -confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease--for -the time, at least--to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, -accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it WAS human, as human as to have met alone, in -the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, -some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close -quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of -the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an -hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, -in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. -The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to -make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't express what followed it -save by saying that the silence itself--which was indeed in a manner -an attestation of my strength--became the element into which I saw the -figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have -seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an -order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch could -have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into the darkness -in which the next bend was lost. - - - - -X - - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently -of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: then I -returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the -candle I had left burning was that Flora's little bed was empty; and on -this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, -I had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her -lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were -disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; -then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I -perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, ducking down, -emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of -her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and -the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had -never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill -of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that -she addressed me with a reproach. "You naughty: where HAVE you -been?"--instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with -the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay -there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back -into my chair--feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had -pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself -to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little -face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an -instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of something -beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. "You were looking for -me out of the window?" I said. "You thought I might be walking in the -grounds?" - -"Well, you know, I thought someone was"--she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! "And did you see anyone?" - -"Ah, NO!" she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish -inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little -drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she -lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the -three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, -for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand -it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, -she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out -at her on the spot and have it all over?--give it to her straight in her -lovely little lighted face? "You see, you see, you KNOW that you do and -that you already quite suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly -confess it to me, so that we may at least live with it together and -learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what -it means?" This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came: if I could -immediately have succumbed to it I might have spared myself--well, -you'll see what. Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, -looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. "Why did you pull the -curtain over the place to make me think you were still there?" - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -"Because I don't like to frighten you!" - -"But if I had, by your idea, gone out--?" - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as -impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. "Oh, but you know," she -quite adequately answered, "that you might come back, you dear, and that -you HAVE!" And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a -long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I -recognized the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. -I repeatedly sat up till I didn't know when; I selected moments when my -roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in -the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But -I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no -other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, -on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it from the top I -once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps -with her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and her head, in an -attitude of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an instant, however, -when she vanished without looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, -exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I wondered whether, if -instead of being above I had been below, I should have had, for going -up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there continued to -be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my latest -encounter with that gentleman--they were all numbered now--I had an -alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the particular -quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was -precisely the first night during this series that, weary with watching, -I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself down at my -old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till about one -o'clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as completely roused -as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light burning, but it was now -out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora had extinguished it. -This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, -which I found she had left. A glance at the window enlightened me -further, and the striking of a match completed the picture. - -The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--as she -had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved to me by -the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the -haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, -absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill--the casement opened -forward--and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, -and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face -with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate -with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to -care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some -other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing -me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for -some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her -brother's door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, -produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke -of as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to HIS -window?--what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of -my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter -of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and -pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might -portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were -secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which -my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was -hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a figure -prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it -was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but -on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. -There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing -the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the -lower one--though high above the gardens--in the solid corner of the -house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square -chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of -which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by -Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and -I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the first -chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I -could one of the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the -glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able, the -darkness without being much less than within, to see that I commanded -the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon made the -night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person, -diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, -looking up to where I had appeared--looking, that is, not so much -straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. There was -clearly another person above me--there was a person on the tower; but -the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived and -had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn--I felt sick -as I made it out--was poor little Miles himself. - - - - -XI - - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with -which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet -her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not -provoking--on the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the -children--any suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of -mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others -my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if she -hadn't I don't know what would have become of me, for I couldn't have -borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to the -blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our little -charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and -cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of my -trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would -doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match them; -as matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed them, -with her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all her -look, thank the Lord's mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would -still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady -fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how, with the -development of the conviction that--as time went on without a public -accident--our young things could, after all, look out for themselves, -she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented by their -instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification: I could -engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, but it would -have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain to find myself -anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the -terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now -agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, -but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one -of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, -over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and -passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. Grose -watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the suppressed -intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take from me -a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of -lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority--my -accomplishments and my function--in her patience under my pain. She -offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch's -broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large -clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time -that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point of -what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a monstrous -hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, I had gone -down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a concentrated -need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a signal more -resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of -representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense of the -real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him -into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge. As soon as I -appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come to me as straight -as possible; on which I had taken his hand without a word and led him, -through the dark spaces, up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily -hovered for him, along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and -so to his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered--oh, -HOW I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his little mind for -something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious -thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn't -play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? -There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an -equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. I was confronted at -last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now to sounding my -own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed into his little -chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all and the window, -uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no -need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank upon -the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must know how he -really, as they say, "had" me. He could do what he liked, with all his -cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue to defer to the -old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who -minister to superstitions and fears. He "had" me indeed, and in a cleft -stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go -unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to -introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it -was useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely -less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in -the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly -kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders -hands of such tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the -bed, I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form -at least, to put it to him. - -"You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out for? What -were you doing there?" - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. "If I -tell you why, will you understand?" My heart, at this, leaped into my -mouth. WOULD he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, -and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. -He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood -there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed -that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really going to -tell me? "Well," he said at last, "just exactly in order that you should -do this." - -"Do what?" - -"Think me--for a change--BAD!" I shall never forget the sweetness and -gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he -bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. -I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my -arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the -account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it -was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I -presently glanced about the room, I could say-- - -"Then you didn't undress at all?" - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. I sat up and read." - -"And when did you go down?" - -"At midnight. When I'm bad I AM bad!" - -"I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would know -it?" - -"Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His answers rang out with a readiness! -"She was to get up and look out." - -"Which is what she did do." It was I who fell into the trap! - -"So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked--you saw." - -"While you," I concurred, "caught your death in the night air!" - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly -to assent. "How otherwise should I have been bad enough?" he asked. -Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my -recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had -been able to draw upon. - - - - -XII - - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, -I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I -reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made -before we separated. "It all lies in half a dozen words," I said to her, -"words that really settle the matter. 'Think, you know, what I MIGHT -do!' He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to -the ground what he 'might' do. That's what he gave them a taste of at -school." - -"Lord, you do change!" cried my friend. - -"I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I've watched -and waited the more I've felt that if there were nothing else to make it -sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a -slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old -friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, -we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us there to -their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale -they're steeped in their vision of the dead restored. He's not reading -to her," I declared; "they're talking of THEM--they're talking horrors! -I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not. What -I've seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made me more lucid, -made me get hold of still other things." - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were -victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, -gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held -as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still -with her eyes. "Of what other things have you got hold?" - -"Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at -bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their more -than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It's a game," -I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!" - -"On the part of little darlings--?" - -"As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!" The very act of -bringing it out really helped me to trace it--follow it all up and piece -it all together. "They haven't been good--they've only been absent. It -has been easy to live with them, because they're simply leading a -life of their own. They're not mine--they're not ours. They're his and -they're hers!" - -"Quint's and that woman's?" - -"Quint's and that woman's. They want to get to them." - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! "But for -what?" - -"For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put -into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of -demons, is what brings the others back." - -"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but -it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad -time--for there had been a worse even than this!--must have occurred. -There could have been no such justification for me as the plain assent -of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in -our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she -brought out after a moment: "They WERE rascals! But what can they now -do?" she pursued. - -"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at their -distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. "Don't -they do enough?" I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, having -smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We -were held by it a minute; then I answered: "They can destroy them!" At -this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent -one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. "They don't know, -as yet, quite how--but they're trying hard. They're seen only across, -as it were, and beyond--in strange places and on high places, the top of -towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the further edge -of pools; but there's a deep design, on either side, to shorten the -distance and overcome the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is -only a question of time. They've only to keep to their suggestions of -danger." - -"For the children to come?" - -"And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: "Unless, of course, we can prevent!" - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned things -over. "Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them away." - -"And who's to make him?" - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish -face. "You, miss." - -"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and -niece mad?" - -"But if they ARE, miss?" - -"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him by a -governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry." - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason--" - -"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his indifference -must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend, at any rate, I shouldn't take -him in." - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and -grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you." - -I stared. "To ME?" I had a sudden fear of what she might do. "'Him'?" - -"He ought to BE here--he ought to help." - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than -ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her eyes on -my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even--as a woman reads -another--she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, -his contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and -for the fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to -my slighted charms. She didn't know--no one knew--how proud I had been -to serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the -measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. "If you should so lose -your head as to appeal to him for me--" - -She was really frightened. "Yes, miss?" - -"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you." - - - - -XIII - - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as -much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a -month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above -all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part -of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere -infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they were aware -of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a manner, for -a long time, the air in which we moved. I don't mean that they had their -tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that was not one -of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the -unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, and -that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully effected -without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if, at moments, we -were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop -short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, -closing with a little bang that made us look at each other--for, like -all bangs, it was something louder than we had intended--the doors we -had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times -when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or -subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was -the question of the return of the dead in general and of whatever, in -especial, might survive, in memory, of the friends little children had -lost. There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had, with -a small invisible nudge, said to the other: "She thinks she'll do it -this time--but she WON'T!" To "do it" would have been to indulge for -instance--and for once in a way--in some direct reference to the lady -who had prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless -appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again and -again treated them; they were in possession of everything that had -ever happened to me, had had, with every circumstance the story of my -smallest adventures and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the -cat and the dog at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric -nature of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house, and -of the conversation of the old women of our village. There were things -enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, if one went very fast -and knew by instinct when to go round. They pulled with an art of their -own the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, -when I thought of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion -of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, MY -past, and MY friends alone that we could take anything like our ease--a -state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence -to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited--with no visible -connection--to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's celebrated mot or to -confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the -vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different -ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I -have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for -me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done -something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that second -night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the foot of -the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, that one -had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which I expected -to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, -would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, -the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out -half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, -its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after -the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly -states of the air, conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable -impressions of the KIND of ministering moment, that brought back to me, -long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June -evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, -too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him through the -window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. I recognized -the signs, the portents--I recognized the moment, the spot. But they -remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; if -unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in the -most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my -talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora's by the lake--and -had perplexed her by so saying--that it would from that moment distress -me much more to lose my power than to keep it. I had then expressed what -was vividly in my mind: the truth that, whether the children really -saw or not--since, that is, it was not yet definitely proved--I greatly -preferred, as a safeguard, the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready -to know the very worst that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly -glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were -most opened. Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present--a -consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There -was, alas, a difficulty about that: I would have thanked him with all -my soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this conviction of the -secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were -times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, -literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they -had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I -not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might prove -greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken -out. "They're here, they're here, you little wretches," I would have -cried, "and you can't deny it now!" The little wretches denied it with -all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just -the crystal depths of which--like the flash of a fish in a stream--the -mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into -me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either -Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over -whose rest I watched and who had immediately brought in with him--had -straightway, there, turned it on me--the lovely upward look with which, -from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had -played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion -had scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition of nerves -produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They harassed me so -that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to rehearse--it -was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed despair--the manner in -which I might come to the point. I approached it from one side and the -other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I always broke down -in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on my lips, I -said to myself that I should indeed help them to represent something -infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little -case of instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever -known. When I said to myself: "THEY have the manners to be silent, and -you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak!" I felt myself crimson -and I covered my face with my hands. After these secret scenes I -chattered more than ever, going on volubly enough till one of our -prodigious, palpable hushes occurred--I can call them nothing else--the -strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause -of all life, that had nothing to do with the more or less noise that at -the moment we might be engaged in making and that I could hear through -any deepened exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the -piano. Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. Though -they were not angels, they "passed," as the French say, causing me, -while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their addressing to their -younger victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image than -they had thought good enough for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE--things terrible and -unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the -past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill -which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all three, with -repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each time, -almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, through the -very same movements. It was striking of the children, at all events, -to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to -fail--one or the other--of the precious question that had helped us -through many a peril. "When do you think he WILL come? Don't you think -we OUGHT to write?"--there was nothing like that inquiry, we found by -experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. "He" of course was their -uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion of theory that he -might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to -have given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but -if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have -deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to -them--that may have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of -his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to -a woman is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the -sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of -the pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand -that their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were -too beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this -hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of -my being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among -us. It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward than -anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, as -I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere fact -that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost patience -with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now reflect, that I -didn't in these days hate them! Would exasperation, however, if relief -had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, -for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it was only the relief that -a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of -suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with a rush. - - - - -XIV - - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my -side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in -sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; -the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright -and sharp, made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of -thought that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly -and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why -did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or -other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy to -my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before me, -I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I -was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all -this belonged--I mean their magnificent little surrender--just to the -special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday -by his uncle's tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of -pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miles's whole title to -independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon -him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I should have had nothing -to say. I was by the strangest of chances wondering how I should meet -him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution -because I now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the -last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was precipitated. -"Look here, my dear, you know," he charmingly said, "when in the world, -please, am I going back to school?" - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly -as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all -interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off -intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in -them that always made one "catch," and I caught, at any rate, now so -effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the -park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, -between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, -to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and -charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at -first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I -was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute, -to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: "You know, my -dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS--!" His "my dear" was -constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have expressed more the -exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire my pupils -than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I -remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in -the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. -"And always with the same lady?" I returned. - -He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. "Ah, of course, she's a jolly, 'perfect' lady; but, after -all, I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's--well, getting on." - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. "Yes, you're -getting on." Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed -to know that and to play with it. "And you can't say I've not been -awfully good, can you?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it -would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. "No, I can't say -that, Miles." - -"Except just that one night, you know--!" - -"That one night?" I couldn't look as straight as he. - -"Why, when I went down--went out of the house." - -"Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for." - -"You forget?"--he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish -reproach. "Why, it was to show you I could!" - -"Oh, yes, you could." - -"And I can again." - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits -about me. "Certainly. But you won't." - -"No, not THAT again. It was nothing." - -"It was nothing," I said. "But we must go on." - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. "Then when AM -I going back?" - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. "Were you very -happy at school?" - -He just considered. "Oh, I'm happy enough anywhere!" - -"Well, then," I quavered, "if you're just as happy here--!" - -"Ah, but that isn't everything! Of course YOU know a lot--" - -"But you hint that you know almost as much?" I risked as he paused. - -"Not half I want to!" Miles honestly professed. "But it isn't so much -that." - -"What is it, then?" - -"Well--I want to see more life." - -"I see; I see." We had arrived within sight of the church and of various -persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their way to it -and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our step; -I wanted to get there before the question between us opened up much -further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he would have -to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew -and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend -my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion -to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in first -when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw out-- - -"I want my own sort!" - -It literally made me bound forward. "There are not many of your own -sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless perhaps dear little Flora!" - -"You really compare me to a baby girl?" - -This found me singularly weak. "Don't you, then, LOVE our sweet Flora?" - -"If I didn't--and you, too; if I didn't--!" he repeated as if retreating -for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, after we had -come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by the pressure -of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into -the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we were, for the -minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path -from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -"Yes, if you didn't--?" - -He looked, while I waited, at the graves. "Well, you know what!" But -he didn't move, and he presently produced something that made me drop -straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. "Does my uncle -think what YOU think?" - -I markedly rested. "How do you know what I think?" - -"Ah, well, of course I don't; for it strikes me you never tell me. But I -mean does HE know?" - -"Know what, Miles?" - -"Why, the way I'm going on." - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer -that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it -appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make -that venial. "I don't think your uncle much cares." - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. "Then don't you think he can be -made to?" - -"In what way?" - -"Why, by his coming down." - -"But who'll get him to come down?" - -"_I_ will!" the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He -gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off -alone into church. - - - - -XV - - -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed -him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this -had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read -into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; -by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for -absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest -of the congregation such an example of delay. What I said to myself -above all was that Miles had got something out of me and that the proof -of it, for him, would be just this awkward collapse. He had got out -of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he should -probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, -more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable -question of the grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was -really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle -should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that, -strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I -could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply -procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep -discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say -to me: "Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you -a life that's so unnatural for a boy." What was so unnatural for the -particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a -consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked -round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, -with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up nothing, -and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: he -would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make -me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with his commentary -on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away -from him. As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the -sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might master me, -I felt, completely should I give it the least encouragement. I might -easily put an end to my predicament by getting away altogether. Here -was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I could give the whole thing -up--turn my back and retreat. It was only a question of hurrying again, -for a few preparations, to the house which the attendance at church of -so many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, -in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. What -was it to get away if I got away only till dinner? That would be in -a couple of hours, at the end of which--I had the acute prevision--my -little pupils would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in -their train. - -"What DID you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to worry us -so--and take our thoughts off, too, don't you know?--did you desert us -at the very door?" I couldn't meet such questions nor, as they asked -them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so exactly what I -should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last -let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came -straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps -through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house -I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the -approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited -me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I -should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have -to be remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the -great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties -and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the -staircase--suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a -revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, -in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had -seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able -to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my -bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging to -me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, in a -flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight -back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush -for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place -and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the -schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the -considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an effort -in the way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands with -evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I took this in -I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance, her attitude -strangely persisted. Then it was--with the very act of its announcing -itself--that her identity flared up in a change of posture. She rose, -not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy -of indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood -there as my vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before -me; but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image -passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and -her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say -that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. -While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of -feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest -against it that, actually addressing her--"You terrible, miserable -woman!"--I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang -through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if -she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was -nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I -must stay. - - - - -XVI - - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked -by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into -account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily -denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed -them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said -nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such purpose that -I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, -however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity. -This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes with her in the -housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked -bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting -in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her -best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining -room, a large clean image of the "put away"--of drawers closed and -locked and rest without a remedy. - -"Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long as -they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to you?" - -"I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come back to -meet a friend." - -She showed her surprise. "A friend--YOU?" - -"Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give you a -reason?" - -"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it -better. Do you like it better?" - -My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" But after an instant -I added: "Did they say why I should like it better?" - -"No; Master Miles only said, 'We must do nothing but what she likes!'" - -"I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?" - -"Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, 'Oh, of course, of course!'--and I -said the same." - -I thought a moment. "You were too sweet, too--I can hear you all. But -nonetheless, between Miles and me, it's now all out." - -"All out?" My companion stared. "But what, miss?" - -"Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. I came home, my -dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well -in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as -she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her -comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?" - -"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom." - -"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the candor -of her stupefaction. - -"That she suffers the torments--!" - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, -gape. "Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?" - -"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them-" I faltered -myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. "To share them--?" - -"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have -fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to -show I was. "As I've told you, however, it doesn't matter." - -"Because you've made up your mind? But to what?" - -"To everything." - -"And what do you call 'everything'?" - -"Why, sending for their uncle." - -"Oh, miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. "ah, but I will, I WILL! I -see it's the only way. What's 'out,' as I told you, with Miles is that -if he thinks I'm afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he -shall see he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me -on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I'm to be -reproached with having done nothing again about more school--" - -"Yes, miss--" my companion pressed me. - -"Well, there's that awful reason." - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?" - -"Why, the letter from his old place." - -"You'll show it to the master?" - -"I ought to have done so on the instant." - -"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake -to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--" - -"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. - -"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful and -perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? -He's exquisite--so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole -thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here -such people--!" - -"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." She had -turned quite pale. - -"Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. - -"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell -him?" - -"You needn't tell him anything. _I_'ll tell him." - -I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write--?" Remembering she couldn't, -I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" - -"I tell the bailiff. HE writes." - -"And should you like him to write our story?" - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and -it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were -again in her eyes. "Ah, miss, YOU write!" - -"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - - - -XVII - - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had -changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, -with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank -sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of -the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage -and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless obsession, -I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at -rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. -His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in -the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very -much at his ease. "Well, what are YOU up to?" he asked with a grace of -sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been -present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was "out." - -I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?" - -"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You're -like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed. - -"Then you weren't asleep?" - -"Not much! I lie awake and think." - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held -out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. -"What is it," I asked, "that you think of?" - -"What in the world, my dear, but YOU?" - -"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on that! I had -so far rather you slept." - -"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours." - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. "Of what queer business, -Miles?" - -"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!" - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. -"What do you mean by all the rest?" - -"Oh, you know, you know!" - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and -our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting -his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at -that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly you shall go -back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles you. But not to -the old place--we must find another, a better. How could I know it did -trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it -at all?" His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made -him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children's -hospital; and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I -possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who -might have helped to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might -help! "Do you know you've never said a word to me about your school--I -mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way?" - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly -gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. "Haven't I?" It wasn't -for ME to help him--it was for the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from -him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; -so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his -little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part -of innocence and consistency. "No, never--from the hour you came back. -You've never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, -nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, -little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of anything that -MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I'm in the -dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the -first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your -previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present." It was -extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or -whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I dared but half -to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, -appear as accessible as an older person--imposed him almost as an -intellectual equal. "I thought you wanted to go on as you are." - -It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, -like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. "I -don't--I don't. I want to get away." - -"You're tired of Bly?" - -"Oh, no, I like Bly." - -"Well, then--?" - -"Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!" - -I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. -"You want to go to your uncle?" - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the -pillow. "Ah, you can't get off with that!" - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. -"My dear, I don't want to get off!" - -"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"--he lay beautifully -staring. "My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle -things." - -"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it will be to -take you quite away." - -"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm working for? -You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it all drop: you'll -have to tell him a tremendous lot!" - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the -instant, to meet him rather more. "And how much will YOU, Miles, have to -tell him? There are things he'll ask you!" - -He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?" - -"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do with -you. He can't send you back--" - -"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new field." - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable -gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the -poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance -at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more -dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear -that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the -tenderness of my pity I embraced him. "Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles--!" - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?" - -"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?" - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his -hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. "I've told you--I -told you this morning." - -Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?" - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; -then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me -release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows -I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn -my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. -"I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said. - -"Well, then, finish it!" - -I waited a minute. "What happened before?" - -He gazed up at me again. "Before what?" - -"Before you came back. And before you went away." - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. "What -happened?" - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that -I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting -consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize -once more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles, if you KNEW how I want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing -but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong--I'd -rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"--oh, I brought it -out now even if I SHOULD go too far--"I just want you to help me to save -you!" But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far. The -answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an -extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the -room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The -boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of -sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, -a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and -was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared -about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window -tight. "Why, the candle's out!" I then cried. - -"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles. - - - - -XVIII - - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me -quietly: "Have you written, miss?" - -"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that my letter, -sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough -to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile -there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more -exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to -gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats -of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated, -in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was -conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to -show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, really -lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; -there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; never -was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and -freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. I had -perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my -initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged -sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of -what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. -Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD -been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof -that it could ever have flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after -our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if -I shouldn't like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing -to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was -literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite -tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights we love to read -about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you -mean that--to be let alone yourself and not followed up--you'll cease to -worry and spy upon me, won't keep me so close to you, will let me go -and come. Well, I 'come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll be plenty of -time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to -show you that I contended for a principle." It may be imagined whether I -resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, to -the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never -played; and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking -a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at the -end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to measure, I -started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It -was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't -really, in the least, slept: I had only done something much worse--I had -forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to -Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: -"Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?"--breaking moreover into a happy laugh -which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he -prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before -going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere -about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that -theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had -found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with blank, -scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had -carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, -for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my -sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she might be -with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for her without -an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but when, ten -minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, -it was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries we -had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, apart from -observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with what high -interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first given her. - -"She'll be above," she presently said--"in one of the rooms you haven't -searched." - -"No; she's at a distance." I had made up my mind. "She has gone out." - -Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?" - -I naturally also looked volumes. "Isn't that woman always without one?" - -"She's with HER?" - -"She's with HER!" I declared. "We must find them." - -My hand was on my friend's arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my -pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her -uneasiness. "And where's Master Miles?" - -"Oh, HE'S with Quint. They're in the schoolroom." - -"Lord, miss!" My view, I was myself aware--and therefore I suppose my -tone--had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -"The trick's played," I went on; "they've successfully worked their -plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she -went off." - -"'Divine'?" Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -"Infernal, then!" I almost cheerfully rejoined. "He has provided for -himself as well. But come!" - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. "You leave him--?" - -"So long with Quint? Yes--I don't mind that now." - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, -and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping -an instant at my sudden resignation, "Because of your letter?" she -eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it -up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. -"Luke will take it," I said as I came back. I reached the house door and -opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to -the drive while she stood in the doorway. "You go with nothing on?" - -"What do I care when the child has nothing? I can't wait to dress," I -cried, "and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, -upstairs." - -"With THEM?" Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - - - -XIX - - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My -acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all -events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection of -my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat moored -there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its -agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the -house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might -be, she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small -adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had shared -with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to -which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose's -steps so marked a direction--a direction that made her, when she -perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly -mystified. "You're going to the water, Miss?--you think she's IN--?" - -"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But -what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, the other -day, we saw together what I told you." - -"When she pretended not to see--?" - -"With that astounding self-possession? I've always been sure she wanted -to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her." - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they really -TALK of them?" - -"I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard -them, would simply appall us." - -"And if she IS there--" - -"Yes?" - -"Then Miss Jessel is?" - -"Beyond a doubt. You shall see." - -"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I -went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, -she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, -might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least -danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the -greater part of the water without a sight of the child. There was no -trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my observation of -her had been most startling, and none on the opposite edge, where, save -for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. -The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared to its length -that, with its ends out of view, it might have been taken for a scant -river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the suggestion -of my friend's eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative -headshake. - -"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat." - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across -the lake. "Then where is it?" - -"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it." - -"All alone--that child?" - -"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's an old, -old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, -into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; -then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge -formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for -the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees -growing close to the water. - -"But if the boat's there, where on earth's SHE?" my colleague anxiously -asked. - -"That's exactly what we must learn." And I started to walk further. - -"By going all the way round?" - -"Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it's -far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over." - -"Laws!" cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too -much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got -halfway round--a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by -a path choked with overgrowth--I paused to give her breath. I sustained -her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and -this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we -reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed -it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and -was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to -the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. I recognized, -as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the -prodigious character of the feat for a little girl; but I had lived, by -this time, too long among wonders and had panted to too many livelier -measures. There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, and -that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. Then, -"There she is!" we both exclaimed at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if -her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was -to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it were all she was there -for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she -had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a -step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently -approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done -in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first -to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the -child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, -yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch -it--which I did the more intently when I saw Flora's face peep at me -over our companion's shoulder. It was serious now--the flicker had left -it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. -Grose the simplicity of HER relation. Still, all this while, nothing -more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again -drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was -that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept -the child's hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular -reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank look she -launched me. "I'll be hanged," it said, "if _I_'ll speak!" - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. -She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. "Why, where are your things?" - -"Where yours are, my dear!" I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an -answer quite sufficient. "And where's Miles?" she went on. - -There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: -these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn -blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had -held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt -overflow in a deluge. "I'll tell you if you'll tell ME--" I heard myself -say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. - -"Well, what?" - -Mrs. Grose's suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. "Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?" - - - - -XX - - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much -as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, -been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child's face now -received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a -pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, -that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence--the -shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a -few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my colleague's -arm. "She's there, she's there!" - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had -stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling -now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She -was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel -nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there -most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so -extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her--with -the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and -understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on -the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all -the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This -first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, -during which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where I pointed struck -me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my -own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner -in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it -would have done to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay -was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our -pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I -was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the particular -one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a convulsion of -her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the -prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression -of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented -and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me--this was a stroke -that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence -that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that -she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the -immediate need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. -"She's there, you little unhappy thing--there, there, THERE, and you see -her as well as you see me!" I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose -that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that -description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in -the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without -a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and -deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this -time--if I can put the whole thing at all together--more appalled at -what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was -simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose -also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next -moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and -her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. "What a dreadful -turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?" - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the -hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already -lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, -quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my -pointing hand. "You don't see her exactly as WE see?--you mean to say -you don't now--NOW? She's as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest -woman, LOOK--!" She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep -groan of negation, repulsion, compassion--the mixture with her pity of -her relief at her exemption--a sense, touching to me even then, that she -would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, for -with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed -I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt--I saw--my livid -predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, -more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in -the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose -immediately and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced -through my sense of ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless -reassurance. - -"She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there--and you never see -nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel--when poor Miss Jessel's -dead and buried? WE know, don't we, love?"--and she appealed, blundering -in, to the child. "It's all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke--and -we'll go home as fast as we can!" - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of -propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as -it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with -her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to -forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight -to our friend's dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly -failed, had quite vanished. I've said it already--she was literally, -she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. "I don't -know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never HAVE. I think -you're cruel. I don't like you!" Then, after this deliverance, which -might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she -hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful -little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. "Take -me away, take me away--oh, take me away from HER!" - -"From ME?" I panted. - -"From you--from you!" she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to -do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, -without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the -interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was not -there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she -had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and -I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly -shake my head at her. "If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would at -present have gone. I've been living with the miserable truth, and now -it has only too much closed round me. Of course I've lost you: I've -interfered, and you've seen--under HER dictation"--with which I faced, -over the pool again, our infernal witness--"the easy and perfect way to -meet it. I've done my best, but I've lost you. Goodbye." For Mrs. -Grose I had an imperative, an almost frantic "Go, go!" before which, in -infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly -convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred -and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as -fast as she could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. -I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an -odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had -made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my face, on the -ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have lain there long -and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day was almost done. -I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at the gray pool and -its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the house, my dreary -and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, -to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to make on -Flora's extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that night, -by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a -false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw -neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous -compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw--I can use no other -phrase--so much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever -been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of -this one; in spite of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of -consternation that had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, in -the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the -house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone -straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at -a glance, much material testimony to Flora's rupture. Her little -belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I -was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my -other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom now--he might -have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it consisted--in part at -least--of his coming in at about eight o'clock and sitting down with me -in silence. On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles -and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness and felt -as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was sitting -in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as if to -look at me; then--as if to share them--came to the other side of the -hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he -wanted, I felt, to be with me. - - - - -XXI - - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. -Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly -feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of -extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had for their -subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, governess. -It was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene -that she protested--it was conspicuously and passionately against mine. -I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; -the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me -once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of -her sense of the child's sincerity as against my own. "She persists in -denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?" - -My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, miss, it isn't a matter -on which I can push her! Yet it isn't either, I must say, as if I much -needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old." - -"Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like -some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, -as it were, her respectability. 'Miss Jessel indeed--SHE!' Ah, she's -'respectable,' the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, -I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the -others. I DID put my foot in it! She'll never speak to me again." - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more -behind it. "I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand -manner about it!" - -"And that manner"--I summed it up--"is practically what's the matter -with her now!" - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's face, and not a little else -besides! "She asks me every three minutes if I think you're coming in." - -"I see--I see." I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it -out. "Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her -familiarity with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss -Jessel?" - -"Not one, miss. And of course you know," my friend added, "I took it -from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there WAS -nobody." - -"Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still." - -"I don't contradict her. What else can I do?" - -"Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal with. -They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer even than -nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her -grievance, and she'll work it to the end." - -"Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?" - -"Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to him -the lowest creature--!" - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; she looked -for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. "And him who thinks so -well of you!" - -"He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed,"--of proving it! -But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of -me." - -My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at you." - -"So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed me on my -way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. "I've a -better idea--the result of my reflections. My going WOULD seem the right -thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won't do. It's YOU -who must go. You must take Flora." - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But where in the world--?" - -"Away from here. Away from THEM. Away, even most of all, now, from me. -Straight to her uncle." - -"Only to tell on you--?" - -"No, not 'only'! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy." - -She was still vague. "And what IS your remedy?" - -"Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles's." - -She looked at me hard. "Do you think he--?" - -"Won't, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think -it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as -possible and leave me with him alone." I was amazed, myself, at the -spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more -disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, -she hesitated. "There's one thing, of course," I went on: "they mustn't, -before she goes, see each other for three seconds." Then it came over me -that, in spite of Flora's presumable sequestration from the instant of -her return from the pool, it might already be too late. "Do you mean," I -anxiously asked, "that they HAVE met?" - -At this she quite flushed. "Ah, miss, I'm not such a fool as that! If -I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each -time with one of the maids, and at present, though she's alone, she's -locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" There were too many things. - -"And yet what?" - -"Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?" - -"I'm not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last evening, a new -hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe that--poor -little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last evening, in the -firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were -just coming." - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. -"And did it come?" - -"No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it was without -a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sister's -condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the -same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle sees her, consent to his -seeing her brother without my having given the boy--and most of all -because things have got so bad--a little more time." - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite -understand. "What do you mean by more time?" - -"Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on MY -side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only -fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your -arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." So I put it -before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed -that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you really -want NOT to go." - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand -to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. I'll go this morning." - -I wanted to be very just. "If you SHOULD wish still to wait, I would -engage she shouldn't see me." - -"No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." She held me a moment -with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the right one. -I myself, miss--" - -"Well?" - -"I can't stay." - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. "You mean -that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen--?" - -She shook her head with dignity. "I've HEARD--!" - -"Heard?" - -"From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic relief. "On my -honor, miss, she says things--!" But at this evocation she broke down; -she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do -before, gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. "Oh, -thank God!" - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. "'Thank -God'?" - -"It so justifies me!" - -"It does that, miss!" - -I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. "She's so -horrible?" - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. "Really shocking." - -"And about me?" - -"About you, miss--since you must have it. It's beyond everything, for a -young lady; and I can't think wherever she must have picked up--" - -"The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!" I broke in with -a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. "Well, perhaps I -ought to also--since I've heard some of it before! Yet I can't bear it," -the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on my -dressing table, at the face of my watch. "But I must go back." - -I kept her, however. "Ah, if you can't bear it--!" - -"How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that: to get her away. -Far from this," she pursued, "far from THEM-" - -"She may be different? She may be free?" I seized her almost with joy. -"Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE--" - -"In such doings?" Her simple description of them required, in the light -of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole -thing as she had never done. "I believe." - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My -support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been -in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my -honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave -of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. "There's one -thing, of course--it occurs to me--to remember. My letter, giving the -alarm, will have reached town before you." - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and -how weary at last it had made her. "Your letter won't have got there. -Your letter never went." - -"What then became of it?" - -"Goodness knows! Master Miles--" - -"Do you mean HE took it?" I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. "I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where you -had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and -he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could only -exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. -Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated "You see!" - -"Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it -and destroyed it." - -"And don't you see anything else?" - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. "It strikes me that by this time -your eyes are open even wider than mine." - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show -it. "I make out now what he must have done at school." And she gave, in -her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. "He stole!" - -I turned it over--I tried to be more judicial. "Well--perhaps." - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. "He stole LETTERS!" - -She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so -I showed them off as I might. "I hope then it was to more purpose than -in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday," -I pursued, "will have given him so scant an advantage--for it contained -only the bare demand for an interview--that he is already much ashamed -of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind -last evening was precisely the need of confession." I seemed to myself, -for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. "Leave us, leave -us"--I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. "I'll get it out of -him. He'll meet me--he'll confess. If he confesses, he's saved. And if -he's saved--" - -"Then YOU are?" The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her -farewell. "I'll save you without him!" she cried as she went. - - - - -XXII - - -Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--that the -great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to -find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it -would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed -with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage -containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the -gates. Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, and -for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my weakness, I could -consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a tighter place still -than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, for the first time, -I could see in the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. -What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was too -little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness -of my colleague's act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect -of which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of -making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching -the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up -at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the -consciousness that I was charged with much to do, and I caused it to be -known as well that, left thus to myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I -wandered with that manner, for the next hour or two, all over the place -and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. So, for -the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, -little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no -glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change -taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the -piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled and -befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her -confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in -by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had -already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and -I learned below that he had breakfasted--in the presence of a couple of -the maids--with Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he -said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have -expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What -he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled: -there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean for myself in -especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung -to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had -perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction -that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, -by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the -care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining -to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate -his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, -moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, -I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither -challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. -Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the -accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the -beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the -eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my -meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so -that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside -of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared -Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. -Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again--how my -equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut -my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with -was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking -"nature" into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous -ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but -demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw -of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require -more tact than just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature. -How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of -reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make -reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort -of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as -that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare -in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found even now--as he -had so often found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me -off. Wasn't there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, -broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?--the fact -that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had now come) it -would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego the help one -might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence been -given him for but to save him? Mightn't one, to reach his mind, risk the -stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, when we were -face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. -The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with attendance. -Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his pockets -and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing some -humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: "I say, my dear, -is she really very awfully ill?" - -"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better. London -will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take -your mutton." - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, -when he was established, went on. "Did Bly disagree with her so terribly -suddenly?" - -"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on." - -"Then why didn't you get her off before?" - -"Before what?" - -"Before she became too ill to travel." - -I found myself prompt. "She's NOT too ill to travel: she only might -have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. The -journey will dissipate the influence"--oh, I was grand!