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diff --git a/42486-0.txt b/42486-0.txt index 217d69c..24f2451 100644 --- a/42486-0.txt +++ b/42486-0.txt @@ -1,26 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Magics, 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 Two Magics - The Turn of the Screw. Covering End - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #42486] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO MAGICS *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42486 *** Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -9256,362 +9234,4 @@ FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Two Magics - The Turn of the Screw. Covering End - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #42486] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO MAGICS *** - - - - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - [ Transcriber's Notes: - - Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully - as possible. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been - made. They are listed at the end of the text. - - Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. - Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=. - ] - - - - - THE TWO MAGICS - - THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - COVERING END - - BY - HENRY JAMES - - AUTHOR OF "DAISY MILLER," "THE EUROPEANS" - ETC., ETC. - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. - 1898 - - All rights reserved - - - Copyright, 1898, - By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Norwood Press - J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith - Norwood Mass. U.S.A. - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but -except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve -in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no -comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case -he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, -I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as -had gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, -to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up -in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe -him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had -succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this -observation that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the -evening--a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call -attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which -I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself -something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in -fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, -he brought out what was in his mind. - -"I quite agree--in regard to Griffin's ghost, or whatever it -was--that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, -adds a particular touch. But it's not the first occurrence of its -charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child -gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to _two_ -children----?" - -"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, "that they give two -turns! Also that we want to hear about them." - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to -present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands -in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's -quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices -to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, -prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going -on: "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches -it." - -"For sheer terror?" I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss -how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little -wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!" - -"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, -he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain." - -"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an -instant. Then as he faced us again: "I can't begin. I shall have -to send to town." There was a unanimous groan at this, and much -reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. "The -story's written. It's in a locked drawer--it has not been out for -years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send -down the packet as he finds it." It was to me in particular that -he appeared to propound this--appeared almost to appeal for aid not -to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many -a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented -postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. I adjured -him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an early -hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his -own. To this his answer was prompt. "Oh, thank God, no!" - -"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?" - -"Nothing but the impression. I took that _here_"--he tapped his -heart. "I've never lost it." - -"Then your manuscript----?" - -"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung -fire again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. She -sent me the pages in question before she died." They were all -listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any -rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by without -a smile it was also without irritation. "She was a most charming -person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my sister's -governess," he quietly said. "She was the most agreeable woman -I've ever known in her position; she would have been worthy of any -whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long before. I was at -Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. I -was much there that year--it was a beautiful one; and we had, in her -off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden--talks in which she -struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don't grin: I liked -her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me too. If -she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. She had never told anyone. It -wasn't simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn't. I was -sure; I could see. You'll easily judge why when you hear." - -"Because the thing had been such a scare?" - -He continued to fix me. "You'll easily judge," he repeated: -"_you_ will." - -I fixed him too. "I see. She was in love." - -He laughed for the first time. "You _are_ acute. Yes, she was in -love. That is, she had been. That came out--she couldn't tell her -story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but -neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the -corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot -summer afternoon. It wasn't a scene for a shudder; but oh----!" He -quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair. - -"You'll receive the packet Thursday morning?" I inquired. - -"Probably not till the second post." - -"Well then; after dinner----" - -"You'll all meet me here?" He looked us round again. "Isn't -anybody going?" It was almost the tone of hope. - -"Everybody will stay!" - -"_I_ will--and _I_ will!" cried the ladies whose departure had -been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more -light. "Who was it she was in love with?" - -"The story will tell," I took upon myself to reply. - -"Oh, I can't wait for the story!" - -"The story _won't_ tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, -vulgar way." - -"More's the pity, then. That's the only way I ever understand." - -"Won't _you_ tell, Douglas?" somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. "Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to -bed. Good-night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us -slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his -step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. "Well, if I don't -know who she was in love with, I know who _he_ was." - -"She was ten years older," said her husband. - -"_Raison de plus_--at that age! But it's rather nice, his long -reticence." - -"Forty years!" Griffin put in. - -"With this outbreak at last." - -"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tremendous occasion of -Thursday night;" and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of -it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however -incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we -handshook and "candlestuck," as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first -post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps -just on account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite -let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, -in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our -hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire -and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him -again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of -the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised -to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of -prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this -narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what -I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death--when it was in -sight--committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began -to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The -departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't, of course, -thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, -in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with -which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final -auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to -a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took -up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to -be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of -several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, -on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to -London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had -already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This -person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house -in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing--this -prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, -such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, -before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could -easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome -and bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her, -inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and -gave her the courage she afterwards showed was that he put the whole -thing to her as a kind of favour, an obligation he should gratefully -incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--saw him -all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of -charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house -filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it -was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished -her immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to -a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military -brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, -by the strangest of chances for a man in his position,--a lone man -without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience,--very -heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own -part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor -chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to -his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, -and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could -find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait -on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they -were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other -relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put -them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed -at the head of their little establishment--but below stairs only--an -excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like -and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper -and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl, -of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely -fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young -lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She -would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been -for a term at school--young as he was to be sent, but what else could -be done?--and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back -from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first -a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done -for them quite beautifully--she was a most respectable person--till -her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no -alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, -in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and -there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, -an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a -question. "And what did the former governess die of?--of so much -respectability?" - -Our friend's answer was prompt. "That will come out. I don't -anticipate." - -"Excuse me--I thought that was just what you _are_ doing." - -"In her successor's place," I suggested, "I should have wished -to learn if the office brought with it----" - -"Necessary danger to life?" Douglas completed my thought. "She -did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow -what she learnt. