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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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