--"and carry it -off." - -"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to -his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, from the day of -his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. Whatever -he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He -was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more -conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things -than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into -peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal was of the -briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things immediately -removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his hands in his -little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of the wide -window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me up. We -continued silent while the maid was with us--as silent, it whimsically -occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, at -the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only -when the waiter had left us. "Well--so we're alone!" - - - - -XXIII - - -"Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. We -shouldn't like that!" I went on. - -"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others." - -"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred. - -"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his hands in -his pockets and planted there in front of me, "they don't much count, do -they?" - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It depends on what you call -'much'!" - -"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" On this, however, -he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, -restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead -against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the -dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work," behind -which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had -repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the -moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which -I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the -worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a -meaning from the boy's embarrassed back--none other than the impression -that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp -intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was -positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a -kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at -any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I -took it in with a throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted -pane, for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in -the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very -first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he -watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his -usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small -strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet -me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. "Well, I think I'm -glad Bly agrees with ME!" - -"You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good -deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," I went on bravely, -"that you've been enjoying yourself." - -"Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles away. -I've never been so free." - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with -him. "Well, do you like it?" - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do -YOU?"--more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. -Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with -the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. "Nothing could -be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we're alone -together now it's you that are alone most. But I hope," he threw in, -"you don't particularly mind!" - -"Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help -minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company--you're so -beyond me--I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?" - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver -now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. "You stay -on just for THAT?" - -"Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest -I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth -your while. That needn't surprise you." My voice trembled so that I felt -it impossible to suppress the shake. "Don't you remember how I told you, -when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was -nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you?" - -"Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone -to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out -through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. "Only -that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!" - -"It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. "But, you know, -you didn't do it." - -"Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, "you wanted -me to tell you something." - -"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know." - -"Ah, then, is THAT what you've stayed over for?" - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can't begin to express the -effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as -if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. "Well, -yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for -that." - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the -assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said -was: "Do you mean now--here?" - -"There couldn't be a better place or time." He looked round him -uneasily, and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very -first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. -It was as if he were suddenly afraid of me--which struck me indeed as -perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort -I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so -gentle as to be almost grotesque. "You want so to go out again?" - -"Awfully!" He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery -of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up -his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that -gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of -what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what -did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt -on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the -possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't it base to create for a -being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into -our situation a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem -to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision -of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with terrors and -scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for each other -we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll -tell you everything," Miles said--"I mean I'll tell you anything you -like. You'll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I WILL -tell you--I WILL. But not now." - -"Why not now?" - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. -Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, -someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. "I have to see -Luke." - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my -truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. "Well, then, -go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for -that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request." - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a -little to bargain. "Very much smaller--?" - -"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work preoccupied -me, and I was offhand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the -hall, you took, you know, my letter." - - - - -XXIV - - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke -that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind -movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just -fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively -keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon us -that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view -like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, from -outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to the -glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room his -white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place -within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time -recovered her grasp of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the -immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw -and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I can -call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how -transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon for a -human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human -soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--had a -perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was -close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it -presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further -away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -"Yes--I took it." - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while -I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his -little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on -the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have -likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather -the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, was -such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, -my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the -scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence that -I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by this time, -of the child's unconsciousness, that made me go on. "What did you take -it for?" - -"To see what you said about me." - -"You opened the letter?" - -"I opened it." - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles's own face, -in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage -of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his -sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in -presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that I also was and -that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes -went back to the window only to see that the air was clear again and--by -my personal triumph--the influence quenched? There was nothing there. I -felt that the cause was mine and that I should surely get ALL. "And you -found nothing!"--I let my elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing." - -"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy. - -"Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with it?" - -"I've burned it." - -"Burned it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at school?" - -Oh, what this brought up! "At school?" - -"Did you take letters?--or other things?" - -"Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and -that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did -reach him. "Did I STEAL?" - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it -were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him -take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the -world. "Was it for that you mightn't go back?" - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. "Did you -know I mightn't go back?" - -"I know everything." - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?" - -"Everything. Therefore DID you--?" But I couldn't say it again. - -Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal." - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but it -was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all -for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. "What then did -you do?" - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his -breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have -been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some -faint green twilight. "Well--I said things." - -"Only that?" - -"They thought it was enough!" - -"To turn you out for?" - -Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little to explain it -as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner -quite detached and almost helpless. "Well, I suppose I oughtn't." - -"But to whom did you say them?" - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. "I don't -know!" - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was -indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left -it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even -then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was -already that of added separation. "Was it to everyone?" I asked. - -"No; it was only to--" But he gave a sick little headshake. "I don't -remember their names." - -"Were they then so many?" - -"No--only a few. Those I liked." - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity -the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the -instant confounding and bottomless, for if he WERE innocent, what then -on earth was _I_? Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the -question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he -turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, -I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him from. "And -did they repeat what you said?" I went on after a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again -with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against -his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim -day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an -unspeakable anxiety. "Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they must have -repeated them. To those THEY liked," he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it -over. "And these things came round--?" - -"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. "But I didn't know -they'd tell." - -"The masters? They didn't--they've never told. That's why I ask you." - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. "Yes, it was -too bad." - -"Too bad?" - -"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home." - -I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such -a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard -myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" But the next -after that I must have sounded stern enough. "What WERE these things?" - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound and -an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against -the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the -hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I felt a sick -swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that -the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I -saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on the -perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was still -to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the climax -of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. "No more, no -more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to my -visitant. - -"Is she HERE?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the -direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, with -a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a sudden fury -gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to -Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still -than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the window--straight -before us. It's THERE--the coward horror, there for the last time!" - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled -dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, -he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place -and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the -taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. "It's HE?" - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to -challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?" - -"Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its -convulsed supplication. "WHERE?" - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his -tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own?--what will he -EVER matter? _I_ have you," I launched at the beast, "but he has lost -you forever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, "There, THERE!" I -said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and -seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he -uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with -which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. -I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a passion; -but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that -I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - -***** This file should be named 209.txt or 209.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/209/ - -Produced by Judith Boss - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/209.zip b/old/209.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index f23a16e..0000000 --- a/old/209.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old-2024-08-16/209-0.txt b/old/old-2024-08-16/209-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7c8b0e1..0000000 --- a/old/old-2024-08-16/209-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4925 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Turn of the Screw - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: February, 1995 [eBook #209] -[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Judith Boss - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - - - - -The Turn of the Screw - -by Henry James - - - -Contents - - - THE TURN OF THE SCREW - I - II - III - IV - V - VI - VII - VIII - IX - X - XI - XII - XIII - XIV - XV - XVI - XVII - XVIII - XIX - XX - XXI - XXII - XXIII - XXIV - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but -except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in -an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no -comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case -he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, -I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as -had gathered us for the occasion—an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to -a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in -the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him -to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had -succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this -observation that drew from Douglas—not immediately, but later in the -evening—a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call -attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which -I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself -something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in -fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, -he brought out what was in his mind. - -“I quite agree—in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it was—that -its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds a -particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming -kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the -effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to _two_ children—?” - -“We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two turns! -Also that we want to hear about them.” - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to -present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in -his pockets. “Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too -horrible.” This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the -thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his -triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: “It’s -beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.” - -“For sheer terror?” I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss -how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little -wincing grimace. “For dreadful—dreadfulness!” - -“Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he -saw what he spoke of. “For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain.” - -“Well then,” I said, “just sit right down and begin.” - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an -instant. Then as he faced us again: “I can’t begin. I shall have to -send to town.” There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; -after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. “The story’s -written. It’s in a locked drawer—it has not been out for years. I could -write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as -he finds it.” It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound -this—appeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a -thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons -for a long silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just -his scruples that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post -and to agree with us for an early hearing; then I asked him if the -experience in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. -“Oh, thank God, no!” - -“And is the record yours? You took the thing down?” - -“Nothing but the impression. I took that _here_”—he tapped his heart. -“I’ve never lost it.” - -“Then your manuscript—?” - -“Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung fire -again. “A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She sent me -the pages in question before she died.” They were all listening now, -and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the -inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also -without irritation. “She was a most charming person, but she was ten -years older than I. She was my sister’s governess,” he quietly said. -“She was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she -would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this -episode was long before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on -my coming down the second summer. I was much there that year—it was a -beautiful one; and we had, in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in -the garden—talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh -yes; don’t grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think -she liked me, too. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had -never told anyone. It wasn’t simply that she said so, but that I knew -she hadn’t. I was sure; I could see. You’ll easily judge why when you -hear.” - -“Because the thing had been such a scare?” - -He continued to fix me. “You’ll easily judge,” he repeated: “_you_ -will.” - -I fixed him, too. “I see. She was in love.” - -He laughed for the first time. “You _are_ acute. Yes, she was in love. -That is, she had been. That came out—she couldn’t tell her story -without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of -us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place—the corner of the -lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer -afternoon. It wasn’t a scene for a shudder; but oh—!” He quitted the -fire and dropped back into his chair. - -“You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired. - -“Probably not till the second post.” - -“Well then; after dinner—” - -“You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. “Isn’t anybody -going?” It was almost the tone of hope. - -“Everybody will stay!” - -“_I_ will”—and “_I_ will!” cried the ladies whose departure had been -fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more -light. “Who was it she was in love with?” - -“The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply. - -“Oh, I can’t wait for the story!” - -“The story _won’t_ tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal, vulgar -way.” - -“More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.” - -“Won’t _you_ tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. “Yes—tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. Good -night.” And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly -bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on -the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t know who she -was in love with, I know who _he_ was.” - -“She was ten years older,” said her husband. - -“_Raison de plus_—at that age! But it’s rather nice, his long -reticence.” - -“Forty years!” Griffin put in. - -“With this outbreak at last.” - -“The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion of -Thursday night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of -it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however -incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we -handshook and “candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first -post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of—or perhaps -just on account of—the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite -let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in -fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes -were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire and -indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him again -before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of the -previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read -us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. -Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this narrative, -from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall -presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death—when it was in -sight—committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began to -read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The -departing ladies who had said they would stay didn’t, of course, thank -heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a -rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with -which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final -auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to -a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up -the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in -possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of -several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, -on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to -London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had -already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This -person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in -Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing—this prospective -patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a -figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a -fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily -fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and -pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as -gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and gave her the -courage she afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as -a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. She -conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant—saw him all in a -glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming -ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled -with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to -his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished her -immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to a -small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military -brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, by the -strangest of chances for a man in his position—a lone man without the -right sort of experience or a grain of patience—very heavily on his -hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, a -series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks and had -done all he could; had in particular sent them down to his other house, -the proper place for them being of course the country, and kept them -there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look after -them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down -himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward -thing was that they had practically no other relations and that his own -affairs took up all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, -which was healthy and secure, and had placed at the head of their -little establishment—but below stairs only—an excellent woman, Mrs. -Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly -been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting -for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, without -children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. There were -plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who should go -down as governess would be in supreme authority. She would also have, -in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been for a term at -school—young as he was to be sent, but what else could be done?—and -who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back from one day to -the other. There had been for the two children at first a young lady -whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite -beautifully—she was a most respectable person—till her death, the great -awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no alternative but the school -for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and -things, had done as she could for Flora; and there were, further, a -cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, and an old -gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. -“And what did the former governess die of?—of so much respectability?” - -Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t -anticipate.” - -“Excuse me—I thought that was just what you _are_ doing.” - -“In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have wished to learn -if the office brought with it—” - -“Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. “She did wish -to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what she learned. -Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. She was -young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little -company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated—took a couple of -days to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her -modest measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she -engaged.” And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of -the company, moved me to throw in— - -“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the -splendid young man. She succumbed to it.” - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave -a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. -“She saw him only twice.” - -“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.” - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It _was_ -the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who hadn’t -succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty—that for several -applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, -simply afraid. It sounded dull—it sounded strange; and all the more so -because of his main condition.” - -“Which was—?” - -“That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal nor -complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, -receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and -let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that -when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking -her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.” - -“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked. - -“She never saw him again.” - -“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, -was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, -the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he -opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. -The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first -occasion the same lady put another question. “What is your title?” - -“I haven’t one.” - -“Oh, _I_ have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun to -read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the -beauty of his author’s hand. - - -I - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a -little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, -to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found -myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this -state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that -carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle -from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I -found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in -waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a -country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly -welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, -encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to -which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something -so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a -most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and -fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn -and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and -the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the -golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair -from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door, -with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent -a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. I -had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and that, -as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a -gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond -his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly -through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my -pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on -the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have -to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I -afterward wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. I -slept little that night—I was too much excited; and this astonished me, -too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense of the -liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, one of -the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the -full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, -I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the -extraordinary charm of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It -was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with -Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I -had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook -might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being -so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so -glad—stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman—as to be positively -on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little -why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with -suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection -with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the -vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to -do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times -rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and -prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look -at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to -listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, -for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not -without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a -moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; -there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as -at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies -were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the -light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent -matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, “form” little -Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It -had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I -should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed -being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken -was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time, -with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my -inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this -timidity—which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had -been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of -uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of -one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, -and to determine us—I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It -was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I -could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with -four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, -brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were -naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only as -prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. - -“And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?” - -One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, miss, _most_ remarkable. If you -think well of this one!”—and she stood there with a plate in her hand, -beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with -placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - -“Yes; if I do—?” - -“You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!” - -“Well, that, I think, is what I came for—to be carried away. I’m -afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m rather -easily carried away. I was carried away in London!” - -I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In Harley -Street?” - -“In Harley Street.” - -“Well, miss, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the last.” - -“Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the only one. My -other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?” - -“Not tomorrow—Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under -care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.” - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an -idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took her -manner as a kind of comforting pledge—never falsified, thank -heaven!—that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was -glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly -called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the -most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the -scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my -new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I -had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, -freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, in this -agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my first -duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into -the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I -arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, -she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by step and -room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, childish -talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our becoming -immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout our little -tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in empty chambers -and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and even -on the summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, -her morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than -she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I -left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would -now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with -her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners -and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance -inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for -diversion of the young idea, take all color out of storybooks and -fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze -and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, -embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and -half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as -a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, -strangely, at the helm! - - -II - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to -meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for an -incident that, presenting itself the second evening, had deeply -disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, as I have -expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen -apprehension. The postbag, that evening—it came late—contained a letter -for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found to be -composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to himself, -with a seal still unbroken. “This, I recognize, is from the headmaster, -and the headmaster’s an awful bore. Read him, please; deal with him; -but mind you don’t report. Not a word. I’m off!” I broke the seal with -a great effort—so great a one that I was a long time coming to it; took -the unopened missive at last up to my room and only attacked it just -before going to bed. I had better have let it wait till morning, for it -gave me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, the next -day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me -that I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. - -“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.” - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a -quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they all—?” - -“Sent home—yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back at -all.” - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take him?” - -“They absolutely decline.” - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them -fill with good tears. “What has he done?” - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter—which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put -her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not -for me, miss.” - -My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated -as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, -faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my -pocket. “Is he really _bad_?” - -The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?” - -“They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it -should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.” Mrs. -Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this -meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some -coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went -on: “That he’s an injury to the others.” - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly -flamed up. “Master Miles! _him_ an injury?” - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the -idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the -spot, sarcastically. “To his poor little innocent mates!” - -“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such cruel things! Why, -he’s scarce ten years old.” - -“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.” - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss, -first. _Then_ believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see -him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, -was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of -what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. -“You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added -the next moment—“_look_ at her!” - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had -established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, -and a copy of nice “round O’s,” now presented herself to view at the -open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment -from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish -light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had -conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should -follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of -Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her -with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. - -Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to -approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy -she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the -staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, -holding her there with a hand on her arm. “I take what you said to me -at noon as a declaration that _you’ve_ never known him to be bad.” - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very -honestly, adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him—I don’t pretend -_that!_” - -I was upset again. “Then you _have_ known him—?” - -“Yes indeed, miss, thank God!” - -On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never is—?” - -“Is no boy for _me!_” - -I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?” -Then, keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought out. -“But not to the degree to contaminate—” - -“To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I explained it. “To -corrupt.” - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. -“Are you afraid he’ll corrupt _you?_” She put the question with such a -fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match -her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in -another place. “What was the lady who was here before?” - -“The last governess? She was also young and pretty—almost as young and -almost as pretty, miss, even as you.” - -“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect -throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!” - -“Oh, he _did_,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he liked -everyone!” She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. -“I mean that’s _his_ way—the master’s.” - -I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?” - -She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of _him_.” - -“Of the master?” - -“Of who else?” - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I -merely asked what I wanted to know. “Did _she_ see anything in the -boy—?” - -“That wasn’t right? She never told me.” - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she careful—particular?” - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some -things—yes.” - -“But not about all?” - -Again she considered. “Well, miss—she’s gone. I won’t tell tales.” - -“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I thought -it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: “Did -she die here?” - -“No—she went off.” - -I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that struck -me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked straight out of -the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to know what -young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was taken ill, -you mean, and went home?” - -“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, -at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, -to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We -had then a young woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good -girl and clever; and _she_ took the children altogether for the -interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I -was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead.” - -I turned this over. “But of what?” - -“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I must get to -my work.” - - -III - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual -esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately -than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so -monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had now -been revealed to me should be under an interdict. I was a little late -on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me -before the door of the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I -had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of -freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from -the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, -and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything but a sort of -passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What I -then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that I -have never found to the same degree in any child—his indescribable -little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. It would have been -impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, -and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely -bewildered—so far, that is, as I was not outraged—by the sense of the -horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could -compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was -grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. “You mean the cruel charge—?” - -“It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, _look_ at him!” - -She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. “I assure -you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?” she immediately -added. - -“In answer to the letter?” I had made up my mind. “Nothing.” - -“And to his uncle?” - -I was incisive. “Nothing.” - -“And to the boy himself?” - -I was wonderful. “Nothing.” - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. “Then I’ll stand by -you. We’ll see it out.” - -“We’ll see it out!” I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make it a -vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. “Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom—” - -“To kiss me? No!” I took the good creature in my arms and, after we had -embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall -the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a -little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the situation I -accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was -under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the -far and difficult connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on -a great wave of infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my -ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could -deal with a boy whose education for the world was all on the point of -beginning. I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I -framed for the end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. -Lessons with me, indeed, that charming summer, we all had a theory that -he was to have; but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must have -been rather my own. I learned something—at first, certainly—that had -not been one of the teachings of my small, smothered life; learned to -be amused, and even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. It was -the first time, in a manner, that I had known space and air and -freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And -then there was consideration—and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a -trap—not designed, but deep—to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps -to my vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to -picture it all is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so -little trouble—they were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to -speculate—but even this with a dim disconnectedness—as to how the rough -future (for all futures are rough!) would handle them and might bruise -them. They had the bloom of health and happiness; and yet, as if I had -been in charge of a pair of little grandees, of princes of the blood, -for whom everything, to be right, would have to be enclosed and -protected, the only form that, in my fancy, the afteryears could take -for them was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden -and the park. It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke -into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in -which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the -spring of a beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final -retirement, a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this -hour was the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all -when, as the light faded—or rather, I should say, the day lingered and -the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the -old trees—I could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a -sense of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity -of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself -tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my -discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was -giving pleasure—if he ever thought of it!—to the person to whose -pressure I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly -hoped and directly asked of me, and that I _could_, after all, do it -proved even a greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied -myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the -faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be -remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently -gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the -children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the -thoughts that, as I don’t in the least shrink now from noting, used to -be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a -charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at -the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I -didn’t ask more than that—I only asked that he should _know;_ and the -only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of -it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to me—by which I -mean the face was—when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of -a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the -plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the -spot—and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for—was -the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did -stand there!—but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the -tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. -This tower was one of a pair—square, incongruous, crenelated -structures—that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see -little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends -of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a -measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too -pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic -revival that was already a respectable past. I admired them, had -fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially -when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual -battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I had -so often invoked seemed most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two -distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first -and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of -the mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person I -had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment of -vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that I can -hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of -fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced me -was—a few more seconds assured me—as little anyone else I knew as it -was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley -Street—I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the -strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact -of its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my -statement here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, the -whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took in—what -I did take in—all the rest of the scene had been stricken with death. I -can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the sounds of -evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the -friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no -other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw with -a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in -the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as -definite as a picture in a frame. That’s how I thought, with -extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been and -that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long -enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, -as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants -more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard -to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, -this matter of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught -at a dozen possibilities, none of which made a difference for the -better, that I could see, in there having been in the house—and for how -long, above all?—a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I -just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded that there -should be no such ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this -visitant, at all events—and there was a touch of the strange freedom, -as I remember, in the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat—seemed -to fix me, from his position, with just the question, just the scrutiny -through the fading light, that his own presence provoked. We were too -far apart to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, at -shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, would have -been the right result of our straight mutual stare. He was in one of -the angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as it struck me, -and with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the letters I -form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the -spectacle, he slowly changed his place—passed, looking at me hard all -the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the -sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, -and I can see at this moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from -one of the crenelations to the next. He stopped at the other corner, -but less long, and even as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He -turned away; that was all I knew. - - -IV - -It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at Bly—a mystery -of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected -confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a -confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my -collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had -quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and -driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked three -miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed that this -mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The most singular -part of it, in fact—singular as the rest had been—was the part I -became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes -back to me in the general train—the impression, as I received it on my -return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in the lamplight and -with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good surprised look of my -friend, which immediately told me she had missed me. It came to me -straightway, under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere -relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that could -bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not suspected -in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow -measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself -hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to -me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may -say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On the spot, -accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, I, for a -reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, achieved an inward -resolution—offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea -of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as -soon as possible to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer -affair enough. There were hours, from day to day—or at least there were -moments, snatched even from clear duties—when I had to shut myself up -to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could -bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the -truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth that I -could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom I had been -so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. -It took little time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry -and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The shock I had -suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end of -three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not -been practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any “game.” -Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was -but one sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That -was what, repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say -to myself. We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some -unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made his way in -unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of view, and then -stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold hard stare, that -was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, after all, was that -we should surely see no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that -what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my -charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, -and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could -throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was -a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my -original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the -probable gray prose of my office. There was to be no gray prose, it -appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that -presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery -and the poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course, that -we studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise -the sort of interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that -except by saying that instead of growing used to them—and it’s a marvel -for a governess: I call the sisterhood to witness!—I made constant -fresh discoveries. There was one direction, assuredly, in which these -discoveries stopped: deep obscurity continued to cover the region of -the boy’s conduct at school. It had been promptly given me, I have -noted, to face that mystery without a pang. Perhaps even it would be -nearer the truth to say that—without a word—he himself had cleared it -up. He had made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there -with the real rose flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and -fair for the little horrid, unclean school-world, and he had paid a -price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, -such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the -majority—which could include even stupid, sordid headmasters—turn -infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it -never made Miles a muff) that kept them—how shall I express it?—almost -impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs -of the anecdote, who had—morally, at any rate—nothing to whack! I -remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, -no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in -this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, yet -extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I -have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a -second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really -been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I -should have caught it by the rebound—I should have found the trace. I -found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never spoke of -his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for my part, -was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was under -the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I -perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to -any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days -of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. But -with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was the -question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by -their loveliness. - -There was a Sunday—to get on—when it rained with such force and for so -many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence -of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, -should the evening show improvement, we would attend together the late -service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, -through the park and by the good road to the village, would be a matter -of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, -I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that -had received them—with a publicity perhaps not edifying—while I sat -with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in -that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the “grown-up” dining -room. The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover -them. The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, -and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, on -a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, but -to become aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking -straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was -instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking straight in was the -person who had already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I -won’t say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a -nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made -me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same—he was -the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the -waist up, the window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, -not going down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to -the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to -show me how intense the former had been. He remained but a few -seconds—long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it -was as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always. -Something, however, happened this time that had not happened before; -his stare into my face, through the glass and across the room, was as -deep and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment during which I -could still watch it, see it fix successively several other things. On -the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was -not for me he had come there. He had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread—produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood -there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because I -was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the -door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the -drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a -corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing now—my -visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief -of this; but I took in the whole scene—I gave him time to reappear. I -call it time, but how long was it? I can’t speak to the purpose today -of the duration of these things. That kind of measure must have left -me: they couldn’t have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. -The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all -I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. There were -shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear assurance I felt -that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not there: not -there if I didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, instinctively, -instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was -confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had -stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had -looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what -his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, -came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition -of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; -she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock -that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I -had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on just _my_ -lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me and that -I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I waited -I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take space to -mention. I wondered why _she_ should be scared. - - -V - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she -loomed again into view. “What in the name of goodness is the matter—?” -She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have made a -wonderful face. “Do I show it?” - -“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.” - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My -need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a -rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not -with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held -her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of -support in the shy heave of her surprise. “You came for me for church, -of course, but I can’t go.” - -“Has anything happened?” - -“Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?” - -“Through this window? Dreadful!” - -“Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened.” Mrs. Grose’s eyes expressed -plainly that _she_ had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well -her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. -Oh, it was quite settled that she _must_ share! “Just what you saw from -the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. What _I_ saw—just -before—was much worse.” - -Her hand tightened. “What was it?” - -“An extraordinary man. Looking in.” - -“What extraordinary man?” - -“I haven’t the least idea.” - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. “Then where is he gone?” - -“I know still less.” - -“Have you seen him before?” - -“Yes—once. On the old tower.” - -She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a stranger?” - -“Oh, very much!” - -“Yet you didn’t tell me?” - -“No—for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed—” - -Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I haven’t -guessed!” she said very simply. “How can I if _you_ don’t imagine?” - -“I don’t in the very least.” - -“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?” - -“And on this spot just now.” - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?” - -“Only standing there and looking down at me.” - -She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?” - -I found I had no need to think. “No.” She gazed in deeper wonder. “No.” - -“Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?” - -“Nobody—nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.” - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It -only went indeed a little way. “But if he isn’t a gentleman—” - -“What _is_ he? He’s a horror.” - -“A horror?” - -“He’s—God help me if I know _what_ he is!” - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier -distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt -inconsequence. “It’s time we should be at church.” - -“Oh, I’m not fit for church!” - -“Won’t it do you good?” - -“It won’t do _them!_— I nodded at the house. - -“The children?” - -“I can’t leave them now.” - -“You’re afraid—?” - -I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of _him_.” - -Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out -in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that -was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought -instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to -be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. “When -was it—on the tower?” - -“About the middle of the month. At this same hour.” - -“Almost at dark,” said Mrs. Grose. - -“Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.” - -“Then how did he get in?” - -“And how did he get out?” I laughed. “I had no opportunity to ask him! -This evening, you see,” I pursued, “he has not been able to get in.” - -“He only peeps?” - -“I hope it will be confined to that!” She had now let go my hand; she -turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: “Go to -church. Goodbye. I must watch.” - -Slowly she faced me again. “Do you fear for them?” - -We met in another long look. “Don’t _you?_” Instead of answering she -came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the -glass. “You see how he could see,” I meanwhile went on. - -She didn’t move. “How long was he here?” - -“Till I came out. I came to meet him.” - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. -“_I_ couldn’t have come out.” - -“Neither could I!” I laughed again. “But I did come. I have my duty.” - -“So have I mine,” she replied; after which she added: “What is he -like?” - -“I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.” - -“Nobody?” she echoed. - -“He has no hat.” Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, -with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke -to stroke. “He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, -long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer -whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, -darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good -deal. His eyes are sharp, strange—awfully; but I only know clearly that -they’re rather small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are -thin, and except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He -gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor.” - -“An actor!” It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. -Grose at that moment. - -“I’ve never seen one, but so I suppose them. He’s tall, active, erect,” -I continued, “but never—no, never!—a gentleman.” - -My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started -and her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: “a gentleman _he?_” - -“You know him then?” - -She visibly tried to hold herself. “But he _is_ handsome?” - -I saw the way to help her. “Remarkably!” - -“And dressed—?” - -“In somebody’s clothes.” “They’re smart, but they’re not his own.” - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: “They’re the master’s!” - -I caught it up. “You _do_ know him?” - -She faltered but a second. “Quint!” she cried. - -“Quint?” - -“Peter Quint—his own man, his valet, when he was here!” - -“When the master was?” - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. “He never -wore his hat, but he did wear—well, there were waistcoats missed. They -were both here—last year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone.” - -I followed, but halting a little. “Alone?” - -“Alone with _us_.” Then, as from a deeper depth, “In charge,” she -added. - -“And what became of him?” - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went, too,” -she brought out at last. - -“Went where?” - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He -died.” - -“Died?” I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” - - -VI - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place us -together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could—my -dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, -and my companion’s knowledge, henceforth—a knowledge half consternation -and half compassion—of that liability. There had been, this evening, -after the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostrate—there had been, -for either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of -tears and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of -mutual challenges and pledges that had straightway ensued on our -retreating together to the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there -to have everything out. The result of our having everything out was -simply to reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She -herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the -house but the governess was in the governess’s plight; yet she accepted -without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and -ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an -expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of -which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of -human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, in -spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I -knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable -of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly -sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so -compromising a contract. I was queer company enough—quite as queer as -the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see -how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good -fortune, _could_ steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that -led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I -could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could -join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to -me before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every -feature of what I had seen. - -“He was looking for someone else, you say—someone who was not you?” - -“He was looking for little Miles.” A portentous clearness now possessed -me. “_That’s_ whom he was looking for.” - -“But how do you know?” - -“I know, I know, I know!” My exaltation grew. “And _you_ know, my -dear!” - -She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling -as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: “What if _he_ should see -him?” - -“Little Miles? That’s what he wants!” - -She looked immensely scared again. “The child?” - -“Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to _them_.” That he might -was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; -which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in -practically proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see -again what I had already seen, but something within me said that by -offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, by -accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as an -expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of my companions. The -children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I -recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -“It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned—” - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. “His having been here -and the time they were with him?” - -“The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, -in any way.” - -“Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or knew.” - -“The circumstances of his death?” I thought with some intensity. -“Perhaps not. But Miles would remember—Miles would know.” - -“Ah, don’t try him!” broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. “Don’t be afraid.” I -continued to think. “It _is_ rather odd.” - -“That he has never spoken of him?” - -“Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were ‘great -friends’?” - -“Oh, it wasn’t _him!_” Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. “It was -Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean—to spoil him.” She paused a -moment; then she added: “Quint was much too free.” - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face—_such_ a face!—a -sudden sickness of disgust. “Too free with _my_ boy?” - -“Too free with everyone!” - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by -the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of -the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our -small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the -lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, -had ever, within anyone’s memory attached to the kind old place. It had -neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only -desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, the -very last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she had -her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. “I have it from you -then—for it’s of great importance—that he was definitely and admittedly -bad?” - -“Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it—but the master didn’t.” - -“And you never told him?” - -“Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing—he hated complaints. He was terribly -short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to -_him_—” - -“He wouldn’t be bothered with more?” This squared well enough with my -impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very -particular perhaps about some of the company _he_ kept. All the same, I -pressed my interlocutress. “I promise you _I_ would have told!” - -She felt my discrimination. “I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was -afraid.” - -“Afraid of what?” - -“Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever—he was so deep.” - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. “You weren’t afraid -of anything else? Not of his effect—?” - -“His effect?” she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while I -faltered. - -“On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.” - -“No, they were not in mine!” she roundly and distressfully returned. -“The master believed in him and placed him here because he was supposed -not to be well and the country air so good for him. So he had -everything to say. Yes”—she let me have it—“even about _them_.” - -“Them—that creature?” I had to smother a kind of howl. “And you could -bear it!” - -“No. I couldn’t—and I can’t now!” And the poor woman burst into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow -them; yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back -together to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, -I was, in the immediate later hours in especial—for it may be imagined -whether I slept—still haunted with the shadow of something she had not -told me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. -Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was -not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were -fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the -morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly read into the fact before us -almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more -cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister -figure of the living man—the dead one would keep awhile!—and of the -months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added up, made a -formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, -on the dawn of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer -going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: a -catastrophe explained—superficially at least—by a visible wound to his -head; such a wound as might have been produced—and as, on the final -evidence, _had_ been—by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the -public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at -the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night -and in liquor, accounted for much—practically, in the end and after the -inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been -matters in his life—strange passages and perils, secret disorders, -vices more than suspected—that would have accounted for a good deal -more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible -picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to -find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded -of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and -difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen—oh, in -the right quarter!—that I could succeed where many another girl might -have failed. It was an immense help to me—I confess I rather applaud -myself as I look back!—that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. -I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the -most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal of whose helplessness -had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one’s -own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united -in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I—well, I had _them_. It -was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented itself to me -in an image richly material. I was a screen—I was to stand before them. -The more I saw, the less they would. I began to watch them in a stifled -suspense, a disguised excitement that might well, had it continued too -long, have turned to something like madness. What saved me, as I now -see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It didn’t last as -suspense—it was superseded by horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes—from -the moment I really took hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in -the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles -indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to -finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable -in a young man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the -restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, and -I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun was -still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with -her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived—it was the -charming thing in both children—to let me alone without appearing to -drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were -never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all -really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this -was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as -an active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention—they had no -occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only -with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of -the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my -exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what -I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something -very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We -were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, -the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other -side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this -knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world—the -strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly -merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work—for I was something -or other that could sit—on the old stone bench which overlooked the -pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and yet -without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. -The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, -but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. -There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the -conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what -I should see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of -raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching -in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort -not to move them till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to -make up my mind what to do. There was an alien object in view—a figure -whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I -recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself -that nothing was more natural, for instance, then the appearance of one -of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a -tradesman’s boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect -on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still even without -looking—of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. -Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other -things that they absolutely were not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as -soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right -second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, I -transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, was -about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with the -wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I held -my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden -innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, -but nothing came; then, in the first place—and there is something more -dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate—I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had -previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also -within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. -This was her attitude when I at last looked at her—looked with the -confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct -personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which -happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to -her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as a -mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, -she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. -My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that after some -seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes—I -faced what I had to face. - - -VII - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give -no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still -hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: “They -_know_—it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!” - -“And what on earth—?” I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -“Why, all that _we_ know—and heaven knows what else besides!” Then, as -she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now -with full coherency even to myself. “Two hours ago, in the garden”—I -could scarce articulate—“Flora _saw!_” - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She -has told you?” she panted. - -“Not a word—that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of -eight, _that_ child!” Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction -of it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. “Then how do you -know?” - -“I was there—I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware.” - -“Do you mean aware of _him?_” - -“No—of _her_.” I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious -things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion’s face. -“Another person—this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror -and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful—with such an air also, -and such a face!—on the other side of the lake. I was there with the -child—quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.” - -“Came how—from where?” - -“From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there—but not -so near.” - -“And without coming nearer?” - -“Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as -you!” - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone -you’ve never seen?” - -“Yes. But someone the child has. Someone _you_ have.” Then, to show how -I had thought it all out: “My predecessor—the one who died.” - -“Miss Jessel?” - -“Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?” I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. “How can you be sure?” - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. -“Then ask Flora—_she’s_ sure!” But I had no sooner spoken than I caught -myself up. “No, for God’s sake, _don’t!_ She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll -lie!” - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. “Ah, how -_can_ you?” - -“Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.” - -“It’s only then to spare you.” - -“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see -in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I -_don’t_ see—what I _don’t_ fear!” - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. “You mean you’re afraid of seeing -her again?” - -“Oh, no; that’s nothing—now!” Then I explained. “It’s of _not_ seeing -her.” - -But my companion only looked wan. “I don’t understand you.” - -“Why, it’s that the child may keep it up—and that the child assuredly -_will_—without my knowing it.” - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force -of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to -give way to. “Dear, dear—we must keep our heads! And after all, if she -doesn’t mind it—!” She even tried a grim joke. “Perhaps she likes it!” - -“Likes _such_ things—a scrap of an infant!” - -“Isn’t it just a proof of her blessed innocence?” my friend bravely -inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. “Oh, we must clutch at -_that_—we must cling to it! If it isn’t a proof of what you say, it’s a -proof of—God knows what! For the woman’s a horror of horrors.” - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at -last raising them, “Tell me how you know,” she said. - -“Then you admit it’s what she was?” I cried. - -“Tell me how you know,” my friend simply repeated. - -“Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.” - -“At you, do you mean—so wickedly?” - -“Dear me, no—I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She -only fixed the child.” - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. “Fixed her?” - -“Ah, with such awful eyes!” - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. “Do you -mean of dislike?” - -“God help us, no. Of something much worse.” - -“Worse than dislike?”—this left her indeed at a loss. - -“With a determination—indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention.” - -I made her turn pale. “Intention?” - -“To get hold of her.” Mrs. Grose—her eyes just lingering on mine—gave a -shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out -I completed my statement. “_That’s_ what Flora knows.” - -After a little she turned round. “The person was in black, you say?” - -“In mourning—rather poor, almost shabby. But—yes—with extraordinary -beauty.” I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, -brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed -this. “Oh, handsome—very, very,” I insisted; “wonderfully handsome. But -infamous.” - -She slowly came back to me. “Miss Jessel—_was_ infamous.” She once more -took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me -against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. “They -were both infamous,” she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found -absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. “I -appreciate,” I said, “the great decency of your not having hitherto -spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing.” -She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which -I went on: “I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was -something between them.” - -“There was everything.” - -“In spite of the difference—?” - -“Oh, of their rank, their condition”—she brought it woefully out. -“_She_ was a lady.” - -I turned it over; I again saw. “Yes—she was a lady.” - -“And he so dreadfully below,” said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such company, on the -place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an -acceptance of my companion’s own measure of my predecessor’s abasement. -There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my -full vision—on the evidence—of our employer’s late clever, good-looking -“own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. “The fellow was a -hound.” - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense -of shades. “I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he wished.” - -“With _her?_” - -“With them all.” - -It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again -appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation -of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out -with decision: “It must have been also what _she_ wished!” - -Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at -the same time: “Poor woman—she paid for it!” - -“Then you do know what she died of?” I asked. - -“No—I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn’t; -and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!” - -“Yet you had, then, your idea—” - -“Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes—as to that. She couldn’t have -stayed. Fancy it here—for a governess! And afterward I imagined—and I -still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.” - -“Not so dreadful as what _I_ do,” I replied; on which I must have shown -her—as I was indeed but too conscious—a front of miserable defeat. It -brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch -of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the -other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly -breast, and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!” I sobbed in -despair; “I don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I -dreamed—they’re lost!” - - -VIII - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter -I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution -to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of -a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We -were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else—difficult indeed -as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was -least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, we had -another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to its -being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her -perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I -had “made it up,” I came to be able to give, of each of the persons -appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their -special marks—a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly -recognized and named them. She wished of course—small blame to her!—to -sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own -interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way -to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability -that with recurrence—for recurrence we took for granted—I should get -used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure had -suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion -that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the later hours -of the day had brought a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my -pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of -their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively -cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other -words, plunged afresh into Flora’s special society and there become -aware—it was almost a luxury!—that she could put her little conscious -hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet -speculation and then had accused me to my face of having “cried.” I had -supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally—for -the time, at all events—rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that -they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of -the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature -cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I -naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my -agitation. I couldn’t abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat -to Mrs. Grose—as I did there, over and over, in the small hours—that -with their voices in the air, their pressure on one’s heart, and their -fragrant faces against one’s cheek, everything fell to the ground but -their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to -settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of -subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my -show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate -the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to me as -a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a -matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have -had to quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, -so much as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I -actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much -as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same -time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I -myself did! It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the -portentous little activity by which she sought to divert my -attention—the perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity -of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to -romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this -review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort -that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to -asseverate to my friend that I was certain—which was so much to the -good—that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have been -prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind—I scarce know what -to call it—to invoke such further aid to intelligence as might spring -from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by -bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong -side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; -and I remember how on this occasion—for the sleeping house and the -concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help—I felt -the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. “I don’t believe -anything so horrible,” I recollect saying; “no, let us put it -definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I did, you know, there’s a -thing I should require now, just without sparing you the least bit -more—oh, not a scrap, come!