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as -slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of -serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She -hesitated--took a couple of days to consult and consider. But the -salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second -interview she faced the music, she engaged." And Douglas, with this, -made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw -in-- - -"The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the -splendid young man. She succumbed to it." - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave -a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to -us. "She saw him only twice." - -"Yes, but that's just the beauty of her passion." - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. "It -_was_ the beauty of it. There were others," he went on, "who -hadn't succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty--that for -several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, -somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull--it sounded strange; and all -the more so because of his main condition." - -"Which was----?" - -"That she should never trouble him--but never, never: neither appeal -nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, -receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and -let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that -when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking -her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded." - -"But was that all her reward?" one of the ladies asked. - -"She never saw him again." - -"Oh!" said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us -again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject -till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, -he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged -album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the -first occasion the same lady put another question. "What is your -title?" - -"I haven't one." - -"Oh, _I_ have!" I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun -to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of -the beauty of his author's hand. - - -I - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, -a little see-saw 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 curtsey as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished -visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the -place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still -more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be -something beyond his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly -through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my -pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on -the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have -to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, -and I afterwards wondered that my employer had not told me more of -her. I slept little that night--I was too much excited; and this -astonished me too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense -of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, -one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, -the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first -time, I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the -extraordinary charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It -was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with -Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear -I had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook -might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being -so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so -glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--as to be positively -on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little -why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with -suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection -with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, -the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything -else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several -times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and -prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look -at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to -listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, -for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not -without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a -moment when I believed I recognised, 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 felt quite sure she would presently like -me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the -pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at -supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a -bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were -naturally things that in Flora's presence could pass between us only -as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. - -"And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?" - -One wouldn't flatter a child. "Oh, Miss, _most_ remarkable. If you -think well of this one!"--and she stood there with a plate in her -hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other -with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - -"Yes; if I do----?" - -"You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!" - -"Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I'm -afraid, however," I remember feeling the impulse to add, "I'm -rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!" - -I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she took this in. "In -Harley Street?" - -"In Harley Street." - -"Well, Miss, you're not the first--and you won't be the last." - -"Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, "to being the only -one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back -tomorrow?" - -"Not tomorrow--Friday, Miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, -under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage." - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an -idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took -her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, thank -heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was -glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly -called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at -the most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of -the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, -of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for -which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found -myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, -in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that -my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the -child into the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out of -doors; I arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should -be she, she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by -step and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, -childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our -becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout -our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in -empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made -me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower -that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so -many more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not -seen Bly since the day I left it, and I dare say 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 colour out of -storybooks and fairy-tales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which -I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, -but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still -older, half replaced and half utilised, in which I had the fancy of -our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting -ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - - -II - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora -to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the -more for an incident that, presenting itself the second evening, -had deeply disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, -as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen -apprehension. The postbag, that evening,--it came late,--contained a -letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found -to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to -himself, with a seal still unbroken. "This, I recognise, is from the -head-master, and the head-master's an awful bore. Read him, please; -deal with him; but mind you don't report. Not a word. I'm off!" -I broke the seal with a great effort--so great a one that I was a long -time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room -and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let -it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no -counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally -got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least to -Mrs. Grose. - -"What does it mean? The child's dismissed his school." - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with -a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. "But aren't they -all----?" - -"Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back -at all." - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. "They won't take -him?" - -"They absolutely decline." - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them -fill with good tears. "What has he done?" - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter--which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put -her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. "Such things are not -for me, Miss." - -My counsellor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I -attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; -then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back -in my pocket. "Is he really _bad_?" - -The tears were still in her eyes. "Do the gentlemen say so?" - -"They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that -it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." -Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what -this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some -coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went -on: "That he's an injury to the others." - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly -flamed up. "Master Miles! _him_ an injury?" - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the -idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the -spot, sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!" - -"It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel -things! Why, he's scarce ten years old." - -"Yes, yes; it would be incredible." - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, Miss, -first. _Then_ believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to -see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next -hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could -judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with -assurance. "You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless -her," she added the next moment--"_look_ at her!" - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had -established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, -and a copy of nice "round O's," now presented herself to view -at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary -detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a -great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the -affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary -that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the -full force of Mrs. Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in my -arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. - -None the less, the rest of the day, I watched for further occasion -to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to -fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on -the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, -holding her there with a hand on her arm. "I take what you said to me -at noon as a declaration that _you've_ never known him to be bad." - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very -honestly, adopted an attitude. "Oh, never known him--I don't -pretend _that_!" - -I was upset again. "Then you _have_ known him----?" - -"Yes indeed, Miss, thank God!" - -On reflection I accepted this. "You mean that a boy who never -is----?" - -"Is no boy for _me_!" - -I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" -Then, keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought -out. "But not to the degree to contaminate----" - -"To contaminate?"--my big word left her at a loss. I explained -it. "To corrupt." - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd -laugh. "Are you afraid he'll corrupt _you_?" She put the -question with such a fine bold humour that, with a laugh, a little -silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the -apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in -another place. "What was the lady who was here before?" - -"The last governess? She was also young and pretty--almost as young -and almost as pretty, Miss, even as you." - -"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!" I recollect -throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!" - -"Oh, he _did_," Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the way he liked -everyone!" She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself -up. "I mean that's _his_ way--the master's." - -I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?" - -She looked blank, but she coloured. "Why, of _him_." - -"Of the master?" - -"Of who else?" - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I -merely asked what I wanted to know. "Did _she_ see anything in the -boy----?" - -"That wasn't right? She never told me." - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?" - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. "About some -things--yes." - -"But not about all?" - -Again she considered. "Well, Miss--she's gone. I won't tell -tales." - -"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I -thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: -"Did she die here?" - -"No--she went off." - -I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that -struck me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked -straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had -a right to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to -do. "She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?" - -"She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She -left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short -holiday, to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a -right. We had then a young woman--a nursemaid who had stayed on and -who was a good girl and clever; and _she_ took the children altogether -for the interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the -very moment I was expecting her I heard from the master that she was -dead." - -I turned this over. "But of what?" - -"He never told me! But please, Miss," said Mrs. Grose, "I must -get to my work." - - -III - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual -esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately -than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so -monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had -now been revealed to me should be under an interdict. I was a little -late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me -before the door of the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I -had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of -freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from -the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, -and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything but a sort of -passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What -I then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that -I have never found to the same degree in any child--his indescribable -little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. It would have been -impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, -and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely -bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not outraged--by the sense of the -horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could -compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was -grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge----?" - -"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, _look_ at him!" - -She smiled at my pretension to have discovered his charm. "I -assure you, Miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?" she -immediately added. - -"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my mind. "Nothing." - -"And to his uncle?" - -I was incisive. "Nothing." - -"And to the boy himself?" - -I was wonderful. "Nothing." - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand -by you. We'll see it out." - -"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make -it a vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. "Would you mind, Miss, if I used the freedom----" - -"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we -had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I -recall the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to -make it a little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the -situation I accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it -out, and I was under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the -extent and the far and difficult connections of such an effort. I -was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation and pity. I found -it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, -to assume that I could deal with a boy whose education for the world -was all on the point of beginning. I am unable even to remember at -this day what proposal I framed for the end of his holidays and the -resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, that charming -summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; but I now feel -that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my own. I learnt -something--at first certainly--that had not been one of the teachings -of my small, smothered life; learnt 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 after-years could take for them was that of a -romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park. It may -be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives -the previous time a charm of stillness--that hush in which something -gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a -beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -tea-time and bed-time 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 dare say -I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort -in the faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to -be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently -gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the -children were tucked away and I had come out for my stroll. One of the -thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used -to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming -as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear -there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and -approve. I didn't ask more than that--I only asked that he should -_know_; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and -the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present -to me--by which I mean the face was--when, on the first of these -occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging -from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What -arrested me on the spot--and with a shock much greater than any vision -had allowed for--was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, -turned real. He did stand there!--but high up, beyond the lawn and at -the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora -had conducted me. This tower was one of a pair--square, incongruous, -crenelated structures--that were distinguished, for some reason, though -I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked -opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, -redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a -height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a -romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I admired them, -had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially -when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual -battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I had -so often invoked seemed most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two -distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first -and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of -the mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person -I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment -of vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that -I can hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted -object of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that -faced me was--a few more seconds assured me--as little anyone else I -knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it -in Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in -the strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very -fact of its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my -statement here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, -the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took -in--what I did take in--all the rest of the scene had been stricken -with death. I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the -sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky -and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there -was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that -I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the -clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements -was as definite as a picture in a frame. That's how I thought, -with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been -and that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long -enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, -as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants -more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterwards, I know, -with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they -have lasted. Well, this matter of mine, think what you will of it, -lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none of which made -a difference for the better, that I could see, in there having been -in the house--and for how long, above all?--a person of whom I was in -ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled a little with the sense that -my office demanded that there should be no such ignorance and no such -person. It lasted while this visitant, at all events,--and there was a -touch of the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity -of his wearing no hat,--seemed to fix me, from his position, with just -the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light, that his own -presence provoked. We were too far apart to call to each other, but -there was a moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge between -us, breaking the hush, would have been the right result of our straight -mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, -very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. So -I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; then, exactly, -after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed -his place--passed, looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite -corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this -transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment -the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to -the next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as -he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all -I knew. - - -IV - -It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a "secret" at Bly--a -mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in -unsuspected confinement? I can't say how long I turned it over, -or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where -I had had my collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house -darkness had quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had -held me and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have -walked three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed -that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The -most singular part of it in fact--singular as the rest had been--was -the part I became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This -picture comes back to me in the general train--the impression, as I -received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in -the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good -surprised look of my friend, which immediately told me she had missed -me. It came to me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain -heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing -whatever that could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I -had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me -up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus -finding myself hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole -history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear -was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On -the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, -I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, achieved an inward -revolution--offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea -of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as -soon as possible to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer -affair enough. There were hours, from day to day,--or at least there -were moments, snatched even from clear duties,--when I had to shut -myself up to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than -I could bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for -the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth -that I could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom -I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately -concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without forms -of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complication. 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 practised 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 traveller, curious in old houses, had -made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of -view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold -hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, -after all, was that we should surely see no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge -that what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my -charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, -and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could -throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges -was a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my -original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the -probable grey prose of my office. There was to be no grey 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 -head-masters--turns infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and -it never made Miles a muff) that kept them--how shall I express -it?