—to get out of you. What was it you had in -mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter -from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn’t pretend -for him that he had not literally _ever_ been ‘bad’? He has _not_ -literally ‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and -so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of -delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made -the claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to -take. What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal -observation of him did you refer?” - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, -at any rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got -my answer. What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the -purpose. It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a -period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually -together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had -ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so -close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank -overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, -directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I -pressed, was that _she_ liked to see young gentlemen not forget their -station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. “You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?” - -“As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was bad.” - -“And for another thing?” I waited. “He repeated your words to Quint?” - -“No, not that. It’s just what he _wouldn’t!_” she could still impress -upon me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, “that he didn’t. But he -denied certain occasions.” - -“What occasions?” - -“When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor—and -a very grand one—and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. When he had -gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him.” - -“He then prevaricated about it—he said he hadn’t?” Her assent was clear -enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He lied.” - -“Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn’t matter; -which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You see, after all, -Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid him.” - -I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification?” - -At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke of it.” - -“Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?” - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t -show anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.” - -Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?” - -“I don’t know—I don’t know!” the poor woman groaned. - -“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you haven’t my dreadful -boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and modesty and -delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, without -my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. -But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that -suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed their -relation.” - -“Oh, he couldn’t prevent—” - -“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with -vehemence, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, -have succeeded in making of him!” - -“Ah, nothing that’s not nice _now!_” Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. - -“I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I mentioned to -you the letter from his school!” - -“I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely force. -“And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel -now?” - -“Yes, indeed—and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? Well,” I -said in my torment, “you must put it to me again, but I shall not be -able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I cried in a -way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which I must -not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her first -example—the one to which she had just previously referred—of the boy’s -happy capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint—on your remonstrance -at the time you speak of—was a base menial, one of the things Miles -said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were another.” Again -her admission was so adequate that I continued: “And you forgave him -that?” - -“Wouldn’t _you?_” - -“Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the -man—” - -“Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!” - -It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it -suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of -forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the -expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light -on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to -Mrs. Grose. “His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less -engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in -him of the little natural man. Still,” I mused, “They must do, for they -make me feel more than ever that I must watch.” - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face how much -more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as -presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out -when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse -_him_—” - -“Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.” Then, before -shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, “I must -just wait,” I wound up. - - -IX - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from -my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant -sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to -grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the -sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish -grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if -I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it would -yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to -struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, -a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought -strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only -made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping -them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they _were_ so -immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, -as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could -only be—blameless and foredoomed as they were—a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I -found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as -I had done so I used to say to myself: “What will they think of that? -Doesn’t it betray too much?” It would have been easy to get into a sad, -wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I -feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the -immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even -under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it -occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little -outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering -if I mightn’t see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own -demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; -which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response -in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they -were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if -I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a -purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for -their poor protectress; I mean—though they got their lessons better and -better, which was naturally what would please her most—in the way of -diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling -her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as -animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the -“pieces” they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. -I should never get to the bottom—were I to let myself go even now—of -the prodigious private commentary, all under still more private -correction, with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. -They had shown me from the first a facility for everything, a general -faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They -got their little tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from the -mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of -memory. They not only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as -Shakespeareans, astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the -case that it had presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at -the present day, I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude -to my unnatural composure on the subject of another school for Miles. -What I remember is that I was content not, for the time, to open the -question, and that contentment must have sprung from the sense of his -perpetually striking show of cleverness. He was too clever for a bad -governess, for a parson’s daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not -the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the -impression I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was -under some influence operating in his small intellectual life as a -tremendous incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone -school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -“kicked out” by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me -add that in their company now—and I was careful almost never to be out -of it—I could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music -and love and success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each -of the children was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a -marvelous knack of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano broke -into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were -confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going out in -the highest spirits in order to “come in” as something new. I had had -brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little girls could -be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed everything was that -there was a little boy in the world who could have for the inferior -age, sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. They were -extraordinarily at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or -complained is to make the note of praise coarse for their quality of -sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps -came across traces of little understandings between them by which one -of them should keep me occupied while the other slipped away. There is -a _naïf_ side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced -upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the -other quarter that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on -with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the -most liberal faith—for which I little care; but—and this is another -matter—I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it -to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, -the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at -least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road out is -doubtless to advance. One evening—with nothing to lead up or to prepare -it—I felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed on me the -night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, -I should probably have made little of in memory had my subsequent -sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a -couple of candles. There was a roomful of old books at Bly—last-century -fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated -renown, but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached -the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my -youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand was Fielding’s -_Amelia_; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further both a general -conviction that it was horribly late and a particular objection to -looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, -in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora’s little bed, shrouded, -as I had assured myself long before, the perfection of childish rest. I -recollect in short that, though I was deeply interested in my author, I -found myself, at the turn of a page and with his spell all scattered, -looking straight up from him and hard at the door of my room. There was -a moment during which I listened, reminded of the faint sense I had -had, the first night, of there being something undefinably astir in the -house, and noted the soft breath of the open casement just move the -half-drawn blind. Then, with all the marks of a deliberation that must -have seemed magnificent had there been anyone to admire it, I laid down -my book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, went straight out of -the room and, from the passage, on which my light made little -impression, noiselessly closed and locked the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went -straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within -sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the -staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware of three -things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of -succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, and I -perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest -morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw -that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I -required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter -with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was -therefore on the spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it -stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed me from the tower -and from the garden. He knew me as well as I knew him; and so, in the -cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass and another on -the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each other in our common -intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, -dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve -this distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that -dread had unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me -there that didn’t meet and measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, -thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not—I found myself at the end -of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of -confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease—for the -time, at least—to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, -accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it _was_ human, as human as to have met alone, in -the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, some -criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close -quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of -the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such an -hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, -in life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. -The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to -make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can’t express what followed -it save by saying that the silence itself—which was indeed in a manner -an attestation of my strength—became the element into which I saw the -figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have -seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an -order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch -could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into the -darkness in which the next bend was lost. - - -X - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect -presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: -then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light -of the candle I had left burning was that Flora’s little bed was empty; -and on this I caught my breath with all the terror that, five minutes -before, I had been able to resist. I dashed at the place in which I had -left her lying and over which (for the small silk counterpane and the -sheets were disarranged) the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled -forward; then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering -sound: I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, -ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood there -in so much of her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink -bare feet and the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, -and I had never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the -thrill of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness -that she addressed me with a reproach. “You naughty: where _have_ you -been?”—instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with -the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay -there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back -into my chair—feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had -pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given -herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful -little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my -eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of -something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You were -looking for me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I might be -walking in the grounds?” - -“Well, you know, I thought someone was”—she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?” - -“Ah, _no!_” she returned, almost with the full privilege of childish -inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little -drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she -lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the -three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One of -these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, to -withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, -wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why -not break out at her on the spot and have it all over?—give it to her -straight in her lovely little lighted face? “You see, you see, you -_know_ that you do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; -therefore, why not frankly confess it to me, so that we may at least -live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our -fate, where we are and what it means?” This solicitation dropped, alas, -as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed to it I might have -spared myself—well, you’ll see what. Instead of succumbing I sprang -again to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. -“Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me think you were -still there?” - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -“Because I don’t like to frighten you!” - -“But if I had, by your idea, gone out—?” - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as -impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. “Oh, but you know,” she -quite adequately answered, “that you might come back, you dear, and -that you _have!_” And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, -for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove -that I recognized the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. -I repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I selected moments when my -roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in -the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. -But I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I -on no other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, on the -staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure. Looking down it -from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman seated on one of -the lower steps with her back presented to me, her body half-bowed and -her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I had been there but an -instant, however, when she vanished without looking round at me. I -knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I -wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should -have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, -there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night -after my latest encounter with that gentleman—they were all numbered -now—I had an alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the -particular quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest -shock. It was precisely the first night during this series that, weary -with watching, I had felt that I might again without laxity lay myself -down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, as I afterward knew, till -about one o’clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, as -completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light -burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora -had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the -darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the -window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed -the picture. - -The child had again got up—this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw—as she -had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time—was proved to me by -the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the -haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, -absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill—the casement opened -forward—and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, -and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was face to face -with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could now communicate -with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, on my side, had to -care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from the corridor, some -other window in the same quarter. I got to the door without her hearing -me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the other side, for -some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her -brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, -produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke of -as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to _his_ -window?—what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of -my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long -halter of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and -pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might -portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were -secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which -my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was -hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds—a figure -prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; but it -was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated afresh, but -on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had made my choice. -There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing -the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the -lower one—though high above the gardens—in the solid corner of the -house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square -chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of -which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by -Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it -and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after just faltering at the -first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across it and unbolt as -quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving this transit, I -uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, -was able, the darkness without being much less than within, to see that -I commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon -made the night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a -person, diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if -fascinated, looking up to where I had appeared—looking, that is, not so -much straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. There -was clearly another person above me—there was a person on the tower; -but the presence on the lawn was not in the least what I had conceived -and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn—I felt -sick as I made it out—was poor little Miles himself. - - -XI - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor -with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet -her privately, and the more as we each felt the importance of not -provoking—on the part of the servants quite as much as on that of the -children—any suspicion of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of -mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others -my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: if -she hadn’t I don’t know what would have become of me, for I couldn’t -have borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent monument to -the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could see in our -little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their happiness -and cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of my -trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she -would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match -them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed -them, with her large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all -her look, thank the Lord’s mercy that if they were ruined the pieces -would still serve. Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a -steady fireside glow, and I had already begun to perceive how, with the -development of the conviction that—as time went on without a public -accident—our young things could, after all, look out for themselves, -she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented by -their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification: I -could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, but it -would have been, in the conditions, an immense added strain to find -myself anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the -terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now -agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, -but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in one -of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, below us, -over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a storybook -and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. Mrs. -Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught the -suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to -take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a -receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my -superiority—my accomplishments and my function—in her patience under my -pain. She offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a -witch’s broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a -large clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the -time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the -point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a -monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, I -had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a -concentrated need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a -signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my -small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy my -sense of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after -I had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate -challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he -had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken his hand -without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the staircase -where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along the lobby where I -had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered—oh, -_how_ I had wondered!—if he were groping about in his little mind for -something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a -curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He -couldn’t play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get -out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this -question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. I was -confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now -to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed -into his little chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all and -the window, uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that -there was no need of striking a match—I remember how I suddenly -dropped, sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that -he must know how he really, as they say, “had” me. He could do what he -liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should -continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those -caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears. He -“had” me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve me, -who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor -of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect -intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to -convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to -suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly -shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; -never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such -tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held -him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, -to put it to him. - -“You must tell me now—and all the truth. What did you go out for? What -were you doing there?” - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. “If I -tell you why, will you understand?” My heart, at this, leaped into my -mouth. _Would_ he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, -and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. -He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood -there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness -indeed that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really -going to tell me? “Well,” he said at last, “just exactly in order that -you should do this.” - -“Do what?” - -“Think me—for a change—_bad!_” I shall never forget the sweetness and -gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he -bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. I -met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my -arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the -account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it -was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I -presently glanced about the room, I could say— - -“Then you didn’t undress at all?” - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. “Not at all. I sat up and read.” - -“And when did you go down?” - -“At midnight. When I’m bad I _am_ bad!” - -“I see, I see—it’s charming. But how could you be sure I would know -it?” - -“Oh, I arranged that with Flora.” His answers rang out with a -readiness! “She was to get up and look out.” - -“Which is what she did do.” It was I who fell into the trap! - -“So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked—you saw.” - -“While you,” I concurred, “caught your death in the night air!” - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford -radiantly to assent. “How otherwise should I have been bad enough?” he -asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview -closed on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his -joke, he had been able to draw upon. - - -XII - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I -repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I -reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made -before we separated. “It all lies in half a dozen words,” I said to -her, “words that really settle the matter. ‘Think, you know, what I -_might_ do!’ He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down -to the ground what he ‘might’ do. That’s what he gave them a taste of -at school.” - -“Lord, you do change!” cried my friend. - -“I don’t change—I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I’ve watched -and waited the more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make -it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. _Never_, -by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of -their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. -Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us -there to their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their -fairytale they’re steeped in their vision of the dead restored. He’s -not reading to her,” I declared; “they’re talking of _them_—they’re -talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder -I’m not. What I’ve seen would have made _you_ so; but it has only made -me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things.” - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were -victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, -gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she -held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them -still with her eyes. “Of what other things have you got hold?” - -“Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at -bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their -more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It’s a -game,” I went on; “it’s a policy and a fraud!” - -“On the part of little darlings—?” - -“As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!” The very act of -bringing it out really helped me to trace it—follow it all up and piece -it all together. “They haven’t been good—they’ve only been absent. It -has been easy to live with them, because they’re simply leading a life -of their own. They’re not mine—they’re not ours. They’re his and -they’re hers!” - -“Quint’s and that woman’s?” - -“Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.” - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! “But for -what?” - -“For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair -put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the -work of demons, is what brings the others back.” - -“Laws!” said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, -but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the -bad time—for there had been a worse even than this!—must have occurred. -There could have been no such justification for me as the plain assent -of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in -our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that -she brought out after a moment: “They _were_ rascals! But what can they -now do?” she pursued. - -“Do?” I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at their -distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. “Don’t they -do enough?” I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, having -smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. We -were held by it a minute; then I answered: “They can destroy them!” At -this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was a silent -one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. “They don’t -know, as yet, quite how—but they’re trying hard. They’re seen only -across, as it were, and beyond—in strange places and on high places, -the top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside of windows, the -further edge of pools; but there’s a deep design, on either side, to -shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; and the success of the -tempters is only a question of time. They’ve only to keep to their -suggestions of danger.” - -“For the children to come?” - -“And perish in the attempt!” Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: “Unless, of course, we can prevent!” - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned -things over. “Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them -away.” - -“And who’s to make him?” - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish -face. “You, miss.” - -“By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and -niece mad?” - -“But if they _are_, miss?” - -“And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be sent him by a -governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry.” - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. “Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason—” - -“Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his -indifference must have been awful. As I’m not a fiend, at any rate, I -shouldn’t take him in.” - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and -grasped my arm. “Make him at any rate come to you.” - -I stared. “To _me?_” I had a sudden fear of what she might do. “‘Him’?” - -“He ought to _be_ here—he ought to help.” - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than -ever yet. “You see me asking him for a visit?” No, with her eyes on my -face she evidently couldn’t. Instead of it even—as a woman reads -another—she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, -his contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone -and for the fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention -to my slighted charms. She didn’t know—no one knew—how proud I had been -to serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the -measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. “If you should so lose -your head as to appeal to him for me—” - -She was really frightened. “Yes, miss?” - -“I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.” - - -XIII - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as -much as ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a -month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above -all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part -of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my -mere infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they were -aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in a -manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. I don’t mean that -they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for that -was not one of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that the -element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than -any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so -successfully effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was -as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects -before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we -perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look at -each other—for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we had -intended—the doors we had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, -and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every -branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. -Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead in general -and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of the friends -little children had lost. There were days when I could have sworn that -one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, said to the other: “She -thinks she’ll do it this time—but she _won’t!_” To “do it” would have -been to indulge for instance—and for once in a way—in some direct -reference to the lady who had prepared them for my discipline. They had -a delightful endless appetite for passages in my own history, to which -I had again and again treated them; they were in possession of -everything that had ever happened to me, had had, with every -circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of those of my -brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, as well as -many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of the furniture -and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation of the old women -of our village. There were things enough, taking one with another, to -chatter about, if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go -round. They pulled with an art of their own the strings of my invention -and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought of such -occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being watched from -under cover. It was in any case over _my_ life, _my_ past, and _my_ -friends alone that we could take anything like our ease—a state of -affairs that led them sometimes without the least pertinence to break -out into sociable reminders. I was invited—with no visible -connection—to repeat afresh Goody Gosling’s celebrated _mot_ or to -confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the -vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different -ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I -have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for -me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have -done something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that -second night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the -foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, -that one had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which -I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely -sinister way, would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The -summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly -and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and -withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like -a theater after the performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills. -There were exactly states of the air, conditions of sound and of -stillness, unspeakable impressions of the _kind_ of ministering moment, -that brought back to me, long enough to catch it, the feeling of the -medium in which, that June evening out of doors, I had had my first -sight of Quint, and in which, too, at those other instants, I had, -after seeing him through the window, looked for him in vain in the -circle of shrubbery. I recognized the signs, the portents—I recognized -the moment, the spot. But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I -continued unmolested; if unmolested one could call a young woman whose -sensibility had, in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but -deepened. I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of -Flora’s by the lake—and had perplexed her by so saying—that it would -from that moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep -it. I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that, -whether the children really saw or not—since, that is, it was not yet -definitely proved—I greatly preferred, as a safeguard, the fullness of -my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst that was to be -known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was that my eyes might be -sealed just while theirs were most opened. Well, my eyes _were_ sealed, -it appeared, at present—a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous -not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty about that: I would -have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in a proportionate -measure this conviction of the secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were -times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, -literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they -had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I -not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might prove -greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have broken -out. “They’re here, they’re here, you little wretches,” I would have -cried, “and you can’t deny it now!” The little wretches denied it with -all the added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just -the crystal depths of which—like the flash of a fish in a stream—the -mockery of their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk -into me still deeper than I knew on the night when, looking out to see -either Quint or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over -whose rest I watched and who had immediately brought in with him—had -straightway, there, turned it on me—the lovely upward look with which, -from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had -played. If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion -had scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition of -nerves produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They harassed -me so that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to -rehearse—it was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed despair—the -manner in which I might come to the point. I approached it from one -side and the other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I -always broke down in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died -away on my lips, I said to myself that I should indeed help them to -represent something infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I should violate -as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, -probably, had ever known. When I said to myself: “_They_ have the -manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to -speak!” I felt myself crimson and I covered my face with my hands. -After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, going on volubly -enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes occurred—I can call -them nothing else—the strange, dizzy lift or swim (I try for terms!) -into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing to do with the -more or less noise that at the moment we might be engaged in making and -that I could hear through any deepened exhilaration or quickened -recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then it was that the others, -the outsiders, were there. Though they were not angels, they “passed,” -as the French say, causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the -fear of their addressing to their younger victims some yet more -infernal message or more vivid image than they had thought good enough -for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw _more_—things terrible and -unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in -the past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, a -chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all three, -with repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, each -time, almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, through -the very same movements. It was striking of the children, at all -events, to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance and -never to fail—one or the other—of the precious question that had helped -us through many a peril. “When do you think he _will_ come? Don’t you -think we _ought_ to write?”—there was nothing like that inquiry, we -found by experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. “He” of course -was their uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion of -theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It -was impossible to have given less encouragement than he had done to -such a doctrine, but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon -we should have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. -He never wrote to them—that may have been selfish, but it was a part of -the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his -highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more festal -celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I -carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal to him when I -let my charges understand that their own letters were but charming -literary exercises. They were too beautiful to be posted; I kept them -myself; I have them all to this hour. This was a rule indeed which only -added to the satiric effect of my being plied with the supposition that -he might at any moment be among us. It was exactly as if my charges -knew how almost more awkward than anything else that might be for me. -There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in all this more -extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of -their triumph, I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in -truth have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them! -Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, -finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call -it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain -or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least -change, and it came with a rush. - - -XIV - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my -side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s, well in -sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; -the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and -sharp, made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of -thought that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly -and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. Why -did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? Something or -other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned the boy -to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled before -me, I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. -I was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But -all this belonged—I mean their magnificent little surrender—just to the -special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for -Sunday by his uncle’s tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of -pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, Miles’s whole title to -independence, the rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon -him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom I should have had -nothing to say. I was by the strangest of chances wondering how I -should meet him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. I call it a -revolution because I now see how, with the word he spoke, the curtain -rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe was -precipitated. “Look here, my dear, you know,” he charmingly said, “when -in the world, please, am I going back to school?” - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly as -uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all -interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off -intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in them -that always made one “catch,” and I caught, at any rate, now so -effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the park -had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, -between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to -enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and -charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at -first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. -I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, after a -minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: “You -know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady _always_—!” His “my -dear” was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have -expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment with which I desired to -inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It was so respectfully -easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I -remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in -the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I -looked. “And always with the same lady?” I returned. - -He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. “Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ lady; but, after -all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? that’s—well, getting on.” - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. “Yes, you’re -getting on.” Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed -to know that and to play with it. “And you can’t say I’ve not been -awfully good, can you?” - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it -would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. “No, I can’t say -that, Miles.” - -“Except just that one night, you know—!” - -“That one night?” I couldn’t look as straight as he. - -“Why, when I went down—went out of the house.” - -“Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.” - -“You forget?”—he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish -reproach. “Why, it was to show you I could!” - -“Oh, yes, you could.” - -“And I can again.” - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits -about me. “Certainly. But you won’t.” - -“No, not _that_ again. It was nothing.” - -“It was nothing,” I said. “But we must go on.” - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. “Then when -_am_ I going back?” - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. “Were you very -happy at school?” - -He just considered. “Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!” - -“Well, then,” I quavered, “if you’re just as happy here—!” - -“Ah, but that isn’t everything! Of course _you_ know a lot—” - -“But you hint that you know almost as much?” I risked as he paused. - -“Not half I want to!” Miles honestly professed. “But it isn’t so much -that.” - -“What is it, then?” - -“Well—I want to see more life.” - -“I see; I see.” We had arrived within sight of the church and of -various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their -way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our -step; I wanted to get there before the question between us opened up -much further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he -would have to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative -dusk of the pew and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on -which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race -with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that -he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he -threw out— - -“I want my own sort!” - -It literally made me bound forward. “There are not many of your own -sort, Miles!” I laughed. “Unless perhaps dear little Flora!” - -“You really compare me to a baby girl?” - -This found me singularly weak. “Don’t you, then, _love_ our sweet -Flora?” - -“If I didn’t—and you, too; if I didn’t—!” he repeated as if retreating -for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, after we had -come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by the -pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had -passed into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we -were, for the minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, -on the path from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -“Yes, if you didn’t—?” - -He looked, while I waited, at the graves. “Well, you know what!” But he -didn’t move, and he presently produced something that made me drop -straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. “Does my uncle -think what _you_ think?” - -I markedly rested. “How do you know what I think?” - -“Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. But -I mean does _he_ know?” - -“Know what, Miles?” - -“Why, the way I’m going on.” - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no -answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. -Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed -to make that venial. “I don’t think your uncle much cares.” - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can be -made to?” - -“In what way?” - -“Why, by his coming down.” - -“But who’ll get him to come down?” - -“_I_ will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. He -gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off -alone into church. - - -XV - -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed -him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of -this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb -and read into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its -meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also -embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my -pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay. What -I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of me -and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this awkward collapse. -He had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of and -that he should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his -own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the -intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school, for -that was really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. That -his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution -that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on; but I -could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply -procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep -discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to -me: “Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you -a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.” What was so unnatural for the -particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a -consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked -round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, -with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up -nothing, and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into -the pew: he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into -mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with -his commentary on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I -wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window -and listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse that -might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least -encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting -away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I -could give the whole thing up—turn my back and retreat. It was only a -question of hurrying again, for a few preparations, to the house which -the attendance at church of so many of the servants would practically -have left unoccupied. No one, in short, could blame me if I should just -drive desperately off. What was it to get away if I got away only till -dinner? That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which—I had -the acute prevision—my little pupils would play at innocent wonder -about my nonappearance in their train. - -“What _did_ you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to worry -us so—and take our thoughts off, too, don’t you know?—did you desert us -at the very door?” I couldn’t meet such questions nor, as they asked -them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so exactly what I -should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last -let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came -straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps -through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house -I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the -approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly excited -me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way, I -should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have -to be remarkable, however, and the question of a conveyance was the -great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and -obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the -staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a -revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month -before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I -had seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able -to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my -bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging to -me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, in -a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled -straight back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush -for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the -place and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of -the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself -to the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. There was an -effort in the way that, while her arms rested on the table, her hands -with evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I took -this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance, her -attitude strangely persisted. Then it was—with the very act of its -announcing itself—that her identity flared up in a change of posture. -She rose, not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand -melancholy of indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of -me, stood there as my vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was -all before me; but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it, the -awful image passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress, her -haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long -enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good -as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the -extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It -was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her—“You -terrible, miserable woman!”—I heard myself break into a sound that, by -the open door, rang through the long passage and the empty house. She -looked at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared -the air. There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine -and a sense that I must stay. - - -XVI - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be -marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take -into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily -denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed -them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said -nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s odd face. I did this to such purpose -that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence -that, however, I would engage to break down on the first private -opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes -with her in the housekeeper’s room, where, in the twilight, amid a -smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and -garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So -I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight -chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the “put -away”—of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. - -“Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them—so long as -they were there—of course I promised. But what had happened to you?” - -“I only went with you for the walk,” I said. “I had then to come back -to meet a friend.” - -She showed her surprise. “A friend—_you?_” - -“Oh, yes, I have a couple!” I laughed. “But did the children give you a -reason?” - -“For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it -better. Do you like it better?” - -My face had made her rueful. “No, I like it worse!” But after an -instant I added: “Did they say why I should like it better?” - -“No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what she likes!’” - -“I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?” - -“Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of course!’—and I -said the same.” - -I thought a moment. “You were too sweet, too—I can hear you all. But -nonetheless, between Miles and me, it’s now all out.” - -“All out?” My companion stared. “But what, miss?” - -“Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came home, my -dear,” I went on, “for a talk with Miss Jessel.” - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well -in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she -bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her -comparatively firm. “A talk! Do you mean she spoke?” - -“It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom.” - -“And what did she say?” I can hear the good woman still, and the candor -of her stupefaction. - -“That she suffers the torments—!” - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, -gape. “Do you mean,” she faltered, “—of the lost?” - -“Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them—” I faltered -myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share them—?” - -“She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have -fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to -show I was. “As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.” - -“Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?” - -“To everything.” - -“And what do you call ‘everything’?” - -“Why, sending for their uncle.” - -“Oh, miss, in pity do,” my friend broke out. “ah, but I will, I _will!_ -I see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ as I told you, with Miles is -that if he thinks I’m afraid to—and has ideas of what he gains by -that—he shall see he’s mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here -from me on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if -I’m to be reproached with having done nothing again about more school—” - -“Yes, miss—” my companion pressed me. - -“Well, there’s that awful reason.” - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. “But—a—which?” - -“Why, the letter from his old place.” - -“You’ll show it to the master?” - -“I ought to have done so on the instant.” - -“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -“I’ll put it before him,” I went on inexorably, “that I can’t undertake -to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled—” - -“For we’ve never in the least known what!” Mrs. Grose declared. - -“For wickedness. For what else—when he’s so clever and beautiful and -perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? -He’s exquisite—so it can be only _that_; and that would open up the -whole thing. After all,” I said, “it’s their uncle’s fault. If he left -here such people—!” - -“He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.” She had -turned quite pale. - -“Well, you shan’t suffer,” I answered. - -“The children shan’t!” she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. “Then what am I to tell -him?” - -“You needn’t tell him anything. _I’ll_ tell him.” - -I measured this. “Do you mean you’ll write—?” Remembering she couldn’t, -I caught myself up. “How do you communicate?” - -“I tell the bailiff. _He_ writes.” - -“And should you like him to write our story?” - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it -made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were -again in her eyes. “Ah, miss, _you_ write!” - -“Well—tonight,” I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - -XVII - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had -changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my -room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a -blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the -batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the -passage and listened a minute at Miles’s door. What, under my endless -obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his -not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I -had expected. His voice tinkled out. “I say, you there—come in.” It was -a gaiety in the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but -very much at his ease. “Well, what are _you_ up to?” he asked with a -grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had -she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was -“out.” - -I stood over him with my candle. “How did you know I was there?” - -“Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You’re -like a troop of cavalry!” he beautifully laughed. - -“Then you weren’t asleep?” - -“Not much! I lie awake and think.” - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held -out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. -“What is it,” I asked, “that you think of?” - -“What in the world, my dear, but _you?_” - -“Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on that! I -had so far rather you slept.” - -“Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.” - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. “Of what queer business, -Miles?” - -“Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!” - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. -“What do you mean by all the rest?” - -“Oh, you know, you know!” - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and -our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of -admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was -perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. “Certainly -you shall go back to school,” I said, “if it be that that troubles you. -But not to the old place—we must find another, a better. How could I -know it did trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, -never spoke of it at all?” His clear, listening face, framed in its -smooth whiteness, made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful -patient in a children’s hospital; and I would have given, as the -resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the nurse -or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him. Well, even -as it was, I perhaps might help! “Do you know you’ve never said a word -to me about your school—I mean the old one; never mentioned it in any -way?” - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly -gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It wasn’t -for _me_ to help him—it was for the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this -from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet -known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled -and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a -part of innocence and consistency. “No, never—from the hour you came -back. You’ve never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your -comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at -school. Never, little Miles—no, never—have you given me an inkling of -anything that _may_ have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how -much I’m in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you -had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to -anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the -present.” It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret -precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I -dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his -inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person—imposed him -almost as an intellectual equal. “I thought you wanted to go on as you -are.” - -It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any -rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his -head. “I don’t—I don’t. I want to get away.” - -“You’re tired of Bly?” - -“Oh, no, I like Bly.” - -“Well, then—?” - -“Oh, _you_ know what a boy wants!” - -I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary -refuge. “You want to go to your uncle?” - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the -pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!” - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. -“My dear, I don’t want to get off!” - -“You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”—he lay beautifully -staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle -things.” - -“If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to -take you quite away.” - -“Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for? -You’ll have to tell him—about the way you’ve let it all drop: you’ll -have to tell him a tremendous lot!” - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the -instant, to meet him rather more. “And how much will _you_, Miles, have -to tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!” - -He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?” - -“The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with -you. He can’t send you back—” - -“Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.” - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; -and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the -poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance -at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more -dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear -that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the -tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles—!” - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?” - -“Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?” - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his -hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you—I -told you this morning.” - -Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?” - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding -him; then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me -release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows -I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn -my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. -“I’ve just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said. - -“Well, then, finish it!” - -I waited a minute. “What happened before?” - -He gazed up at me again. “Before what?” - -“Before you came back. And before you went away.” - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What -happened?” - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I -caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting -consciousness—it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once -more the chance of possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles, if you _knew_ how I want to help you! It’s only that, it’s -nothing but that, and I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a -wrong—I’d rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles”—oh, I -brought it out now even if I _should_ go too far—“I just want you to -help me to save you!” But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone -too far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the -form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a -shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had -crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest -of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so -close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my -feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, -while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred -and the window tight. “Why, the candle’s out!” I then cried. - -“It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles. - - -XVIII - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me -quietly: “Have you written, miss?” - -“Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for the hour—that my letter, -sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough -to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile -there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more -exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to -gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest -feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of _my_ feeble range, and -perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical -jokes. It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he -appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, -to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no -words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in every -impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the -uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more -extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the -wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to -check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly -both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman -could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy -I knew, the imagination of all evil _had_ been opened up to him: all -the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have -flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after -our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if -I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to -Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was -literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite -tantamount to his saying outright: “The true knights we love to read -about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you -mean that—to be let alone yourself and not followed up—you’ll cease to -worry and spy upon me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go -and come. Well, I ‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of -time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to -show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether -I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, -to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had -never played; and if there are those who think he had better have been -kicking a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at -the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to -measure, I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at -my post. It was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I -hadn’t really, in the least, slept: I had only done something much -worse—I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the -question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then -could only say: “Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?”—breaking moreover into -a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal -accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before -going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere -about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that -theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had -found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with -blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, -I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her -right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out -of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she -might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for -her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but -when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in -the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded -inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, -apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with -what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first -given her. - -“She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of the rooms you haven’t -searched.” - -“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She has gone out.” - -Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?” - -I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without one?” - -“She’s with _her?_” - -“She’s with _her!_” I declared. “We must find them.” - -My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my -pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her -uneasiness. “And where’s Master Miles?” - -“Oh, _he’s_ with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.” - -“Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I suppose my -tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -“The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their -plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she -went off.” - -“‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -“Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for -himself as well. But come!” - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him—?” - -“So long with Quint? Yes—I don’t mind that now.” - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, -and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after -gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” -she eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it -up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. -“Luke will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door -and opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down -to the drive while she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?” - -“What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to dress,” I -cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, -upstairs.” - -“With _them?_” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - -XIX - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My -acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at -all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection -of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat -moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its -agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the -house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, -she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small -adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had shared -with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to -which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose’s -steps so marked a direction—a direction that made her, when she -perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly -mystified. “You’re going to the water, Miss?—you think she’s _in_—?” - -“She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But -what I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from which, the -other day, we saw together what I told you.” - -“When she pretended not to see—?” - -“With that astounding self-possession? I’ve always been sure she wanted -to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.” - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really -_talk_ of them?” - -“I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard -them, would simply appall us.” - -“And if she _is_ there—” - -“Yes?” - -“Then Miss Jessel is?” - -“Beyond a doubt. You shall see.” - -“Oh, thank you!” my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it in, I -went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, -she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her -apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as -her least danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in -sight of the greater part of the water without a sight of the child. -There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank where my -observation of her had been most startling, and none on the opposite -edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick copse came -down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant -compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have -been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then -I felt the suggestion of my friend’s eyes. I knew what she meant and I -replied with a negative headshake. - -“No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.” - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across -the lake. “Then where is it?” - -“Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it.” - -“All alone—that child?” - -“She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an old, -old woman.” I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took -again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of -submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a -small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation -masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump -of trees growing close to the water. - -“But if the boat’s there, where on earth’s _she?_” my colleague -anxiously asked. - -“That’s exactly what we must learn.” And I started to walk further. - -“By going all the way round?” - -“Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it’s far -enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over.” - -“Laws!” cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too much -for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got -halfway round—a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by -a path choked with overgrowth—I paused to give her breath. I sustained -her with a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; -and this started us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes -more we reached a point from which we found the boat to be where I had -supposed it. It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of -sight and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just -there, down to the brink and that had been an assistance to -disembarking. I recognized, as I looked at the pair of short, thick -oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for a -little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders and -had panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the -fence, through which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling -interval, more into the open. Then, “There she is!” we both exclaimed -at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if -her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was -to stoop straight down and pluck—quite as if it were all she was there -for—a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she had -just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a -step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently -approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it was all done -in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first -to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the -child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, -yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch -it—which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face peep at me -over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now—the flicker had left -it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied -Mrs. Grose the simplicity of _her_ relation. Still, all this while, -nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern -again drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each -other was that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got -up she kept the child’s hand, so that the two were still before me; and -the singular reticence of our communion was even more marked in the -frank look she launched me. “I’ll be hanged,” it said, “if _I’ll_ -speak!” - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. -She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. “Why, where are your -things?” - -“Where yours are, my dear!” I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an -answer quite sufficient. “And where’s Miles?” she went on. - -There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: -these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn -blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had -held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt -overflow in a deluge. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell _me_—” I heard -myself say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. - -“Well, what?” - -Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. “Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?” - - -XX - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much -as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, -been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child’s face now -received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a -pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, -that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence—the -shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, within -a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized my -colleague’s arm. “She’s there, she’s there!” - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had -stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling -now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She -was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel -nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there -most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so -extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her—with the -sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and -understand it—an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect on -the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, in all -the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. This -first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, -during which Mrs. Grose’s dazed blink across to where I pointed struck -me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my -own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner -in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it -would have done to find her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was -of course not what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our -pursuit had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; and I -was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first glimpse of the -particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, without a -convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the -direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn -at _me_ an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely -new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge -me—this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself -into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though -my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater than at that -instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself I called it -passionately to witness. “She’s there, you little unhappy thing—there, -there, _there_, and you see her as well as you see me!” I had said -shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child, -but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not have been -more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to -this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission, of her -eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite -fixed, reprobation. I was by this time—if I can put the whole thing at -all together—more appalled at what I may properly call her manner than -at anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I became -aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. -My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out -everything but her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a -burst of high disapproval. “What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! -Where on earth do you see anything?” - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the -hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already -lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, -quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my -pointing hand. “You don’t see her exactly as _we_ see?—you mean to say -you don’t now—_now?_ She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest -woman, _look_—!” She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep -groan of negation, repulsion, compassion—the mixture with her pity of -her relief at her exemption—a sense, touching to me even then, that she -would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, -for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly -sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt—I saw—my livid -predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was -conscious, more than all, of what I should have from this instant to -deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this -attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, breaking, even -while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious private -triumph, into breathless reassurance. - -“She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there—and you never see -nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel—when poor Miss Jessel’s -dead and buried? _We_ know, don’t we, love?”—and she appealed, -blundering in, to the child. “It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a -joke—and we’ll go home as fast as we can!” - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of -propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as -it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her -small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to -forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight to -our friend’s dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly -failed, had quite vanished. I’ve said it already—she was literally, she -was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. “I don’t -know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never _have_. I -think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!” Then, after this deliverance, -which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the -street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the -dreadful little face. In this position she produced an almost furious -wail. “Take me away, take me away—oh, take me away from _her!_” - -“From _me?_” I panted. - -“From you—from you!” she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do -but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, -without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the -interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was -not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if -she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, -and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but -sadly shake my head at her. “If I had ever doubted, all my doubt would -at present have gone. I’ve been living with the miserable truth, and -now it has only too much closed round me. Of course I’ve lost you: I’ve -interfered, and you’ve seen—under _her_ dictation”—with which I faced, -over the pool again, our infernal witness—“the easy and perfect way to -meet it. I’ve done my best, but I’ve lost you. Goodbye.” For Mrs. Grose -I had an imperative, an almost frantic “Go, go!” before which, in -infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly -convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred -and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, -as fast as she could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent -memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an -hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my -trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on my -face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must have -lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head the day -was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the twilight, at -the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back to the -house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the -fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh -reflection to make on Flora’s extraordinary command of the situation. -She passed that night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not -the word so grotesque a false note, the happiest of arrangements, with -Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on my return, but, on the other hand, -as by an ambiguous compensation, I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw—I -can use no other phrase—so much of him that it was as if it were more -than it had ever been. No evening I had passed at Bly had the -portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of -the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my -feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily -sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for -the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was -wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Flora’s -rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the -schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, -on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his -freedom now—he might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it -consisted—in part at least—of his coming in at about eight o’clock and -sitting down with me in silence. On the removal of the tea things I had -blown out the candles and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a -mortal coldness and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when -he appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a -moment by the door as if to look at me; then—as if to share them—came -to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in -absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. - - -XXI - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. -Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so -markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a -night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had -for their subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, -governess. It was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel -on the scene that she protested—it was conspicuously and passionately -against mine. I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense -deal to ask; the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her -loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her the -question of her sense of the child’s sincerity as against my own. “She -persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?” - -My visitor’s trouble, truly, was great. “Ah, miss, it isn’t a matter on -which I can push her! Yet it isn’t either, I must say, as if I much -needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old.” - -“Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like -some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as -it were, her respectability. ‘Miss Jessel indeed—_she!_’ Ah, she’s -‘respectable,’ the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday -was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any -of the others. I _did_ put my foot in it! She’ll never speak to me -again.” - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more -behind it. “I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand -manner about it!” - -“And that manner”—I summed it up—“is practically what’s the matter with -her now!” - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor’s face, and not a little -else besides! “She asks me every three minutes if I think you’re coming -in.” - -“I see—I see.” I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it out. -“Has she said to you since yesterday—except to repudiate her -familiarity with anything so dreadful—a single other word about Miss -Jessel?” - -“Not one, miss. And of course you know,” my friend added, “I took it -from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there _was_ -nobody.” - -“Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still.” - -“I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?” - -“Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to deal with. -They’ve made them—their two friends, I mean—still cleverer even than -nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her -grievance, and she’ll work it to the end.” - -“Yes, miss; but to _what_ end?” - -“Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She’ll make me out to him -the lowest creature—!” - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose’s face; she looked -for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. “And him who thinks -so well of you!” - -“He has an odd way—it comes over me now,” I laughed, “—of proving it! -But that doesn’t matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of -me.” - -My companion bravely concurred. “Never again to so much as look at -you.” - -“So that what you’ve come to me now for,” I asked, “is to speed me on -my way?” Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. -“I’ve a better idea—the result of my reflections. My going _would_ seem -the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won’t -do. It’s _you_ who must go. You must take Flora.” - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. “But where in the world—?” - -“Away from here. Away from _them_. Away, even most of all, now, from -me. Straight to her uncle.” - -“Only to tell on you—?” - -“No, not ‘only’! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy.” - -She was still vague. “And what _is_ your remedy?” - -“Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.” - -She looked at me hard. “Do you think he—?” - -“Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to think -it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as -possible and leave me with him alone.” I was amazed, myself, at the -spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more -disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, -she hesitated. “There’s one thing, of course,” I went on: “they -mustn’t, before she goes, see each other for three seconds.” Then it -came over me that, in spite of Flora’s presumable sequestration from -the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be too late. -“Do you mean,” I anxiously asked, “that they _have_ met?” - -At this she quite flushed. “Ah, miss, I’m not such a fool as that! If -I’ve been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each -time with one of the maids, and at present, though she’s alone, she’s -locked in safe. And yet—and yet!” There were too many things. - -“And yet what?” - -“Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?” - -“I’m not sure of anything but _you_. But I have, since last evening, a -new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe -that—poor little exquisite wretch!—he wants to speak. Last evening, in -the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it -were just coming.” - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. -“And did it come?” - -“No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was -without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his -sister’s condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. -All the same,” I continued, “I can’t, if her uncle sees her, consent to -his seeing her brother without my having given the boy—and most of all -because things have got so bad—a little more time.” - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite -understand. “What do you mean by more time?” - -“Well, a day or two—really to bring it out. He’ll then be on _my_ -side—of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only -fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your -arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible.” So I put it -before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed -that I came again to her aid. “Unless, indeed,” I wound up, “you really -want _not_ to go.” - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand -to me as a pledge. “I’ll go—I’ll go. I’ll go this morning.” - -I wanted to be very just. “If you _should_ wish still to wait, I would -engage she shouldn’t see me.” - -“No, no: it’s the place itself. She must leave it.” She held me a -moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. “Your idea’s the -right one. I myself, miss—” - -“Well?” - -“I can’t stay.” - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. “You mean -that, since yesterday, you _have_ seen—?” - -She shook her head with dignity. “I’ve _heard_—!” - -“Heard?” - -“From that child—horrors! There!” she sighed with tragic relief. “On my -honor, miss, she says things—!” But at this evocation she broke down; -she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do -before, gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. “Oh, -thank God!” - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. “‘Thank -God’?” - -“It so justifies me!” - -“It does that, miss!” - -I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. “She’s so -horrible?” - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.” - -“And about me?” - -“About you, miss—since you must have it. It’s beyond everything, for a -young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have picked up—” - -“The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in -with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I -ought to also—since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t bear it,” -the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she glanced, on -my dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go back.” - -I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it—!” - -“How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just _for_ that: to get her -away. Far from this,” she pursued, “far from _them_—” - -“She may be different? She may be free?” I seized her almost with joy. -“Then, in spite of yesterday, you _believe_—” - -“In such doings?” Her simple description of them required, in the light -of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole -thing as she had never done. “I believe.” - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My -support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been in -my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my -honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave -of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. “There’s one -thing, of course—it occurs to me—to remember. My letter, giving the -alarm, will have reached town before you.” - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and -how weary at last it had made her. “Your letter won’t have got there. -Your letter never went.” - -“What then became of it?” - -“Goodness knows! Master Miles—” - -“Do you mean _he_ took it?” I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. “I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t where you -had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and -he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it.” We could only -exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. -Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elated “You see!” - -“Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it -and destroyed it.” - -“And don’t you see anything else?” - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. “It strikes me that by this time -your eyes are open even wider than mine.” - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show -it. “I make out now what he must have done at school.” And she gave, in -her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. “He stole!” - -I turned it over—I tried to be more judicial. “Well—perhaps.” - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. “He stole _letters!_” - -She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; -so I showed them off as I might. “I hope then it was to more purpose -than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table -yesterday,” I pursued, “will have given him so scant an advantage—for -it contained only the bare demand for an interview—that he is already -much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had -on his mind last evening was precisely the need of confession.” I -seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. -“Leave us, leave us”—I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. -“I’ll get it out of him. He’ll meet me—he’ll confess. If he confesses, -he’s saved. And if he’s saved—” - -“Then _you_ are?” The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her -farewell. “I’ll save you without him!” she cried as she went. - - -XXII - -Yet it was when she had got off—and I missed her on the spot—that the -great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to -find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it -would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed -with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage -containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of -the gates. Now I _was_, I said to myself, face to face with the -elements, and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought my -weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a -tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, -for the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused -reflection of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused them all -to stare; there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we -might, in the suddenness of my colleague’s act. The maids and the men -looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation until -I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid. It was precisely, in -short, by just clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and I -dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that morning, very grand -and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much -to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, I -was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next -hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I -were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, -I paraded with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, -little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no -glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change -taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the -piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora’s interest, so beguiled and -befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her -confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered in by -our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. He had -already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his door, and I -learned below that he had breakfasted—in the presence of a couple of -the maids—with Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, as he -said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have -expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. -What he would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be -settled: there was a queer relief, at all events—I mean for myself in -especial—in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung -to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that what had -perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction -that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, -by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out -the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off -straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any -rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply -shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous -night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, -neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other -ideas. Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, -the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by -the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, -for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my -meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so -that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside -of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared -Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. -Here at present I felt afresh—for I had felt it again and again—how my -equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut -my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what I had to deal with -was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on at all by taking -“nature” into my confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous -ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and unpleasant, but -demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of the screw -of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require -more tact than just this attempt to supply, one’s self, _all_ the -nature. How could I put even a little of that article into a -suppression of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, -could I make reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? -Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it was so far -confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the quickened vision of -what was rare in my little companion. It was indeed as if he had found -even now—as he had so often found at lessons—still some other delicate -way to ease me off. Wasn’t there light in the fact which, as we shared -our solitude, broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite -worn?—the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had -now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, to forego -the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his -intelligence been given him for but to save him? Mightn’t one, to reach -his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was -as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally -shown me the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had -dispensed with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment -with his hands in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he -seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment. But what he -presently produced was: “I say, my dear, is she really very awfully -ill?” - -“Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better. London -will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take -your mutton.” - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, -when he was established, went on. “Did Bly disagree with her so -terribly suddenly?” - -“Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on.” - -“Then why didn’t you get her off before?” - -“Before what?” - -“Before she became too ill to travel.” - -I found myself prompt. “She’s _not_ too ill to travel: she only might -have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. -The journey will dissipate the influence”—oh, I was grand!—“and carry -it off.” - -“I see, I see”—Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled to -his repast with the charming little “table manner” that, from the day -of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. -Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly -feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was -unmistakably more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for -granted more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; and -he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. Our meal -was of the briefest—mine a vain pretense, and I had the things -immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his -hands in his little pockets and his back to me—stood and looked out of -the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled -me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it -whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding -journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned -round only when the waiter had left us. “Well—so we’re alone!” - - -XXIII - -“Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not absolutely. We -shouldn’t like that!” I went on. - -“No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the others.” - -“We have the others—we have indeed the others,” I concurred. - -“Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands in -his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much count, -do they?” - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on what you call -‘much’!” - -“Yes”—with all accommodation—“everything depends!” On this, however, he -faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, -restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead -against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the -dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of “work,” behind -which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had -repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as -the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from -which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared -for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I -extracted a meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back—none other than the -impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few -minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct -perception that it was positively _he_ who was. The frames and squares -of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of -failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He -was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of hope. -Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldn’t -see?—and wasn’t it the first time in the whole business that he had -known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid -portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been -anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat -at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. -When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this -genius had succumbed. “Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees with _me!_” - -“You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good -deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,” I went on bravely, -“that you’ve been enjoying yourself.” - -“Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about—miles and miles away. -I’ve never been so free.” - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with -him. “Well, do you like it?” - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words—“Do -_you?_”—more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. -Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with -the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. “Nothing could -be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone -together now it’s you that are alone most. But I hope,” he threw in, -“you don’t particularly mind!” - -“Having to do with you?” I asked. “My dear child, how can I help -minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your company—you’re so -beyond me—I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?” - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver -now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. “You stay -on just for _that?_” - -“Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I -take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth -your while. That needn’t surprise you.” My voice trembled so that I -felt it impossible to suppress the shake. “Don’t you remember how I -told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that -there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you?” - -“Yes, yes!” He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone -to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out -through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. “Only -that, I think, was to get me to do something for _you!_” - -“It was partly to get you to do something,” I conceded. “But, you know, -you didn’t do it.” - -“Oh, yes,” he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, “you -wanted me to tell you something.” - -“That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know.” - -“Ah, then, is _that_ what you’ve stayed over for?” - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to express the -effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as -if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. “Well, -yes—I may as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for -that.” - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the -assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally -said was: “Do you mean now—here?” - -“There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round him -uneasily, and I had the rare—oh, the queer!—impression of the very -first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It -was as if he were suddenly afraid of me—which struck me indeed as -perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort -I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so -gentle as to be almost grotesque. “You want so to go out again?” - -“Awfully!” He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little bravery -of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up -his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that -gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of -what I was doing. To do it in _any_ way was an act of violence, for -what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and -guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of -the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn’t it base to create -for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read -into our situation a clearness it couldn’t have had at the time, for I -seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a -prevision of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, with -terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close. But it was for -each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and -unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles said—“I mean I’ll tell you -anything you like. You’ll stay on with me, and we shall both be all -right, and I _will_ tell you—I _will_. But not now.” - -“Why not now?” - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. -Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, -someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. “I have to see -Luke.” - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my -truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, -go to Luke, and I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for -that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller request.” - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a -little to bargain. “Very much smaller—?” - -“Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me”—oh, my work preoccupied -me, and I was offhand!—“if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the -hall, you took, you know, my letter.” - - -XXIV - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention—a stroke -that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind -movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just -fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively -keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon -us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into -view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, -from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to -the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room -his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place -within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time -recovered her grasp of the _act_. It came to me in the very horror of -the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I -saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can -call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how -transcendently, I _might_. It was like fighting with a demon for a -human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human -soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm’s length—had a perfect -dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was close to -mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it -presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further -away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -“Yes—I took it.” - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I -held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his -little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on -the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I have -likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was rather -the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, however, -was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, as it -were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the -window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very -confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive -certitude, by this time, of the child’s unconsciousness, that made me -go on. “What did you take it for?” - -“To see what you said about me.” - -“You opened the letter?” - -“I opened it.” - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s own -face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the -ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my -success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: he knew -that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still less that -I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of trouble -matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that the air -was clear again and—by my personal triumph—the influence quenched? -There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and that I -should surely get _all_. “And you found nothing!”—I let my elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.” - -“Nothing, nothing!” I almost shouted in my joy. - -“Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. “So what have you done with -it?” - -“I’ve burned it.” - -“Burned it?” It was now or never. “Is that what you did at school?” - -Oh, what this brought up! “At school?” - -“Did you take letters?—or other things?” - -“Other things?” He appeared now to be thinking of something far off and -that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did -reach him. “Did I _steal?_” - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it -were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him -take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the -world. “Was it for that you mightn’t go back?” - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. “Did you -know I mightn’t go back?” - -“I know everything.” - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. “Everything?” - -“Everything. Therefore _did_ you—?” But I couldn’t say it again. - -Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.” - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands—but it -was for pure tenderness—shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all -for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. “What then did -you do?” - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his -breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have -been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some -faint green twilight. “Well—I said things.” - -“Only that?” - -“They thought it was enough!” - -“To turn you out for?” - -Never, truly, had a person “turned out” shown so little to explain it -as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a -manner quite detached and almost helpless. “Well, I suppose I -oughtn’t.” - -“But to whom did you say them?” - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped—he had lost it. “I don’t -know!” - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was -indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left -it there. But I was infatuated—I was blind with victory, though even -then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was -already that of added separation. “Was it to everyone?” I asked. - -“No; it was only to—” But he gave a sick little headshake. “I don’t -remember their names.” - -“Were they then so many?” - -“No—only a few. Those I liked.” - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity -the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the -instant confounding and bottomless, for if he _were_ innocent, what -then on earth was _I?_ Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of -the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, -he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear -window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep him -from. “And did they repeat what you said?” I went on after a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again -with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined -against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the -dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but -an unspeakable anxiety. “Oh, yes,” he nevertheless replied—“they must -have repeated them. To those _they_ liked,” he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it -over. “And these things came round—?” - -“To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered very simply. “But I didn’t know -they’d tell.” - -“The masters? They didn’t—they’ve never told. That’s why I ask you.” - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was -too bad.” - -“Too bad?” - -“What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.” - -I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a -speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard -myself throw off with homely force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next -after that I must have sounded stern enough. “What _were_ these -things?” - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made _me_, with a single bound -and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, -against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, -was the hideous author of our woe—the white face of damnation. I felt a -sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so -that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. -I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, and on -the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window was -still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert the -climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. “No more, -no more, no more!” I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, to -my visitant. - -“Is she _here?_” Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the -direction of my words. Then as his strange “she” staggered me and, with -a gasp, I echoed it, “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he with a sudden fury -gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition—some sequel to what we had done to -Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still -than that. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the window—straight -before us. It’s _there_—the coward horror, there for the last time!” - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a -baffled dog’s on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air -and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly -over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled -the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. -“It’s _he?_” - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to -challenge him. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” - -“Peter Quint—you devil!” His face gave again, round the room, its -convulsed supplication. “_Where?_” - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his -tribute to my devotion. “What does he matter now, my own?—what will he -_ever_ matter? _I_ have you,” I launched at the beast, “but he has lost -you forever!” Then, for the demonstration of my work, “There, _there!_” -I said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and -seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of -he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp -with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his -fall. I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a -passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was -that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Turn of the Screw</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February, 1995 [eBook #209]<br /> -[Most recently updated: September 17, 2022]</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Judith Boss</div> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW ***</div> - -<h1>The Turn of the Screw</h1> - -<h2 class="no-break">by Henry James</h2> - -<hr /> - -<h2>Contents</h2> - -<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#intro01">THE TURN OF THE SCREW</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap01">I</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap02">II</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap03">III</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap04">IV</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap05">V</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap06">VI</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap07">VII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap09">IX</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap10">X</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap11">XI</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap12">XII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap15">XV</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap20">XX</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap22">XXII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap23">XXIII</a></td> -</tr> - -<tr> -<td> <a href="#chap24">XXIV</a></td> -</tr> - -</table> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="intro01"></a>THE TURN OF THE SCREW</h2> - -<p> -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the -obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a -strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody -happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation -had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in -just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion—an appearance, -of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and -waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and -soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had -succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this -observation that drew from Douglas—not immediately, but later in the -evening—a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call -attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw he -was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself something to -produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in fact till two nights -later; but that same evening, before we scattered, he brought out what was in -his mind. -</p> - -<p> -“I quite agree—in regard to Griffin’s ghost, or whatever it -was—that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, adds -a particular touch. But it’s not the first occurrence of its charming -kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect -another turn of the screw, what do you say to <i>two</i> -children—?” -</p> - -<p> -“We say, of course,” somebody exclaimed, “that they give two -turns! Also that we want to hear about them.” -</p> - -<p> -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to present his -back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands in his pockets. -“Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It’s quite too -horrible.” This, naturally, was declared by several voices to give the -thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, prepared his triumph by -turning his eyes over the rest of us and going on: “It’s beyond -everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it.” -</p> - -<p> -“For sheer terror?” I remember asking. -</p> - -<p> -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to -qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. -“For dreadful—dreadfulness!” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, how delicious!” cried one of the women. -</p> - -<p> -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw -what he spoke of. “For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well then,” I said, “just sit right down and begin.” -</p> - -<p> -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an instant. Then -as he faced us again: “I can’t begin. I shall have to send to -town.” There was a unanimous groan at this, and much reproach; after -which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. “The story’s written. -It’s in a locked drawer—it has not been out for years. I could -write to my man and enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds -it.” It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound -this—appeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. He had broken a -thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; had had his reasons for a -long silence. The others resented postponement, but it was just his scruples -that charmed me. I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us -for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been -his own. To this his answer was prompt. “Oh, thank God, no!” -</p> - -<p> -“And is the record yours? You took the thing down?” -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing but the impression. I took that <i>here</i>”—he -tapped his heart. “I’ve never lost it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then your manuscript—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.” He hung -fire again. “A woman’s. She has been dead these twenty years. She -sent me the pages in question before she died.” They were all listening -now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any rate to draw the -inference. But if he put the inference by without a smile it was also without -irritation. “She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older -than I. She was my sister’s governess,” he quietly said. “She -was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would -have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long -before. I was at Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second -summer. I was much there that year—it was a beautiful one; and we had, in -her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden—talks in which she -struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don’t grin: I liked her -extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she -hadn’t she wouldn’t have told me. She had never told anyone. It -wasn’t simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn’t. I was -sure; I could see. You’ll easily judge why when you hear.” -</p> - -<p> -“Because the thing had been such a scare?” -</p> - -<p> -He continued to fix me. “You’ll easily judge,” he repeated: -“<i>you</i> will.” -</p> - -<p> -I fixed him, too. “I see. She was in love.” -</p> - -<p> -He laughed for the first time. “You <i>are</i> acute. Yes, she was in -love. That is, she had been. That came out—she couldn’t tell her -story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us -spoke of it. I remember the time and the place—the corner of the lawn, -the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. It -wasn’t a scene for a shudder; but oh—!” He quitted the fire -and dropped back into his chair. -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired. -</p> - -<p> -“Probably not till the second post.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well then; after dinner—” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. -“Isn’t anybody going?” It was almost the tone of hope. -</p> - -<p> -“Everybody will stay!” -</p> - -<p> -“<i>I</i> will”—and “<i>I</i> will!” cried the -ladies whose departure had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the -need for a little more light. “Who was it she was in love with?” -</p> - -<p> -“The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I can’t wait for the story!” -</p> - -<p> -“The story <i>won’t</i> tell,” said Douglas; “not in -any literal, vulgar way.” -</p> - -<p> -“More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever -understand.” -</p> - -<p> -“Won’t <i>you</i> tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired. -</p> - -<p> -He sprang to his feet again. “Yes—tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. -Good night.” And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly -bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the -stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t know who she -was in love with, I know who <i>he</i> was.” -</p> - -<p> -“She was ten years older,” said her husband. -</p> - -<p> -“<i>Raison de plus</i>—at that age! But it’s rather nice, his -long reticence.” -</p> - -<p> -“Forty years!” Griffin put in. -</p> - -<p> -“With this outbreak at last.” -</p> - -<p> -“The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion -of Thursday night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of -it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however -incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we handshook -and “candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed. -</p> - -<p> -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first post, -gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of—or perhaps just on -account of—the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him -alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, as might -best accord with the kind of emotion on which our hopes were fixed. Then he -became as communicative as we could desire and indeed gave us his best reason -for being so. We had it from him again before the fire in the hall, as we had -had our mild wonders of the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he -had promised to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words -of prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this -narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what I shall -presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death—when it was in -sight—committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began to read to -our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The departing ladies who -had said they would stay didn’t, of course, thank heaven, stay: they -departed, in consequence of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they -professed, produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up. But -that only made his little final auditory more compact and select, kept it, -round the hearth, subject to a common thrill. -</p> - -<p> -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took up the tale -at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to be in possession of -was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of several daughters of a poor -country parson, had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time -in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer in person an -advertisement that had already placed her in brief correspondence with the -advertiser. This person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a -house in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing—this -prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, such a -figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, -anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could easily fix his type; it -never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, off-hand and -gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took -her most of all and gave her the courage she afterward showed was that he put -the whole thing to her as a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully -incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant—saw him -all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of charming -ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house filled with the -spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it was to his country home, -an old family place in Essex, that he wished her immediately to proceed. -</p> - -<p> -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to a small -nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military brother, whom he -had lost two years before. These children were, by the strangest of chances for -a man in his position—a lone man without the right sort of experience or -a grain of patience—very heavily on his hands. It had all been a great -worry and, on his own part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely -pitied the poor chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them -down to his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, -and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could find to look -after them, parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going down -himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. The awkward thing was -that they had practically no other relations and that his own affairs took up -all his time. He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and -secure, and had placed at the head of their little establishment—but -below stairs only—an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his -visitor would like and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now -housekeeper and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little -girl, of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely -fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady who -should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She would also have, -in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been for a term at -school—young as he was to be sent, but what else could be done?—and -who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back from one day to the -other. There had been for the two children at first a young lady whom they had -had the misfortune to lose. She had done for them quite beautifully—she -was a most respectable person—till her death, the great awkwardness of -which had, precisely, left no alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. -Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for -Flora; and there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, -an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. -</p> - -<p> -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. -“And what did the former governess die of?—of so much -respectability?” -</p> - -<p> -Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t -anticipate.” -</p> - -<p> -“Excuse me—I thought that was just what you <i>are</i> -doing.” -</p> - -<p> -“In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have -wished to learn if the office brought with it—” -</p> - -<p> -“Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. -“She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow what -she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as slightly grim. -She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little -company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated—took a couple of days -to consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest -measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged.” And -Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me -to throw in— -</p> - -<p> -“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid -young man. She succumbed to it.” -</p> - -<p> -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir -to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. “She saw -him only twice.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.” -</p> - -<p> -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It -<i>was</i> the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who -hadn’t succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty—that for -several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, somehow, -simply afraid. It sounded dull—it sounded strange; and all the more so -because of his main condition.” -</p> - -<p> -“Which was—?” -</p> - -<p> -“That she should never trouble him—but never, never: neither appeal -nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive -all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone. She -promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, for a moment, -disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking her for the sacrifice, she -already felt rewarded.” -</p> - -<p> -“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked. -</p> - -<p> -“She never saw him again.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us -again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, -the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, he opened the -faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. The whole thing took -indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion the same lady put -another question. “What is your title?” -</p> - -<p> -“I haven’t one.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, <i>I</i> have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had -begun to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of the -beauty of his author’s hand. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I</h2> - -<p> -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little -seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his -appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found myself -doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I -spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping -place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I -was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June -afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a -lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me -a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the -avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to -which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so -melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most -pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains -and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers -and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which -the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that -made it a different affair from my own scant home, and there immediately -appeared at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who -dropped me as decent a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished -visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, and -that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still more of a gentleman, -suggested that what I was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise. -</p> - -<p> -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly through -the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my pupils. The little -girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so -charming as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her. She was the most -beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward wondered that my employer had -not told me more of her. I slept little that night—I was too much -excited; and this astonished me, too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to -my sense of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive -room, one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, -the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I -could see myself from head to foot, all struck me—like the extraordinary -charm of my small charge—as so many things thrown in. It was thrown in as -well, from the first moment, that I should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation -over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. The only -thing indeed that in this early outlook might have made me shrink again was the -clear circumstance of her being so glad to see me. I perceived within half an -hour that she was so glad—stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome -woman—as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much. I -wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, and that, with -reflection, with suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. -</p> - -<p> -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection with -anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the vision of -whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to do with the -restlessness that, before morning, made me several times rise and wander about -my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from my open -window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of the -house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first -birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less -natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been -a moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there -had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the -passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked -enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I -should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to -me. To watch, teach, “form” little Flora would too evidently be the -making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us downstairs -that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter of course at -night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. -What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just -this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my -inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this -timidity—which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had -been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of -uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of -Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to -determine us—I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was part -of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her -feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and -with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, -over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora’s presence -could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and -roundabout allusions. -</p> - -<p> -“And the little boy—does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?” -</p> - -<p> -One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, miss, <i>most</i> remarkable. If -you think well of this one!”—and she stood there with a plate in -her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with -placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes; if I do—?” -</p> - -<p> -“You <i>will</i> be carried away by the little gentleman!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, that, I think, is what I came for—to be carried away. -I’m afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, -“I’m rather easily carried away. I was carried away in -London!” -</p> - -<p> -I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In -Harley Street?” -</p> - -<p> -“In Harley Street.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, miss, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the -last.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the -only one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back -tomorrow?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not tomorrow—Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, -under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.” -</p> - -<p> -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and friendly -thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public conveyance I should -be in waiting for him with his little sister; an idea in which Mrs. Grose -concurred so heartily that I somehow took her manner as a kind of comforting -pledge—never falsified, thank heaven!—that we should on every -question be quite at one. Oh, she was glad I was there! -</p> - -<p> -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly called a -reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at the most only a -slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of the scale, as I walked round -them, gazed up at them, took them in, of my new circumstances. They had, as it -were, an extent and mass for which I had not been prepared and in the presence -of which I found myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. -Lessons, in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that my -first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the child into -the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with -her, to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, who might show -me the place. She showed it step by step and room by room and secret by secret, -with droll, delightful, childish talk about it and with the result, in half an -hour, of our becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, -throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in -empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made me pause and -even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her -morning music, her disposition to tell me so many more things than she asked, -rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day I left it, and I -daresay that to my older and more informed eyes it would now appear -sufficiently contracted. But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold -and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down -passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, -such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all color -out of storybooks and fairytales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which I -had fallen adoze and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient -house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and -half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a -handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the -helm! -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II</h2> - -<p> -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora to meet, as -Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the more for an incident that, -presenting itself the second evening, had deeply disconcerted me. The first day -had been, on the whole, as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it -wind up in keen apprehension. The postbag, that evening—it came -late—contained a letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my -employer, I found to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, -addressed to himself, with a seal still unbroken. “This, I recognize, is -from the headmaster, and the headmaster’s an awful bore. Read him, -please; deal with him; but mind you don’t report. Not a word. I’m -off!” I broke the seal with a great effort—so great a one that I -was a long time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room -and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let it wait -till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no counsel to take, -the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally got so the better of me -that I determined to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. -</p> - -<p> -“What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school.” -</p> - -<p> -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with a quick -blankness, seemed to try to take it back. “But aren’t they -all—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Sent home—yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back -at all.” -</p> - -<p> -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. “They won’t take -him?” -</p> - -<p> -“They absolutely decline.” -</p> - -<p> -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them fill with -good tears. “What has he done?” -</p> - -<p> -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter—which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put her hands -behind her. She shook her head sadly. “Such things are not for me, -miss.” -</p> - -<p> -My counselor couldn’t read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as -I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering in the -act and folding it up once more, I put it back in my pocket. “Is he -really <i>bad</i>?” -</p> - -<p> -The tears were still in her eyes. “Do the gentlemen say so?” -</p> - -<p> -“They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it -should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning.” Mrs. -Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this meaning might -be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence and with the mere -aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: “That he’s an injury -to the others.” -</p> - -<p> -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed up. -“Master Miles! <i>him</i> an injury?” -</p> - -<p> -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet seen the -child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. I found myself, -to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the spot, sarcastically. -“To his poor little innocent mates!” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s too dreadful,” cried Mrs. Grose, “to say such -cruel things! Why, he’s scarce ten years old.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, yes; it would be incredible.” -</p> - -<p> -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. “See him, miss, first. -<i>Then</i> believe it!” I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; it -was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, was to deepen -almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, of what she had produced -in me, and she followed it up with assurance. “You might as well believe -it of the little lady. Bless her,” she added the next -moment—“<i>look</i> at her!” -</p> - -<p> -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established in the -schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy of nice -“round O’s,” now presented herself to view at the open door. -She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from disagreeable -duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light that seemed to -offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived for my person, -which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. I needed nothing more -than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Grose’s comparison, and, -catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob -of atonement. -</p> - -<p> -Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion to approach my -colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to fancy she rather sought to -avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on the staircase; we went down together, -and at the bottom I detained her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. -“I take what you said to me at noon as a declaration that -<i>you’ve</i> never known him to be bad.” -</p> - -<p> -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very honestly, -adopted an attitude. “Oh, never known him—I don’t pretend -<i>that!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -I was upset again. “Then you <i>have</i> known him—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes indeed, miss, thank God!” -</p> - -<p> -On reflection I accepted this. “You mean that a boy who never -is—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Is no boy for <i>me!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -I held her tighter. “You like them with the spirit to be naughty?” -Then, keeping pace with her answer, “So do I!” I eagerly brought -out. “But not to the degree to contaminate—” -</p> - -<p> -“To contaminate?”—my big word left her at a loss. I explained -it. “To corrupt.” -</p> - -<p> -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. -“Are you afraid he’ll corrupt <i>you?</i>” She put the -question with such a fine bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly -doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the apprehension of -ridicule. -</p> - -<p> -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in another -place. “What was the lady who was here before?” -</p> - -<p> -“The last governess? She was also young and pretty—almost as young -and almost as pretty, miss, even as you.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!” I recollect -throwing off. “He seems to like us young and pretty!” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, he <i>did</i>,” Mrs. Grose assented: “it was the way he -liked everyone!” She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself -up. “I mean that’s <i>his</i> way—the master’s.” -</p> - -<p> -I was struck. “But of whom did you speak first?” -</p> - -<p> -She looked blank, but she colored. “Why, of <i>him</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Of the master?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of who else?” -</p> - -<p> -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I merely -asked what I wanted to know. “Did <i>she</i> see anything in the -boy—?” -</p> - -<p> -“That wasn’t right? She never told me.” -</p> - -<p> -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. “Was she -careful—particular?” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. “About some -things—yes.” -</p> - -<p> -“But not about all?” -</p> - -<p> -Again she considered. “Well, miss—she’s gone. I won’t -tell tales.” -</p> - -<p> -“I quite understand your feeling,” I hastened to reply; but I -thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: -“Did she die here?” -</p> - -<p> -“No—she went off.” -</p> - -<p> -I don’t know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose’s that -struck me as ambiguous. “Went off to die?” Mrs. Grose looked -straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right to -know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. “She was -taken ill, you mean, and went home?” -</p> - -<p> -“She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She left it, -at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short holiday, to which -the time she had put in had certainly given her a right. We had then a young -woman—a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and clever; -and <i>she</i> took the children altogether for the interval. But our young -lady never came back, and at the very moment I was expecting her I heard from -the master that she was dead.” -</p> - -<p> -I turned this over. “But of what?” -</p> - -<p> -“He never told me! But please, miss,” said Mrs. Grose, “I -must get to my work.” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III</h2> - -<p> -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. We -met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately than ever on the -ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so monstrous was I then ready to -pronounce it that such a child as had now been revealed to me should be under -an interdict. I was a little late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood -wistfully looking out for me before the door of the inn at which the coach had -put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the -great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, -from the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, and -Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything but a sort of passion of -tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What I then and there took -him to my heart for was something divine that I have never found to the same -degree in any child—his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in -the world but love. It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a -greater sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him -I remained merely bewildered—so far, that is, as I was not -outraged—by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a -drawer. As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to -her that it was grotesque. -</p> - -<p> -She promptly understood me. “You mean the cruel charge—?” -</p> - -<p> -“It doesn’t live an instant. My dear woman, <i>look</i> at -him!” -</p> - -<p> -She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. “I assure you, -miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?” she immediately added. -</p> - -<p> -“In answer to the letter?” I had made up my mind. -“Nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“And to his uncle?” -</p> - -<p> -I was incisive. “Nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“And to the boy himself?” -</p> - -<p> -I was wonderful. “Nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. “Then I’ll stand -by you. We’ll see it out.” -</p> - -<p> -“We’ll see it out!” I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to -make it a vow. -</p> - -<p> -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her detached -hand. “Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom—” -</p> - -<p> -“To kiss me? No!” I took the good creature in my arms and, after we -had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. -</p> - -<p> -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I recall the way -it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to make it a little distinct. -What I look back at with amazement is the situation I accepted. I had -undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was under a charm, -apparently, that could smooth away the extent and the far and difficult -connections of such an effort. I was lifted aloft on a great wave of -infatuation and pity. I found it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and -perhaps my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy whose education for -the world was all on the point of beginning. I am unable even to remember at -this day what proposal I framed for the end of his holidays and the resumption -of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, that charming summer, we all had a -theory that he was to have; but I now feel that, for weeks, the lessons must -have been rather my own. I learned something—at first, -certainly—that had not been one of the teachings of my small, smothered -life; learned to be amused, and even amusing, and not to think for the morrow. -It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, -all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was -consideration—and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap—not -designed, but deep—to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my -vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable. The best way to picture it all -is to say that I was off my guard. They gave me so little trouble—they -were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to speculate—but even this -with a dim disconnectedness—as to how the rough future (for all futures -are rough!) would handle them and might bruise them. They had the bloom of -health and happiness; and yet, as if I had been in charge of a pair of little -grandees, of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be right, would have -to be enclosed and protected, the only form that, in my fancy, the afteryears -could take for them was that of a romantic, a really royal extension of the -garden and the park. It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke -into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which -something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a -beast. -</p> - -<p> -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, gave me -what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, teatime and -bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final retirement, a small -interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this hour was the thing in the -day I liked most; and I liked it best of all when, as the light faded—or -rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last calls of the last birds -sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees—I could take a turn into -the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of property that amused and -flattered me, the beauty and dignity of the place. It was a pleasure at these -moments to feel myself tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to -reflect that by my discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, -I was giving pleasure—if he ever thought of it!—to the person to -whose pressure I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly -hoped and directly asked of me, and that I <i>could</i>, after all, do it -proved even a greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in -short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would -more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the -remarkable things that presently gave their first sign. -</p> - -<p> -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children were -tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts that, as I -don’t in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these -wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to -meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand -before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask more than that—I only -asked that he should <i>know;</i> and the only way to be sure he knew would be -to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly -present to me—by which I mean the face was—when, on the first of -these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging -from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me -on the spot—and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed -for—was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He -did stand there!—but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the -tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This -tower was one of a pair—square, incongruous, crenelated -structures—that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see -little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the -house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed -by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in -their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a -respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could all -profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, by the -grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that -the figure I had so often invoked seemed most in place. -</p> - -<p> -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two distinct -gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first and that of my -second surprise. My second was a violent perception of the mistake of my first: -the man who met my eyes was not the person I had precipitately supposed. There -came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of which, after these years, there is -no living view that I can hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a -permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that -faced me was—a few more seconds assured me—as little anyone else I -knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley -Street—I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in the strangest -way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance, -become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement here with a deliberation -with which I have never made it, the whole feeling of the moment returns. It -was as if, while I took in—what I did take in—all the rest of the -scene had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write, the intense -hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the -golden sky, and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But -there was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I saw -with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the clearness in the -air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a -picture in a frame. That’s how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, -of each person that he might have been and that he was not. We were confronted -across our distance quite long enough for me to ask myself with intensity who -then he was and to feel, as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in -a few instants more became intense. -</p> - -<p> -The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard to -certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted. Well, this matter -of mine, think what you will of it, lasted while I caught at a dozen -possibilities, none of which made a difference for the better, that I could -see, in there having been in the house—and for how long, above -all?—a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled -a little with the sense that my office demanded that there should be no such -ignorance and no such person. It lasted while this visitant, at all -events—and there was a touch of the strange freedom, as I remember, in -the sign of familiarity of his wearing no hat—seemed to fix me, from his -position, with just the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light, -that his own presence provoked. We were too far apart to call to each other, -but there was a moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge between us, -breaking the hush, would have been the right result of our straight mutual -stare. He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, very erect, as -it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. So I saw him as I see the -letters I form on this page; then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the -spectacle, he slowly changed his place—passed, looking at me hard all the -while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense -that during this transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this -moment the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the -next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as he turned away -still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all I knew. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV</h2> - -<p> -It was not that I didn’t wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a “secret” at -Bly—a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in -unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how -long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my -collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had quite -closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me and driven me, for -I must, in circling about the place, have walked three miles; but I was to be, -later on, so much more overwhelmed that this mere dawn of alarm was a -comparatively human chill. The most singular part of it, in fact—singular -as the rest had been—was the part I became, in the hall, aware of in -meeting Mrs. Grose. This picture comes back to me in the general -train—the impression, as I received it on my return, of the wide white -panelled space, bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet, -and of the good surprised look of my friend, which immediately told me she had -missed me. It came to me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain -heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever -that could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I had not -suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me up, and I somehow -measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate -to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd as this -fact that my real beginning of fear was one, as I may say, with the instinct of -sparing my companion. On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with -her eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn’t then have phrased, -achieved an inward resolution—offered a vague pretext for my lateness -and, with the plea of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet -feet, went as soon as possible to my room. -</p> - -<p> -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer affair -enough. There were hours, from day to day—or at least there were moments, -snatched even from clear duties—when I had to shut myself up to think. It -was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could bear to be as that I -was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for the truth I had now to turn over was, -simply and clearly, the truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of the -visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so -intimately concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without -forms of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complications. The -shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses; I felt sure, at the end -of three days and as the result of mere closer attention, that I had not been -practiced upon by the servants nor made the object of any “game.” -Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. There was but one -sane inference: someone had taken a liberty rather gross. That was what, -repeatedly, I dipped into my room and locked the door to say to myself. We had -been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; some unscrupulous traveler, -curious in old houses, had made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect -from the best point of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me -such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good -thing, after all, was that we should surely see no more of him. -</p> - -<p> -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that what, -essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming work. My -charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing could -I so like it as through feeling that I could throw myself into it in trouble. -The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, leading me to wonder -afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the distaste I had begun by -entertaining for the probable gray prose of my office. There was to be no gray -prose, it appeared, and no long grind; so how could work not be charming that -presented itself as daily beauty? It was all the romance of the nursery and the -poetry of the schoolroom. I don’t mean by this, of course, that we -studied only fiction and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort of -interest my companions inspired. How can I describe that except by saying that -instead of growing used to them—and it’s a marvel for a governess: -I call the sisterhood to witness!—I made constant fresh discoveries. -There was one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped: deep -obscurity continued to cover the region of the boy’s conduct at school. -It had been promptly given me, I have noted, to face that mystery without a -pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say that—without a -word—he himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge absurd. -My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his innocence: he was -only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean school-world, and he had -paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, -such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the majority—which -could include even stupid, sordid headmasters—turn infallibly to the -vindictive. -</p> - -<p> -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and it never made -Miles a muff) that kept them—how shall I express it?—almost -impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like the cherubs of the -anecdote, who had—morally, at any rate—nothing to whack! I remember -feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no history. We -expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this beautiful little boy -something extraordinarily sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than -in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. -He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his -having really been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have -“caught” it, and I should have caught it by the rebound—I -should have found the trace. I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an -angel. He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and -I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I was -under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly -knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I -had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days of disturbing letters -from home, where things were not going well. But with my children, what things -in the world mattered? That was the question I used to put to my scrappy -retirements. I was dazzled by their loveliness. -</p> - -<p> -There was a Sunday—to get on—when it rained with such force and for -so many hours that there could be no procession to church; in consequence of -which, as the day declined, I had arranged with Mrs. Grose that, should the -evening show improvement, we would attend together the late service. The rain -happily stopped, and I prepared for our walk, which, through the park and by -the good road to the village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming -downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that -had required three stitches and that had received them—with a publicity -perhaps not edifying—while I sat with the children at their tea, served -on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the -“grown-up” dining room. The gloves had been dropped there, and I -turned in to recover them. The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light -still lingered, and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to -recognize, on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, -but to become aware of a person on the other side of the window and looking -straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; -it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had already -appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won’t say greater -distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented a -forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my breath -and turn cold. He was the same—he was the same, and seen, this time, as -he had been seen before, from the waist up, the window, though the dining room -was on the ground floor, not going down to the terrace on which he stood. His -face was close to the glass, yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, -only to show me how intense the former had been. He remained but a few -seconds—long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was -as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always. Something, -however, happened this time that had not happened before; his stare into my -face, through the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but -it quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it fix -successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the added shock -of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He had come for -someone else. -</p> - -<p> -The flash of this knowledge—for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread—produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started as I stood -there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage because I was -beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight out of the door again, -reached that of the house, got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing -along the terrace as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and came full in -sight. But it was in sight of nothing now—my visitor had vanished. I -stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of this; but I took in the -whole scene—I gave him time to reappear. I call it time, but how long was -it? I can’t speak to the purpose today of the duration of these things. -That kind of measure must have left me: they couldn’t have lasted as they -actually appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and -the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great -emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember the clear -assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. He was there or was not -there: not there if I didn’t see him. I got hold of this; then, -instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went to the window. It was -confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. I did -so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. -As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, -as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had -the full image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I -had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her -something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me -ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, and retreated on -just <i>my</i> lines, and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me -and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, and while I -waited I thought of more things than one. But there’s only one I take -space to mention. I wondered why <i>she</i> should be scared. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V</h2> - -<p> -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed again -into view. “What in the name of goodness is the matter—?” She -was now flushed and out of breath. -</p> - -<p> -I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have -made a wonderful face. “Do I show it?” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.” -</p> - -<p> -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My need to -respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a rustle, from my -shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I -put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to -feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her -surprise. “You came for me for church, of course, but I can’t -go.” -</p> - -<p> -“Has anything happened?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?” -</p> - -<p> -“Through this window? Dreadful!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened.” Mrs. -Grose’s eyes expressed plainly that <i>she</i> had no wish to be, yet -also that she knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any -marked inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she <i>must</i> share! -“Just what you saw from the dining room a minute ago was the effect of -that. What <i>I</i> saw—just before—was much worse.” -</p> - -<p> -Her hand tightened. “What was it?” -</p> - -<p> -“An extraordinary man. Looking in.” -</p> - -<p> -“What extraordinary man?” -</p> - -<p> -“I haven’t the least idea.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. “Then where is he gone?” -</p> - -<p> -“I know still less.” -</p> - -<p> -“Have you seen him before?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes—once. On the old tower.” -</p> - -<p> -She could only look at me harder. “Do you mean he’s a -stranger?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, very much!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yet you didn’t tell me?” -</p> - -<p> -“No—for reasons. But now that you’ve guessed—” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose’s round eyes encountered this charge. “Ah, I -haven’t guessed!” she said very simply. “How can I if -<i>you</i> don’t imagine?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t in the very least.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?” -</p> - -<p> -“And on this spot just now.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose looked round again. “What was he doing on the tower?” -</p> - -<p> -“Only standing there and looking down at me.” -</p> - -<p> -She thought a minute. “Was he a gentleman?” -</p> - -<p> -I found I had no need to think. “No.” She gazed in deeper wonder. -“No.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?” -</p> - -<p> -“Nobody—nobody. I didn’t tell you, but I made sure.” -</p> - -<p> -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It only went -indeed a little way. “But if he isn’t a gentleman—” -</p> - -<p> -“What <i>is</i> he? He’s a horror.” -</p> - -<p> -“A horror?” -</p> - -<p> -“He’s—God help me if I know <i>what</i> he is!” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier distance, -then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt inconsequence. -“It’s time we should be at church.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I’m not fit for church!” -</p> - -<p> -“Won’t it do you good?” -</p> - -<p> -“It won’t do <i>them!</i>— I nodded at the house. -</p> - -<p> -“The children?” -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t leave them now.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re afraid—?” -</p> - -<p> -I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of <i>him</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose’s large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made out in it -the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and that was as yet -quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as -something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire -she presently showed to know more. “When was it—on the -tower?” -</p> - -<p> -“About the middle of the month. At this same hour.” -</p> - -<p> -“Almost at dark,” said Mrs. Grose. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then how did he get in?” -</p> - -<p> -“And how did he get out?” I laughed. “I had no opportunity to -ask him! This evening, you see,” I pursued, “he has not been able -to get in.” -</p> - -<p> -“He only peeps?” -</p> - -<p> -“I hope it will be confined to that!” She had now let go my hand; -she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: “Go to -church. Goodbye. I must watch.” -</p> - -<p> -Slowly she faced me again. “Do you fear for them?” -</p> - -<p> -We met in another long look. “Don’t <i>you?</i>” Instead of -answering she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to -the glass. “You see how he could see,” I meanwhile went on. -</p> - -<p> -She didn’t move. “How long was he here?” -</p> - -<p> -“Till I came out. I came to meet him.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. -“<i>I</i> couldn’t have come out.” -</p> - -<p> -“Neither could I!” I laughed again. “But I did come. I have -my duty.” -</p> - -<p> -“So have I mine,” she replied; after which she added: “What -is he like?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve been dying to tell you. But he’s like nobody.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nobody?” she echoed. -</p> - -<p> -“He has no hat.” Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, -with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to -stroke. “He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long -in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that -are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look -particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, -strange—awfully; but I only know clearly that they’re rather small -and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and except for -his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense -of looking like an actor.” -</p> - -<p> -“An actor!” It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than -Mrs. Grose at that moment. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve never seen one, but so I suppose them. He’s tall, -active, erect,” I continued, “but never—no, never!—a -gentleman.” -</p> - -<p> -My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and -her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: “a gentleman <i>he?