--almost impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like -the cherubs of the anecdote, who had--morally, at any rate--nothing to -whack! I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as -it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there -was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, -yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age -I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a -second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really -been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have "caught" it, -and I should have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the -trace. I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never -spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for -my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I -was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, -I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote -to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these -days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going -well. But with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was -the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by -their loveliness. - -There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force and -for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; -in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with -Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, we would attend -together the late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared -for our walk, which, through the park and by the good road to the -village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to -meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had -required three stitches and that had received them--with a publicity -perhaps not edifying--while I sat with the children at their tea, -served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany -and brass, the "grown-up" dining-room. The gloves had been dropped -there, and I turned in to recover them. The day was grey enough, but -the afternoon light still lingered, and it enabled me, on crossing -the threshold, not only to recognise, 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 recognised; but it was as if I had been looking at him -for years and had known him always. Something, however, happened this -time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, through -the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it -quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it -fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the -added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He -had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started, as I -stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage -because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight -out of the door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, -upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, -turned a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing -now--my visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the -real relief of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time -to reappear. I call it time, but how long was it? I can't speak -to the purpose today of the duration of these things. That kind of -measure must have left me: they couldn't have lasted as they actually -appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and -the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a -great emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember -the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. He was -there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him. I got hold of -this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went -to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place -myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane -and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to -show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for -himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full -image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I -had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her -something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this -made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, -and retreated on just _my_ lines, and I knew she had then passed out -and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained -where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But -there's only one I take space to mention. I wondered why _she_ should -be scared. - - -V - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, -she loomed again into view. "What in the name of goodness is the -matter----?" She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" I must have -made a wonderful face. "Do I show it?" - -"You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My -need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a -rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not -with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held -her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind -of support in the shy heave of her surprise. "You came for me for -church, of course, but I can't go." - -"Has anything happened?" - -"Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?" - -"Through this window? Dreadful!" - -"Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes -expressed plainly that _she_ had no wish to be, yet also that she -knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any marked -inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she _must_ share! "Just -what you saw from the dining-room a minute ago was the effect of -that. What _I_ saw--just before--was much worse." - -Her hand tightened. "What was it?" - -"An extraordinary man. Looking in." - -"What extraordinary man?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?" - -"I know still less." - -"Have you seen him before?" - -"Yes--once. On the old tower." - -She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?" - -"Oh, very much!" - -"Yet you didn't tell me?" - -"No--for reasons. But now that you've guessed----" - -Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't -guessed!" she said very simply. "How can I if _you_ don't -imagine?" - -"I don't in the very least." - -"You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?" - -"And on this spot just now." - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was he doing on the tower?" - -"Only standing there and looking down at me." - -She thought a minute. "Was he a gentleman?" - -I found I had no need to think. "No." She gazed in deeper -wonder. "No." - -"Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?" - -"Nobody--nobody. I didn't tell you, but I made sure." - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It -only went indeed a little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman----" - -"What _is_ he? He's a horror." - -"A horror?" - -"He's--God help me if I know _what_ he is!" - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier -distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt -inconsequence. "It's time we should be at church." - -"Oh, I'm not fit for church!" - -"Won't it do you good?" - -"It won't do _them_----!" I nodded at the house. - -"The children?" - -"I can't leave them now." - -"You're afraid----?" - -I spoke boldly. "I'm afraid of _him_." - -Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -far-away faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made -out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and -that was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought -instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to -be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. "When -was it--on the tower?" - -"About the middle of the month. At this same hour." - -"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. - -"Oh no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." - -"Then how did he get in?" - -"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask -him! This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to -get in." - -"He only peeps?" - -"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand; -she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: -"Go to church. Good-bye. I must watch." - -Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?" - -We met in another long look. "Don't _you_?" Instead of answering -she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to -the glass. "You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. - -She didn't move. "How long was he here?" - -"Till I came out. I came to meet him." - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her -face. "_I_ couldn't have come out." - -"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. I have my -duty." - -"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: "What is -he like?" - -"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody." - -"Nobody?" she echoed. - -"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, in -this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added -stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and -a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, -rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, -somehow, darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might -move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know -clearly that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, -and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's quite -clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor." - -"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than -Mrs. Grose at that moment. - -"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, -erect," I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman." - -My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started -and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: "a gentleman _he_?" - -"You know him then?" - -She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he _is_ handsome?" - -I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!" - -"And dressed----?" - -"In somebody's clothes. They're smart, but they're not his -own." - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan. "They're the -master's!" - -I caught it up. "You _do_ know him?" - -She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried. - -"Quint?" - -"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!" - -"When the master was?" - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. "He -never wore his hat, but he did wear--well, there were waistcoats -missed! They were both here--last year. Then the master went, and Quint -was alone." - -I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?" - -"Alone with _us_." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," -she added. - -"And what became of him?" - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. "He went -too," she brought out at last. - -"Went where?" - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where! He -died." - -"Died?" I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead." - - -VI - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place -us together in presence of what we had now to live with as we -could--my dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly -exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth,--a knowledge -half consternation and half compassion,--of that liability. There had -been, this evening, after the revelation that 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 -rigour 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 awe-stricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of my -more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has remained -with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, -in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I -knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later what I was capable -of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly -sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so -compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--quite as queer as -the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see -how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good -fortune, _could_ steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that -led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I -could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could -join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to -me before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every -feature of what I had seen. - -"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not -you?" - -"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now -possessed me. "_That's_ whom he was looking for." - -"But how do you know?" - -"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And _you_ know, -my dear!" - -She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much -telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: "What if _he_ -should see him?" - -"Little Miles? That's what he wants!" - -She looked immensely scared again. "The child?" - -"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to _them_." That he -might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at -bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in -practically proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see -again what I had already seen, but something within me said that -by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, -by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as -an expiatory victim and guard the tranquillity of my companions. The -children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I -recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned----" - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been here -and the time they were with him?" - -"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his -history, in any way." - -"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew." - -"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity. -"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know." - -"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid." I -continued to think. "It is rather odd." - -"That he has never spoken of him?" - -"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were 'great -friends'?" - -"Oh, it wasn't _him_!