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“You know him then?” -</p> - -<p> -She visibly tried to hold herself. “But he <i>is</i> handsome?” -</p> - -<p> -I saw the way to help her. “Remarkably!” -</p> - -<p> -“And dressed—?” -</p> - -<p> -“In somebody’s clothes.” “They’re smart, but -they’re not his own.” -</p> - -<p> -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: “They’re the -master’s!” -</p> - -<p> -I caught it up. “You <i>do</i> know him?” -</p> - -<p> -She faltered but a second. “Quint!” she cried. -</p> - -<p> -“Quint?” -</p> - -<p> -“Peter Quint—his own man, his valet, when he was here!” -</p> - -<p> -“When the master was?” -</p> - -<p> -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. “He never wore -his hat, but he did wear—well, there were waistcoats missed. They were -both here—last year. Then the master went, and Quint was alone.” -</p> - -<p> -I followed, but halting a little. “Alone?” -</p> - -<p> -“Alone with <i>us</i>.” Then, as from a deeper depth, “In -charge,” she added. -</p> - -<p> -“And what became of him?” -</p> - -<p> -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. “He went, -too,” she brought out at last. -</p> - -<p> -“Went where?” -</p> - -<p> -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. “God knows where! He -died.” -</p> - -<p> -“Died?” I almost shrieked. -</p> - -<p> -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter the -wonder of it. “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI</h2> - -<p> -It took of course more than that particular passage to place us together in -presence of what we had now to live with as we could—my dreadful -liability to impressions of the order so vividly exemplified, and my -companion’s knowledge, henceforth—a knowledge half consternation -and half compassion—of that liability. There had been, this evening, -after the revelation left me, for an hour, so prostrate—there had been, -for either of us, no attendance on any service but a little service of tears -and vows, of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges -and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to the -schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out. The result -of our having everything out was simply to reduce our situation to the last -rigor of its elements. She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a -shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess’s -plight; yet she accepted without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I -gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken -tenderness, an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, -of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human -charities. -</p> - -<p> -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we thought we -might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, in spite of her -exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I knew at this hour, I -think, as well as I knew later, what I was capable of meeting to shelter my -pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was -prepared for to keep terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company -enough—quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over what -we went through I see how much common ground we must have found in the one idea -that, by good fortune, <i>could</i> steady us. It was the idea, the second -movement, that led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my -dread. I could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could -join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me -before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every feature of -what I had seen. -</p> - -<p> -“He was looking for someone else, you say—someone who was not -you?” -</p> - -<p> -“He was looking for little Miles.” A portentous clearness now -possessed me. “<i>That’s</i> whom he was looking for.” -</p> - -<p> -“But how do you know?” -</p> - -<p> -“I know, I know, I know!” My exaltation grew. “And <i>you</i> -know, my dear!” -</p> - -<p> -She didn’t deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much telling as -that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: “What if <i>he</i> should see -him?” -</p> - -<p> -“Little Miles? That’s what he wants!” -</p> - -<p> -She looked immensely scared again. “The child?” -</p> - -<p> -“Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to <i>them</i>.” That -he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at bay; -which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in practically -proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I had already -seen, but something within me said that by offering myself bravely as the sole -subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I -should serve as an expiatory victim and guard the tranquility of my companions. -The children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I -recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. -</p> - -<p> -“It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned—” -</p> - -<p> -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. “His having been here and -the time they were with him?” -</p> - -<p> -“The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, in -any way.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, the little lady doesn’t remember. She never heard or -knew.” -</p> - -<p> -“The circumstances of his death?” I thought with some intensity. -“Perhaps not. But Miles would remember—Miles would know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, don’t try him!” broke from Mrs. Grose. -</p> - -<p> -I returned her the look she had given me. “Don’t be afraid.” -I continued to think. “It <i>is</i> rather odd.” -</p> - -<p> -“That he has never spoken of him?” -</p> - -<p> -“Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were ‘great -friends’?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, it wasn’t <i>him!</i>” Mrs. Grose with emphasis -declared. “It was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I -mean—to spoil him.” She paused a moment; then she added: -“Quint was much too free.” -</p> - -<p> -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face—<i>such</i> a -face!—a sudden sickness of disgust. “Too free with <i>my</i> -boy?” -</p> - -<p> -“Too free with everyone!” -</p> - -<p> -I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than by the -reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of the -household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our small colony. -But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the lucky fact that no -discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, had ever, within -anyone’s memory attached to the kind old place. It had neither bad name -nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, only desired to cling to me and -to quake in silence. I even put her, the very last thing of all, to the test. -It was when, at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom door to take -leave. “I have it from you then—for it’s of great -importance—that he was definitely and admittedly bad?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, not admittedly. <i>I</i> knew it—but the master -didn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“And you never told him?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, he didn’t like tale-bearing—he hated complaints. He -was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to -<i>him</i>—” -</p> - -<p> -“He wouldn’t be bothered with more?” This squared well enough -with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very -particular perhaps about some of the company <i>he</i> kept. All the same, I -pressed my interlocutress. “I promise you <i>I</i> would have told!” -</p> - -<p> -She felt my discrimination. “I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was -afraid.” -</p> - -<p> -“Afraid of what?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever—he was so -deep.” -</p> - -<p> -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. “You weren’t -afraid of anything else? Not of his effect—?” -</p> - -<p> -“His effect?” she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while -I faltered. -</p> - -<p> -“On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge.” -</p> - -<p> -“No, they were not in mine!” she roundly and distressfully -returned. “The master believed in him and placed him here because he was -supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. So he had -everything to say. Yes”—she let me have it—“even about -<i>them</i>.” -</p> - -<p> -“Them—that creature?” I had to smother a kind of howl. -“And you could bear it!” -</p> - -<p> -“No. I couldn’t—and I can’t now!” And the poor -woman burst into tears. -</p> - -<p> -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; yet -how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together to the -subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, in the immediate -later hours in especial—for it may be imagined whether I -slept—still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me. I -myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had kept back. I -was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from a failure of frankness, -but because on every side there were fears. It seems to me indeed, in -retrospect, that by the time the morrow’s sun was high I had restlessly -read into the fact before us almost all the meaning they were to receive from -subsequent and more cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the -sinister figure of the living man—the dead one would keep -awhile!—and of the months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added -up, made a formidable stretch. The limit of this evil time had arrived only -when, on the dawn of a winter’s morning, Peter Quint was found, by a -laborer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: a -catastrophe explained—superficially at least—by a visible wound to -his head; such a wound as might have been produced—and as, on the final -evidence, <i>had</i> been—by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving -the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the -bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in -liquor, accounted for much—practically, in the end and after the inquest -and boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his -life—strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than -suspected—that would have accounted for a good deal more. -</p> - -<p> -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible picture -of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to find a joy in -the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that -I had been asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would be a -greatness in letting it be seen—oh, in the right quarter!—that I -could succeed where many another girl might have failed. It was an immense help -to me—I confess I rather applaud myself as I look back!—that I saw -my service so strongly and so simply. I was there to protect and defend the -little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the -appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, -constant ache of one’s own committed heart. We were cut off, really, -together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and -I—well, I had <i>them</i>. It was in short a magnificent chance. This -chance presented itself to me in an image richly material. I was a -screen—I was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I -began to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that might -well, had it continued too long, have turned to something like madness. What -saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. It -didn’t last as suspense—it was superseded by horrible proofs. -Proofs, I say, yes—from the moment I really took hold. -</p> - -<p> -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in the -grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles indoors, on the -red cushion of a deep window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had -been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose only defect -was an occasional excess of the restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been -alert to come out, and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for -the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with -her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived—it was the -charming thing in both children—to let me alone without appearing to drop -me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were never -importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all really went to -seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they -seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. I walked -in a world of their invention—they had no occasion whatever to draw upon -mine; so that my time was taken only with being, for them, some remarkable -person or thing that the game of the moment required and that was merely, -thanks to my superior, my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished -sinecure. I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I -was something very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very -hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, -the lake was the Sea of Azof. -</p> - -<p> -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other side of the -Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this knowledge gathered in -me was the strangest thing in the world—the strangest, that is, except -the very much stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with a -piece of work—for I was something or other that could sit—on the -old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this position I began to take -in with certitude, and yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, -of a third person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and -pleasant shade, but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still -hour. There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, in the -conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming as to what I -should see straight before me and across the lake as a consequence of raising -my eyes. They were attached at this juncture to the stitching in which I was -engaged, and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them till -I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. -There was an alien object in view—a figure whose right of presence I -instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the -possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, -then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, -a postman, or a tradesman’s boy, from the village. That reminder had as -little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still even -without looking—of its having upon the character and attitude of our -visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things should be the other -things that they absolutely were not. -</p> - -<p> -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself as soon as the -small clock of my courage should have ticked out the right second; meanwhile, -with an effort that was already sharp enough, I transferred my eyes straight to -little Flora, who, at the moment, was about ten yards away. My heart had stood -still for an instant with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too -would see; and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what -some sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I -waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place—and there is something -more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate—I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had previously -dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, also within the minute, -she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. This was her attitude when -I at last looked at her—looked with the confirmed conviction that we were -still, together, under direct personal notice. She had picked up a small flat -piece of wood, which happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently -suggested to her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as -a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched her, she was -very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension -of what she was doing sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was -ready for more. Then I again shifted my eyes—I faced what I had to face. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII</h2> - -<p> -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no -intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself -cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: “They -<i>know</i>—it’s too monstrous: they know, they know!” -</p> - -<p> -“And what on earth—?” I felt her incredulity as she held me. -</p> - -<p> -“Why, all that <i>we</i> know—and heaven knows what else -besides!” Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out -perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. “Two hours ago, in -the garden”—I could scarce articulate—“Flora -<i>saw!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. “She -has told you?” she panted. -</p> - -<p> -“Not a word—that’s the horror. She kept it to herself! The -child of eight, <i>that</i> child!” Unutterable still, for me, was the -stupefaction of it. -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. “Then how do you -know?” -</p> - -<p> -“I was there—I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly -aware.” -</p> - -<p> -“Do you mean aware of <i>him?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“No—of <i>her</i>.” I was conscious as I spoke that I looked -prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my -companion’s face. “Another person—this time; but a figure of -quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and -dreadful—with such an air also, and such a face!—on the other side -of the lake. I was there with the child—quiet for the hour; and in the -midst of it she came.” -</p> - -<p> -“Came how—from where?” -</p> - -<p> -“From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there—but -not so near.” -</p> - -<p> -“And without coming nearer?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as -you!” -</p> - -<p> -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. “Was she someone -you’ve never seen?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes. But someone the child has. Someone <i>you</i> have.” Then, to -show how I had thought it all out: “My predecessor—the one who -died.” -</p> - -<p> -“Miss Jessel?” -</p> - -<p> -“Miss Jessel. You don’t believe me?” I pressed. -</p> - -<p> -She turned right and left in her distress. “How can you be sure?” -</p> - -<p> -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. -“Then ask Flora—<i>she’s</i> sure!” But I had no sooner -spoken than I caught myself up. “No, for God’s sake, -<i>don’t!</i> She’ll say she isn’t—she’ll -lie!” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. “Ah, how -<i>can</i> you?” -</p> - -<p> -“Because I’m clear. Flora doesn’t want me to know.” -</p> - -<p> -“It’s only then to spare you.” -</p> - -<p> -“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I -see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I -<i>don’t</i> see—what I <i>don’t</i> fear!” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. “You mean you’re afraid of -seeing her again?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no; that’s nothing—now!” Then I explained. -“It’s of <i>not</i> seeing her.” -</p> - -<p> -But my companion only looked wan. “I don’t understand you.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, it’s that the child may keep it up—and that the child -assuredly <i>will</i>—without my knowing it.” -</p> - -<p> -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force of the -sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to give way to. -“Dear, dear—we must keep our heads! And after all, if she -doesn’t mind it—!” She even tried a grim joke. “Perhaps -she likes it!” -</p> - -<p> -“Likes <i>such</i> things—a scrap of an infant!” -</p> - -<p> -“Isn’t it just a proof of her blessed innocence?” my friend -bravely inquired. -</p> - -<p> -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. “Oh, we must clutch at -<i>that</i>—we must cling to it! If it isn’t a proof of what you -say, it’s a proof of—God knows what! For the woman’s a horror -of horrors.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last -raising them, “Tell me how you know,” she said. -</p> - -<p> -“Then you admit it’s what she was?” I cried. -</p> - -<p> -“Tell me how you know,” my friend simply repeated. -</p> - -<p> -“Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked.” -</p> - -<p> -“At you, do you mean—so wickedly?” -</p> - -<p> -“Dear me, no—I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. -She only fixed the child.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. “Fixed her?” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, with such awful eyes!” -</p> - -<p> -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. “Do you -mean of dislike?” -</p> - -<p> -“God help us, no. Of something much worse.” -</p> - -<p> -“Worse than dislike?”—this left her indeed at a loss. -</p> - -<p> -“With a determination—indescribable. With a kind of fury of -intention.” -</p> - -<p> -I made her turn pale. “Intention?” -</p> - -<p> -“To get hold of her.” Mrs. Grose—her eyes just lingering on -mine—gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there -looking out I completed my statement. “<i>That’s</i> what Flora -knows.” -</p> - -<p> -After a little she turned round. “The person was in black, you -say?” -</p> - -<p> -“In mourning—rather poor, almost shabby. But—yes—with -extraordinary beauty.” I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by -stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed -this. “Oh, handsome—very, very,” I insisted; -“wonderfully handsome. But infamous.” -</p> - -<p> -She slowly came back to me. “Miss Jessel—<i>was</i> -infamous.” She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as -tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this -disclosure. “They were both infamous,” she finally said. -</p> - -<p> -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely a -degree of help in seeing it now so straight. “I appreciate,” I -said, “the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time -has certainly come to give me the whole thing.” She appeared to assent to -this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: “I must have it -now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them.” -</p> - -<p> -“There was everything.” -</p> - -<p> -“In spite of the difference—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, of their rank, their condition”—she brought it woefully -out. “<i>She</i> was a lady.” -</p> - -<p> -I turned it over; I again saw. “Yes—she was a lady.” -</p> - -<p> -“And he so dreadfully below,” said Mrs. Grose. -</p> - -<p> -I felt that I doubtless needn’t press too hard, in such company, on the -place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an acceptance -of my companion’s own measure of my predecessor’s abasement. There -was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my full -vision—on the evidence—of our employer’s late clever, -good-looking “own” man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. -“The fellow was a hound.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense of -shades. “I’ve never seen one like him. He did what he -wished.” -</p> - -<p> -“With <i>her?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“With them all.” -</p> - -<p> -It was as if now in my friend’s own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. -I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as -distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision: -“It must have been also what <i>she</i> wished!” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose’s face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the -same time: “Poor woman—she paid for it!” -</p> - -<p> -“Then you do know what she died of?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“No—I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I -didn’t; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yet you had, then, your idea—” -</p> - -<p> -“Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes—as to that. She -couldn’t have stayed. Fancy it here—for a governess! And afterward -I imagined—and I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful.” -</p> - -<p> -“Not so dreadful as what <i>I</i> do,” I replied; on which I must -have shown her—as I was indeed but too conscious—a front of -miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the -renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, -the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, -and my lamentation overflowed. “I don’t do it!” I sobbed in -despair; “I don’t save or shield them! It’s far worse than I -dreamed—they’re lost!” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII</h2> - -<p> -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter I had -put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution to sound; so -that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a common mind about -the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were to keep our heads if we -should keep nothing else—difficult indeed as that might be in the face of -what, in our prodigious experience, was least to be questioned. Late that -night, while the house slept, we had another talk in my room, when she went all -the way with me as to its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had -seen. To hold her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her -how, if I had “made it up,” I came to be able to give, of each of -the persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their -special marks—a portrait on the exhibition of which she had instantly -recognized and named them. She wished of course—small blame to -her!—to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her that my own -interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search for the way to -escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a probability that with -recurrence—for recurrence we took for granted—I should get used to -my danger, distinctly professing that my personal exposure had suddenly become -the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; and -yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought a little -ease. -</p> - -<p> -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my pupils, -associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of their charm which -I had already found to be a thing I could positively cultivate and which had -never failed me yet. I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into -Flora’s special society and there become aware—it was almost a -luxury!—that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon the -spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet speculation and then had accused -me to my face of having “cried.” I had supposed I had brushed away -the ugly signs: but I could literally—for the time, at all -events—rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that they had not entirely -disappeared. To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and -pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a -cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment -and, so far as might be, my agitation. I couldn’t abjure for merely -wanting to, but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose—as I did there, over and -over, in the small hours—that with their voices in the air, their -pressure on one’s heart, and their fragrant faces against one’s -cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It -was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to -re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made -a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to -reinvestigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come to -me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion I then surprised was a -matter, for either party, of habit. It was a pity that I should have had to -quaver out again the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much as -questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. -Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to -make me suppose she didn’t, and at the same time, without showing -anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I -needed once more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought -to divert my attention—the perceptible increase of movement, the greater -intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to -romp. -</p> - -<p> -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this review, I -should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort that still remained -to me. I should not for instance have been able to asseverate to my friend that -I was certain—which was so much to the good—that <i>I</i> at least -had not betrayed myself. I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by -desperation of mind—I scarce know what to call it—to invoke such -further aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to -the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a -small shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my brow -like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion—for the -sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed -to help—I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. -“I don’t believe anything so horrible,” I recollect saying; -“no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don’t. But if I did, -you know, there’s a thing I should require now, just without sparing you -the least bit more—oh, not a scrap, come!—to get out of you. What -was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the -letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn’t -pretend for him that he had not literally <i>ever</i> been ‘bad’? -He has <i>not</i> literally ‘ever,’ in these weeks that I myself -have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable -little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness. Therefore you might perfectly -have made the claim for him if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception -to take. What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal -observation of him did you refer?” -</p> - -<p> -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, at any -rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got my answer. What -my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. It was neither -more nor less than the circumstance that for a period of several months Quint -and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate -truth that she had ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the -incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a -frank overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, directly -approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that -<i>she</i> liked to see young gentlemen not forget their station. -</p> - -<p> -I pressed again, of course, at this. “You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?” -</p> - -<p> -“As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was -bad.” -</p> - -<p> -“And for another thing?” I waited. “He repeated your words to -Quint?” -</p> - -<p> -“No, not that. It’s just what he <i>wouldn’t!</i>” she -could still impress upon me. “I was sure, at any rate,” she added, -“that he didn’t. But he denied certain occasions.” -</p> - -<p> -“What occasions?” -</p> - -<p> -“When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his -tutor—and a very grand one—and Miss Jessel only for the little -lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with -him.” -</p> - -<p> -“He then prevaricated about it—he said he hadn’t?” Her -assent was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: “I see. He -lied.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh!” Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it -didn’t matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. “You -see, after all, Miss Jessel didn’t mind. She didn’t forbid -him.” -</p> - -<p> -I considered. “Did he put that to you as a justification?” -</p> - -<p> -At this she dropped again. “No, he never spoke of it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?” -</p> - -<p> -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. “Well, he didn’t -show anything. He denied,” she repeated; “he denied.” -</p> - -<p> -Lord, how I pressed her now! “So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t know—I don’t know!” the poor woman -groaned. -</p> - -<p> -“You do know, you dear thing,” I replied; “only you -haven’t my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity -and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you had, -without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you miserable. -But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in the boy that -suggested to you,” I continued, “that he covered and concealed -their relation.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, he couldn’t prevent—” -</p> - -<p> -“Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens,” I fell, with -vehemence, athinking, “what it shows that they must, to that extent, have -succeeded in making of him!” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, nothing that’s not nice <i>now!</i>” Mrs. Grose -lugubriously pleaded. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t wonder you looked queer,” I persisted, “when I -mentioned to you the letter from his school!” -</p> - -<p> -“I doubt if I looked as queer as you!” she retorted with homely -force. “And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an -angel now?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, indeed—and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? -Well,” I said in my torment, “you must put it to me again, but I -shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me again!” I -cried in a way that made my friend stare. “There are directions in which -I must not for the present let myself go.” Meanwhile I returned to her -first example—the one to which she had just previously referred—of -the boy’s happy capacity for an occasional slip. “If Quint—on -your remonstrance at the time you speak of—was a base menial, one of the -things Miles said to you, I find myself guessing, was that you were -another.” Again her admission was so adequate that I continued: -“And you forgave him that?” -</p> - -<p> -“Wouldn’t <i>you?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes!” And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: “At all events, while he was with the -man—” -</p> - -<p> -“Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!” -</p> - -<p> -It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it suited -exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of forbidding myself -to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of this view -that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be offered by the -mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. “His having lied and been -impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from -you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still,” I mused, -“They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that I must -watch.” -</p> - -<p> -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend’s face how much -more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as -presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at -the schoolroom door, she quitted me. “Surely you don’t accuse -<i>him</i>—” -</p> - -<p> -“Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody.” Then, before shutting -her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, “I must just -wait,” I wound up. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX</h2> - -<p> -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from my -consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant sight of my -pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies and even -to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken of the -surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could actively -cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself to this -source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was -the effort to struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, -however, a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange -things about them; and the circumstances that these things only made them more -interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I -trembled lest they should see that they <i>were</i> so immensely more -interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so -often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be—blameless and -foredoomed as they were—a reason the more for taking risks. There were -moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and -pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: -“What will they think of that? Doesn’t it betray too much?” -It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might -betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still -enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still -effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if -it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little -outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I -mightn’t see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own -demonstrations. -</p> - -<p> -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; which, -after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response in children -perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish -succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to -myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. They had -never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their poor protectress; I -mean—though they got their lessons better and better, which was naturally -what would please her most—in the way of diverting, entertaining, -surprising her; reading her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, -pouncing out at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and -above all astonishing her by the “pieces” they had secretly got by -heart and could interminably recite. I should never get to the -bottom—were I to let myself go even now—of the prodigious private -commentary, all under still more private correction, with which, in these days, -I overscored their full hours. They had shown me from the first a facility for -everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable -flights. They got their little tasks as if they loved them, and indulged, from -the mere exuberance of the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of -memory. They not only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as -Shakespeareans, astronomers, and navigators. This was so singularly the case -that it had presumably much to do with the fact as to which, at the present -day, I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural -composure on the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember is that I -was content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment must -have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. He -was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson’s daughter, to spoil; -and the strangest if not the brightest thread in the pensive embroidery I just -spoke of was the impression I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, -that he was under some influence operating in his small intellectual life as a -tremendous incitement. -</p> - -<p> -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone school, it -was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been “kicked -out” by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. Let me add that -in their company now—and I was careful almost never to be out of -it—I could follow no scent very far. We lived in a cloud of music and -love and success and private theatricals. The musical sense in each of the -children was of the quickest, but the elder in especial had a marvelous knack -of catching and repeating. The schoolroom piano broke into all gruesome -fancies; and when that failed there were confabulations in corners, with a -sequel of one of them going out in the highest spirits in order to “come -in” as something new. I had had brothers myself, and it was no revelation -to me that little girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What -surpassed everything was that there was a little boy in the world who could -have for the inferior age, sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. They -were extraordinarily at one, and to say that they never either quarreled or -complained is to make the note of praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. -Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across traces -of little understandings between them by which one of them should keep me -occupied while the other slipped away. There is a <i>naïf</i> side, I suppose, -in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practiced upon me, it was surely with the -minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, the -grossness broke out. -</p> - -<p> -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going on with the -record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge the most liberal -faith—for which I little care; but—and this is another -matter—I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way through it to -the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, the affair -seems to me to have been all pure suffering; but I have at least reached the -heart of it, and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance. One -evening—with nothing to lead up or to prepare it—I felt the cold -touch of the impression that had breathed on me the night of my arrival and -which, much lighter then, as I have mentioned, I should probably have made -little of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not -gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of old -books at Bly—last-century fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a -distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, -had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity of my -youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand was Fielding’s -<i>Amelia</i>; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further both a general -conviction that it was horribly late and a particular objection to looking at -my watch. I figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, in the fashion of -those days, the head of Flora’s little bed, shrouded, as I had assured -myself long before, the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, -though I was deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a -page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard at -the door of my room. There was a moment during which I listened, reminded of -the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being something -undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of the open casement -just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all the marks of a deliberation that -must have seemed magnificent had there been anyone to admire it, I laid down my -book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, -from the passage, on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed -and locked the door. -</p> - -<p> -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went straight -along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within sight of the tall -window that presided over the great turn of the staircase. At this point I -precipitately found myself aware of three things. They were practically -simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. My candle, under a bold -flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding -dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, -I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required -no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The -apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot -nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly -as it had fixed me from the tower and from the garden. He knew me as well as I -knew him; and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass -and another on the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each other in our -common intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, a living, detestable, -dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder of wonders; I reserve this -distinction for quite another circumstance: the circumstance that dread had -unmistakably quitted me and that there was nothing in me there that -didn’t meet and measure him. -</p> - -<p> -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, thank God, -no terror. And he knew I had not—I found myself at the end of an instant -magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigor of confidence, that if I -stood my ground a minute I should cease—for the time, at least—to -have him to reckon with; and during the minute, accordingly, the thing was as -human and hideous as a real interview: hideous just because it <i>was</i> -human, as human as to have met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, -some enemy, some adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long -gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its -only note of the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such -an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in -life, between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. The moment -was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me doubt if -even <i>I</i> were in life. I can’t express what followed it save by -saying that the silence itself—which was indeed in a manner an -attestation of my strength—became the element into which I saw the figure -disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have seen the low -wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an order, and pass, -with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch could have more disfigured, -straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which the next bend was -lost. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X</h2> - -<p> -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect presently of -understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: then I returned to my -room. The foremost thing I saw there by the light of the candle I had left -burning was that Flora’s little bed was empty; and on this I caught my -breath with all the terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to -resist. I dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which (for -the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) the white curtains -had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, to my unutterable relief, -produced an answering sound: I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and -the child, ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it. She stood -there in so much of her candor and so little of her nightgown, with her pink -bare feet and the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I -had never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which -had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she addressed me with -a reproach. “You naughty: where <i>have</i> you -been?”—instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with the -loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay there, that -I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had become of me. I had -dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair—feeling -then, and then only, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over to me, -thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the -candle full in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. I -remember closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the -excess of something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You -were looking for me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I -might be walking in the grounds?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you know, I thought someone was”—she never blanched as -she smiled out that at me. -</p> - -<p> -Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, <i>no!</i>” she returned, almost with the full privilege of -childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in her little -drawl of the negative. -</p> - -<p> -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she lied; and -if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of the three or four -possible ways in which I might take this up. One of these, for a moment, -tempted me with such singular intensity that, to withstand it, I must have -gripped my little girl with a spasm that, wonderfully, she submitted to without -a cry or a sign of fright. Why not break out at her on the spot and have it all -over?—give it to her straight in her lovely little lighted face? -“You see, you see, you <i>know</i> that you do and that you already quite -suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly confess it to me, so that we -may at least live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our -fate, where we are and what it means?” This solicitation dropped, alas, -as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed to it I might have spared -myself—well, you’ll see what. Instead of succumbing I sprang again -to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle way. “Why did -you pull the curtain over the place to make me think you were still -there?” -</p> - -<p> -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -“Because I don’t like to frighten you!” -</p> - -<p> -“But if I had, by your idea, gone out—?” -</p> - -<p> -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame of the -candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as impersonal, as -Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. “Oh, but you know,” she quite -adequately answered, “that you might come back, you dear, and that you -<i>have!</i>” And after a little, when she had got into bed, I had, for a -long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to prove that I -recognized the pertinence of my return. -</p> - -<p> -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. I -repeatedly sat up till I didn’t know when; I selected moments when my -roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns in the -passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. But I never -met him there again; and I may as well say at once that I on no other occasion -saw him in the house. I just missed, on the staircase, on the other hand, a -different adventure. Looking down it from the top I once recognized the -presence of a woman seated on one of the lower steps with her back presented to -me, her body half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. I -had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without looking round -at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face she had to show; and I -wondered whether, if instead of being above I had been below, I should have -had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately shown Quint. Well, there -continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. On the eleventh night after my -latest encounter with that gentleman—they were all numbered now—I -had an alarm that perilously skirted it and that indeed, from the particular -quality of its unexpectedness, proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely -the first night during this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I -might again without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately -and, as I afterward knew, till about one o’clock; but when I woke it was -to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left -a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that Flora -had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in the darkness, -to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the window enlightened me -further, and the striking of a match completed the picture. -</p> - -<p> -The child had again got up—this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind the -blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw—as she had -not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time—was proved to me by the -fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination nor by the haste I -made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she -evidently rested on the sill—the casement opened forward—and gave -herself up. There was a great still moon to help her, and this fact had counted -in my quick decision. She was face to face with the apparition we had met at -the lake, and could now communicate with it as she had not then been able to -do. What I, on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, -from the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door -without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it, and listened, from the -other side, for some sound from her. While I stood in the passage I had my eyes -on her brother’s door, which was but ten steps off and which, -indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately -spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go straight in and march to -<i>his</i> window?—what if, by risking to his boyish bewilderment a -revelation of my motive, I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long -halter of my boldness? -</p> - -<p> -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold and pause -again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might portentously -be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It -was a deep, soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed. He was -quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a -figure in the grounds—a figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with -whom Flora was engaged; but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. -I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few seconds; then I had -made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question of -choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the -lower one—though high above the gardens—in the solid corner of the -house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, square chamber, -arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of which made it so -inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary -order, been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I -had only, after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass -across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving this -transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying my face to the -pane, was able, the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I -commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. The moon made the -night extraordinarily penetrable and showed me on the lawn a person, diminished -by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to -where I had appeared—looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at -something that was apparently above me. There was clearly another person above -me—there was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not -in the least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The -presence on the lawn—I felt sick as I made it out—was poor little -Miles himself. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI</h2> - -<p> -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigor with which -I kept my pupils in sight making it often difficult to meet her privately, and -the more as we each felt the importance of not provoking—on the part of -the servants quite as much as on that of the children—any suspicion of a -secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries. I drew a great security in -this particular from her mere smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh -face to pass on to others my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, -absolutely: if she hadn’t I don’t know what would have become of -me, for I couldn’t have borne the business alone. But she was a -magnificent monument to the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could -see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, their -happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication with the sources of -my trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would -doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough to match them; as -matters stood, however, I could feel her, when she surveyed them, with her -large white arms folded and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank the -Lord’s mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would still serve. -Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, and I had -already begun to perceive how, with the development of the conviction -that—as time went on without a public accident—our young things -could, after all, look out for themselves, she addressed her greatest -solicitude to the sad case presented by their instructress. That, for myself, -was a sound simplification: I could engage that, to the world, my face should -tell no tales, but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added -strain to find myself anxious about hers. -</p> - -<p> -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the terrace, -where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now agreeable; and -we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, but within call if we -wished, the children strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods. -They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, -reading aloud from a storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her -quite in touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught -the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned to take -from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her a receptacle of -lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my superiority—my -accomplishments and my function—in her patience under my pain. She -offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch’s -broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held out a large clean -saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that, in my -recital of the events of the night, I reached the point of what Miles had said -to me when, after seeing him, at such a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot -where he happened now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, at -the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming the house, rather that -method than a signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of -my small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense -of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him -into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge. As soon as I -appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he had come to me as straight as -possible; on which I had taken his hand without a word and led him, through the -dark spaces, up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, -along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. -</p> - -<p> -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered—oh, -<i>how</i> I had wondered!—if he were groping about in his little mind -for something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill -of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn’t play any -longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat in me -indeed, with the passionate throb of this question an equal dumb appeal as to -how the deuce <i>I</i> should. I was confronted at last, as never yet, with all -the risk attached even now to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact -that as we pushed into his little chamber, where the bed had not been slept in -at all and the window, uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that -there was no need of striking a match—I remember how I suddenly dropped, -sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must know how -he really, as they say, “had” me. He could do what he liked, with -all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue to defer to the -old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister -to superstitions and fears. He “had” me indeed, and in a cleft -stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go -unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to -introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was -useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to -attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly -shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, -never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as -those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well under -fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to him. -</p> - -<p> -“You must tell me now—and all the truth. What did you go out for? -What were you doing there?” -</p> - -<p> -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, and the -uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. “If I tell you -why, will you understand?” My heart, at this, leaped into my mouth. -<i>Would</i> he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, and I was -aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness -itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood there more than ever a -little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed that gave me a respite. Would -it be so great if he were really going to tell me? “Well,” he said -at last, “just exactly in order that you should do this.” -</p> - -<p> -“Do what?” -</p> - -<p> -“Think me—for a change—<i>bad!</i>” I shall never -forget the sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on -top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of -everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute -in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the -account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it was only -with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I presently glanced -about the room, I could say— -</p> - -<p> -“Then you didn’t undress at all?” -</p> - -<p> -He fairly glittered in the gloom. “Not at all. I sat up and read.” -</p> - -<p> -“And when did you go down?” -</p> - -<p> -“At midnight. When I’m bad I <i>am</i> bad!” -</p> - -<p> -“I see, I see—it’s charming. But how could you be sure I -would know it?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I arranged that with Flora.” His answers rang out with a -readiness! “She was to get up and look out.” -</p> - -<p> -“Which is what she did do.” It was I who fell into the trap! -</p> - -<p> -“So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked—you saw.” -</p> - -<p> -“While you,” I concurred, “caught your death in the night -air!” -</p> - -<p> -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly to -assent. “How otherwise should I have been bad enough?” he asked. -Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my -recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had been -able to draw upon. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII</h2> - -<p> -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I repeat, -not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I reinforced it with -the mention of still another remark that he had made before we separated. -“It all lies in half a dozen words,” I said to her, “words -that really settle the matter. ‘Think, you know, what I <i>might</i> -do!’ He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to the -ground what he ‘might’ do. That’s what he gave them a taste -of at school.” -</p> - -<p> -“Lord, you do change!” cried my friend. -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t change—I simply make it out. The four, depend upon -it, perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I’ve watched -and waited the more I’ve felt that if there were nothing else to make it -sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. <i>Never</i>, by a -slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old -friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, we may sit -here and look at them, and they may show off to us there to their fill; but -even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale they’re steeped in -their vision of the dead restored. He’s not reading to her,” I -declared; “they’re talking of <i>them</i>—they’re -talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it’s a wonder -I’m not. What I’ve seen would have made <i>you</i> so; but it has -only made me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things.” -</p> - -<p> -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were victims -of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague -something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in -the breath of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. “Of what -other things have you got hold?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, at -bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their more than -earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It’s a game,” -I went on; “it’s a policy and a fraud!” -</p> - -<p> -“On the part of little darlings—?” -</p> - -<p> -“As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!” The very act -of bringing it out really helped me to trace it—follow it all up and -piece it all together. “They haven’t been good—they’ve -only been absent. It has been easy to live with them, because they’re -simply leading a life of their own. They’re not mine—they’re -not ours. They’re his and they’re hers!” -</p> - -<p> -“Quint’s and that woman’s?” -</p> - -<p> -“Quint’s and that woman’s. They want to get to them.” -</p> - -<p> -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! “But for -what?” -</p> - -<p> -“For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put -into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of demons, -is what brings the others back.” -</p> - -<p> -“Laws!” said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was -homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the -bad time—for there had been a worse even than this!—must have -occurred. There could have been no such justification for me as the plain -assent of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our -brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of memory that she brought -out after a moment: “They <i>were</i> rascals! But what can they now -do?” she pursued. -</p> - -<p> -“Do?” I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at -their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. -“Don’t they do enough?” I demanded in a lower tone, while the -children, having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their -exhibition. We were held by it a minute; then I answered: “They can -destroy them!” At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she -launched was a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. -“They don’t know, as yet, quite how—but they’re trying -hard. They’re seen only across, as it were, and beyond—in strange -places and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside -of windows, the further edge of pools; but there’s a deep design, on -either side, to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; and the success -of the tempters is only a question of time. They’ve only to keep to their -suggestions of danger.” -</p> - -<p> -“For the children to come?” -</p> - -<p> -“And perish in the attempt!” Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: “Unless, of course, we can prevent!” -</p> - -<p> -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned things over. -“Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them away.” -</p> - -<p> -“And who’s to make him?” -</p> - -<p> -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish face. -“You, miss.” -</p> - -<p> -“By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew and -niece mad?” -</p> - -<p> -“But if they <i>are</i>, miss?” -</p> - -<p> -“And if I am myself, you mean? That’s charming news to be sent him -by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. “Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason—” -</p> - -<p> -“Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his indifference -must have been awful. As I’m not a fiend, at any rate, I shouldn’t -take him in.” -</p> - -<p> -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and grasped -my arm. “Make him at any rate come to you.” -</p> - -<p> -I stared. “To <i>me?</i>” I had a sudden fear of what she might do. -“‘Him’?” -</p> - -<p> -“He ought to <i>be</i> here—he ought to help.” -</p> - -<p> -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than ever yet. -“You see me asking him for a visit?” No, with her eyes on my face -she evidently couldn’t. Instead of it even—as a woman reads -another—she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, his -contempt for the breakdown of my resignation at being left alone and for the -fine machinery I had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted -charms. She didn’t know—no one knew—how proud I had been to -serve him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took the measure, I -think, of the warning I now gave her. “If you should so lose your head as -to appeal to him for me—” -</p> - -<p> -She was really frightened. “Yes, miss?” -</p> - -<p> -“I would leave, on the spot, both him and you.” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap13"></a>XIII</h2> - -<p> -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as -ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a month, and -with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and -sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was -not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere infernal imagination: it -was absolutely traceable that they were aware of my predicament and that this -strange relation made, in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. -I don’t mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything -vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, -that the element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than -any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully -effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was as if, at moments, -we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects before which we must stop -short, turning suddenly out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing -with a little bang that made us look at each other—for, like all bangs, -it was something louder than we had intended—the doors we had -indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might -have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation -skirted forbidden ground. Forbidden ground was the question of the return of -the dead in general and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of -the friends little children had lost. There were days when I could have sworn -that one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, said to the other: -“She thinks she’ll do it this time—but she -<i>won’t!</i>” To “do it” would have been to indulge -for instance—and for once in a way—in some direct reference to the -lady who had prepared them for my discipline. They had a delightful endless -appetite for passages in my own history, to which I had again and again treated -them; they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had -had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of those -of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, as well as many -particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of the furniture and -arrangement of our house, and of the conversation of the old women of our -village. There were things enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, -if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go round. They pulled with -an art of their own the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else -perhaps, when I thought of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion -of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over <i>my</i> life, -<i>my</i> past, and <i>my</i> friends alone that we could take anything like -our ease—a state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least -pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited—with no -visible connection—to repeat afresh Goody Gosling’s celebrated -<i>mot</i> or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of -the vicarage pony. -</p> - -<p> -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different ones -that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, as I have called -it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed for me without another -encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have done something toward soothing -my nerves. Since the light brush, that second night on the upper landing, of -the presence of a woman at the foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether -in or out of the house, that one had better not have seen. There was many a -corner round which I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in -a merely sinister way, would have favored the appearance of Miss Jessel. The -summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had -blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, -its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the -performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly states -of the air, conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable impressions of -the <i>kind</i> of ministering moment, that brought back to me, long enough to -catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, that June evening out of doors, I -had had my first sight of Quint, and in which, too, at those other instants, I -had, after seeing him through the window, looked for him in vain in the circle -of shrubbery. I recognized the signs, the portents—I recognized the -moment, the spot. But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued -unmolested; if unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, -in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened. I had said in my -talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora’s by the -lake—and had perplexed her by so saying—that it would from that -moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it. I had then -expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that, whether the children -really saw or not—since, that is, it was not yet definitely -proved—I greatly preferred, as a safeguard, the fullness of my own -exposure. I was ready to know the very worst that was to be known. What I had -then had an ugly glimpse of was that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs -were most opened. Well, my eyes <i>were</i> sealed, it appeared, at -present—a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. -There was, alas, a difficulty about that: I would have thanked him with all my -soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of -my pupils. -</p> - -<p> -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were times of -our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, literally, in my -presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they had visitors who were -known and were welcome. Then it was that, had I not been deterred by the very -chance that such an injury might prove greater than the injury to be averted, -my exultation would have broken out. “They’re here, they’re -here, you little wretches,” I would have cried, “and you -can’t deny it now!” The little wretches denied it with all the -added volume of their sociability and their tenderness, in just the crystal -depths of which—like the flash of a fish in a stream—the mockery of -their advantage peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper -than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel -under the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest I watched and who had -immediately brought in with him—had straightway, there, turned it on -me—the lovely upward look with which, from the battlements above me, the -hideous apparition of Quint had played. If it was a question of a scare, my -discovery on this occasion had scared me more than any other, and it was in the -condition of nerves produced by it that I made my actual inductions. They -harassed me so that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself up audibly to -rehearse—it was at once a fantastic relief and a renewed -despair—the manner in which I might come to the point. I approached it -from one side and the other while, in my room, I flung myself about, but I -always broke down in the monstrous utterance of names. As they died away on my -lips, I said to myself that I should indeed help them to represent something -infamous, if, by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little case of -instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said -to myself: “<i>They</i> have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted -as you are, the baseness to speak!” I felt myself crimson and I covered -my face with my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, -going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes -occurred—I can call them nothing else—the strange, dizzy lift or -swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had nothing -to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we might be engaged in -making and that I could hear through any deepened exhilaration or quickened -recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then it was that the others, the -outsiders, were there. Though they were not angels, they “passed,” -as the French say, causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of -their addressing to their younger victims some yet more infernal message or -more vivid image than they had thought good enough for myself. -</p> - -<p> -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, whatever I -had seen, Miles and Flora saw <i>more</i>—things terrible and unguessable -and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past. Such things -naturally left on the surface, for the time, a chill which we vociferously -denied that we felt; and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such -splendid training that we went, each time, almost automatically, to mark the -close of the incident, through the very same movements. It was striking of the -children, at all events, to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild -irrelevance and never to fail—one or the other—of the precious -question that had helped us through many a peril. “When do you think he -<i>will</i> come? Don’t you think we <i>ought</i> to -write?”—there was nothing like that inquiry, we found by -experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. “He” of course was -their uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion of theory that he -might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have -given less encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not -had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other of some -of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them—that may have been -selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in -which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more -festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I -carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my -charges understand that their own letters were but charming literary exercises. -They were too beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to -this hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of my -being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among us. It -was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward than anything else -that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, as I look back, no note in -all this more extraordinary than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and -of their triumph, I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in truth -have been, I now reflect, that I didn’t in these days hate them! Would -exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have -betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it -was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a -thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it came with -a rush. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap14"></a>XIV</h2> - -<p> -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side and -his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose’s, well in sight. It was a -crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; the night had brought a -touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp, made the church bells -almost gay. It was an odd accident of thought that I should have happened at -such a moment to be particularly and very gratefully struck with the obedience -of my little charges. Why did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual -society? Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but -pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled -before me, I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. I -was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. But all this -belonged—I mean their magnificent little surrender—just to the -special array of the facts that were most abysmal. Turned out for Sunday by his -uncle’s tailor, who had had a free hand and a notion of pretty waistcoats -and of his grand little air, Miles’s whole title to independence, the -rights of his sex and situation, were so stamped upon him that if he had -suddenly struck for freedom I should have had nothing to say. I was by the -strangest of chances wondering how I should meet him when the revolution -unmistakably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see how, with the -word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, and the -catastrophe was precipitated. “Look here, my dear, you know,” he -charmingly said, “when in the world, please, am I going back to -school?” -</p> - -<p> -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly as uttered in -the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all interlocutors, but above all at -his eternal governess, he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses. -There was something in them that always made one “catch,” and I -caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as short as if one of -the trees of the park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on -the spot, between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, -to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming -than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my at first finding -nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. I was so slow to find -anything that he had plenty of time, after a minute, to continue with his -suggestive but inconclusive smile: “You know, my dear, that for a fellow -to be with a lady <i>always</i>—!” His “my dear” was -constantly on his lips for me, and nothing could have expressed more the exact -shade of the sentiment with which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond -familiarity. It was so respectfully easy. -</p> - -<p> -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I remember -that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in the beautiful face -with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. “And always with -the same lady?” I returned. -</p> - -<p> -He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out between us. -“Ah, of course, she’s a jolly, ‘perfect’ lady; but, -after all, I’m a fellow, don’t you see? that’s—well, -getting on.” -</p> - -<p> -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. “Yes, you’re -getting on.” Oh, but I felt helpless! -</p> - -<p> -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed to know -that and to play with it. “And you can’t say I’ve not been -awfully good, can you?” -</p> - -<p> -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it would -have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. “No, I can’t say -that, Miles.” -</p> - -<p> -“Except just that one night, you know—!” -</p> - -<p> -“That one night?” I couldn’t look as straight as he. -</p> - -<p> -“Why, when I went down—went out of the house.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for.” -</p> - -<p> -“You forget?”—he spoke with the sweet extravagance of -childish reproach. “Why, it was to show you I could!” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes, you could.” -</p> - -<p> -“And I can again.” -</p> - -<p> -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits about me. -“Certainly. But you won’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“No, not <i>that</i> again. It was nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“It was nothing,” I said. “But we must go on.” -</p> - -<p> -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. “Then when -<i>am</i> I going back?” -</p> - -<p> -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. “Were you very happy -at school?” -</p> - -<p> -He just considered. “Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, then,” I quavered, “if you’re just as happy -here—!” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, but that isn’t everything! Of course <i>you</i> know a -lot—” -</p> - -<p> -“But you hint that you know almost as much?” I risked as he paused. -</p> - -<p> -“Not half I want to!” Miles honestly professed. “But it -isn’t so much that.” -</p> - -<p> -“What is it, then?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well—I want to see more life.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see; I see.” We had arrived within sight of the church and of -various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their way to it -and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened our step; I wanted to -get there before the question between us opened up much further; I reflected -hungrily that, for more than an hour, he would have to be silent; and I thought -with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew and of the almost spiritual help -of the hassock on which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be running -a race with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that -he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw -out— -</p> - -<p> -“I want my own sort!” -</p> - -<p> -It literally made me bound forward. “There are not many of your own sort, -Miles!” I laughed. “Unless perhaps dear little Flora!” -</p> - -<p> -“You really compare me to a baby girl?” -</p> - -<p> -This found me singularly weak. “Don’t you, then, <i>love</i> our -sweet Flora?” -</p> - -<p> -“If I didn’t—and you, too; if I didn’t—!” -he repeated as if retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished -that, after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me by -the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed -into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we were, for the -minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path from the -gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, if you didn’t—?” -</p> - -<p> -He looked, while I waited, at the graves. “Well, you know what!” -But he didn’t move, and he presently produced something that made me drop -straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. “Does my uncle -think what <i>you</i> think?” -</p> - -<p> -I markedly rested. “How do you know what I think?” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. -But I mean does <i>he</i> know?” -</p> - -<p> -“Know what, Miles?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, the way I’m going on.” -</p> - -<p> -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, no answer that -would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer. Yet it appeared to -me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. -“I don’t think your uncle much cares.” -</p> - -<p> -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can -be made to?” -</p> - -<p> -“In what way?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, by his coming down.” -</p> - -<p> -“But who’ll get him to come down?” -</p> - -<p> -“<i>I</i> will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and -emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched -off alone into church. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap15"></a>XV</h2> - -<p> -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him. It -was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this had somehow no -power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read into what my little -friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; by the time I had grasped -the whole of which I had also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was -ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of -delay. What I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of -me and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this awkward collapse. He -had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he -should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, -more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable question of -the grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was really but the question -of the horrors gathered behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me -of these things was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have -desired to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it -that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep -discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to me: -“Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of -my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you a life that’s so -unnatural for a boy.” What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was -concerned with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan. -</p> - -<p> -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked round -the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had already, with him, -hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was too -extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: he would be so much more -sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make me sit there for an hour in -close, silent contact with his commentary on our talk. For the first minute -since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high -east window and listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse -that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least -encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting away -altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I could give the -whole thing up—turn my back and retreat. It was only a question of -hurrying again, for a few preparations, to the house which the attendance at -church of so many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No -one, in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. What was -it to get away if I got away only till dinner? That would be in a couple of -hours, at the end of which—I had the acute prevision—my little -pupils would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in their train. -</p> - -<p> -“What <i>did</i> you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to -worry us so—and take our thoughts off, too, don’t you -know?—did you desert us at the very door?” I couldn’t meet -such questions nor, as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it -was all so exactly what I should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp -to me, I at last let myself go. -</p> - -<p> -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came straight out -of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps through the park. It -seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up my mind I would -fly. The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, in which -I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off -quickly, this way, I should get off without a scene, without a word. My -quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the question of a -conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with -difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the -staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a -revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the -darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of -the most horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went the -rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there -were objects belonging to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door -to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I -reeled straight back upon my resistance. -</p> - -<p> -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, without my -previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush for some housemaid -who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who, availing herself -of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, -and paper, had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her -sweetheart. There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested on the -table, her hands with evident weariness supported her head; but at the moment I -took this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance, her -attitude strangely persisted. Then it was—with the very act of its -announcing itself—that her identity flared up in a change of posture. She -rose, not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of -indifference and detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my -vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; but even as I -fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image passed away. Dark as -midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she -had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table -was as good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had -the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was -as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her—“You -terrible, miserable woman!”—I heard myself break into a sound that, -by the open door, rang through the long passage and the empty house. She looked -at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There -was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I -must stay. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap16"></a>XVI</h2> - -<p> -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked by a -demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into account that they -were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they -made no allusion to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, on -perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s odd face. I -did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to -silence; a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first -private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes -with her in the housekeeper’s room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell -of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her -sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her -best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining room, a -large clean image of the “put away”—of drawers closed and -locked and rest without a remedy. -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them—so long -as they were there—of course I promised. But what had happened to -you?” -</p> - -<p> -“I only went with you for the walk,” I said. “I had then to -come back to meet a friend.” -</p> - -<p> -She showed her surprise. “A friend—<i>you?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes, I have a couple!” I laughed. “But did the children -give you a reason?” -</p> - -<p> -“For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it -better. Do you like it better?” -</p> - -<p> -My face had made her rueful. “No, I like it worse!” But after an -instant I added: “Did they say why I should like it better?” -</p> - -<p> -“No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what she -likes!’” -</p> - -<p> -“I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?” -</p> - -<p> -“Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of -course!’—and I said the same.” -</p> - -<p> -I thought a moment. “You were too sweet, too—I can hear you all. -But nonetheless, between Miles and me, it’s now all out.” -</p> - -<p> -“All out?” My companion stared. “But what, miss?” -</p> - -<p> -“Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came -home, my dear,” I went on, “for a talk with Miss Jessel.” -</p> - -<p> -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in hand -in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she bravely blinked -under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. “A -talk! Do you mean she spoke?” -</p> - -<p> -“It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom.” -</p> - -<p> -“And what did she say?” I can hear the good woman still, and the -candor of her stupefaction. -</p> - -<p> -“That she suffers the torments—!” -</p> - -<p> -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. -“Do you mean,” she faltered, “—of the lost?” -</p> - -<p> -“Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share -them—” I faltered myself with the horror of it. -</p> - -<p> -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share -them—?” -</p> - -<p> -“She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly -have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to -show I was. “As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t -matter.” -</p> - -<p> -“Because you’ve made up your mind? But to what?” -</p> - -<p> -“To everything.” -</p> - -<p> -“And what do you call ‘everything’?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, sending for their uncle.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, miss, in pity do,” my friend broke out. “ah, but I will, -I <i>will!</i> I see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ -as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks I’m afraid to—and -has ideas of what he gains by that—he shall see he’s mistaken. Yes, -yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on the spot (and before the boy -himself, if necessary) that if I’m to be reproached with having done -nothing again about more school—” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, miss—” my companion pressed me. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, there’s that awful reason.” -</p> - -<p> -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was -excusable for being vague. “But—a—which?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, the letter from his old place.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’ll show it to the master?” -</p> - -<p> -“I ought to have done so on the instant.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Grose with decision. -</p> - -<p> -“I’ll put it before him,” I went on inexorably, “that I -can’t undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been -expelled—” -</p> - -<p> -“For we’ve never in the least known what!” Mrs. Grose -declared. -</p> - -<p> -“For wickedness. For what else—when he’s so clever and -beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he -ill-natured? He’s exquisite—so it can be only <i>that</i>; and that -would open up the whole thing. After all,” I said, “it’s -their uncle’s fault. If he left here such people—!” -</p> - -<p> -“He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s -mine.” She had turned quite pale. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, you shan’t suffer,” I answered. -</p> - -<p> -“The children shan’t!” she emphatically returned. -</p> - -<p> -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. “Then what am I to tell -him?” -</p> - -<p> -“You needn’t tell him anything. <i>I’ll</i> tell him.” -</p> - -<p> -I measured this. “Do you mean you’ll write—?” -Remembering she couldn’t, I caught myself up. “How do you -communicate?” -</p> - -<p> -“I tell the bailiff. <i>He</i> writes.” -</p> - -<p> -“And should you like him to write our story?” -</p> - -<p> -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made -her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her -eyes. “Ah, miss, <i>you</i> write!” -</p> - -<p> -“Well—tonight,” I at last answered; and on this we separated. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap17"></a>XVII</h2> - -<p> -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed -back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at -peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and -listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went -out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at -Miles’s door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to -listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught -one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. “I say, -you there—come in.” It was a gaiety in the gloom! -</p> - -<p> -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very much -at his ease. “Well, what are <i>you</i> up to?” he asked with a -grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been -present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was -“out.” -</p> - -<p> -I stood over him with my candle. “How did you know I was there?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? -You’re like a troop of cavalry!” he beautifully laughed. -</p> - -<p> -“Then you weren’t asleep?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not much! I lie awake and think.” -</p> - -<p> -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held out his -friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. “What is -it,” I asked, “that you think of?” -</p> - -<p> -“What in the world, my dear, but <i>you?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on that! -I had so far rather you slept.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.” -</p> - -<p> -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. “Of what queer business, -Miles?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!” -</p> - -<p> -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper there was -light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. “What do you -mean by all the rest?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, you know, you know!” -</p> - -<p> -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and our -eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting his charge -and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment so -fabulous as our actual relation. “Certainly you shall go back to -school,” I said, “if it be that that troubles you. But not to the -old place—we must find another, a better. How could I know it did trouble -you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all?” -His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, made him for the -minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children’s hospital; and -I would have given, as the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth -really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure -him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might help! “Do you know -you’ve never said a word to me about your school—I mean the old -one; never mentioned it in any way?” -</p> - -<p> -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly gained -time; he waited, he called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It -wasn’t for <i>me</i> to help him—it was for the thing I had met! -</p> - -<p> -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from him, -set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; so unutterably -touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed -to play, under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. -“No, never—from the hour you came back. You’ve never -mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the least little -thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, little Miles—no, -never—have you given me an inkling of anything that <i>may</i> have -happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I’m in the dark. Until -you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the first hour I saw you, -scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life. You seemed so -perfectly to accept the present.” It was extraordinary how my absolute -conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an -influence that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint -breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older -person—imposed him almost as an intellectual equal. “I thought you -wanted to go on as you are.” -</p> - -<p> -It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, like a -convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. “I -don’t—I don’t. I want to get away.” -</p> - -<p> -“You’re tired of Bly?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, no, I like Bly.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, then—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, <i>you</i> know what a boy wants!” -</p> - -<p> -I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. -“You want to go to your uncle?” -</p> - -<p> -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. -“Ah, you can’t get off with that!” -</p> - -<p> -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. “My -dear, I don’t want to get off!” -</p> - -<p> -“You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you -can’t!”—he lay beautifully staring. “My uncle must come -down, and you must completely settle things.” -</p> - -<p> -“If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it -will be to take you quite away.” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what -I’m working for? You’ll have to tell him—about the way -you’ve let it all drop: you’ll have to tell him a tremendous -lot!” -</p> - -<p> -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the instant, -to meet him rather more. “And how much will <i>you</i>, Miles, have to -tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!” -</p> - -<p> -He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?” -</p> - -<p> -“The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do -with you. He can’t send you back—” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a -new field.” -</p> - -<p> -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; and -doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, the -unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three -months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me now -that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go. I threw -myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear -little Miles, dear little Miles—!” -</p> - -<p> -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?” -</p> - -<p> -“Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?” -</p> - -<p> -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his hand to -look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you—I -told you this morning.” -</p> - -<p> -Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?” -</p> - -<p> -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; then -ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied. -</p> - -<p> -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me release -him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows I never wished -to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn my back on him was to -abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. “I’ve just begun a -letter to your uncle,” I said. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, then, finish it!” -</p> - -<p> -I waited a minute. “What happened before?” -</p> - -<p> -He gazed up at me again. “Before what?” -</p> - -<p> -“Before you came back. And before you went away.” -</p> - -<p> -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What -happened?” -</p> - -<p> -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I caught for -the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting consciousness—it -made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once more the chance of -possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you <i>knew</i> -how I want to help you! It’s only that, it’s nothing but that, and -I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—I’d -rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles”—oh, I -brought it out now even if I <i>should</i> go too far—“I just want -you to help me to save you!” But I knew in a moment after this that I had -gone too far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the -form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of -the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy -gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might -have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of -jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of -darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw that the -drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. “Why, the -candle’s out!” I then cried. -</p> - -<p> -“It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap18"></a>XVIII</h2> - -<p> -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly: -“Have you written, miss?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for -the hour—that my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. -There would be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the -village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, -more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to -gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats of -arithmetic, soaring quite out of <i>my</i> feeble range, and perpetrated, in -higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. It was conspicuous -of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show how easily he -could let me down. This child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of -beauty and misery that no words can translate; there was a distinction all his -own in every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the -uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more -extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the wonder -of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to check the -irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and -renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman could have done that -deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of -all evil <i>had</i> been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for -the proof that it could ever have flowered into an act. -</p> - -<p> -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after our -early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I -shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to -Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was literally a -charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying -outright: “The true knights we love to read about never push an advantage -too far. I know what you mean now: you mean that—to be let alone yourself -and not followed up—you’ll cease to worry and spy upon me, -won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. Well, I -‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go! There’ll be -plenty of time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want -to show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether -I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the -schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played; and -if there are those who think he had better have been kicking a football I can -only say that I wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his -influence I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense of -having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom -fire, and yet I hadn’t really, in the least, slept: I had only done -something much worse—I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? -When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and -then could only say: “Why, my dear, how do <i>I</i> -know?”—breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately -after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, -extravagant song. -</p> - -<p> -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before going -downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere about she would -surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly -proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had found her the evening before, -but she met my quick challenge with blank, scared ignorance. She had only -supposed that, after the repast, I had carried off both the children; as to -which she was quite in her right, for it was the very first time I had allowed -the little girl out of my sight without some special provision. Of course now -indeed she might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for -her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but when, -ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, it -was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries we had -altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, apart from observation, we -exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with what high interest my friend -returned me all those I had from the first given her. -</p> - -<p> -“She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of -the rooms you haven’t searched.” -</p> - -<p> -“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She -has gone out.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?” -</p> - -<p> -I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without -one?” -</p> - -<p> -“She’s with <i>her?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“She’s with <i>her!</i>” I declared. “We must find -them.” -</p> - -<p> -My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment, confronted -with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. She communed, on -the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. “And where’s Master -Miles?” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, <i>he’s</i> with Quint. They’re in the -schoolroom.” -</p> - -<p> -“Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I -suppose my tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance. -</p> - -<p> -“The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve -successfully worked their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me -quiet while she went off.” -</p> - -<p> -“‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. -</p> - -<p> -“Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has -provided for himself as well. But come!” -</p> - -<p> -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave -him—?” -</p> - -<p> -“So long with Quint? Yes—I don’t mind that now.” -</p> - -<p> -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, and in -this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping an instant at -my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” she eagerly -brought out. -</p> - -<p> -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, and -then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. “Luke -will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door and opened -it; I was already on the steps. -</p> - -<p> -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early morning had -dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to the drive while -she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?” -</p> - -<p> -“What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to -dress,” I cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try -meanwhile, yourself, upstairs.” -</p> - -<p> -“With <i>them?</i>” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap19"></a>XIX</h2> - -<p> -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay rightly -called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet of water less -remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My acquaintance with sheets -of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at all events on the few occasions of -my consenting, under the protection of my pupils, to affront its surface in the -old flat-bottomed boat moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its -extent and its agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from -the house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, she -was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small adventure, and, -since the day of the very great one that I had shared with her by the pond, I -had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined. This -was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose’s steps so marked a -direction—a direction that made her, when she perceived it, oppose a -resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified. “You’re going -to the water, Miss?—you think she’s <i>in</i>—?” -</p> - -<p> -“She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But what -I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from which, the other day, -we saw together what I told you.” -</p> - -<p> -“When she pretended not to see—?” -</p> - -<p> -“With that astounding self-possession? I’ve always been sure she -wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really -<i>talk</i> of them?” -</p> - -<p> -“I could meet this with a confidence! They say things that, if we heard -them, would simply appall us.” -</p> - -<p> -“And if she <i>is</i> there—” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes?” -</p> - -<p> -“Then Miss Jessel is?” -</p> - -<p> -“Beyond a doubt. You shall see.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, thank you!” my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it -in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, however, -she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, might -befall me, the exposure of my society struck her as her least danger. She -exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight of the greater part of the -water without a sight of the child. There was no trace of Flora on that nearer -side of the bank where my observation of her had been most startling, and none -on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick -copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant -compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have been -taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and then I felt the -suggestion of my friend’s eyes. I knew what she meant and I replied with -a negative headshake. -</p> - -<p> -“No, no; wait! She has taken the boat.” -</p> - -<p> -My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across the lake. -“Then where is it?” -</p> - -<p> -“Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it.” -</p> - -<p> -“All alone—that child?” -</p> - -<p> -“She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: -she’s an old, old woman.” I scanned all the visible shore while -Mrs. Grose took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges -of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small -refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, for -the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees growing -close to the water. -</p> - -<p> -“But if the boat’s there, where on earth’s <i>she?</i>” -my colleague anxiously asked. -</p> - -<p> -“That’s exactly what we must learn.” And I started to walk -further. -</p> - -<p> -“By going all the way round?” -</p> - -<p> -“Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it’s -far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over.” -</p> - -<p> -“Laws!” cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too -much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had got halfway -round—a devious, tiresome process, on ground much broken and by a path -choked with overgrowth—I paused to give her breath. I sustained her with -a grateful arm, assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this started us -afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we reached a point from -which we found the boat to be where I had supposed it. It had been -intentionally left as much as possible out of sight and was tied to one of the -stakes of a fence that came, just there, down to the brink and that had been an -assistance to disembarking. I recognized, as I looked at the pair of short, -thick oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for a -little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders and had -panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the fence, through -which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the -open. Then, “There she is!” we both exclaimed at once. -</p> - -<p> -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her -performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, was to stoop -straight down and pluck—quite as if it were all she was there for—a -big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure she had just come out -of the copse. She waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was conscious -of the rare solemnity with which we presently approached her. She smiled and -smiled, and we met; but it was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly -ominous. Mrs. Grose was the first to break the spell: she threw herself on her -knees and, drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the -little tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only -watch it—which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face peep -at me over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now—the flicker -had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied -Mrs. Grose the simplicity of <i>her</i> relation. Still, all this while, -nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again -drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually said to each other was that -pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she kept the -child’s hand, so that the two were still before me; and the singular -reticence of our communion was even more marked in the frank look she launched -me. “I’ll be hanged,” it said, “if <i>I’ll</i> -speak!” -</p> - -<p> -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the first. She was -struck with our bareheaded aspect. “Why, where are your things?” -</p> - -<p> -“Where yours are, my dear!” I promptly returned. -</p> - -<p> -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an answer -quite sufficient. “And where’s Miles?” she went on. -</p> - -<p> -There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: these -three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a drawn blade, the -jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, had held high and full to -the brim that now, even before speaking, I felt overflow in a deluge. -“I’ll tell you if you’ll tell <i>me</i>—” I heard -myself say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. -</p> - -<p> -“Well, what?” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose’s suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. “Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap20"></a>XX</h2> - -<p> -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much as I -had made of the fact that this name had never once, between us, been sounded, -the quick, smitten glare with which the child’s face now received it -fairly likened my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. It -added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the -same instant, uttered over my violence—the shriek of a creature scared, -or rather wounded, which, in turn, within a few seconds, was completed by a -gasp of my own. I seized my colleague’s arm. “She’s there, -she’s there!” -</p> - -<p> -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the -other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, -my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was there, and I was -justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for -poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no moment of my -monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as that in which I consciously -threw out to her—with the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, -she would catch and understand it—an inarticulate message of gratitude. -She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was -not, in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell short. -This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, during -which Mrs. Grose’s dazed blink across to where I pointed struck me as a -sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just as it carried my own eyes -precipitately to the child. The revelation then of the manner in which Flora -was affected startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done to find -her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course not what I had -expected. Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she -would repress every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my -first glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, -without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the -direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of that, turn at -<i>me</i> an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new -and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me—this -was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very -presence that could make me quail. I quailed even though my certitude that she -thoroughly saw was never greater than at that instant, and in the immediate -need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. “She’s -there, you little unhappy thing—there, there, <i>there</i>, and you see -her as well as you see me!” I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that -she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description -of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, -for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an -admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly -quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time—if I can put the whole thing -at all together—more appalled at what I may properly call her manner than -at anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware of -having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder -companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own -flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. -“What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see -anything?” -</p> - -<p> -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the hideous -plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, -and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at -it and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. “You -don’t see her exactly as <i>we</i> see?—you mean to say you -don’t now—<i>now?</i> She’s as big as a blazing fire! Only -look, dearest woman, <i>look</i>—!” She looked, even as I did, and -gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion—the -mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption—a sense, touching to -me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might well have -needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly -sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, I felt—I saw—my -livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, and I was conscious, -more than all, of what I should have from this instant to deal with in the -astounding little attitude of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately -and violently entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of -ruin a prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. -</p> - -<p> -“She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there—and -you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel—when poor Miss -Jessel’s dead and buried? <i>We</i> know, don’t we, -love?”—and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. -“It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke—and -we’ll go home as fast as we can!” -</p> - -<p> -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness of -propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, as it -were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with her small mask -of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming -to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend’s dress, her -incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, had quite vanished. -I’ve said it already—she was literally, she was hideously, hard; -she had turned common and almost ugly. “I don’t know what you mean. -I see nobody. I see nothing. I never <i>have</i>. I think you’re cruel. I -don’t like you!” Then, after this deliverance, which might have -been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose -more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this -position she produced an almost furious wail. “Take me away, take me -away—oh, take me away from <i>her!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“From <i>me?</i>” I panted. -</p> - -<p> -“From you—from you!” she cried. -</p> - -<p> -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing to do but -communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite bank, without a -movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was -as vividly there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. The -wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source -each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair -of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her. “If I had ever -doubted, all my doubt would at present have gone. I’ve been living with -the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course -I’ve lost you: I’ve interfered, and you’ve seen—under -<i>her</i> dictation”—with which I faced, over the pool again, our -infernal witness—“the easy and perfect way to meet it. I’ve -done my best, but I’ve lost you. Goodbye.” For Mrs. Grose I had an -imperative, an almost frantic “Go, go!” before which, in infinite -distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in -spite of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse -engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. -</p> - -<p> -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. I only -knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, an odorous dampness -and roughness, chilling and piercing my trouble, had made me understand that I -must have thrown myself, on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness -of grief. I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised -my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the -twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then I took, back -to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I reached the gate in the -fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, so that I had a fresh reflection to -make on Flora’s extraordinary command of the situation. She passed that -night, by the most tacit, and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a -false note, the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of -them on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, I -saw a great deal of Miles. I saw—I can use no other phrase—so much -of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening I had -passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of -which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had -opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an -extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so much as -looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was -wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Flora’s -rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the -schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the -article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom -now—he might have it to the end! Well, he did have it; and it -consisted—in part at least—of his coming in at about eight -o’clock and sitting down with me in silence. On the removal of the tea -things I had blown out the candles and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious -of a mortal coldness and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he -appeared, I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the -door as if to look at me; then—as if to share them—came to the -other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute -stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap21"></a>XXI</h2> - -<p> -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to Mrs. Grose, -who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so markedly feverish that -an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed a night of extreme unrest, a -night agitated above all by fears that had for their subject not in the least -her former, but wholly her present, governess. It was not against the possible -re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that she protested—it was -conspicuously and passionately against mine. I was promptly on my feet of -course, and with an immense deal to ask; the more that my friend had -discernibly now girded her loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon as I -had put to her the question of her sense of the child’s sincerity as -against my own. “She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever -seen, anything?” -</p> - -<p> -My visitor’s trouble, truly, was great. “Ah, miss, it isn’t a -matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn’t either, I must say, as if I -much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like -some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as it were, -her respectability. ‘Miss Jessel indeed—<i>she!</i>’ Ah, -she’s ‘respectable,’ the chit! The impression she gave me -there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite -beyond any of the others. I <i>did</i> put my foot in it! She’ll never -speak to me again.” -</p> - -<p> -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; then she -granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more behind it. -“I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand manner about -it!” -</p> - -<p> -“And that manner”—I summed it up—“is practically -what’s the matter with her now!” -</p> - -<p> -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor’s face, and not a little else -besides! “She asks me every three minutes if I think you’re coming -in.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see—I see.” I, too, on my side, had so much more than -worked it out. “Has she said to you since yesterday—except to -repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadful—a single other word -about Miss Jessel?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not one, miss. And of course you know,” my friend added, “I -took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there -<i>was</i> nobody.” -</p> - -<p> -“Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still.” -</p> - -<p> -“I don’t contradict her. What else can I do?” -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing in the world! You’ve the cleverest little person to deal -with. They’ve made them—their two friends, I mean—still -cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora -has now her grievance, and she’ll work it to the end.” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, miss; but to <i>what</i> end?” -</p> - -<p> -“Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She’ll make me out to -him the lowest creature—!” -</p> - -<p> -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose’s face; she looked -for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. “And him who thinks so -well of you!” -</p> - -<p> -“He has an odd way—it comes over me now,” I laughed, -“—of proving it! But that doesn’t matter. What Flora wants, -of course, is to get rid of me.” -</p> - -<p> -My companion bravely concurred. “Never again to so much as look at -you.” -</p> - -<p> -“So that what you’ve come to me now for,” I asked, “is -to speed me on my way?” Before she had time to reply, however, I had her -in check. “I’ve a better idea—the result of my reflections. -My going <i>would</i> seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near -it. Yet that won’t do. It’s <i>you</i> who must go. You must take -Flora.” -</p> - -<p> -My visitor, at this, did speculate. “But where in the -world—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Away from here. Away from <i>them</i>. Away, even most of all, now, from -me. Straight to her uncle.” -</p> - -<p> -“Only to tell on you—?” -</p> - -<p> -“No, not ‘only’! To leave me, in addition, with my -remedy.” -</p> - -<p> -She was still vague. “And what <i>is</i> your remedy?” -</p> - -<p> -“Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles’s.” -</p> - -<p> -She looked at me hard. “Do you think he—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Won’t, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still to -think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister as soon as -possible and leave me with him alone.” I was amazed, myself, at the -spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a trifle the more -disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, she -hesitated. “There’s one thing, of course,” I went on: -“they mustn’t, before she goes, see each other for three -seconds.” Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora’s presumable -sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be -too late. “Do you mean,” I anxiously asked, “that they -<i>have</i> met?” -</p> - -<p> -At this she quite flushed. “Ah, miss, I’m not such a fool as that! -If I’ve been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each -time with one of the maids, and at present, though she’s alone, -she’s locked in safe. And yet—and yet!” There were too many -things. -</p> - -<p> -“And yet what?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’m not sure of anything but <i>you</i>. But I have, since last -evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe -that—poor little exquisite wretch!—he wants to speak. Last evening, -in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were -just coming.” -</p> - -<p> -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. -“And did it come?” -</p> - -<p> -“No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn’t, and it was -without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his -sister’s condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All -the same,” I continued, “I can’t, if her uncle sees her, -consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boy—and -most of all because things have got so bad—a little more time.” -</p> - -<p> -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite understand. -“What do you mean by more time?” -</p> - -<p> -“Well, a day or two—really to bring it out. He’ll then be on -<i>my</i> side—of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall -only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival -in town, whatever you may have found possible.” So I put it before her, -but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to -her aid. “Unless, indeed,” I wound up, “you really want -<i>not</i> to go.” -</p> - -<p> -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to me -as a pledge. “I’ll go—I’ll go. I’ll go this -morning.” -</p> - -<p> -I wanted to be very just. “If you <i>should</i> wish still to wait, I -would engage she shouldn’t see me.” -</p> - -<p> -“No, no: it’s the place itself. She must leave it.” She held -me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. “Your -idea’s the right one. I myself, miss—” -</p> - -<p> -“Well?” -</p> - -<p> -“I can’t stay.” -</p> - -<p> -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. “You mean -that, since yesterday, you <i>have</i> seen—?” -</p> - -<p> -She shook her head with dignity. “I’ve <i>heard</i>—!” -</p> - -<p> -“Heard?” -</p> - -<p> -“From that child—horrors! There!” she sighed with tragic -relief. “On my honor, miss, she says things—!” But at this -evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as -I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it. -</p> - -<p> -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. “Oh, -thank God!” -</p> - -<p> -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. “‘Thank -God’?” -</p> - -<p> -“It so justifies me!” -</p> - -<p> -“It does that, miss!” -</p> - -<p> -I couldn’t have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. -“She’s so horrible?” -</p> - -<p> -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. “Really shocking.” -</p> - -<p> -“And about me?” -</p> - -<p> -“About you, miss—since you must have it. It’s beyond -everything, for a young lady; and I can’t think wherever she must have -picked up—” -</p> - -<p> -“The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!” I broke in -with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. -</p> - -<p> -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. “Well, perhaps I -ought to also—since I’ve heard some of it before! Yet I can’t -bear it,” the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she -glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. “But I must go -back.” -</p> - -<p> -I kept her, however. “Ah, if you can’t bear it—!” -</p> - -<p> -“How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just <i>for</i> that: to get her -away. Far from this,” she pursued, “far from -<i>them</i>—” -</p> - -<p> -“She may be different? She may be free?” I seized her almost with -joy. “Then, in spite of yesterday, you <i>believe</i>—” -</p> - -<p> -“In such doings?” Her simple description of them required, in the -light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the whole -thing as she had never done. “I believe.” -</p> - -<p> -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might continue -sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My support in the -presence of disaster would be the same as it had been in my early need of -confidence, and if my friend would answer for my honesty, I would answer for -all the rest. On the point of taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some -extent embarrassed. “There’s one thing, of course—it occurs -to me—to remember. My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town -before you.” -</p> - -<p> -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and how -weary at last it had made her. “Your letter won’t have got there. -Your letter never went.” -</p> - -<p> -“What then became of it?” -</p> - -<p> -“Goodness knows! Master Miles—” -</p> - -<p> -“Do you mean <i>he</i> took it?” I gasped. -</p> - -<p> -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. “I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn’t where you had -put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared -that he had neither noticed nor touched it.” We could only exchange, on -this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first -brought up the plumb with an almost elated “You see!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it -and destroyed it.” -</p> - -<p> -“And don’t you see anything else?” -</p> - -<p> -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. “It strikes me that by this time -your eyes are open even wider than mine.” -</p> - -<p> -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show it. -“I make out now what he must have done at school.” And she gave, in -her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. “He -stole!” -</p> - -<p> -I turned it over—I tried to be more judicial. -“Well—perhaps.” -</p> - -<p> -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. “He stole -<i>letters!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty shallow; so -I showed them off as I might. “I hope then it was to more purpose than in -this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday,” I -pursued, “will have given him so scant an advantage—for it -contained only the bare demand for an interview—that he is already much -ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and that what he had on his mind -last evening was precisely the need of confession.” I seemed to myself, -for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. “Leave us, leave -us”—I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. “I’ll -get it out of him. He’ll meet me—he’ll confess. If he -confesses, he’s saved. And if he’s saved—” -</p> - -<p> -“Then <i>you</i> are?” The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took -her farewell. “I’ll save you without him!” she cried as she -went. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap22"></a>XXII</h2> - -<p> -Yet it was when she had got off—and I missed her on the spot—that -the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give me to find -myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, that it would give me -a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions as -that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my -younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates. Now I <i>was</i>, I said to -myself, face to face with the elements, and for much of the rest of the day, -while I fought my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It -was a tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, -for the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused reflection -of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; there was -too little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, in the suddenness of -my colleague’s act. The maids and the men looked blank; the effect of -which on my nerves was an aggravation until I saw the necessity of making it a -positive aid. It was precisely, in short, by just clutching the helm that I -avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that -morning, very grand and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was -charged with much to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to -myself, I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next -hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I were ready -for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded with a -sick heart. -</p> - -<p> -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, little Miles -himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no glimpse of him, but they -had tended to make more public the change taking place in our relation as a -consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, kept me, in -Flora’s interest, so beguiled and befooled. The stamp of publicity had of -course been fully given by her confinement and departure, and the change itself -was now ushered in by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the -schoolroom. He had already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed open his -door, and I learned below that he had breakfasted—in the presence of a -couple of the maids—with Mrs. Grose and his sister. He had then gone out, -as he said, for a stroll; than which nothing, I reflected, could better have -expressed his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. What he -would not permit this office to consist of was yet to be settled: there was a -queer relief, at all events—I mean for myself in especial—in the -renouncement of one pretension. If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce -put it too strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest was the -absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. -It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than -myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to -let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at -any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, -moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, I had -uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither challenge nor -hint. I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last -arrived, the difficulty of applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were -brought straight home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had -occurred had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. -</p> - -<p> -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that my meals -with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been -awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the window of which I -had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, my flash of something it -would scarce have done to call light. Here at present I felt afresh—for I -had felt it again and again—how my equilibrium depended on the success of -my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that -what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get on -at all by taking “nature” into my confidence and my account, by -treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, and -unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, only another turn of -the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, nonetheless, could well require -more tact than just this attempt to supply, one’s self, <i>all</i> the -nature. How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression of -reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I make reference -without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? Well, a sort of answer, after a -time, had come to me, and it was so far confirmed as that I was met, -incontestably, by the quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion. -It was indeed as if he had found even now—as he had so often found at -lessons—still some other delicate way to ease me off. Wasn’t there -light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, broke out with a specious -glitter it had never yet quite worn?—the fact that (opportunity aiding, -precious opportunity which had now come) it would be preposterous, with a child -so endowed, to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What -had his intelligence been given him for but to save him? Mightn’t one, to -reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was -as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me -the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with -attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands in his -pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point of passing -some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: “I say, my -dear, is she really very awfully ill?” -</p> - -<p> -“Little Flora? Not so bad but that she’ll presently be better. -London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come here and take -your mutton.” -</p> - -<p> -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, when he was -established, went on. “Did Bly disagree with her so terribly -suddenly?” -</p> - -<p> -“Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on.” -</p> - -<p> -“Then why didn’t you get her off before?” -</p> - -<p> -“Before what?” -</p> - -<p> -“Before she became too ill to travel.” -</p> - -<p> -I found myself prompt. “She’s <i>not</i> too ill to travel: she -only might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment to seize. -The journey will dissipate the influence”—oh, I was -grand!—“and carry it off.” -</p> - -<p> -“I see, I see”—Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He -settled to his repast with the charming little “table manner” that, -from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. -Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. He -was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably more conscious. -He was discernibly trying to take for granted more things than he found, -without assistance, quite easy; and he dropped into peaceful silence while he -felt his situation. Our meal was of the briefest—mine a vain pretense, -and I had the things immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again -with his hands in his little pockets and his back to me—stood and looked -out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled me -up. We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it -whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding journey, -at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when -the waiter had left us. “Well—so we’re alone!” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap23"></a>XXIII</h2> - -<p> -“Oh, more or less.” I fancy my smile was pale. “Not -absolutely. We shouldn’t like that!” I went on. -</p> - -<p> -“No—I suppose we shouldn’t. Of course we have the -others.” -</p> - -<p> -“We have the others—we have indeed the others,” I concurred. -</p> - -<p> -“Yet even though we have them,” he returned, still with his hands -in his pockets and planted there in front of me, “they don’t much -count, do they?” -</p> - -<p> -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. “It depends on what you call -‘much’!” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes”—with all accommodation—“everything -depends!” On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently -reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, -with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I -knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of -“work,” behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with -it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have -described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something -from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for -the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a -meaning from the boy’s embarrassed back—none other than the -impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to -sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was -positively <i>he</i> who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind -of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, -shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a -throb of hope. Wasn’t he looking, through the haunted pane, for something -he couldn’t see?—and wasn’t it the first time in the whole -business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it -a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been -anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at -table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at -last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. -“Well, I think I’m glad Bly agrees with <i>me!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good -deal more of it than for some time before. I hope,” I went on bravely, -“that you’ve been enjoying yourself.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes, I’ve been ever so far; all round about—miles and -miles away. I’ve never been so free.” -</p> - -<p> -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. -“Well, do you like it?” -</p> - -<p> -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words—“Do -<i>you?</i>”—more discrimination than I had ever heard two words -contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with -the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. “Nothing could be -more charming than the way you take it, for of course if we’re alone -together now it’s you that are alone most. But I hope,” he threw -in, “you don’t particularly mind!” -</p> - -<p> -“Having to do with you?” I asked. “My dear child, how can I -help minding? Though I’ve renounced all claim to your -company—you’re so beyond me—I at least greatly enjoy it. What -else should I stay on for?” -</p> - -<p> -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, -struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. “You stay on just -for <i>that?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I -take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your -while. That needn’t surprise you.” My voice trembled so that I felt -it impossible to suppress the shake. “Don’t you remember how I told -you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was -nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, yes!” He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a -tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out -through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. “Only -that, I think, was to get me to do something for <i>you!</i>” -</p> - -<p> -“It was partly to get you to do something,” I conceded. “But, -you know, you didn’t do it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Oh, yes,” he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, -“you wanted me to tell you something.” -</p> - -<p> -“That’s it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you -know.” -</p> - -<p> -“Ah, then, is <i>that</i> what you’ve stayed over for?” -</p> - -<p> -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest little -quiver of resentful passion; but I can’t begin to express the effect upon -me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It was as if what I had -yearned for had come at last only to astonish me. “Well, yes—I may -as well make a clean breast of it, it was precisely for that.” -</p> - -<p> -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the -assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was: -“Do you mean now—here?” -</p> - -<p> -“There couldn’t be a better place or time.” He looked round -him uneasily, and I had the rare—oh, the queer!—impression of the -very first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was -as if he were suddenly afraid of me—which struck me indeed as perhaps the -best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to -try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost -grotesque. “You want so to go out again?” -</p> - -<p> -“Awfully!” He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little -bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He had picked up -his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, -even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. -To do it in <i>any</i> way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of -but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless -creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful -intercourse? Wasn’t it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere -alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it -couldn’t have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already -lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come. So we -circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close. -But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little longer suspended and -unbruised. “I’ll tell you everything,” Miles -said—“I mean I’ll tell you anything you like. You’ll -stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, and I <i>will</i> tell -you—I <i>will</i>. But not now.” -</p> - -<p> -“Why not now?” -</p> - -<p> -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window in a -silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. Then he was -before me again with the air of a person for whom, outside, someone who had -frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. “I have to see Luke.” -</p> - -<p> -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt proportionately -ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my truth. I achieved -thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. “Well, then, go to Luke, and -I’ll wait for what you promise. Only, in return for that, satisfy, before -you leave me, one very much smaller request.” -</p> - -<p> -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a little to -bargain. “Very much smaller—?” -</p> - -<p> -“Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me”—oh, my work -preoccupied me, and I was offhand!—“if, yesterday afternoon, from -the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter.” -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2><a name="chap24"></a>XXIV</h2> - -<p> -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I -can describe only as a fierce split of my attention—a stroke that at -first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind movement of -getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just fell for support -against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back -to the window. The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal -with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. The -next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, and then I -knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more -to the room his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took -place within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered -her grasp of the <i>act</i>. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate -presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep -the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other -name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I <i>might</i>. -It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so -appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my -hands, at arm’s length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely -childish forehead. The face that was close to mine was as white as the face -against the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but -as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. -</p> - -<p> -“Yes—I took it.” -</p> - -<p> -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I held him -to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his little body the -tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes on the thing at the window -and saw it move and shift its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its -slow wheel, for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present -quickened courage, however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I -had to shade, as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again -at the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very -confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, by -this time, of the child’s unconsciousness, that made me go on. -“What did you take it for?” -</p> - -<p> -“To see what you said about me.” -</p> - -<p> -“You opened the letter?” -</p> - -<p> -“I opened it.” -</p> - -<p> -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles’s own face, -in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete was the ravage of -uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, his sense was -sealed and his communication stopped: he knew that he was in presence, but knew -not of what, and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. And what -did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to -see that the air was clear again and—by my personal triumph—the -influence quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and -that I should surely get <i>all</i>. “And you found -nothing!”—I let my elation out. -</p> - -<p> -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. “Nothing.” -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing, nothing!” I almost shouted in my joy. -</p> - -<p> -“Nothing, nothing,” he sadly repeated. -</p> - -<p> -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. “So what have you done with -it?” -</p> - -<p> -“I’ve burned it.” -</p> - -<p> -“Burned it?” It was now or never. “Is that what you did at -school?” -</p> - -<p> -Oh, what this brought up! “At school?” -</p> - -<p> -“Did you take letters?—or other things?” -</p> - -<p> -“Other things?” He appeared now to be thinking of something far off -and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it did reach -him. “Did I <i>steal?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were more -strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it with -allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. “Was it -for that you mightn’t go back?” -</p> - -<p> -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. “Did you know -I mightn’t go back?” -</p> - -<p> -“I know everything.” -</p> - -<p> -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. “Everything?” -</p> - -<p> -“Everything. Therefore <i>did</i> you—?” But I couldn’t -say it again. -</p> - -<p> -Miles could, very simply. “No. I didn’t steal.” -</p> - -<p> -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands—but it -was for pure tenderness—shook him as if to ask him why, if it was all for -nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. “What then did you -do?” -</p> - -<p> -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two -or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing at the -bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. -“Well—I said things.” -</p> - -<p> -“Only that?” -</p> - -<p> -“They thought it was enough!” -</p> - -<p> -“To turn you out for?” -</p> - -<p> -Never, truly, had a person “turned out” shown so little to explain -it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in a manner -quite detached and almost helpless. “Well, I suppose I -oughtn’t.” -</p> - -<p> -“But to whom did you say them?” -</p> - -<p> -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped—he had lost it. “I -don’t know!” -</p> - -<p> -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was indeed -practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left it there. But -I was infatuated—I was blind with victory, though even then the very -effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was already that of added -separation. “Was it to everyone?” I asked. -</p> - -<p> -“No; it was only to—” But he gave a sick little headshake. -“I don’t remember their names.” -</p> - -<p> -“Were they then so many?” -</p> - -<p> -“No—only a few. Those I liked.” -</p> - -<p> -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the -appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant -confounding and bottomless, for if he <i>were</i> innocent, what then on earth -was <i>I?</i> Paralyzed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of the question, I -let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me -again; which, as he faced toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I -had nothing now there to keep him from. “And did they repeat what you -said?” I went on after a moment. -</p> - -<p> -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with the -air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. Once -more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what had -hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. “Oh, -yes,” he nevertheless replied—“they must have repeated them. -To those <i>they</i> liked,” he added. -</p> - -<p> -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. -“And these things came round—?” -</p> - -<p> -“To the masters? Oh, yes!” he answered very simply. “But I -didn’t know they’d tell.” -</p> - -<p> -“The masters? They didn’t—they’ve never told. -That’s why I ask you.” -</p> - -<p> -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. “Yes, it was too -bad.” -</p> - -<p> -“Too bad?” -</p> - -<p> -“What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home.” -</p> - -<p> -I can’t name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such a -speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard myself -throw off with homely force: “Stuff and nonsense!” But the next -after that I must have sounded stern enough. “What <i>were</i> these -things?” -</p> - -<p> -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him avert -himself again, and that movement made <i>me</i>, with a single bound and an -irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, against the -glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, was the hideous -author of our woe—the white face of damnation. I felt a sick swim at the -drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, so that the wildness of my -veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my -act, meet it with a divination, and on the perception that even now he only -guessed, and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse -flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his -liberation. “No more, no more, no more!” I shrieked, as I tried to -press him against me, to my visitant. -</p> - -<p> -“Is she <i>here?</i>” Miles panted as he caught with his sealed -eyes the direction of my words. Then as his strange “she” staggered -me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, “Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!” he -with a sudden fury gave me back. -</p> - -<p> -I seized, stupefied, his supposition—some sequel to what we had done to -Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than -that. “It’s not Miss Jessel! But it’s at the -window—straight before us. It’s <i>there</i>—the coward -horror, there for the last time!” -</p> - -<p> -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a baffled -dog’s on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air and light, -he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly over the place and -missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, filled the room like the taste of -poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. “It’s <i>he?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to challenge -him. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?” -</p> - -<p> -“Peter Quint—you devil!” His face gave again, round the room, -its convulsed supplication. “<i>Where?</i>” -</p> - -<p> -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his tribute to -my devotion. “What does he matter now, my own?—what will he -<i>ever</i> matter? <i>I</i> have you,” I launched at the beast, -“but he has lost you forever!” Then, for the demonstration of my -work, “There, <i>there!</i>” I said to Miles. -</p> - -<p> -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but -the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry -of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him -might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held -him—it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I -began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, -and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. -</p> - -</div><!--end chapter--> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE SCREW ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* - - - - - -The text is from the first American appearance in book form. - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, -but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas -Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, -I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it -was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen -on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition -in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion-- -an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping -in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; -waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, -but to encounter also, herself, before she had succeeded in doing so, -the same sight that had shaken him. It was this observation -that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the evening-- -a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call attention. -Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which I saw -he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself -something to produce and that we should only have to wait. -We waited in fact till two nights later; but that same evening, -before we scattered, he brought out what was in his mind. - -"I quite agree--in regard to Griffin's ghost, or whatever it was-- -that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, -adds a particular touch. But it's not the first occurrence -of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. -If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, -what do you say to TWO children--?" - -"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, "that they give two turns! -Also that we want to hear about them." - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up -to present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his -hands in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. -It's quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several -voices to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, -with quiet art, prepared his triumph by turning his eyes -over the rest of us and going on: "It's beyond everything. -Nothing at all that I know touches it." - -"For sheer terror?" I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss how to -qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little wincing grimace. -"For dreadful--dreadfulness!" - -"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, he saw -what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and pain." - -"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it -an instant. Then as he faced us again: "I can't begin. -I shall have to send to town." There was a unanimous groan -at this, and much reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, -he explained. "The story's written. It's in a locked drawer-- -it has not been out for years. I could write to my man and -enclose the key; he could send down the packet as he finds it." -It was to me in particular that he appeared to propound this-- -appeared almost to appeal for aid not to hesitate. -He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many a winter; -had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented -postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. -I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us -for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience -in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt. -"Oh, thank God, no!" - -"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?" - -"Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE"--he tapped his heart. -"I've never lost it." - -"Then your manuscript--?" - -"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung -fire again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. -She sent me the pages in question before she died." -They were all listening now, and of course there was somebody -to be arch, or at any rate to draw the inference. But if he put -the inference by without a smile it was also without irritation. -"She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older -than I. She was my sister's governess," he quietly said. -"She was the most agreeable woman I've ever known in her position; -she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago, -and this episode was long before. I was at Trinity, -and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. -I was much there that year--it was a beautiful one; and we had, -in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden-- -talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice. -Oh yes; don't grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day -to think she liked me, too. If she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. -She had never told anyone. It wasn't simply that she said so, -but that I knew she hadn't. I was sure; I could see. -You'll easily judge why when you hear." - -"Because the thing had been such a scare?" - -He continued to fix me. "You'll easily judge," he repeated: -"YOU will." - -I fixed him, too. "I see. She was in love." - -He laughed for the first time. "You ARE acute. -Yes, she was in love. That is, she had been. That came out-- -she couldn't tell her story without its coming out. -I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but neither of us spoke of it. -I remember the time and the place--the corner of the lawn, -the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot summer afternoon. -It wasn't a scene for a shudder; but oh--!" He quitted the fire -and dropped back into his chair. - -"You'll receive the packet Thursday morning?" I inquired. - -"Probably not till the second post." - -"Well then; after dinner--" - -"You'll all meet me here?" He looked us round again. "Isn't anybody going?" -It was almost the tone of hope. - -"Everybody will stay!" - -"_I_ will" --and "_I_ will!" cried the ladies whose departure -had been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need -for a little more light. "Who was it she was in love with?" - -"The story will tell," I took upon myself to reply. - -"Oh, I can't wait for the story!" - -"The story WON'T tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, vulgar way." - -"More's the pity, then. That's the only way I ever understand." - -"Won't YOU tell, Douglas?" somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. "Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. -Good night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left -us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall -we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. -"Well, if I don't know who she was in love with, I know -who HE was." - -"She was ten years older," said her husband. - -"Raison de plus--at that age! But it's rather nice, -his long reticence." - -"Forty years!" Griffin put in. - -"With this outbreak at last." - -"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tremendous occasion -of Thursday night;" and everyone so agreed with me that, -in the light of it, we lost all attention for everything else. -The last story, however incomplete and like the mere opening -of a serial, had been told; we handshook and "candlestuck," -as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, -by the first post, gone off to his London apartments; -but in spite of--or perhaps just on account of--the eventual -diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him alone till -after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact, -as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our -hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could -desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. -We had it from him again before the fire in the hall, -as we had had our mild wonders of the previous night. -It appeared that the narrative he had promised to read us really -required for a proper intelligence a few words of prologue. -Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, -that this narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made -much later, is what I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, -before his death--when it was in sight--committed to me -the manuscript that reached him on the third of these days -and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began -to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. -The departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't, -of course, thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence -of arrangements made, in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, -produced by the touches with which he had already worked us up. -But that only made his little final auditory more compact and select, -kept it, round the hearth, subject to a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement -took up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. -The fact to be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, -the youngest of several daughters of a poor country parson, -had, at the age of twenty, on taking service for the first time -in the schoolroom, come up to London, in trepidation, to answer -in person an advertisement that had already placed her in brief -correspondence with the advertiser. This person proved, on her -presenting herself, for judgment, at a house in Harley Street, -that impressed her as vast and imposing--this prospective -patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, -such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, -before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. -One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. -He was handsome and bold and pleasant, offhand and gay and kind. -He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, -but what took her most of all and gave her the courage she -afterward showed was that he put the whole thing to her as -a kind of favor, an obligation he should gratefully incur. -She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant-- -saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, -of expensive habits, of charming ways with women. -He had for his own town residence a big house filled -with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; -but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, -that he wished her immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, -guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, -a military brother, whom he had lost two years before. -These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man -in his position--a lone man without the right sort of -experience or a grain of patience--very heavily on his hands. -It had all been a great worry and, on his own part doubtless, -a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor chicks -and had done all he could; had in particular sent them -down to his other house, the proper place for them being -of course the country, and kept them there, from the first, -with the best people he could find to look after them, -parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going -down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing. -The awkward thing was that they had practically no other -relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. -He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, -and had placed at the head of their little establishment-- -but below stairs only--an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, -whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been -maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting -for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom, -without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely fond. -There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young lady -who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. -She would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, -who had been for a term at school--young as he was to be sent, -but what else could be done?--and who, as the holidays were -about to begin, would be back from one day to the other. -There had been for the two children at first a young lady -whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done -for them quite beautifully--she was a most respectable person-- -till her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, -left no alternative but the school for little Miles. -Mrs. Grose, since then, in the way of manners and things, -had done as she could for Flora; and there were, further, a cook, -a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, an old groom, -and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a question. -"And what did the former governess die of?--of so much respectability?" - -Our friend's answer was prompt. "That will come out. -I don't anticipate." - -"Excuse me--I thought that was just what you ARE doing." - -"In her successor's place," I suggested, "I should have wished to learn -if the office brought with it--" - -"Necessary danger to life?" Douglas completed my thought. -"She did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow -what she learned. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her -as slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision -of serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. -She hesitated--took a couple of days to consult and consider. -But the salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, -and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged." -And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit -of the company, moved me to throw in-- - -"The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid -young man. She succumbed to it." - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, -gave a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us. -"She saw him only twice." - -"Yes, but that's just the beauty of her passion." - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. -"It WAS the beauty of it. There were others," he went on, -"who hadn't succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty-- -that for several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. -They were, somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull--it sounded strange; -and all the more so because of his main condition." - -"Which was--?" - -"That she should never trouble him--but never, never: -neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; -only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from -his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone. -She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that when, -for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, -thanking her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded." - -"But was that all her reward?" one of the ladies asked. - -"She never saw him again." - -"Oh!" said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us again, -was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject till, -the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, -he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged album. -The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the first occasion -the same lady put another question. "What is your title?" - -"I haven't one." - -"Oh, _I_ have!" I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, -had begun to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering -to the ear of the beauty of his author's hand. - - - - I - - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, -a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, -to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days-- -found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. -In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, -swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I -was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, -I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close -of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. -Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which -the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, -my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, -encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point -to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, -something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. -I remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, -its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids -looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and -the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops -over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky. -The scene had a greatness that made it a different affair from -my own scant home, and there immediately appeared at the door, -with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped me as decent -a curtsy as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished visitor. -I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the place, -and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still -more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be -something beyond his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried -triumphantly through the following hours by my introduction -to the younger of my pupils. The little girl who accompanied -Mrs. Grose appeared to me on the spot a creature so charming -as to make it a great fortune to have to do with her. -She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, and I afterward -wondered that my employer had not told me more of her. -I slept little that night--I was too much excited; -and this astonished me, too, I recollect, remained with me, -adding to my sense of the liberality with which I was treated. -The large, impressive room, one of the best in the house, the great -state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured draperies, -the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see -myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the extraordinary -charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in. -It was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I -should get on with Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, -on my way, in the coach, I fear I had rather brooded. -The only thing indeed that in this early outlook might have -made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being -so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she -was so glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman-- -as to be positively on her guard against showing it too much. -I wondered even then a little why she should wish not to show it, -and that, with reflection, with suspicion, might of course -have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a -connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my -little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably -more than anything else to do with the restlessness that, -before morning, made me several times rise and wander -about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; -to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, -to look at such portions of the rest of the house as I -could catch, and to listen, while, in the fading dusk, -the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence -of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, -that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I -believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; -there had been another when I found myself just consciously -starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. -But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, -and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, -of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me. -To watch, teach, "form" little Flora would too evidently -be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been -agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion -I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small -white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. -What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and she -had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as -an effect of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness -and her natural timidity. In spite of this timidity-- -which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, -had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, -without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, -sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael's holy infants, -to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us-- -I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was part -of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I -could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper -with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and -a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. -There were naturally things that in Flora's presence could -pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, -obscure and roundabout allusions. - -"And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable?" - -One wouldn't flatter a child. "Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. -If you think well of this one!"--and she stood there with a plate -in her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us -to the other with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing -to check us. - -"Yes; if I do--?" - -"You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!" - -"Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. -I'm afraid, however," I remember feeling the impulse to add, -"I'm rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!" - -I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she took this in. -"In Harley Street?" - -"In Harley Street." - -"Well, miss, you're not the first--and you won't be the last." - -"Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, "to being the only one. -My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?" - -"Not tomorrow--Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, -under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage." - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; -an idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow -took her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, -thank heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. -Oh, she was glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could -be fairly called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; -it was probably at the most only a slight oppression produced -by a fuller measure of the scale, as I walked round them, -gazed up at them, took them in, of my new circumstances. -They had, as it were, an extent and mass for which I had not -been prepared and in the presence of which I found myself, -freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. -Lessons, in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; -I reflected that my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I -could contrive, to win the child into the sense of knowing me. -I spent the day with her out-of-doors; I arranged with her, -to her great satisfaction, that it should be she, she only, -who might show me the place. She showed it step by step -and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, -childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, -of our becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, -throughout our little tour, with her confidence and courage -with the way, in empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked -staircases that made me pause and even on the summit of an old -machicolated square tower that made me dizzy, her morning music, -her disposition to tell me so many more things than she asked, -rang out and led me on. I have not seen Bly since the day -I left it, and I daresay that to my older and more informed -eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as my -little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, -danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, -I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, -such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, -take all color out of storybooks and fairytales. -Wasn't it just a storybook over which I had fallen adoze -and adream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, -embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and -half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost -as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. -Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - - - - II - - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over -with Flora to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; -and all the more for an incident that, presenting itself -the second evening, had deeply disconcerted me. -The first day had been, on the whole, as I have expressed, -reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen apprehension. -The postbag, that evening--it came late--contained a letter -for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, -I found to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, -addressed to himself, with a seal still unbroken. "This, I recognize, -is from the headmaster, and the headmaster's an awful bore. -Read him, please; deal with him; but mind you don't report. -Not a word. I'm off!" I broke the seal with a great effort-- -so great a one that I was a long time coming to it; -took the unopened missive at last up to my room and only -attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let it -wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. -With no counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; -and it finally got so the better of me that I determined -to open myself at least to Mrs. Grose. - -"What does it mean? The child's dismissed his school." - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, -with a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. -"But aren't they all--?" - -"Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go -back at all." - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. "They won't take him?" - -"They absolutely decline." - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; -I saw them fill with good tears. "What has he done?" - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter-- -which, however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, -simply put her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. -"Such things are not for me, miss." - -My counselor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I -attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it -to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, -I put it back in my pocket. "Is he really BAD?" - -The tears were still in her eyes. "Do the gentlemen say so?" - -"They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that it -should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." -Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what this -meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some coherence -and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went on: -"That he's an injury to the others." - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly flamed up. -"Master Miles! HIM an injury?" - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the idea. -I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, -on the spot, sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!" - -"It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel things! -Why, he's scarce ten years old." - -"Yes, yes; it would be incredible." - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, miss, first. -THEN believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to see him; -it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next hours, -was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could judge, -of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with assurance. -"You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless her," -she added the next moment--"LOOK at her!" - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had established -in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, and a copy -of nice "round o's," now presented herself to view at the open door. -She expressed in her little way an extraordinary detachment from -disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a great childish light -that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the affection she had conceived -for my person, which had rendered necessary that she should follow me. -I needed nothing more than this to feel the full force of Mrs. Grose's -comparison, and, catching my pupil in my arms, covered her with kisses -in which there was a sob of atonement. - -Nonetheless, the rest of the day I watched for further occasion -to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, -I began to fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, -I remember, on the staircase; we went down together, and at the -bottom I detained her, holding her there with a hand on her arm. -"I take what you said to me at noon as a declaration that -YOU'VE never known him to be bad." - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, -and very honestly, adopted an attitude. "Oh, never known him-- -I don't pretend THAT!" - -I was upset again. "Then you HAVE known him--?" - -"Yes indeed, miss, thank God!" - -On reflection I accepted this. "You mean that a boy who never is--?" - -"Is no boy for ME!" - -I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" -Then, keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought out. -"But not to the degree to contaminate--" - -"To contaminate?"--my big word left her at a loss. -I explained it. "To corrupt." - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh. -"Are you afraid he'll corrupt YOU?" She put the question with such a fine -bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own, -I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped -up in another place. "What was the lady who was here before?" - -"The last governess? She was also young and pretty-- -almost as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you." - -"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!" -I recollect throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!" - -"Oh, he DID," Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the way he liked everyone!" -She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. -"I mean that's HIS way--the master's." - -I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?" - -She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM." - -"Of the master?" - -"Of who else?" - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I -had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more -than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know. -"Did SHE see anything in the boy--?" - -"That wasn't right? She never told me." - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?" - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. -"About some things--yes." - -"But not about all?" - -Again she considered. "Well, miss--she's gone. -I won't tell tales." - -"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I thought it, -after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: -"Did she die here?" - -"No--she went off." - -I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that struck -me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked straight -out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had a right -to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to do. -"She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?" - -"She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. -She left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, -for a short holiday, to which the time she had put in had -certainly given her a right. We had then a young woman-- -a nursemaid who had stayed on and who was a good girl and clever; -and SHE took the children altogether for the interval. -But our young lady never came back, and at the very moment I -was expecting her I heard from the master that she was dead." - -I turned this over. "But of what?" - -"He never told me! But please, miss," said Mrs. Grose, -"I must get to my work." - - - - III - - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual esteem. -We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately -than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: -so monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child -as had now been revealed to me should be under an interdict. -I was a little late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully -looking out for me before the door of the inn at which the coach had -put him down, that I had seen him, on the instant, without and within, -in the great glow of freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, -in which I had, from the first moment, seen his little sister. -He was incredibly beautiful, and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: -everything but a sort of passion of tenderness for him was swept away -by his presence. What I then and there took him to my heart for was -something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any child-- -his indescribable little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. -It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater -sweetness of innocence, and by the time I had got back to Bly with him -I remained merely bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not outraged-- -by the sense of the horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. -As soon as I could compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared -to her that it was grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge--?" - -"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, LOOK at him!" - -She smiled at my pretention to have discovered his charm. -"I assure you, miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?" -she immediately added. - -"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my mind. "Nothing." - -"And to his uncle?" - -I was incisive. "Nothing." - -"And to the boy himself?" - -I was wonderful. "Nothing." - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand by you. -We'll see it out." - -"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make -it a vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. "Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom--" - -"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we -had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, -as I recall the way it went, it reminds me of all the art -I now need to make it a little distinct. What I look -back at with amazement is the situation I accepted. -I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it out, and I was -under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the extent -and the far and difficult connections of such an effort. -I was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation and pity. -I found it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps -my conceit, to assume that I could deal with a boy whose -education for the world was all on the point of beginning. -I am unable even to remember at this day what proposal I framed -for the end of his holidays and the resumption of his studies. -Lessons with me, indeed, that charming summer, we all had -a theory that he was to have; but I now feel that, for weeks, -the lessons must have been rather my own. I learned something-- -at first, certainly--that had not been one of the teachings of -my small, smothered life; learned to be amused, and even amusing, -and not to think for the morrow. It was the first time, -in a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, -all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. -And then there was consideration--and consideration was sweet. -Oh, it was a trap--not designed, but deep--to my imagination, -to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; to whatever, in me, -was most excitable. The best way to picture it all is to say -that I was off my guard. They gave me so little trouble-- -they were of a gentleness so extraordinary. I used to speculate-- -but even this with a dim disconnectedness--as to how the rough future -(for all futures are rough!) would handle them and might bruise them. -They had the bloom of health and happiness; and yet, -as if I had been in charge of a pair of little grandees, -of princes of the blood, for whom everything, to be right, -would have to be enclosed and protected, the only form that, -in my fancy, the afteryears could take for them was that of -a romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park. -It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke -into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness-- -that hush in which something gathers or crouches. -The change was actually like the spring of a beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -teatime and bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final retirement, -a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this hour was -the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all when, -as the light faded--or rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last -calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees-- -I could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense -of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity of -the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself tranquil -and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my discretion, -my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving pleasure-- -if he ever thought of it!--to the person to whose pressure I had responded. -What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and directly asked of me, -and that I COULD, after all, do it proved even a greater joy than I -had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young -woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear. -Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things -that presently gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: -the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. -One of the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now -from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it -would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. -Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand -before me and smile and approve. I didn't ask more than that-- -I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure he knew -would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. -That was exactly present to me--by which I mean the face was-- -when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long -June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations -and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot-- -and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for-- -was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. -He did stand there!--but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of -the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. -This tower was one of a pair--square, incongruous, crenelated structures-- -that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see -little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite -ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, -redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor -of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, -from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past. -I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could all profit -in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, -by the grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at -such an elevation that the figure I had so often invoked seemed -most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, -two distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock -of my first and that of my second surprise. My second was a -violent perception of the mistake of my first: the man who met -my eyes was not the person I had precipitately supposed. -There came to me thus a bewilderment of vision of which, -after these years, there is no living view that I can hope to give. -An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear -to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that faced -me was--a few more seconds assured me--as little anyone -else I knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. -I had not seen it in Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere. -The place, moreover, in the strangest way in the world, had, -on the instant, and by the very fact of its appearance, -become a solitude. To me at least, making my statement -here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, -the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, -while I took in--what I did take in--all the rest of the scene -had been stricken with death. I can hear again, as I write, -the intense hush in which the sounds of evening dropped. -The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky, and the friendly -hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there was no -other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that I -saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, -the clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over -the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame. -That's how I thought, with extraordinary quickness, -of each person that he might have been and that he was not. -We were confronted across our distance quite long enough for me -to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, -as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few -instants more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, -with regard to certain matters, the question of how long -they have lasted. Well, this matter of mine, think what you -will of it, lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, -none of which made a difference for the better, that I could see, -in there having been in the house--and for how long, above all?-- -a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I -just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded -that there should be no such ignorance and no such person. -It lasted while this visitant, at all events--and there was a touch -of the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity -of his wearing no hat--seemed to fix me, from his position, -with just the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light, -that his own presence provoked. We were too far apart -to call to each other, but there was a moment at which, -at shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush, -would have been the right result of our straight mutual stare. -He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, -very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. -So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; -then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, -he slowly changed his place--passed, looking at me hard all -the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had -the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his -eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand, -as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next. -He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even -as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; -that was all I knew. - - - - IV - - -It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, -for more, for I was rooted as deeply as I was shaken. -Was there a "secret" at Bly--a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, -an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement? -I can't say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a confusion -of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my collision; -I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had quite -closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had held me -and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have walked -three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed -that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. -The most singular part of it, in fact--singular as the rest had been-- -was the part I became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. -This picture comes back to me in the general train--the impression, -as I received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space, -bright in the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet, -and of the good surprised look of my friend, which immediately -told me she had missed me. It came to me straightway, -under her contact, that, with plain heartiness, mere relieved -anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing whatever that -could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. -I had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would -pull me up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I -had seen by my thus finding myself hesitate to mention it. -Scarce anything in the whole history seems to me so odd -as this fact that my real beginning of fear was one, -as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. -On the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her -eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, -achieved an inward resolution--offered a vague pretext -for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night -and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible -to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, -it was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day -to day--or at least there were moments, snatched even from -clear duties--when I had to shut myself up to think. -It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could -bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; -for the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, -the truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of -the visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet, -as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took little -time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry -and without exciting remark any domestic complications. -The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses; -I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result -of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced -upon by the servants nor made the object of any "game." -Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me. -There was but one sane inference: someone had taken -a liberty rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I dipped -into my room and locked the door to say to myself. -We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion; -some unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made -his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point -of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me -such a bold hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. -The good thing, after all, was that we should surely see -no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge that what, -essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my charming work. -My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, and through nothing -could I so like it as through feeling that I could throw myself into it -in trouble. The attraction of my small charges was a constant joy, -leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my original fears, the distaste -I had begun by entertaining for the probable gray prose of my office. -There was to be no gray prose, it appeared, and no long grind; -so how could work not be charming that presented itself as daily beauty? -It was all the romance of the nursery and the poetry of the schoolroom. -I don't mean by this, of course, that we studied only fiction -and verse; I mean I can express no otherwise the sort of interest -my companions inspired. How can I describe that except by saying that -instead of growing used to them--and it's a marvel for a governess: -I call the sisterhood to witness!--I made constant fresh discoveries. -There was one direction, assuredly, in which these discoveries stopped: -deep obscurity continued to cover the region of the boy's conduct at school. -It had been promptly given me, I have noted, to face that mystery without -a pang. Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say that--without -a word--he himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge absurd. -My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his innocence: -he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean school world, -and he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense -of such differences, such superiorities of quality, always, on the part -of the majority--which could include even stupid, sordid headmasters-- -turn infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, -and it never made Miles a muff) that kept them--how shall I -express it?--almost impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. -They were like the cherubs of the anecdote, who had-- -morally, at any rate--nothing to whack! I remember feeling -with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no history. -We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this -beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, -yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature -of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. -He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a -direct disproof of his having really been chastised. -If he had been wicked he would have "caught" it, and I should -have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the trace. -I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. -He never spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; -and I, for my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. -Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part -is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. -But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, -and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these days -of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going well. -But with my children, what things in the world mattered? -That was the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. -I was dazzled by their loveliness. - -There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force -and for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; -in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged -with Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, -we would attend together the late service. The rain happily stopped, -and I prepared for our walk, which, through the park and by the -good road to the village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. -Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair -of gloves that had required three stitches and that had received them-- -with a publicity perhaps not edifying--while I sat with the children -at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, -clean temple of mahogany and brass, the "grown-up" dining room. -The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them. -The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered, -and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize, -on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted, -but to become aware of a person on the other side of the window -and looking straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; -my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking -straight in was the person who had already appeared to me. -He appeared thus again with I won't say greater distinctness, -for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented -a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, -catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same--he was the same, -and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, -the window, though the dining room was on the ground floor, not going -down to the terrace on which he stood. His face was close to the glass, -yet the effect of this better view was, strangely, only to show me -how intense the former had been. He remained but a few seconds-- -long enough to convince me he also saw and recognized; but it was -as if I had been looking at him for years and had known him always. -Something, however, happened this time that had not happened before; -his stare into my face, through the glass and across the room, -was as deep and hard as then, but it quitted me for a moment -during which I could still watch it, see it fix successively -several other things. On the spot there came to me the added -shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. -He had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst -of dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, -started as I stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. -I say courage because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. -I bounded straight out of the door again, reached that of the house, -got, in an instant, upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace -as fast as I could rush, turned a corner and came full in sight. -But it was in sight of nothing now--my visitor had vanished. -I stopped, I almost dropped, with the real relief of this; -but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time to reappear. -I call it time, but how long was it? I can't speak -to the purpose today of the duration of these things. -That kind of measure must have left me: they couldn't -have lasted as they actually appeared to me to last. -The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, -all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness. -There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember -the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. -He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him. -I got hold of this; then, instinctively, instead of returning -as I had come, went to the window. It was confusedly present -to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood. -I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, -as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, -to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, -as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. -With this I had the full image of a repetition of what had -already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; -she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something -of the shock that I had received. She turned white, -and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. -She stared, in short, and retreated on just MY lines, -and I knew she had then passed out and come round to me -and that I should presently meet her. I remained where I was, -and while I waited I thought of more things than one. -But there's only one I take space to mention. I wondered why -SHE should be scared. - - - - V - - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, she loomed -again into view. "What in the name of goodness is the matter--?" -She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" -I must have made a wonderful face. "Do I show it?" - -"You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. -My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, -without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant -it was not with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she -took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. -There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her surprise. -"You came for me for church, of course, but I can't go." - -"Has anything happened?" - -"Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?" - -"Through this window? Dreadful!" - -"Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes expressed -plainly that SHE had no wish to be, yet also that she knew too well -her place not to be ready to share with me any marked inconvenience. -Oh, it was quite settled that she MUST share! "Just what you -saw from the dining room a minute ago was the effect of that. -What _I_ saw--just before--was much worse." - -Her hand tightened. "What was it?" - -"An extraordinary man. Looking in." - -"What extraordinary man?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?" - -"I know still less." - -"Have you seen him before?" - -"Yes--once. On the old tower." - -She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?" - -"Oh, very much!" - -"Yet you didn't tell me?" - -"No--for reasons. But now that you've guessed--" - -Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't guessed!" -she said very simply. "How can I if YOU don't imagine?" - -"I don't in the very least." - -"You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?" - -"And on this spot just now." - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was he doing on the tower?" - -"Only standing there and looking down at me." - -She thought a minute. "Was he a gentleman?" - -I found I had no need to think. "No." She gazed in deeper wonder. "No." - -"Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?" - -"Nobody--nobody. I didn't tell you, but I made sure." - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. -It only went indeed a little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman--" - -"What IS he? He's a horror." - -"A horror?" - -"He's--God help me if I know WHAT he is!" - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier distance, -then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt inconsequence. -"It's time we should be at church." - -"Oh, I'm not fit for church!" - -"Won't it do you good?" - -"It won't do THEM--! I nodded at the house. - -"The children?" - -"I can't leave them now." - -"You're afraid--?" - -I spoke boldly. "I'm afraid of HIM." - -Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for the first time, -the faraway faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: -I somehow made out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself -had not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me. -It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this -as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be -connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. -"When was it--on the tower?" - -"About the middle of the month. At this same hour." - -"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. - -"Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." - -"Then how did he get in?" - -"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him! -This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in." - -"He only peeps?" - -"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand; -she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: -"Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch." - -Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?" - -We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came -nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. -"You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. - -She didn't move. "How long was he here?" - -"Till I came out. I came to meet him." - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. -"_I_ couldn't have come out." - -"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. -I have my duty." - -"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: -"What is he like?" - -"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody." - -"Nobody?" she echoed. - -"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, -in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, -I quickly added stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red, -close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, -good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red -as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look -particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. -His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly -that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, -and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's -quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking -like an actor." - -"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, -than Mrs. Grose at that moment. - -"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect," -I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman." - -My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round -eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" -she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?" - -"You know him then?" - -She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?" - -I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!" - -"And dressed--?" - -"In somebody's clothes. "They're smart, but they're not his own." - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!" - -I caught it up. "You DO know him?" - -She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried. - -"Quint?" - -"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!" - -"When the master was?" - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. -"He never wore his hat, but he did wear--well, there were -waistcoats missed. They were both here--last year. -Then the master went, and Quint was alone." - -I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?" - -"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added. - -"And what became of him?" - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. -"He went, too," she brought out at last. - -"Went where?" - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where! -He died." - -"Died?" I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead." - - - - VI - - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place us -together in presence of what we had now to live with as we could-- -my dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly -exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth--a knowledge -half consternation and half compassion--of that liability. -There had been, this evening, after the revelation left me, -for an hour, so prostrate--there had been, for either of us, -no attendance on any service but a little service of tears and vows, -of prayers and promises, a climax to the series of mutual challenges -and pledges that had straightway ensued on our retreating together to -the schoolroom and shutting ourselves up there to have everything out. -The result of our having everything out was simply to reduce -our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had -seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house -but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted -without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, -and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, -an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, -of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest -of human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, -in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. -I knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later, what I was -capable of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time -to be wholly sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep -terms with so compromising a contract. I was queer company enough-- -quite as queer as the company I received; but as I trace over -what we went through I see how much common ground we must have -found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us. -It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out, -as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take -the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. -Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me -before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every -feature of what I had seen. - -"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not you?" - -"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now possessed me. -"THAT'S whom he was looking for." - -"But how do you know?" - -"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And YOU know, my dear!" - -She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much -telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: -"What if HE should see him?" - -"Little Miles? That's what he wants!" - -She looked immensely scared again. "The child?" - -"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to THEM." -That he might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could -keep it at bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, -was what I succeeded in practically proving. I had an absolute -certainty that I should see again what I had already seen, -but something within me said that by offering myself bravely -as the sole subject of such experience, by accepting, by inviting, -by surmounting it all, I should serve as an expiatory victim -and guard the tranquility of my companions. The children, -in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. -I recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned--" - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been -here and the time they were with him?" - -"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his history, -in any way." - -"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew." - -"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity. -"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know." - -"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid." -I continued to think. "It IS rather odd." - -"That he has never spoken of him?" - -"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were `great friends'?" - -"Oh, it wasn't HIM!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. -"It was Quint's own fancy. To play with him, I mean-- -to spoil him." She paused a moment; then she added: -"Quint was much too free." - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--SUCH a face!-- -a sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with MY boy?" - -"Too free with everyone!" - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyze this description further than -by the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members -of the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still -of our small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, -in the lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation -of scullions, had ever, within anyone's memory attached to the kind -old place. It had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, -most apparently, only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. -I even put her, the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when, -at midnight, she had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. -"I have it from you then--for it's of great importance--that he was -definitely and admittedly bad?" - -"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't." - -"And you never told him?" - -"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. -He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people -were all right to HIM--" - -"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough -with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, -nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company HE kept. -All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_ -would have told!" - -She felt my discrimination. "I daresay I was wrong. -But, really, I was afraid." - -"Afraid of what?" - -"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep." - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. -"You weren't afraid of anything else? Not of his effect--?" - -"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting -while I faltered. - -"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge." - -"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully returned. -"The master believed in him and placed him here because he was -supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. -So he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even -about THEM." - -"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl. -"And you could bear it!" - -"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow them; -yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back together -to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, I was, -in the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined whether -I slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had not told me. -I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word Mrs. Grose had -kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this was not from -a failure of frankness, but because on every side there were fears. -It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the morrow's sun -was high I had restlessly read into the fact before us almost all the -meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more cruel occurrences. -What they gave me above all was just the sinister figure of the living man-- -the dead one would keep awhile!--and of the months he had continuously -passed at Bly, which, added up, made a formidable stretch. -The limit of this evil time had arrived only when, on the dawn of a -winter's morning, Peter Quint was found, by a laborer going to early work, -stone dead on the road from the village: a catastrophe explained-- -superficially at least--by a visible wound to his head; such a wound -as might have been produced--and as, on the final evidence, HAD been-- -by a fatal slip, in the dark and after leaving the public house, -on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path altogether, at the bottom of -which he lay. The icy slope, the turn mistaken at night and in liquor, -accounted for much--practically, in the end and after the inquest and -boundless chatter, for everything; but there had been matters in his life-- -strange passages and perils, secret disorders, vices more than suspected-- -that would have accounted for a good deal more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be -a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days -literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of -heroism the occasion demanded of me. I now saw that I had been -asked for a service admirable and difficult; and there would -be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, in the right quarter!-- -that I could succeed where many another girl might have failed. -It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather applaud myself -as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and so simply. -I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in -the world the most bereaved and the most lovable, the appeal -of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, -a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. -We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. -They had nothing but me, and I--well, I had THEM. It -was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented -itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen-- -I was to stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. -I began to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised -excitement that might well, had it continued too long, -have turned to something like madness. What saved me, -as I now see, was that it turned to something else altogether. -It didn't last as suspense--it was superseded by horrible proofs. -Proofs, I say, yes--from the moment I really took hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened -to spend in the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. -We had left Miles indoors, on the red cushion of a deep -window seat; he had wished to finish a book, and I had been -glad to encourage a purpose so laudable in a young man whose -only defect was an occasional excess of the restless. -His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, -and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, -for the sun was still high and the day exceptionally warm. -I was aware afresh, with her, as we went, of how, -like her brother, she contrived--it was the charming thing -in both children--to let me alone without appearing to drop -me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. -They were never importunate and yet never listless. -My attention to them all really went to seeing them amuse -themselves immensely without me: this was a spectacle they seemed -actively to prepare and that engaged me as an active admirer. -I walked in a world of their invention--they had no occasion whatever -to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only with being, -for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game of -the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, -my exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. -I forget what I was on the present occasion; I only remember -that I was something very important and very quiet and that Flora -was playing very hard. We were on the edge of the lake, and, as we -had lately begun geography, the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the -other side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. -The way this knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing -in the world--the strangest, that is, except the very much -stranger in which it quickly merged itself. I had sat down with -a piece of work--for I was something or other that could sit-- -on the old stone bench which overlooked the pond; and in this -position I began to take in with certitude, and yet without -direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person. -The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant shade, -but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still hour. -There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, -in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself -forming as to what I should see straight before me and across -the lake as a consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached -at this juncture to the stitching in which I was engaged, -and I can feel once more the spasm of my effort not to move them -till I should so have steadied myself as to be able to make up -my mind what to do. There was an alien object in view--a figure -whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. -I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, -reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, -then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even -of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the village. -That reminder had as little effect on my practical -certitude as I was conscious--still even without looking-- -of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. -Nothing was more natural than that these things should be -the other things that they absolutely were not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself -as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the -right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, -I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, -was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant -with the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; -and I held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some -sudden innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. -I waited, but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is -something more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate-- -I was determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her -had previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, -also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the water. -This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with the confirmed -conviction that we were still, together, under direct personal notice. -She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which happened to have in it -a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of sticking -in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the thing a boat. -This second morsel, as I watched her, she was very markedly and intently -attempting to tighten in its place. My apprehension of what she was doing -sustained me so that after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. -Then I again shifted my eyes--I faced what I had to face. - - - - VII - - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can -give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. -Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: -"They KNOW--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!" - -"And what on earth--?" I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -"Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!" -Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only -now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"-- -I could scarce articulate--"Flora SAW!" - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. -"She has told you?" she panted. - -"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! -The child of eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still, -for me, was the stupefaction of it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. -"Then how do you know?" - -"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware." - -"Do you mean aware of HIM?" - -"No--of HER." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked -prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them -in my companion's face. "Another person--this time; -but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil: -a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also, -and such a face!--on the other side of the lake. -I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst -of it she came." - -"Came how--from where?" - -"From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there-- -but not so near." - -"And without coming nearer?" - -"Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!" - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. -"Was she someone you've never seen?" - -"Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have." -Then, to show how I had thought it all out: "My predecessor-- -the one who died." - -"Miss Jessel?" - -"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?" - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. -"Then ask Flora--SHE'S sure!" But I had no sooner spoken -than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, DON'T!" -She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!" - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. -"Ah, how CAN you?" - -"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know." - -"It's only then to spare you." - -"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, -the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. -I don't know what I DON'T see--what I DON'T fear!" - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid -of seeing her again?" - -"Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained. -"It's of NOT seeing her." - -But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you." - -"Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child assuredly -WILL--without my knowing it." - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, -yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive -force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would -really be to give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! -And after all, if she doesn't mind it--!" She even tried a grim joke. -"Perhaps she likes it!" - -"Likes SUCH things--a scrap of an infant!" - -"Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend bravely inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. -"Oh, we must clutch at THAT--we must cling to it! -If it isn't a proof of what you say, it's a proof of--God knows what! -For the woman's a horror of horrors." - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; -then at last raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said. - -"Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried. - -"Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated. - -"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked." - -"At you, do you mean--so wickedly?" - -"Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. -She only fixed the child." - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" - -"Ah, with such awful eyes!" - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. -"Do you mean of dislike?" - -"God help us, no. Of something much worse." - -"Worse than dislike?--this left her indeed at a loss. - -"With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention." - -I made her turn pale. "Intention?" - -"To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering -on mine--gave a shudder and walked to the window; -and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement. -"THAT'S what Flora knows." - -After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you say?" - -"In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with -extraordinary beauty." I now recognized to what I had at last, -stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite -visibly weighed this. "Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted; -"wonderfully handsome. But infamous." - -She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--WAS infamous." -She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it -as tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I -might draw from this disclosure. "They were both infamous," -she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely -a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I appreciate," -I said, "the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; -but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing." -She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; -seeing which I went on: "I must have it now. Of what did she die? -Come, there was something between them." - -"There was everything." - -"In spite of the difference--?" - -"Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully out. -"SHE was a lady." - -I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady." - -"And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, -on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent -an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement. -There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily -for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's late clever, -good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. -"The fellow was a hound." - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case -for a sense of shades. "I've never seen one like him. -He did what he wished." - -"With HER?" - -"With them all." - -It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. -I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as -distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision: -"It must have been also what SHE wished!" - -Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said -at the same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!" - -"Then you do know what she died of?" I asked. - -"No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn't; -and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!" - -"Yet you had, then, your idea--" - -"Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. -She couldn't have stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! -And afterward I imagined--and I still imagine. And what I -imagine is dreadful." - -"Not so dreadful as what _I_ do," I replied; on which I must -have shown her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of -miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, -and at the renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. -I burst, as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; -she took me to her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. -"I don't do it!" I sobbed in despair; "I don't save or shield them! -It's far worse than I dreamed--they're lost!" - - - - VIII - - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter I -had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution to sound; -so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of a common mind -about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We were to keep our -heads if we should keep nothing else--difficult indeed as that might be in -the face of what, in our prodigious experience, was least to be questioned. -Late that night, while the house slept, we had another talk in my room, -when she went all the way with me as to its being beyond doubt that I -had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold her perfectly in the pinch -of that, I found I had only to ask her how, if I had "made it up," -I came to be able to give, of each of the persons appearing to me, -a picture disclosing, to the last detail, their special marks--a portrait -on the exhibition of which she had instantly recognized and named them. -She wished of course--small blame to her!--to sink the whole subject; -and I was quick to assure her that my own interest in it had now -violently taken the form of a search for the way to escape from it. -I encountered her on the ground of a probability that with recurrence-- -for recurrence we took for granted--I should get used to my danger, -distinctly professing that my personal exposure had suddenly become -the least of my discomforts. It was my new suspicion that was intolerable; -and yet even to this complication the later hours of the day had brought -a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned -to my pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with -that sense of their charm which I had already found to be a thing -I could positively cultivate and which had never failed me yet. -I had simply, in other words, plunged afresh into Flora's -special society and there become aware--it was almost a luxury!-- -that she could put her little conscious hand straight upon -the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet speculation -and then had accused me to my face of having "cried." -I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I -could literally--for the time, at all events--rejoice, under this -fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. -To gaze into the depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce -their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty -of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred -to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation. -I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat -to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in the small hours-- -that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart, -and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell -to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. -It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, -I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, -in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show -of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate -the certitude of the moment itself and repeat how it had come -to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion I -then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. -It was a pity that I should have had to quaver out again -the reasons for my not having, in my delusion, so much -as questioned that the little girl saw our visitant even -as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, -by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she -didn't, and at the same time, without showing anything, -arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity -that I needed once more to describe the portentous little activity -by which she sought to divert my attention--the perceptible -increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, -the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, -in this review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements -of comfort that still remained to me. I should not for instance have -been able to asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was -so much to the good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. -I should not have been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation -of mind--I scarce know what to call it--to invoke such further -aid to intelligence as might spring from pushing my colleague -fairly to the wall. She had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, -a great deal; but a small shifty spot on the wrong side of it -all still sometimes brushed my brow like the wing of a bat; -and I remember how on this occasion--for the sleeping house and -the concentration alike of our danger and our watch seemed to help-- -I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to the curtain. -"I don't believe anything so horrible," I recollect saying; -"no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don't. But if I did, -you know, there's a thing I should require now, just without sparing -you the least bit more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get out of you. -What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, -over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, -that you didn't pretend for him that he had not literally EVER -been `bad'? He has NOT literally `ever,' in these weeks that I -myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been -an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness. -Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him -if you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. -What was your exception, and to what passage in your personal -observation of him did you refer?" - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, at any -rate, before the gray dawn admonished us to separate I had got my answer. -What my friend had had in mind proved to be immensely to the purpose. -It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a period -of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. -It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she had ventured to criticize -the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, -and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel. -Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, requested her to mind her -business, and the good woman had, on this, directly approached little Miles. -What she had said to him, since I pressed, was that SHE liked to see -young gentlemen not forget their station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. "You reminded him that Quint -was only a base menial?" - -"As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, -that was bad." - -"And for another thing?" I waited. "He repeated your words to Quint?" - -"No, not that. It's just what he WOULDN'T!" she could -still impress upon me. "I was sure, at any rate," she added, -"that he didn't. But he denied certain occasions." - -"What occasions?" - -"When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his tutor-- -and a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little lady. -When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours with him." - -"He then prevaricated about it--he said he hadn't?" -Her assent was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: -"I see. He lied." - -"Oh!" Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn't matter; -which indeed she backed up by a further remark. "You see, after all, -Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't forbid him." - -I considered. "Did he put that to you as a justification?" - -At this she dropped again. "No, he never spoke of it." - -"Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?" - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. "Well, he didn't -show anything. He denied," she repeated; "he denied." - -Lord, how I pressed her now! "So that you could see he knew -what was between the two wretches?" - -"I don't know--I don't know!" the poor woman groaned. - -"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't -my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity -and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, -when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, -most of all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! -There was something in the boy that suggested to you," I continued, -"that he covered and concealed their relation." - -"Oh, he couldn't prevent--" - -"Your learning the truth? I daresay! But, heavens," I fell, -with vehemence, athinking, "what it shows that they must, -to that extent, have succeeded in making of him!" - -"Ah, nothing that's not nice NOW!" Mrs. Grose lugubriously pleaded. - -"I don't wonder you looked queer," I persisted, "when I mentioned -to you the letter from his school!" - -"I doubt if I looked as queer as you!" she retorted with homely force. -"And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an angel now?" - -"Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, how? -Well," I said in my torment, "you must put it to me again, -but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it -to me again!" I cried in a way that made my friend stare. -"There are directions in which I must not for the present -let myself go." Meanwhile I returned to her first example-- -the one to which she had just previously referred-- -of the boy's happy capacity for an occasional slip. -"If Quint--on your remonstrance at the time you speak of-- -was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, -I find myself guessing, was that you were another." -Again her admission was so adequate that I continued: -"And you forgave him that?" - -"Wouldn't YOU?" - -"Oh, yes!" And we exchanged there, in the stillness, -a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on: -"At all events, while he was with the man--" - -"Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!" - -It suited me, too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean -that it suited exactly the particularly deadly view I -was in the very act of forbidding myself to entertain. -But I so far succeeded in checking the expression of this view -that I will throw, just here, no further light on it than may be -offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. -"His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging -specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him -of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "They must do, -for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch." - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face -how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote -struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. -This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. -"Surely you don't accuse HIM--" - -"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? -Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." -Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage, -to her own place, "I must just wait," I wound up. - - - - IX - - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, -took something from my consternation. A very few of them, -in fact, passing, in constant sight of my pupils, -without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies -and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. -I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary -childish grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, -and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself -to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I -can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my -new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater -tension still had it not been so frequently successful. -I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I -thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that -these things only made them more interesting was not by itself -a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they -should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting. -Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I -so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be-- -blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, -I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. -As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: -"What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" -It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how -much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours -of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate -charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective -even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. -For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite -suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, -so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness -in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond -of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a -graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. -The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, -for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself, -as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. -They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their -poor protectress; I mean--though they got their lessons better -and better, which was naturally what would please her most-- -in the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; -reading her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, -pouncing out at her, in disguises, as animals and historical -characters, and above all astonishing her by the "pieces" they -had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. -I should never get to the bottom--were I to let myself go even now-- -of the prodigious private commentary, all under still more -private correction, with which, in these days, I overscored -their full hours. They had shown me from the first a facility -for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, -achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks -as if they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance -of the gift, in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. -They not only popped out at me as tigers and as Romans, -but as Shakespeareans, astronomers, and navigators. -This was so singularly the case that it had presumably -much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, -I am at a loss for a different explanation: I allude to my -unnatural composure on the subject of another school for Miles. -What I remember is that I was content not, for the time, -to open the question, and that contentment must have sprung -from the sense of his perpetually striking show of cleverness. -He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson's daughter, -to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread -in the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression -I might have got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was -under some influence operating in his small intellectual life -as a tremendous incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone school, -it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -"kicked out" by a schoolmaster was a mystification without end. -Let me add that in their company now--and I was careful almost -never to be out of it--I could follow no scent very far. We lived -in a cloud of music and love and success and private theatricals. -The musical sense in each of the children was of the quickest, -but the elder in especial had a marvelous knack of catching and repeating. -The schoolroom piano broke into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed -there were confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going -out in the highest spirits in order to "come in" as something new. -I had had brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little -girls could be slavish idolaters of little boys. What surpassed -everything was that there was a little boy in the world who could have -for the inferior age, sex, and intelligence so fine a consideration. -They were extraordinarily at one, and to say that they never either -quarreled or complained is to make the note of praise coarse for their -quality of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, when I dropped into coarseness, -I perhaps came across traces of little understandings between them by -which one of them should keep me occupied while the other slipped away. -There is a naive side, I suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils -practiced upon me, it was surely with the minimum of grossness. -It was all in the other quarter that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. -In going on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, -I not only challenge the most liberal faith--for which I -little care; but--and this is another matter--I renew what I -myself suffered, I again push my way through it to the end. -There came suddenly an hour after which, as I look back, -the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; -but I have at least reached the heart of it, -and the straightest road out is doubtless to advance. -One evening--with nothing to lead up or to prepare it-- -I felt the cold touch of the impression that had breathed -on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, -as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little -of in memory had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. -I had not gone to bed; I sat reading by a couple of candles. -There was a roomful of old books at Bly--last-century fiction, -some of it, which, to the extent of a distinctly deprecated renown, -but never to so much as that of a stray specimen, had reached -the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed curiosity -of my youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand -was Fielding's Amelia; also that I was wholly awake. -I recall further both a general conviction that it was horribly -late and a particular objection to looking at my watch. -I figure, finally, that the white curtain draping, -in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora's -little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, -the perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, -though I was deeply interested in my author, I found myself, -at the turn of a page and with his spell all scattered, -looking straight up from him and hard at the door of my room. -There was a moment during which I listened, reminded of -the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being -something undefinably astir in the house, and noted the soft -breath of the open casement just move the half-drawn blind. -Then, with all the marks of a deliberation that must have -seemed magnificent had there been anyone to admire it, -I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, taking a candle, -went straight out of the room and, from the passage, -on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed -and locked the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I went -straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came within sight -of the tall window that presided over the great turn of the staircase. -At this point I precipitately found myself aware of three things. -They were practically simultaneous, yet they had flashes of succession. -My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, and I perceived, by the uncovered -window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. -Without it, the next instant, I saw that there was someone on the stair. -I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen -myself for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached -the landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, -where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed -me from the tower and from the garden. He knew me as well as I knew him; -and so, in the cold, faint twilight, with a glimmer in the high glass -and another on the polish of the oak stair below, we faced each -other in our common intensity. He was absolutely, on this occasion, -a living, detestable, dangerous presence. But that was not the wonder -of wonders; I reserve this distinction for quite another circumstance: -the circumstance that dread had unmistakably quitted me and that there -was nothing in me there that didn't meet and measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, -but I had, thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not--I found -myself at the end of an instant magnificently aware of this. -I felt, in a fierce rigor of confidence, that if I stood -my ground a minute I should cease--for the time, at least-- -to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, accordingly, -the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it WAS human, as human as to have -met alone, in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, -some adventurer, some criminal. It was the dead silence of our -long gaze at such close quarters that gave the whole horror, -huge as it was, its only note of the unnatural. If I had met -a murderer in such a place and at such an hour, we still at -least would have spoken. Something would have passed, in life, -between us; if nothing had passed, one of us would have moved. -The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little -more to make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't -express what followed it save by saying that the silence itself-- -which was indeed in a manner an attestation of my strength-- -became the element into which I saw the figure disappear; -in which I definitely saw it turn as I might have seen the low -wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt of an order, -and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no hunch -could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase -and into the darkness in which the next bend was lost. - - - - X - - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect -presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had gone: -then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there -by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Flora's -little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all -the terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. -I dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which -(for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) -the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; -then my step, to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: -I perceived an agitation of the window blind, and the child, -ducking down, emerged rosily from the other side of it. -She stood there in so much of her candor and so little of her nightgown, -with her pink bare feet and the golden glow of her curls. -She looked intensely grave, and I had never had such a sense of losing -an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just been so prodigious) -as on my consciousness that she addressed me with a reproach. -"You naughty: where HAVE you been?"--instead of challenging -her own irregularity I found myself arraigned and explaining. -She herself explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, -eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay there, -that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, -back into my chair--feeling then, and then only, a little faint; -and she had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon -my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the candle full -in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. -I remember closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, -as before the excess of something beautiful that shone out of the blue -of her own. "You were looking for me out of the window?" I said. -"You thought I might be walking in the grounds?" - -"Well, you know, I thought someone was"--she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! "And did you see anyone?" - -"Ah, NO!" she returned, almost with the full privilege -of childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long -sweetness in her little drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed -she lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle -of the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. -One of these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, -to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, -wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. -Why not break out at her on the spot and have it all over?-- -give it to her straight in her lovely little lighted face? -"You see, you see, you KNOW that you do and that you already quite -suspect I believe it; therefore, why not frankly confess it to me, -so that we may at least live with it together and learn perhaps, -in the strangeness of our fate, where we are and what it means?" -This solicitation dropped, alas, as it came: if I could immediately -have succumbed to it I might have spared myself--well, you'll see what. -Instead of succumbing I sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, -and took a helpless middle way. "Why did you pull the curtain -over the place to make me think you were still there?" - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -"Because I don't like to frighten you!" - -"But if I had, by your idea, gone out--?" - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate -as impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. "Oh, but you know," -she quite adequately answered, "that you might come back, you dear, -and that you HAVE!" And after a little, when she had got into bed, -I had, for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, -to prove that I recognized the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my nights. -I repeatedly sat up till I didn't know when; I selected moments when my -roommate unmistakably slept, and, stealing out, took noiseless turns -in the passage and even pushed as far as to where I had last met Quint. -But I never met him there again; and I may as well say at once -that I on no other occasion saw him in the house. I just missed, -on the staircase, on the other hand, a different adventure. -Looking down it from the top I once recognized the presence of a woman -seated on one of the lower steps with her back presented to me, -her body half-bowed and her head, in an attitude of woe, in her hands. -I had been there but an instant, however, when she vanished without -looking round at me. I knew, nonetheless, exactly what dreadful face -she had to show; and I wondered whether, if instead of being above I had -been below, I should have had, for going up, the same nerve I had lately -shown Quint. Well, there continued to be plenty of chance for nerve. -On the eleventh night after my latest encounter with that gentleman-- -they were all numbered now--I had an alarm that perilously skirted it -and that indeed, from the particular quality of its unexpectedness, -proved quite my sharpest shock. It was precisely the first night during -this series that, weary with watching, I had felt that I might again -without laxity lay myself down at my old hour. I slept immediately and, -as I afterward knew, till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was -to sit straight up, as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. -I had left a light burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant -certainty that Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet -and straight, in the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. -A glance at the window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match -completed the picture. - -The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had again, -for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw-- -as she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved -to me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my reillumination -nor by the haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. -Hidden, protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill-- -the casement opened forward--and gave herself up. There was a great -still moon to help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. -She was face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, -and could now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. -What I, on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, -to reach, from the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. -I got to the door without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it, -and listened, from the other side, for some sound from her. -While I stood in the passage I had my eyes on her brother's door, -which was but ten steps off and which, indescribably, produced in me -a renewal of the strange impulse that I lately spoke of as my temptation. -What if I should go straight in and march to HIS window?--what if, -by risking to his boyish bewilderment a revelation of my motive, -I should throw across the rest of the mystery the long halter -of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his -threshold and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured -to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were -also empty and he too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, -soundless minute, at the end of which my impulse failed. -He was quiet; he might be innocent; the risk was hideous; -I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a figure -prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; -but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. -I hesitated afresh, but on other grounds and only for a few seconds; -then I had made my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, -and it was only a question of choosing the right one. -The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one-- -though high above the gardens--in the solid corner of the house -that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was a large, -square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant -size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, -though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. -I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, -after just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, -to pass across it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of -the shutters. Achieving this transit, I uncovered the glass -without a sound and, applying my face to the pane, was able, -the darkness without being much less than within, to see that I -commanded the right direction. Then I saw something more. -The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and -showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, -who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up -to where I had appeared--looking, that is, not so much -straight at me as at something that was apparently above me. -There was clearly another person above me--there was a person -on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least -what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. -The presence on the lawn--I felt sick as I made it out-- -was poor little Miles himself. - - - - XI - - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; -the rigor with which I kept my pupils in sight making it often -difficult to meet her privately, and the more as we each felt -the importance of not provoking--on the part of the servants -quite as much as on that of the children--any suspicion -of a secret flurry or that of a discussion of mysteries. -I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass -on to others my horrible confidences. She believed me, -I was sure, absolutely: if she hadn't I don't know what would -have become of me, for I couldn't have borne the business alone. -But she was a magnificent monument to the blessing of a want -of imagination, and if she could see in our little charges nothing -but their beauty and amiability, their happiness and cleverness, -she had no direct communication with the sources of my trouble. -If they had been at all visibly blighted or battered, she would -doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard enough -to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, -when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded -and the habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord's -mercy that if they were ruined the pieces would still serve. -Flights of fancy gave place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, -and I had already begun to perceive how, with the development -of the conviction that--as time went on without a public accident-- -our young things could, after all, look out for themselves, -she addressed her greatest solicitude to the sad case presented -by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound simplification: -I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell no tales, -but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added -strain to find myself anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, -on the terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon -sun was now agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, -at a distance, but within call if we wished, the children -strolled to and fro in one of their most manageable moods. -They moved slowly, in unison, below us, over the lawn, the boy, -as they went, reading aloud from a storybook and passing -his arm round his sister to keep her quite in touch. -Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught -the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously -turned to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. -I had made her a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd -recognition of my superiority--my accomplishments and my function-- -in her patience under my pain. She offered her mind to my -disclosures as, had I wished to mix a witch's broth and proposed it -with assurance, she would have held out a large clean saucepan. -This had become thoroughly her attitude by the time that, -in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the point -of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such -a monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he happened -now to be, I had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, -at the window, with a concentrated need of not alarming the house, -rather that method than a signal more resonant. I had left -her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of representing -with success even to her actual sympathy my sense of the real -splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got -him into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge. -As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, -he had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken -his hand without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, -up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, -along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and so to -his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered-- -oh, HOW I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his -little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque. -It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, -over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. -It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn't play any -longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? -There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this -question an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. -I was confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk -attached even now to sounding my own horrid note. -I remember in fact that as we pushed into his little chamber, -where the bed had not been slept in at all and the window, -uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear that there -was no need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly dropped, -sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea -that he must know how he really, as they say, "had" me. -He could do what he liked, with all his cleverness to help him, -so long as I should continue to defer to the old tradition -of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who -minister to superstitions and fears. He "had" me indeed, -and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would -consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor -of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect -intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless -to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely -less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, -stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. -I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet -had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness -as those with which, while I rested against the bed, -I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, -in form at least, to put it to him. - -"You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out for? -What were you doing there?" - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. -"If I tell you why, will you understand?" My heart, -at this, leaped into my mouth. WOULD he tell me why? -I found no sound on my lips to press it, and I was aware -of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. -He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at -him he stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. -It was his brightness indeed that gave me a respite. -Would it be so great if he were really going to tell me? -"Well," he said at last, "just exactly in order that you -should do this." - -"Do what?" - -"Think me--for a change--BAD!" I shall never forget the sweetness -and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, -he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. -I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute -in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly -the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, -and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, -as I presently glanced about the room, I could say-- - -"Then you didn't undress at all?" - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. -I sat up and read." - -"And when did you go down?" - -"At midnight. When I'm bad I AM bad!" - -"I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would know it?" - -"Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His answers rang out with a readiness! -"She was to get up and look out." - -"Which is what she did do." It was I who fell into the trap! - -"So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, -you also looked--you saw." - -"While you," I concurred, "caught your death in the night air!" - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly -to assent. "How otherwise should I have been bad enough?" he asked. -Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed -on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, -he had been able to draw upon. - - - - XII - - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, -I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, -though I reinforced it with the mention of still another remark -that he had made before we separated. "It all lies in half a -dozen words," I said to her, "words that really settle the matter. -'Think, you know, what I MIGHT do!' He threw that off to show -me how good he is. He knows down to the ground what he `might' do. -That's what he gave them a taste of at school." - -"Lord, you do change!" cried my friend. - -"I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had -been with either child, you would clearly have understood. -The more I've watched and waited the more I've felt that if -there were nothing else to make it sure it would be made -so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a slip -of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their -old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. -Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show -off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend -to be lost in their fairytale they're steeped in their vision -of the dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared; -"they're talking of THEM--they're talking horrors! -I go on, I know, as if I were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not. -What I've seen would have made YOU so; but it has only made -me more lucid, made me get hold of still other things." - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures -who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their -interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by; -and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath -of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. -"Of what other things have you got hold?" - -"Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, -at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. -Their more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. -It's a game," I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!" - -"On the part of little darlings--?" - -"As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!" -The very act of bringing it out really helped me to -trace it--follow it all up and piece it all together. -"They haven't been good--they've only been absent. -It has been easy to live with them, because they're simply leading -a life of their own. They're not mine--they're not ours. -They're his and they're hers!" - -"Quint's and that woman's?" - -"Quint's and that woman's. They want to get to them." - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! -"But for what?" - -"For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, -the pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, -to keep up the work of demons, is what brings the others back." - -"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was homely, but it -revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, in the bad time-- -for there had been a worse even than this!