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. "It -was Quint's own fancy. To play with him, I mean--to spoil him." She -paused a moment; then she added: "Quint was much too free." - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--_such_ a face!--a -sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with _my_ boy?" - -"Too free with everyone!" - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyse this description further than by -the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of -the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our -small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the -lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, -had ever, within anyone's memory, attached to the kind old place. It -had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, -only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, -the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she -had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. "I have it from -you then--for it's of great importance--that he was definitely and -admittedly bad?" - -"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't." - -"And you never told him?" - -"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. He was -terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right -to _him_----" - -"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough -with my impression of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor -so very particular perhaps about some of the company _he_ kept. All -the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_ would have -told!" - -She felt my discrimination. "I dare say I was wrong. But, really, -I was afraid." - -"Afraid of what?" - -"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep." - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. "You weren't -afraid of anything else? Not of his effect----?" - -"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while -I faltered. - -"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge." - -"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully -returned. "The master believed in him and placed him here because he -was supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. So -he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even about -_them_." - -"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl. "And you -could bear it!" - -"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst -into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow -them; yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back -together to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, -I was, in the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined -whether I slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had -not told me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word -Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this -was not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there -were fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the -morrow's sun was high I had restlessly read into the facts before us -almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more -cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister -figure of the living man--the dead one would keep awhile!--and of -the months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added 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 -labourer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: -a catastrophe explained--superficially at least--by a visible wound -to his head; such a wound as might have been produced--and as, on the -final evidence, _had_ been--by a fatal slip, in the dark and after -leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path -altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn -mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much--practically, in -the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; -but there had been matters in his life--strange passages and perils, -secret disorders, vices more than suspected--that would have accounted -for a good deal more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible -picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to -find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded -of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and -difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, -in the right quarter!--that I could succeed where many another girl -might have failed. It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather -applaud myself as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and -so simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in -the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose -helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant -ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; -we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I -had _them_. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented -itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen--I was to -stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began -to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that -might well, had it continued too long, have turned to something like -madness. What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something -else altogether. It didn't last as suspense--it was superseded by -horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from the moment I really took -hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in -the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles -indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window-seat; he had wished to -finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable -in a young man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the -restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, -and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun -was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with -her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the -charming thing in both children--to let me alone without appearing to -drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were -never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all -really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this -was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as -an active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention--they had no -occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only -with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game -of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my -exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what -I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something -very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We -were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, -the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other -side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this -knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the -strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly -merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work--for I was something -or other that could sit--on the old stone bench which overlooked the -pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and -yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third -person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant -shade, but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still -hour. There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, -in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming -as to what I should see straight before me and across the lake as a -consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture -to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the -spasm of my effort not to move them till I should so have steadied -myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There was an -alien object in view--a figure whose right of presence I instantly, -passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the -possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for -instance, than the appearance of one of the men about the place, -or even of a messenger, a postman or a tradesman's boy, from the -village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude -as I was conscious--still even without looking--of its having upon the -character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than -that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were -not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself -as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the -right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, -I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, -was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with -the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I -held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden -innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, -but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something -more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had -previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, -also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the -water. This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with -the confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct -personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which -happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to -her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as -a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched -her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in -its place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that -after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my -eyes--I faced what I had to face. - - -VII - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can -give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I -still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: "They -_know_--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!" - -"And what on earth----?" I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -"Why, all that _we_ know--and heaven knows what else besides!" -Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps -only now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the -garden"--I could scarce articulate--"Flora _saw_!" - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the -stomach. "She has told you?" she panted. - -"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The -child of eight, _that_ child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the -stupefaction of it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. "Then how do you -know?" - -"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly -aware." - -"Do you mean aware of _him_?" - -"No--of _her_." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked -prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my -companion's face. "Another person--this time; but a figure of -quite as unmistakeable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and -dreadful--with such an air also, and such a face!--on the other side -of the lake. I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the -midst of it she came." - -"Came how--from where?" - -"From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but -not so near." - -"And without coming nearer?" - -"Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close -as you!" - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. "Was she someone -you've never seen?" - -"Yes. But someone the child has. Someone _you_ have." Then, to show -how I had thought it all out: "My predecessor--the one who died." - -"Miss Jessel?" - -"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?" - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of -impatience. "Then ask Flora--_she's_ sure!" But I had no -sooner spoken than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, -_don't_! She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!" - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. "Ah, how -_can_ you?" - -"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know." - -"It's only then to spare you." - -"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more -I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I don't know -what I _don't_ see--what I _don't_ fear!" - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid of -seeing her again?" - -"Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained. "It's of -_not_ seeing her." - -But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you." - -"Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child -assuredly _will_--without my knowing it." - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force -of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be -to give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! And after all, -if she doesn't mind it----!" She even tried a grim joke. "Perhaps -she likes it!" - -"Likes _such_ things--a scrap of an infant!" - -"Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend -bravely inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. "Oh, we must clutch -at _that_--we must cling to it! If it isn't a proof of what you -say, it's a proof of--God knows what! For the woman's a horror of -horrors." - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at -last raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said. - -"Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried. - -"Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated. - -"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked." - -"At you, do you mean--so wickedly?" - -"Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a -glance. She only fixed the child." - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" - -"Ah, with such awful eyes!" - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. "Do -you mean of dislike?" - -"God help us, no. Of something much worse." - -"Worse than dislike?"