--must have occurred. There could -have been no such justification for me as the plain assent of her experience -to whatever depth of depravity I found credible in our brace of scoundrels. -It was in obvious submission of memory that she brought out after a moment: -"They WERE rascals! But what can they now do?" she pursued. - -"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed at -their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at us. -"Don't they do enough?" I demanded in a lower tone, while the children, -having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed their exhibition. -We were held by it a minute; then I answered: "They can destroy them!" -At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry she launched was -a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more explicit. -"They don't know, as yet, quite how--but they're trying hard. -They're seen only across, as it were, and beyond--in strange places -and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, the outside -of windows, the further edge of pools; but there's a deep design, -on either side, to shorten the distance and overcome the obstacle; -and the success of the tempters is only a question of time. -They've only to keep to their suggestions of danger." - -"For the children to come?" - -"And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly got up, -and I scrupulously added: "Unless, of course, we can prevent!" - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly -turned things over. "Their uncle must do the preventing. -He must take them away." - -"And who's to make him?" - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me -a foolish face. "You, miss." - -"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little -nephew and niece mad?" - -"But if they ARE, miss?" - -"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him -by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry." - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate worry. -That was the great reason--" - -"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his -indifference must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend, -at any rate, I shouldn't take him in." - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again -and grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you." - -I stared. "To ME?" I had a sudden fear of what she might do. "'Him'?" - -"He ought to BE here--he ought to help." - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face -than ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her -eyes on my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even-- -as a woman reads another--she could see what I myself saw: -his derision, his amusement, his contempt for the breakdown -of my resignation at being left alone and for the fine machinery I -had set in motion to attract his attention to my slighted charms. -She didn't know--no one knew--how proud I had been to serve -him and to stick to our terms; yet she nonetheless took -the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. -"If you should so lose your head as to appeal to him for me--" - -She was really frightened. "Yes, miss?" - -"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you." - - - - - XIII - - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved -quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered, -in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. -This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations -and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper, -of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. -It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere -infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they -were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, -in a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. -I don't mean that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did -anything vulgar, for that was not one of their dangers: -I do mean, on the other hand, that the element of the unnamed -and untouched became, between us, greater than any other, -and that so much avoidance could not have been so successfully -effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. -It was as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight -of subjects before which we must stop short, turning suddenly -out of alleys that we perceived to be blind, closing with a little -bang that made us look at each other--for, like all bangs, -it was something louder than we had intended--the doors we -had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to Rome, and there -were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch -of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground. -Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead -in general and of whatever, in especial, might survive, -in memory, of the friends little children had lost. -There were days when I could have sworn that one of them had, -with a small invisible nudge, said to the other: -"She thinks she'll do it this time--but she WON'T!" To "do it" -would have been to indulge for instance--and for once in a way-- -in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for -my discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages -in my own history, to which I had again and again treated them; -they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, -had had, with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures -and of those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog -at home, as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature -of my father, of the furniture and arrangement of our house, -and of the conversation of the old women of our village. -There were things enough, taking one with another, to chatter about, -if one went very fast and knew by instinct when to go round. -They pulled with an art of their own the strings of my invention -and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, when I thought -of such occasions afterward, gave me so the suspicion of being -watched from under cover. It was in any case over MY life, -MY past, and MY friends alone that we could take anything -like our ease--a state of affairs that led them sometimes without -the least pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. -I was invited--with no visible connection--to repeat afresh -Goody Gosling's celebrated mot or to confirm the details -already supplied as to the cleverness of the vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite -different ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, -my predicament, as I have called it, grew most sensible. -The fact that the days passed for me without another encounter ought, -it would have appeared, to have done something toward soothing my nerves. -Since the light brush, that second night on the upper landing, -of the presence of a woman at the foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, -whether in or out of the house, that one had better not have seen. -There was many a corner round which I expected to come upon Quint, -and many a situation that, in a merely sinister way, would have favored -the appearance of Miss Jessel. The summer had turned, the summer had gone; -the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. -The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces -and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance-- -all strewn with crumpled playbills. There were exactly states of the air, -conditions of sound and of stillness, unspeakable impressions -of the KIND of ministering moment, that brought back to me, -long enough to catch it, the feeling of the medium in which, -that June evening out of doors, I had had my first sight of Quint, -and in which, too, at those other instants, I had, after seeing him -through the window, looked for him in vain in the circle of shrubbery. -I recognized the signs, the portents--I recognized the moment, the spot. -But they remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; -if unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, -in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened. -I had said in my talk with Mrs. Grose on that horrid scene of Flora's -by the lake--and had perplexed her by so saying--that it would from -that moment distress me much more to lose my power than to keep it. -I had then expressed what was vividly in my mind: the truth that, -whether the children really saw or not--since, that is, it was -not yet definitely proved--I greatly preferred, as a safeguard, -the fullness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst -that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was -that my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened. -Well, my eyes WERE sealed, it appeared, at present-- -a consummation for which it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. -There was, alas, a difficulty about that: I would have thanked -him with all my soul had I not had in a proportionate measure this -conviction of the secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? -There were times of our being together when I would have been ready -to swear that, literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense -of it closed, they had visitors who were known and were welcome. -Then it was that, had I not been deterred by the very chance that -such an injury might prove greater than the injury to be averted, -my exultation would have broken out. "They're here, they're here, -you little wretches," I would have cried, "and you can't deny it now!" -The little wretches denied it with all the added volume of their -sociability and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths of which-- -like the flash of a fish in a stream--the mockery of their advantage -peeped up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper -than I knew on the night when, looking out to see either Quint -or Miss Jessel under the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose -rest I watched and who had immediately brought in with him-- -had straightway, there, turned it on me--the lovely upward look with which, -from the battlements above me, the hideous apparition of Quint had played. -If it was a question of a scare, my discovery on this occasion -had scared me more than any other, and it was in the condition -of nerves produced by it that I made my actual inductions. -They harassed me so that sometimes, at odd moments, I shut myself -up audibly to rehearse--it was at once a fantastic relief and a -renewed despair--the manner in which I might come to the point. -I approached it from one side and the other while, in my room, -I flung myself about, but I always broke down in the monstrous -utterance of names. As they died away on my lips, I said to myself -that I should indeed help them to represent something infamous, -if, by pronouncing them, I should violate as rare a little case -of instinctive delicacy as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. -When I said to myself: "THEY have the manners to be silent, -and you, trusted as you are, the baseness to speak!" -I felt myself crimson and I covered my face with my hands. -After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, going on -volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes occurred-- -I can call them nothing else--the strange, dizzy lift or swim -(I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that had -nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we -might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened -exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano. -Then it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. -Though they were not angels, they "passed," as the French say, -causing me, while they stayed, to tremble with the fear of their -addressing to their younger victims some yet more infernal message -or more vivid image than they had thought good enough for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw MORE--things terrible -and unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse -in the past. Such things naturally left on the surface, -for the time, a chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; -and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such splendid -training that we went, each time, almost automatically, to mark -the close of the incident, through the very same movements. -It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss me inveterately -with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to fail--one or the other-- -of the precious question that had helped us through many a peril. -"When do you think he WILL come? Don't you think we OUGHT -to write?"--there was nothing like that inquiry, we found -by experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. "He" of course -was their uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion -of theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle. -It was impossible to have given less encouragement than he had done -to such a doctrine, but if we had not had the doctrine to fall back upon -we should have deprived each other of some of our finest exhibitions. -He never wrote to them--that may have been selfish, but it was a part -of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a man -pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more -festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort; -and I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not -to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that their own -letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too beautiful -to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this hour. -This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect of my being -plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be among us. -It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward -than anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, -moreover, as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary -than the mere fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, -I never lost patience with them. Adorable they must in truth -have been, I now reflect, that I didn't in these days hate them! -Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, -finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived. -I call it relief, though it was only the relief that a snap brings -to a strain or the burst of a thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. -It was at least change, and it came with a rush. - - - - XIV - - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my side -and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in sight. -It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some time; -the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, bright and sharp, -made the church bells almost gay. It was an odd accident of thought -that I should have happened at such a moment to be particularly -and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my little charges. -Why did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual society? -Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had all but pinned -the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions were marshaled -before me, I might have appeared to provide against some danger of rebellion. -I was like a gaoler with an eye to possible surprises and escapes. -But all this belonged--I mean their magnificent little surrender-- -just to the special array of the facts that were most abysmal. -Turned out for Sunday by his uncle's tailor, who had had a free -hand and a notion of pretty waistcoats and of his grand little air, -Miles's whole title to independence, the rights of his sex and situation, -were so stamped upon him that if he had suddenly struck for freedom -I should have had nothing to say. I was by the strangest of chances -wondering how I should meet him when the revolution unmistakably occurred. -I call it a revolution because I now see how, with the word he spoke, -the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful drama, and the catastrophe -was precipitated. "Look here, my dear, you know," he charmingly said, -"when in the world, please, am I going back to school?" - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, -particularly as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, -at all interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, -he threw off intonations as if he were tossing roses. -There was something in them that always made one "catch," and -I caught, at any rate, now so effectually that I stopped as short -as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road. -There was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was -perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do so, -he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming than usual. -I could feel in him how he already, from my at first finding -nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained. -I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, -after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile: -"You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS--!" -His "my dear" was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing -could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment with -which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. -It was so respectfully easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! -I remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see in -the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I looked. -"And always with the same lady?" I returned. - -He neither blanched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. "Ah, of course, she's a jolly, `perfect' lady; but, after all, -I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's--well, getting on." - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. -"Yes, you're getting on." Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea -of how he seemed to know that and to play with it. -"And you can't say I've not been awfully good, can you?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much -better it would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. -"No, I can't say that, Miles." - -"Except just that one night, you know--!" - -"That one night?" I couldn't look as straight as he. - -"Why, when I went down--went out of the house." - -"Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for." - -"You forget?"--he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish reproach. -"Why, it was to show you I could!" - -"Oh, yes, you could." - -"And I can again." - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping -my wits about me. "Certainly. But you won't." - -"No, not THAT again. It was nothing." - -"It was nothing," I said. "But we must go on." - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. -"Then when AM I going back?" - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. -"Were you very happy at school?" - -He just considered. "Oh, I'm happy enough anywhere!" - -"Well, then," I quavered, "if you're just as happy here--!" - -"Ah, but that isn't everything! Of course YOU know a lot--" - -"But you hint that you know almost as much?" I risked as he paused. - -"Not half I want to!" Miles honestly professed. -"But it isn't so much that." - -"What is it, then?" - -"Well--I want to see more life." - -"I see; I see." We had arrived within sight of the church and -of various persons, including several of the household of Bly, -on their way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. -I quickened our step; I wanted to get there before the question -between us opened up much further; I reflected hungrily that, -for more than an hour, he would have to be silent; and I thought -with envy of the comparative dusk of the pew and of the almost -spiritual help of the hassock on which I might bend my knees. -I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion -to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got -in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, -he threw out-- - -"I want my own sort!" - -It literally made me bound forward. "There are not many of your -own sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless perhaps dear little Flora!" - -"You really compare me to a baby girl?" - -This found me singularly weak. "Don't you, then, LOVE -our sweet Flora?" - -"If I didn't--and you, too; if I didn't--!" he repeated as if -retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, -after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed -on me by the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. -Mrs. Grose and Flora had passed into the church, the other -worshippers had followed, and we were, for the minute, -alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, on the path -from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -"Yes, if you didn't--?" - -He looked, while I waited, at the graves. "Well, you know what!" -But he didn't move, and he presently produced something that made -me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to rest. -"Does my uncle think what YOU think?" - -I markedly rested. "How do you know what I think?" - -"Ah, well, of course I don't; for it strikes me you never tell me. -But I mean does HE know?" - -"Know what, Miles?" - -"Why, the way I'm going on." - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, -no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice -of my employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, -at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. -"I don't think your uncle much cares." - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. "Then don't you think he can -be made to?" - -"In what way?" - -"Why, by his coming down." - -"But who'll get him to come down?" - -"_I_ will!" the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis. -He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched -off alone into church. - - - - XV - - -The business was practically settled from the moment I -never followed him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, -but my being aware of this had somehow no power to restore me. -I only sat there on my tomb and read into what my little -friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; -by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, -for absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils -and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay. -What I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something -out of me and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this -awkward collapse. He had got out of me that there was something -I was much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make -use of my fear to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. -My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable question -of the grounds of his dismissal from school, for that was -really but the question of the horrors gathered behind. -That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things -was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have -desired to bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness -and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived -from hand to mouth. The boy, to my deep discomposure, -was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to me: -"Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me -to lead with you a life that's so unnatural for a boy." -What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was concerned -with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. -I walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected -that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. -Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was too -extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew: -he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm -into mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, -silent contact with his commentary on our talk. For the first -minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him. -As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the sounds -of worship, I was taken with an impulse that might master me, -I felt, completely should I give it the least encouragement. -I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting -away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; -I could give the whole thing up--turn my back and retreat. -It was only a question of hurrying again, for a few preparations, -to the house which the attendance at church of so many of -the servants would practically have left unoccupied. No one, -in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off. -What was it to get away if I got away only till dinner? -That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which-- -I had the acute prevision--my little pupils would play at -innocent wonder about my nonappearance in their train. - -"What DID you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, -to worry us so--and take our thoughts off, too, don't you know?-- -did you desert us at the very door?" I couldn't meet such -questions nor, as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; -yet it was all so exactly what I should have to meet that, -as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came straight -out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps through the park. -It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up my mind I -would fly. The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, -in which I met no one, fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. -Were I to get off quickly, this way, I should get off without a scene, -without a word. My quickness would have to be remarkable, however, -and the question of a conveyance was the great one to settle. -Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember -sinking down at the foot of the staircase--suddenly collapsing there -on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it -was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night -and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most -horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself; I went -the rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, -where there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take. -But I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed. -In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at -the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed -at home to look after the place and who, availing herself -of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom -table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself -to the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart. -There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested on -the table, her hands with evident weariness supported her head; -but at the moment I took this in I had already become aware that, -in spite of my entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. -Then it was--with the very act of its announcing itself-- -that her identity flared up in a change of posture. -She rose, not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable -grand melancholy of indifference and detachment, and, within a -dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile predecessor. -Dishonored and tragic, she was all before me; but even as I -fixed and, for memory, secured it, the awful image passed away. -Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her -unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say -that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. -While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary -chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. -It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing -her--"You terrible, miserable woman!"--I heard myself break -into a sound that, by the open door, rang through the long -passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she -heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. -There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine -and a sense that I must stay. - - - - XVI - - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would -be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having -to take into account that they were dumb about my absence. -Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion -to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving -that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. -I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in some -way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would -engage to break down on the first private opportunity. -This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes -with her in the housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, -amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all -swept and garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity -before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her best: -facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, -shining room, a large clean image of the "put away"-- -of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. - -"Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them-- -so long as they were there--of course I promised. -But what had happened to you?" - -"I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come -back to meet a friend." - -She showed her surprise. "A friend--YOU?" - -"Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give -you a reason?" - -"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would -like it better. Do you like it better?" - -My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" -But after an instant I added: "Did they say why I should -like it better?" - -"No; Master Miles only said, "We must do nothing but what she likes!" - -"I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?" - -"Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, `Oh, of course, of course!'-- -and I said the same." - -I thought a moment. "You were too sweet, too--I can hear you all. -But nonetheless, between Miles and me, it's now all out." - -"All out?" My companion stared. "But what, miss?" - -"Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. -I came home, my dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose -literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; -so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal -of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. "A talk! -Do you mean she spoke?" - -"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom." - -"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, -and the candor of her stupefaction. - -"That she suffers the torments--!" - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. -"Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?" - -"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them-" -I faltered myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. -"To share them--?" - -"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have fallen -away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to show I was. -"As I've told you, however, it doesn't matter." - -"Because you've made up your mind? But to what?" - -"To everything." - -"And what do you call `everything'?" - -"Why, sending for their uncle." - -"Oh, miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. - -"ah, but I will, I WILL! I see it's the only way. -What's `out,' as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks -I'm afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that-- -he shall see he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it -here from me on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) -that if I'm to be reproached with having done nothing again -about more school--" - -"Yes, miss--" my companion pressed me. - -"Well, there's that awful reason." - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. "But--a-- which?" - -"Why, the letter from his old place." - -"You'll show it to the master?" - -"I ought to have done so on the instant." - -"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake -to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--" - -"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. - -"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful -and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? -Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only THAT; -and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, -"it's their uncle's fault. If he left here such people--!" - -"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." -She had turned quite pale. - -"Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. - -"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am -I to tell him?" - -"You needn't tell him anything. _I_'ll tell him." - -I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write--?" Remembering she couldn't, I -caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" - -"I tell the bailiff. HE writes." - -"And should you like him to write our story?" - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, -and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. -The tears were again in her eyes. "Ah, miss, YOU write!" - -"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - - - XVII - - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. -The weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, -and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, -I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and -listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. -Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage -and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my -endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some -betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught one, -but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. -"I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, -but very much at his ease. "Well, what are YOU up to?" -he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred -to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked -in vain for proof that anything was "out." - -I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?" - -"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? -You're like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed. - -"Then you weren't asleep?" - -"Not much! I lie awake and think." - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he held -out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. -"What is it," I asked, "that you think of?" - -"What in the world, my dear, but YOU?" - -"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on that! -I had so far rather you slept." - -"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours." - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. -"Of what queer business, Miles?" - -"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!" - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. -"What do you mean by all the rest?" - -"Oh, you know, you know!" - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held -his hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence -had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing -in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment -so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly you shall go -back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles you. -But not to the old place--we must find another, a better. -How could I know it did trouble you, this question, -when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all?" -His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness, -made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful -patient in a children's hospital; and I would have given, -as the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really -to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped -to cure him. Well, even as it was, I perhaps might help! -"Do you know you've never said a word to me about your school-- -I mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way?" - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. -But he clearly gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. -"Haven't I?" It wasn't for ME to help him--it was for -the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I -got this from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it -had never yet known; so unutterably touching was it to see his -little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play, -under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. -"No, never--from the hour you came back. You've never -mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, -nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. -Never, little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling -of anything that MAY have happened there. Therefore you -can fancy how much I'm in the dark. Until you came out, -that way, this morning, you had, since the first hour I saw you, -scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life. -You seemed so perfectly to accept the present." It was -extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity -(or whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I -dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint -breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an -older person--imposed him almost as an intellectual equal. -"I thought you wanted to go on as you are." - -It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate, -like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. -"I don't--I don't. I want to get away." - -"You're tired of Bly?" - -"Oh, no, I like Bly." - -"Well, then--?" - -"Oh, YOU know what a boy wants!" - -I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. -"You want to go to your uncle?" - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. -"Ah, you can't get off with that!" - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. -"My dear, I don't want to get off!" - -"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"-- -he lay beautifully staring. "My uncle must come down, -and you must completely settle things." - -"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it -will be to take you quite away." - -"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm working for? -You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it all drop: -you'll have to tell him a tremendous lot!" - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped -me somehow, for the instant, to meet him rather more. -"And how much will YOU, Miles, have to tell him? -There are things he'll ask you!" - -He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?" - -"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you. -He can't send you back--" - -"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new field." - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; -and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, -the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of -three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me -now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go. -I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. -"Dear little Miles, dear little Miles--!" - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it -with indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?" - -"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?" - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding -up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. -"I've told you--I told you this morning." - -Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?" - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; -then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made -me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. -God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, -to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him. -"I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said. - -"Well, then, finish it!" - -I waited a minute. "What happened before?" - -He gazed up at me again. "Before what?" - -"Before you came back. And before you went away." - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. -"What happened?" - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me -that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver -of consenting consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside -the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing him. -"Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you KNEW how I -want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing but that, -and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong-- -I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"-- -oh, I brought it out now even if I SHOULD go too far--"I -just want you to help me to save you!" But I knew in a moment -after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my appeal -was instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary -blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room -as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. -The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest -of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I -was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. -I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. -So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw -that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. -"Why, the candle's out!" I then cried. - -"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles. - - - - XVIII - - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly: -"Have you written, miss?" - -"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that my letter, -sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time -enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village. -Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, -more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart -to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest feats -of arithmetic, soaring quite out of MY feeble range, and perpetrated, -in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes. -It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared -to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child, to my memory, -really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate; -there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed; -never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness -and freedom, a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman. -I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my -initiated view betrayed me; to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged -sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of -what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. -Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil HAD -been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof -that it could ever have flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman -as when, after our early dinner on this dreadful day, -he came round to me and asked if I shouldn't like him, -for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul -could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. -It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, -and quite tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights -we love to read about never push an advantage too far. -I know what you mean now: you mean that--to be let alone yourself -and not followed up--you'll cease to worry and spy upon me, -won't keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. -Well, I `come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll be plenty -of time for that. I do really delight in your society, -and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle." -It may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed -to accompany him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom. -He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played; -and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking -a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. -For at the end of a time that under his influence I had -quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense -of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, -and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't really, -in the least, slept: I had only done something much worse-- -I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? -When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute -before answering and then could only say: "Why, my dear, -how do _I_ know?"--breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, -immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, -he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; -then, before going downstairs, I looked into several others. -As she was nowhere about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, -in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. -I found her where I had found her the evening before, -but she met my quick challenge with blank, scared ignorance. -She had only supposed that, after the repast, I had carried -off both the children; as to which she was quite in her right, -for it was the very first time I had allowed the little -girl out of my sight without some special provision. -Of course now indeed she might be with the maids, so that the -immediate thing was to look for her without an air of alarm. -This we promptly arranged between us; but when, ten minutes -later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall, -it was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries -we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, -apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could -feel with what high interest my friend returned me all those I -had from the first given her. - -"She'll be above," she presently said--"in one of the rooms -you haven't searched." - -"No; she's at a distance." I had made up my mind. -"She has gone out." - -Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?" - -I naturally also looked volumes. "Isn't that woman always without one?" - -"She's with HER?" - -"She's with HER!" I declared. "We must find them." - -My hand was on my friend's arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. -She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. -"And where's Master Miles?" - -"Oh, HE'S with Quint. They're in the schoolroom." - -"Lord, miss!" My view, I was myself aware--and therefore I suppose my tone-- -had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -"The trick's played," I went on; "they've successfully worked their plan. -He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off." - -"'Divine'?" Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -"Infernal, then!" I almost cheerfully rejoined. -"He has provided for himself as well. But come!" - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. -"You leave him--?" - -"So long with Quint? Yes--I don't mind that now." - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of -my hand, and in this manner she could at present still stay me. -But after gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, -"Because of your letter?" she eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, -and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. -"Luke will take it," I said as I came back. I reached the house door -and opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. -I came down to the drive while she stood in the doorway. -"You go with nothing on?" - -"What do I care when the child has nothing? I can't wait -to dress," I cried, "and if you must do so, I leave you. -Try meanwhile, yourself, upstairs." - -"With THEM?" Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - - - XIX - - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. -My acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool -of Bly, at all events on the few occasions of my consenting, -under the protection of my pupils, to affront its surface -in the old flat-bottomed boat moored there for our use, -had impressed me both with its extent and its agitation. -The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the house, -but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, -she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any -small adventure, and, since the day of the very great one -that I had shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, -in our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined. -This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose's steps so marked -a direction--a direction that made her, when she perceived it, -oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified. -"You're going to the water, Miss?--you think she's IN--?" - -"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. -But what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, -the other day, we saw together what I told you." - -"When she pretended not to see--?" - -"With that astounding self-possession? I've always been sure she wanted -to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her." - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they -really TALK of them?" - -"I could meet this with a confidence! "They say things that, -if we heard them, would simply appall us." - -"And if she IS there--" - -"Yes?" - -"Then Miss Jessel is?" - -"Beyond a doubt. You shall see." - -"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, -taking it in, I went straight on without her. By the time -I reached the pool, however, she was close behind me, and I -knew that, whatever, to her apprehension, might befall me, -the exposure of my society struck her as her least danger. -She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came in sight -of the greater part of the water without a sight of the child. -There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank -where my observation of her had been most startling, -and none on the opposite edge, where, save for a margin -of some twenty yards, a thick copse came down to the water. -The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so scant compared -to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might have -been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, -and then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes. -I knew what she meant and I replied with a negative headshake. - -"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat." - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring place and then again across -the lake. "Then where is it?" - -"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go over, -and then has managed to hide it." - -"All alone--that child?" - -"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's an old, -old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose took again, -into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges of submission; -then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a small refuge -formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation masked, -for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump of trees -growing close to the water. - -"But if the boat's there, where on earth's SHE?" -my colleague anxiously asked. - -"That's exactly what we must learn." And I started to walk further. - -"By going all the way round?" - -"Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, -but it's far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. -She went straight over." - -"Laws!" cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever -too much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, -and when we had got halfway round--a devious, tiresome process, -on ground much broken and by a path choked with overgrowth-- -I paused to give her breath. I sustained her with a grateful arm, -assuring her that she might hugely help me; and this started -us afresh, so that in the course of but few minutes more we reached -a point from which we found the boat to be where I had supposed it. -It had been intentionally left as much as possible out of sight -and was tied to one of the stakes of a fence that came, just there, -down to the brink and that had been an assistance to disembarking. -I recognized, as I looked at the pair of short, thick oars, -quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat -for a little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long -among wonders and had panted to too many livelier measures. -There was a gate in the fence, through which we passed, -and that brought us, after a trifling interval, more into the open. -Then, "There she is!" we both exclaimed at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled -as if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, -however, was to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it -were all she was there for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. -I instantly became sure she had just come out of the copse. -She waited for us, not herself taking a step, and I was -conscious of the rare solemnity with which we presently -approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it -was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. -Mrs. Grose was the first to break the spell: she threw -herself on her knees and, drawing the child to her breast, -clasped in a long embrace the little tender, yielding body. -While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch it-- -which I did the more intently when I saw Flora's face peep -at me over our companion's shoulder. It was serious now-- -the flicker had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I -at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of HER relation. -Still, all this while, nothing more passed between us save -that Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground. -What she and I had virtually said to each other was that -pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose finally got up she -kept the child's hand, so that the two were still before me; -and the singular reticence of our communion was even more -marked in the frank look she launched me. "I'll be hanged," -it said, "if _I_'ll speak!" - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, -was the first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. -"Why, where are your things?" - -"Where yours are, my dear!" I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take -this as an answer quite sufficient. "And where's Miles?" -she went on. - -There was something in the small valor of it that quite finished me: -these three words from her were, in a flash like the glitter of a -drawn blade, the jostle of the cup that my hand, for weeks and weeks, -had held high and full to the brim that now, even before speaking, -I felt overflow in a deluge. "I'll tell you if you'll tell ME--" -I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in which it broke. - -"Well, what?" - -Mrs. Grose's suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, -and I brought the thing out handsomely. "Where, my pet, -is Miss Jessel?" - - - - XX - - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. -Much as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, -between us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with -which the child's face now received it fairly likened -my breach of the silence to the smash of a pane of glass. -It added to the interposing cry, as if to stay the blow, -that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my violence-- -the shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in turn, -within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. -I seized my colleague's arm. "She's there, she's there!" - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she -had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the -first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having -brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified; -she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. -She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there -most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps -so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her-- -with the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would -catch and understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude. -She rose erect on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, -and there was not, in all the long reach of her desire, -an inch of her evil that fell short. This first vividness -of vision and emotion were things of a few seconds, -during which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where I pointed -struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, -just as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. -The revelation then of the manner in which Flora was affected -startled me, in truth, far more than it would have done to find -her also merely agitated, for direct dismay was of course not -what I had expected. Prepared and on her guard as our pursuit -had actually made her, she would repress every betrayal; -and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first -glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. -To see her, without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even -feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, -but only, instead of that, turn at ME an expression of hard, -still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented -and that appeared to read and accuse and judge me-- -this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl -herself into the very presence that could make me quail. -I quailed even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw -was never greater than at that instant, and in the immediate -need to defend myself I called it passionately to witness. -"She's there, you little unhappy thing--there, there, THERE, -and you see her as well as you see me!" I had said shortly -before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child, -but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not -have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, -for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, -an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, -of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time-- -if I can put the whole thing at all together--more appalled -at what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, -though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware -of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. -My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out -everything but her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, -a burst of high disapproval. "What a dreadful turn, -to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?" - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she -spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. -It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, -seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, -to insist with my pointing hand. "You don't see her exactly as WE see?-- -you mean to say you don't now--NOW? She's as big as a blazing fire! -Only look, dearest woman, LOOK--!" She looked, even as I did, -and gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion-- -the mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption--a sense, -touching to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. -I might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that -her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, -I felt--I saw--my livid predecessor press, from her position, on my defeat, -and I was conscious, more than all, of what I should have from this -instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude of Flora. -Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently entered, -breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a prodigious -private triumph, into breathless reassurance. - -"She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there--and you never see nothing, -my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel--when poor Miss Jessel's dead and buried? -WE know, don't we, love?--and she appealed, blundering in, to the child. -"It's all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke--and we'll go home as fast -as we can!" - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, -quick primness of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose -on her feet, united, as it were, in pained opposition to me. -Flora continued to fix me with her small mask of reprobation, -and even at that minute I prayed God to forgive me for seeming -to see that, as she stood there holding tight to our friend's dress, -her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly failed, -had quite vanished. I've said it already--she was literally, -she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. -"I don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. -I never HAVE. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!" -Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a -vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose -more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. -In this position she produced an almost furious wail. -"Take me away, take me away--oh, take me away from HER!" - -"From ME?" I panted. - -"From you--from you!" she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had -nothing to do but communicate again with the figure that, -on the opposite bank, without a movement, as rigidly still -as if catching, beyond the interval, our voices, was as vividly -there for my disaster as it was not there for my service. -The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from -some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I -could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, -but sadly shake my head at her. "If I had ever doubted, -all my doubt would at present have gone. I've been living with -the miserable truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. -Of course I've lost you: I've interfered, and you've seen-- -under HER dictation"--with which I faced, over the pool again, -our infernal witness--"the easy and perfect way to meet it. -I've done my best, but I've lost you. Goodbye." For Mrs. Grose -I had an imperative, an almost frantic "Go, go!" before which, -in infinite distress, but mutely possessed of the little girl -and clearly convinced, in spite of her blindness, that something -awful had occurred and some collapse engulfed us, she retreated, -by the way we had come, as fast as she could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent memory. -I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, -an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing -my trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, -on my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. -I must have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised -my head the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, -through the twilight, at the gray pool and its blank, haunted edge, -and then I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. -When I reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, -so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Flora's extraordinary -command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, -and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, -the happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them -on my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, -I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw--I can use no other phrase-- -so much of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. -No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; -in spite of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of -consternation that had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, -in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness. -On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for the boy; -I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was wearing -and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Flora's rupture. -Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, -by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, -I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever. -He had his freedom now--he might have it to the end! Well, he did -have it; and it consisted--in part at least--of his coming -in at about eight o'clock and sitting down with me in silence. -On the removal of the tea things I had blown out the candles -and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness -and felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, -I was sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment -by the door as if to look at me; then--as if to share them-- -came to the other side of the hearth and sank into a chair. -We sat there in absolute stillness; yet he wanted, I felt, -to be with me. - - - - XXI - - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened -to Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. -Flora was so markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; -she had passed a night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above -all by fears that had for their subject not in the least her former, -but wholly her present, governess. It was not against the possible -re-entrance of Miss Jessel on the scene that she protested-- -it was conspicuously and passionately against mine. I was promptly -on my feet of course, and with an immense deal to ask; the more that my -friend had discernibly now girded her loins to meet me once more. -This I felt as soon as I had put to her the question of her sense -of the child's sincerity as against my own. "She persists in denying -to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?" - -My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, miss, it isn't a matter on which -I can push her! Yet it isn't either, I must say, as if I much needed to. -It has made her, every inch of her, quite old." - -"Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all -the world like some high little personage, the imputation -on her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability. -`Miss Jessel indeed--SHE!' Ah, she's `respectable,' the chit! -The impression she gave me there yesterday was, I assure you, -the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the others. -I DID put my foot in it! She'll never speak to me again." - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, -had more behind it. "I think indeed, miss, she never will. -She do have a grand manner about it!" - -"And that manner"--I summed it up--"is practically what's the matter -with her now!" - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's face, and not -a little else besides! "She asks me every three minutes if I -think you're coming in." - -"I see--I see." I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it out. -"Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her familiarity -with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss Jessel?" - -"Not one, miss. And of course you know," my friend added, -"I took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there -at least, there WAS nobody." - -"Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still." - -"I don't contradict her. What else can I do?" - -"Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal with. -They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer -even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! -Flora has now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end." - -"Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?" - -"Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to him -the lowest creature--!" - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; -she looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. -"And him who thinks so well of you!" - -"He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed,"--of proving it! -But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me." - -My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at you." - -"So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed me on -my way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. -"I've a better idea--the result of my reflections. My going WOULD seem -the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won't do. -It's YOU who must go. You must take Flora." - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But where in the world--?" - -"Away from here. Away from THEM. Away, even most of all, now, from me. -Straight to her uncle." - -"Only to tell on you--?" - -"No, not `only'! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy." - -She was still vague. "And what IS your remedy?" - -"Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles's." - -She looked at me hard. "Do you think he--?" - -"Won't, if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still -to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his -sister as soon as possible and leave me with him alone." -I was amazed, myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, -and therefore perhaps a trifle the more disconcerted -at the way in which, in spite of this fine example of it, -she hesitated. "There's one thing, of course," I went on: -"they mustn't, before she goes, see each other for three seconds." -Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's presumable -sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, -it might already be too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, -"that they HAVE met?" - -At this she quite flushed. "Ah, miss, I'm not such a fool as that! -If I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, -it has been each time with one of the maids, and at present, -though she's alone, she's locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" -There were too many things. - -"And yet what?" - -"Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?" - -"I'm not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last evening, -a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. -I do believe that--poor little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. -Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me -for two hours as if it were just coming." - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. -"And did it come?" - -"No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it was -without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his -sister's condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. -All the same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle sees her, -consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boy-- -and most of all because things have got so bad--a little more time." - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could -quite understand. "What do you mean by more time?" - -"Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on -MY side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, -I shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, -on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." -So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably -embarrassed that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," -I wound up, "you really want NOT to go." - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; -she put out her hand to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. -I'll go this morning." - -I wanted to be very just. "If you SHOULD wish still to wait, -I would engage she shouldn't see me." - -"No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." -She held me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. -"Your idea's the right one. I myself, miss--" - -"Well?" - -"I can't stay." - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. -"You mean that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen--?" - -She shook her head with dignity. "I've HEARD--!" - -"Heard?" - -"From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic relief. -"On my honor, miss, she says things--!" But at this evocation she broke down; -she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa and, as I had seen her do before, -gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself go. -"Oh, thank God!" - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. "'Thank God'?" - -"It so justifies me!" - -"It does that, miss!" - -I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. -"She's so horrible?" - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. "Really shocking." - -"And about me?" - -"About you, miss--since you must have it. It's beyond everything, -for a young lady; and I can't think wherever she must have picked up--" - -"The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!" -I broke in with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. -"Well, perhaps I ought to also--since I've heard some of it before! -Yet I can't bear it," the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, -she glanced, on my dressing table, at the face of my watch. -"But I must go back." - -I kept her, however. "Ah, if you can't bear it--!" - -"How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just FOR that: -to get her away. Far from this," she pursued, "far from THEM-" - -"She may be different? She may be free?" I seized her almost with joy. -"Then, in spite of yesterday, you BELIEVE--" - -"In such doings?" Her simple description of them required, -in the light of her expression, to be carried no further, -and she gave me the whole thing as she had never done. -"I believe." - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. -My support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had -been in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer -for my honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of -taking leave of her, nonetheless, I was to some extent embarrassed. -"There's one thing, of course--it occurs to me--to remember. -My letter, giving the alarm, will have reached town before you." - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush and -how weary at last it had made her. "Your letter won't have got there. -Your letter never went." - -"What then became of it?" - -"Goodness knows! Master Miles--" - -"Do you mean HE took it?" I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. "I mean that I saw yesterday, -when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where you had put it. -Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, and he declared -that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could only exchange, on this, -one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was Mrs. Grose who first brought -up the plumb with an almost elated "You see!" - -"Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read it -and destroyed it." - -"And don't you see anything else?" - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. "It strikes me that by this -time your eyes are open even wider than mine." - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to show it. -"I make out now what he must have done at school." And she gave, -in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. "He stole!" - -I turned it over--I tried to be more judicial. "Well--perhaps." - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. -"He stole LETTERS!" - -She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness after all -pretty shallow; so I showed them off as I might. -"I hope then it was to more purpose than in this case! -The note, at any rate, that I put on the table yesterday," -I pursued, "will have given him so scant an advantage-- -for it contained only the bare demand for an interview-- -that he is already much ashamed of having gone so far -for so little, and that what he had on his mind last evening -was precisely the need of confession." I seemed to myself, -for the instant, to have mastered it, to see it all. -"Leave us, leave us"--I was already, at the door, hurrying her off. -"I'll get it out of him. He'll meet me--he'll confess. -If he confesses, he's saved. And if he's saved--" - -"Then YOU are?" The dear woman kissed me on this, -and I took her farewell. "I'll save you without him!" -she cried as she went. - - - - XXII - - -Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot-- -that the great pinch really came. If I had counted on -what it would give me to find myself alone with Miles, -I speedily perceived, at least, that it would give me a measure. -No hour of my stay in fact was so assailed with apprehensions -as that of my coming down to learn that the carriage containing -Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already rolled out of the gates. -Now I WAS, I said to myself, face to face with the elements, -and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought -my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. -It was a tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; -all the more that, for the first time, I could see in -the aspect of others a confused reflection of the crisis. -What had happened naturally caused them all to stare; -there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we might, -in the suddenness of my colleague's act. The maids and the men -looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation -until I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid. -It was precisely, in short, by just clutching the helm -that I avoided total wreck; and I dare say that, to bear up -at all, I became, that morning, very grand and very dry. -I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much to do, -and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, -I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, -for the next hour or two, all over the place and looked, -I have no doubt, as if I were ready for any onset. -So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, I paraded -with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, -till dinner, little Miles himself. My perambulations had -given me, meanwhile, no glimpse of him, but they had tended -to make more public the change taking place in our relation -as a consequence of his having at the piano, the day before, -kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled and befooled. -The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by her -confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered -in by our nonobservance of the regular custom of the schoolroom. -He had already disappeared when, on my way down, I pushed -open his door, and I learned below that he had breakfasted-- -in the presence of a couple of the maids--with Mrs. Grose -and his sister. He had then gone out, as he said, for a stroll; -than which nothing, I reflected, could better have expressed -his frank view of the abrupt transformation of my office. -What he would not permit this office to consist of was yet -to be settled: there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean -for myself in especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. -If so much had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too -strongly in saying that what had perhaps sprung highest -was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had -anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, -by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried -out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me -off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. -He had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; -as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in -the schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject -of the interval just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. -I had too much, from this moment, my other ideas. -Yet when he at last arrived, the difficulty of applying them, -the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me -by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred -had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I -decreed that my meals with the boy should be served, -as we called it, downstairs; so that I had been awaiting -him in the ponderous pomp of the room outside of the window -of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first scared Sunday, -my flash of something it would scarce have done to call light. -Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and again-- -how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, -the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth -that what I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. -I could only get on at all by taking "nature" into my -confidence and my account, by treating my monstrous -ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of course, -and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, -only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. -No attempt, nonetheless, could well require more tact than -just this attempt to supply, one's self, ALL the nature. -How could I put even a little of that article into a suppression -of reference to what had occurred? How, on the other hand, could I -make reference without a new plunge into the hideous obscure? -Well, a sort of answer, after a time, had come to me, and it -was so far confirmed as that I was met, incontestably, by the -quickened vision of what was rare in my little companion. -It was indeed as if he had found even now--as he had so often -found at lessons--still some other delicate way to ease me off. -Wasn't there light in the fact which, as we shared our solitude, -broke out with a specious glitter it had never yet quite worn?-- -the fact that (opportunity aiding, precious opportunity which had -now come) it would be preposterous, with a child so endowed, -to forego the help one might wrest from absolute intelligence? -What had his intelligence been given him for but to save him? -Mightn't one, to reach his mind, risk the stretch of an angular -arm over his character? It was as if, when we were face -to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way. -The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed -with attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment -with his hands in his pockets and looked at the joint, -on which he seemed on the point of passing some humorous judgment. -But what he presently produced was: "I say, my dear, is she -really very awfully ill?" - -"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better. -London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. -Come here and take your mutton." - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully -to his seat, and, when he was established, went on. -"Did Bly disagree with her so terribly suddenly?" - -"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on." - -"Then why didn't you get her off before?" - -"Before what?" - -"Before she became too ill to travel." - -I found myself prompt. "She's NOT too ill to travel: -she only might have become so if she had stayed. -This was just the moment to seize. The journey will dissipate -the influence"--oh, I was grand!--"and carry it off." - -"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand, too. He settled -to his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, from the day -of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of admonition. -Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not for ugly feeding. -He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was unmistakably -more conscious. He was discernibly trying to take for granted -more things than he found, without assistance, quite easy; -and he dropped into peaceful silence while he felt his situation. -Our meal was of the briefest--mine a vain pretense, and I had the things -immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his -hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked -out of the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen -what pulled me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us-- -as silent, it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, -on their wedding journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence -of the waiter. He turned round only when the waiter had left us. -"Well--so we're alone!" - - - - XXIII - - -"Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. -We shouldn't like that!" I went on. - -"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others." - -"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred. - -"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his -hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, -"they don't much count, do they?" - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. -"It depends on what you call `much'!" - -"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" -On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently -reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. -He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, -in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull -things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work," -behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself -with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments -of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing -the children to be given to something from which I was barred, -I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. -But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I -extracted a meaning from the boy's embarrassed back-- -none other than the impression that I was not barred now. -This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity -and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was -positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great -window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. -I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. -He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a -throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane, -for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time -in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? -The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. -It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been -anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little -manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange -genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round -to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. -"Well, I think I'm glad Bly agrees with ME!" - -"You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, -a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," -I went on bravely, "that you've been enjoying yourself." - -"Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles away. -I've never been so free." - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. -"Well, do you like it?" - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do YOU?"-- -more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. -Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if -with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. -"Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of -course if we're alone together now it's you that are alone most. -But I hope," he threw in, "you don't particularly mind!" - -"Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help minding? -Though I've renounced all claim to your company--you're so beyond me-- -I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for?" - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, -graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. -"You stay on just for THAT?" - -"Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous -interest I take in you till something can be done for you -that may be more worth your while. That needn't surprise you." -My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. -"Don't you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your -bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I -wouldn't do for you?" - -"Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had a tone -to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, laughing out -through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly jesting. -"Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for YOU!" - -"It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. -"But, you know, you didn't do it." - -"Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, -"you wanted me to tell you something." - -"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you know." - -"Ah, then, is THAT what you've stayed over for?" - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can't begin to express -the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. -It was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only to -astonish me. "Well, yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it. -it was precisely for that." - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating the -assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally said was: -"Do you mean now--here?" - -"There couldn't be a better place or time." He looked round him uneasily, -and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very first symptom I had -seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It was as if he were suddenly -afraid of me--which struck me indeed as perhaps the best thing to make him. -Yet in the very pang of the effort I felt it vain to try sternness, -and I heard myself the next instant so gentle as to be almost grotesque. -"You want so to go out again?" - -"Awfully!" He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little -bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. -He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood -twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly -reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. -To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what did -it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness -and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me -a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? -Wasn't it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere -alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation -a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem to see -our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision -of the anguish that was to come. So we circled about, -with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring to close. -But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little -longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll tell you everything," -Miles said--"I mean I'll tell you anything you like. -You'll stay on with me, and we shall both be all right, -and I WILL tell you--I WILL. But not now." - -"Why not now?" - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin drop. -Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, -outside, someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. -"I have to see Luke." - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made -up my truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. -"Well, then, go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise. -Only, in return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, -one very much smaller request." - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still -a little to bargain. "Very much smaller--?" - -"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work preoccupied me, -and I was offhand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from the table in the hall, -you took, you know, my letter." - - - - XXIV - - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention-- -a stroke that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to -the mere blind movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, -and, while I just fell for support against the nearest piece -of furniture, instinctively keeping him with his back to the window. -The appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here: -Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison. -The next thing I saw was that, from outside, he had reached the window, -and then I knew that, close to the glass and glaring in through it, -he offered once more to the room his white face of damnation. -It represents but grossly what took place within me at the sight -to say that on the second my decision was made; yet I believe that no -woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time recovered her grasp -of the ACT. It came to me in the very horror of the immediate -presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw -and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration-- -I can call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, -how transcendently, I MIGHT. It was like fighting with a demon -for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how -the human soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length-- -had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. -The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against -the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak, -but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -"Yes--I took it." - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; -and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden -fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, -I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift -its posture. I have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, -for a moment, was rather the prowl of a baffled beast. -My present quickened courage, however, was such that, not too -much to let it through, I had to shade, as it were, my flame. -Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at the window, the scoundrel -fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the very confidence -that I might now defy him, as well as the positive certitude, -by this time, of the child's unconsciousness, that made me go on. -"What did you take it for?" - -"To see what you said about me." - -"You opened the letter?" - -"I opened it." - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, -on Miles's own face, in which the collapse of mockery -showed me how complete was the ravage of uneasiness. -What was prodigious was that at last, by my success, -his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: -he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, -and knew still less that I also was and that I did know. -And what did this strain of trouble matter when my eyes -went back to the window only to see that the air was clear -again and--by my personal triumph--the influence quenched? -There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine -and that I should surely get ALL. "And you found nothing!"-- -I let my elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing." - -"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy. - -"Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with it?" - -"I've burned it." - -"Burned it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at school?" - -Oh, what this brought up! "At school?" - -"Did you take letters?--or other things?" - -"Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far -off and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. -Yet it did reach him. "Did I STEAL?" - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it were -more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him take it -with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the world. -"Was it for that you mightn't go back?" - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. -"Did you know I mightn't go back?" - -"I know everything." - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?" - -"Everything. Therefore DID you--?" But I couldn't say it again. - -Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal." - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands-- -but it was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, -if it was all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. -"What then did you do?" - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, -two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have been standing -at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight. -"Well--I said things." - -"Only that?" - -"They thought it was enough!" - -"To turn you out for?" - -Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little -to explain it as this little person! He appeared to weigh -my question, but in a manner quite detached and almost helpless. -"Well, I suppose I oughtn't." - -"But to whom did you say them?" - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. -"I don't know!" - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, -which was indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I -ought to have left it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind -with victory, though even then the very effect that was to have -brought him so much nearer was already that of added separation. -"Was it to everyone?" I asked. - -"No; it was only to--" But he gave a sick little headshake. -"I don't remember their names." - -"Were they then so many?" - -"No--only a few. Those I liked." - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into -a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out -of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. -It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he -WERE innocent, what then on earth was _I_? Paralyzed, while it lasted, -by the mere brush of the question, I let him go a little, so that, -with a deep-drawn sigh, he turned away from me again; which, as he faced -toward the clear window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing -now there to keep him from. "And did they repeat what you said?" -I went on after a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with -the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will. -Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what -had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety. -"Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they must have repeated them. -To those THEY liked," he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over. -"And these things came round--?" - -"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. -"But I didn't know they'd tell." - -"The masters? They didn't--they've never told. -That's why I ask you." - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. -"Yes, it was too bad." - -"Too bad?" - -"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home." - -I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such -a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I -heard myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" -But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough. -"What WERE these things?" - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound -and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, -against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, -was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. -I felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my battle, -so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a great betrayal. -I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with a divination, -and on the perception that even now he only guessed, and that the window -was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse flame up to convert -the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his liberation. -"No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to press him against me, -to my visitant. - -"Is she HERE?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes -the direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered -me and, with a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" -he with a sudden fury gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we -had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him -that it was better still than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! -But it's at the window--straight before us. It's THERE-- -the coward horror, there for the last time!" - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of a -baffled dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake for air -and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring vainly -over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, -filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming presence. -"It's HE?" - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice -to challenge him. "Whom do you mean by `he'?" - -"Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, -its convulsed supplication. "WHERE?" - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name -and his tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, -my own?--what will he EVER matter? _I_ have you," -I launched at the beast, "but he has lost you forever!" -Then, for the demonstration of my work, "There, THERE!" -I said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, -and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was -so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, -and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that -of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him-- -it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end -of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. -We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - -End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turn of the Screw - - diff --git a/old/tturn10.zip b/old/tturn10.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 88b1bb5..0000000 --- a/old/tturn10.zip +++ /dev/null |