--this left her indeed at a loss. - -"With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of -intention." - -I made her turn pale. "Intention?" - -"To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering on -mine--gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood -there looking out I completed my statement. "_That's_ what Flora -knows." - -After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you -say?" - -"In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with -extraordinary beauty." I now recognised to what I had at last, -stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite -visibly weighed this. "Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted; -"wonderfully handsome. But infamous." - -She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--_was_ infamous." She -once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if -to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this -disclosure. "They were both infamous," she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found -absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I -appreciate," I said, "the great decency of your not having hitherto -spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing." -She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which -I went on: "I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was -something between them." - -"There was everything." - -"In spite of the difference----?" - -"Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully -out. "_She_ was a lady." - -I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady." - -"And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, on -the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent -an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's -abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more -readily for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's -late clever, good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, -depraved. "The fellow was a hound." - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense -of shades. "I've never seen one like him. He did what he wished." - -"With _her_?" - -"With them all." - -It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again -appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation -of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out -with decision: "It must have been also what _she_ wished!" - -Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at -the same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!" - -"Then you do know what she died of?" I asked. - -"No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I -didn't; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!" - -"Yet you had, then, your idea----" - -"Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn't -have stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterwards I -imagined--and I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful." - -"Not so dreadful as what _I_ do," I replied; on which I must have -shown her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable -defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the -renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, -as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to -her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. "I don't do -it!" I sobbed in despair; "I don't save or shield them! It's -far worse than I dreamed--they're lost!" - - -VIII - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter -I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution -to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of -a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We -were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else--difficult indeed -as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, -was least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, -we had another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to -its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold -her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, -if I had "made it up," I came to be able to give, of each of the -persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, -their special marks--a portrait on the exhibition of which she had -instantly recognised and named them. She wished, of course,--small -blame to her!--to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her -that my own interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search -for the way to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a -probability that with recurrence--for recurrence we took for granted--I -should get used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal -exposure had suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new -suspicion that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the -later hours of the day had brought a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my -pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of -their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively -cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other -words, plunged afresh into Flora's special society and there become -aware--it was almost a luxury!--that she could put her little conscious -hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet -speculation and then had accused me to my face of having "cried." -I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could -literally--for the time, at all events--rejoice, under this fathomless -charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the -depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce their loveliness a -trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference -to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as -might be, my agitation. I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, -but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in -the small hours--that with their voices in the air, their pressure -on one's heart and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, -everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It -was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to -re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake, -had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be -obliged to re-investigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat -how it had come to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion -I then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. It was a -pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not -having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the little girl saw -our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she -wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she -didn't, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at -a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once -more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to -divert my attention--the perceptible increase of movement, the greater -intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the -invitation to romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this -review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort -that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to -asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was so much to the -good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have -been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind,--I scarce -know what to call it,--to invoke such further aid to intelligence -as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She -had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small -shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my -brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion--for -the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our -watch seemed to help--I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to -the curtain. "I don't believe anything so horrible," I recollect -saying; "no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don't. But -if I did, you know, there's a thing I should require now, just -without sparing you the least bit more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get -out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before -Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my -insistence, that you didn't pretend for him that he had not literally -_ever_ been 'bad'? He has _not_ literally 'ever,' in these -weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; -he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, loveable -goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him if -you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was your -exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him did -you refer?" - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, -at any rate, before the grey 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 criticise the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of -so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank -overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, -directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I -pressed, was that _she_ liked to see young gentlemen not forget their -station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. "You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?" - -"As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was -bad." - -"And for another thing?" I waited. "He repeated your words to -Quint?" - -"No, not that. It's just what he _wouldn't_!" she could still -impress upon me. "I was sure, at any rate," she added, "that he -didn't. But he denied certain occasions." - -"What occasions?" - -"When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his -tutor--and a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little -lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours -with him." - -"He then prevaricated about it--he said he hadn't?" Her assent -was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: "I see. He lied." - -"Oh!" Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn't -matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. "You see, -after all, Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't forbid him." - -I considered. "Did he put that to you as a justification?" - -At this she dropped again. "No, he never spoke of it." - -"Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?" - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. "Well, he didn't -show anything. He denied," she repeated; "he denied." - -Lord, how I pressed her now! "So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?" - -"I don't know--I don't know!" the poor woman groaned. - -"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't -my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and -modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you -had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you -miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in -the boy that suggested to you," I continued, "that he covered and -concealed their relation." - -"Oh, he couldn't prevent----" - -"Your learning the truth? I dare say! But, heavens," I fell, with -vehemence, a-thinking, "what it shows that they must, to that extent, -have succeeded in making of him!" - -"Ah, nothing that's not nice _now_!" Mrs. Grose lugubriously -pleaded. - -"I don't wonder you looked queer," I persisted, "when I -mentioned to you the letter from his school!" - -"I doubt if I looked as queer as you!" she retorted with homely -force. "And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an -angel now?" - -"Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, -how? Well," I said in my torment, "you must put it to me again, -but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me -again!" I cried in a way that made my friend stare. "There are -directions in which I must not for the present let myself go." -Meanwhile I returned to her first example--the one to which she -had just previously referred--of the boy's happy capacity for an -occasional slip. "If Quint--on your remonstrance at the time you -speak of--was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I -find myself guessing, was that you were another." Again her admission -was so adequate that I continued: "And you forgave him that?" - -"Wouldn't _you_?" - -"Oh, yes!" And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: "At all events, while he was with -the man----" - -"Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!" - -It suited me too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it -suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of -forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the -expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light -on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to -Mrs. Grose. "His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less -engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in -him of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "they must do, for -they make me feel more than ever that I must watch." - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face how -much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck -me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came -out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you don't -accuse _him_----" - -"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before -shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, "I must -just wait," I wound up. - - -IX - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from -my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant -sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to -grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the -sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish -grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined -if I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it -would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to -struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, -a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought -strange things about them; and the circumstance that these things only -made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping -them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they _were_ so -immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, -as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could -only be--blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, -I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As -soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they -think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been -easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; -but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still -enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement -still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was -studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite -suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, -so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness in the -traceable increase of their own demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of -me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful -response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of -which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite -as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to -catch them at a purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so -many things for their poor protectress; I mean--though they got their -lessons better and better, which was naturally what would please her -most--in the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading -her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out -at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and above -all astonishing her by the "pieces" they had secretly got by heart -and could interminably recite. I should never get to the bottom--were -I to let myself go even now--of the prodigious private commentary, -all under still more private correction, with which, in these days, -I overscored their full hours. They had shown me from the first -a facility for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh -start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks as if -they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance of the gift, -in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not only popped -out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, astronomers, -and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had presumably -much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, I am at a -loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural composure on -the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember is that I was -content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment -must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of -cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson's -daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread in -the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I might have -got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some influence -operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone -school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -"kicked out" by a school-master 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 marvellous 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 quarrelled or complained is to make the note of -praise coarse for their quality of sweetness. Sometimes, indeed, -when I dropped into coarseness, I perhaps came across traces of -little understandings between them by which one of them should keep -me occupied while the other slipped away. There is a _naïf_ side, I -suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practised upon me, it was -surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter -that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going -on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge -the most liberal faith--for which I little care; but--and this is -another matter--I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way -through it to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as -I look back, the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; -but I have at least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road -out is doubtless to advance. One evening--with nothing to lead up -or to prepare it--I felt the cold touch of the impression that had -breathed on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, -as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory -had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to bed; -I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of old books -at Bly--last-century fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a -distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray -specimen, had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed -curiosity of my youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand was -Fielding's _Amelia_; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further -both a general conviction that it was horribly late and a particular -objection to looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the white -curtain draping, in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora's -little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, the -perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though I was -deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a page -and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard -at the door of my room. There was a moment during which I listened, -reminded of the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being -something undefineably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of -the open casement just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all the -marks of a deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had there -been anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, -taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the passage, -on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed and locked -the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I -went straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came -within sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn -of the staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware -of three things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had -flashes of succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, -and I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of -earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, -I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I -required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter -with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing half-way 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 unmistakeably quitted me and that there was nothing in me -there that didn't meet and measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, -thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not--I found myself at the end -of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigour -of confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease--for -the time, at least--to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, -accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it _was_ human, as human as to have met alone, -in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, -some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close -quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of -the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such -an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have -passed, in life, between us; if nothing had passed one of us would have -moved. The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little -more to make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't express what -followed it save by saying that the silence itself--which was indeed in -a manner an attestation of my strength--became the element into which I -saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might -have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt -of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no -hunch could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into -the darkness in which the next bend was lost. - - -X - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect -presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had -gone: then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there -by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Flora's -little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all the -terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I -dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which -(for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) -the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, -to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I perceived an -agitation of the window-blind, and the child, ducking down, emerged -rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of her -candour and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and -the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had -never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill -of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that -she addressed me with a reproach. "You naughty: where _have_ you -been?"--instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with -the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay -there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back -into my chair--feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she -had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given -herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful -little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing -my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of -something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. "You were -looking for me out of the window?" I said. "You thought I might be -walking in the grounds?" - -"Well, you know, I thought someone was"--she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! "And did you see anyone?" - -"Ah, _no_!" she returned, almost with the full privilege of -childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in -her little drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she -lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of -the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One -of these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, -to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, -wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why -not break out at her on the spot and have it all over?--give it to her -straight in her lovely little lighted face? "You see, you see, you -_know_ that you do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; -therefore why not frankly confess it to me, so that we may at least -live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our -fate, where we are and what it means?" This solicitation dropped, -alas, as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed to it I might -have spared myself----well you'll see what. Instead of succumbing I -sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle -way. "Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me think -you were still there?" - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -"Because I don't like to frighten you!" - -"But if I had, by your idea, gone out----?" - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as -impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. "Oh, but you know," -she quite adequately answered, "that you might come back, you dear, -and that you _have_!" And after a little, when she had got into bed, -I had, for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to -prove that I recognised the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my -nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didn't know when; I selected -moments when my room-mate unmistakeably 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 recognised 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, none the less, 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 afterwards knew, -till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, -as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light -burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that -Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in -the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the -window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed -the picture. - -The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--as -she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved to -me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my re-illumination -nor by the haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, -protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill--the casement -opened forward--and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to -help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was -face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could -now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, -on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from -the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door -without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it and listened, from -the other side, for some sound from her. While I stood in the passage -I had my eyes on her brother's door, which was but ten steps off and -which, indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse -that I lately spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go straight -in and march to _his_ window?--what if, by risking to his boyish -bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I should throw across the rest -of the mystery the long halter of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold -and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what -might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he -too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the -end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the -risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a -figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; -but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated -afresh, but on other grounds and only a few seconds; then I had made -my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question -of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself -to me as the lower one--though high above the gardens--in the solid -corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was -a large, square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the -extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for -years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I -had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after -just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across -it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving -this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying -my face to the pane, was able, the darkness without being much less -than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I saw -something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable -and showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood -there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I had -appeared--looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at something -that was apparently above me. There was clearly another person above -me--there was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was -not in the least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to -meet. The presence on the lawn--I felt sick as I made it out--was poor -little Miles himself. - - -XI - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigour -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 of a discussion -of mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others -my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: -if she hadn't I don't know what would have become of me, for I -couldn't have borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent -monument to the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could -see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, -their happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication with -the sources of my trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or -battered, she would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard -enough to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, -when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded and the -habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord's mercy that if -they were ruined the pieces would still serve. Flights of fancy gave -place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, and I had already begun -to perceive how, with the development of the conviction that--as time -went on without a public accident--our young things could, after all, -look out for themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude to the -sad case presented by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound -simplification: I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell -no tales, but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added -strain to find myself anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the -terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now -agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, -but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in -one of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, -below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a -storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in -touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught -the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned -to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her -a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my -superiority--my accomplishments and my function--in her patience under -my pain. She offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix -a witch's broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held -out a large clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by -the time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the -point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a -monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, -I had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a -concentrated need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a -signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my -small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy -my sense of the real splendour of the little inspiration with which, -after I had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate -challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he -had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken his hand -without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the staircase -where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along the lobby where I -had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered--oh, -_how_ I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his little mind for -something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a -curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He -couldn't play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get -out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this -question, an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. I was -confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now -to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed -into his little chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all -and the window, uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear -that there was no need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly -dropped, sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that -he must know how he really, as they say, "had" me. He could do what -he liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should -continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those -caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears. He -"had" me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve -me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest -tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect -intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to -convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to -suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly -shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; -never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such -tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held -him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, -to put it to him. - -"You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out -for? What were you doing there?" - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. "If -I tell you why, will you understand?" My heart, at this, leaped into -my mouth. _Would_ he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press -it, and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing -nod. He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he -stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness -indeed that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really -going to tell me? "Well," he said at last, "just exactly in order -that you should do this." - -"Do what?" - -"Think me--for a change--_bad_!" I shall never forget the sweetness -and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of -it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of -everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a -minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given -exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind -it, and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it -that, as I presently glanced about the room, I could say-- - -"Then you didn't undress at all?" - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. I sat up and read." - -"And when did you go down?" - -"At midnight. When I'm bad I _am_ bad!" - -"I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would -know it?" - -"Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His answers rang out with a -readiness! "She was to get up and look out." - -"Which is what she did do." It was I who fell into the trap! - -"So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked--you saw." - -"While you," I concurred, "caught your death in the night air!" - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford -radiantly to assent. "How otherwise should I have been bad enough?" -he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview -closed on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his -joke, he had been able to draw upon. - - -XII - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, -I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I -reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made -before we separated. "It all lies in half-a-dozen words," I said to -her, "words that really settle the matter. 'Think, you know, what -I _might_ do!' He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows -down to the ground what he 'might' do. That's what he gave them a -taste of at school." - -"Lord, you do change!" cried my friend. - -"I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I've -watched and waited the more I've felt that if there were nothing -else to make it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of -each. _Never_, by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded -to either of their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to -his expulsion. Oh yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may -show off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend to -be lost in their fairy-tale they're steeped in their vision of the -dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared; "they're -talking of _them_--they're talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if I -were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not. What I've seen would have -made _you_ so; but it has only made me more lucid, made me get hold of -still other things." - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were -victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, -gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she -held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them -still with her eyes. "Of what other things have you got hold?" - -"Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, -at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their -more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It's a -game," I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!" - -"On the part of little darlings----?" - -"As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!" The very act -of bringing it out really helped me to trace it--follow it all up and -piece it all together. "They haven't been good--they've only -been absent. It has been easy to live with them, because they're -simply leading a life of their own. They're not mine--they're not -ours. They're his and they're hers!" - -"Quint's and that woman's?" - -"Quint's and that woman's. They want to get to them." - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! "But for -what?" - -"For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair -put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the -work of demons, is what brings the others back." - -"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was -homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, -in the bad time--for there had been a worse even than this!--must have -occurred. There could have been no such justification for me as the -plain assent of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found -credible in our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of -memory that she brought out after a moment: "They _were_ rascals! But -what can they now do?" she pursued. - -"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed -at their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at -us. "Don't they do enough?" I demanded in a lower tone, while -the children, having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed -their exhibition. We were held by it a minute; then I answered: "They -can destroy them!" At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry -she launched was a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more -explicit. "They don't know, as yet, quite how--but they're trying -hard. They're seen only across, as it were, and beyond--in strange -places and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, -the outside of windows, the further edge of pools; but there's a -deep design, on either side, to shorten the distance and overcome -the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is only a question of -time. They've only to keep to their suggestions of danger." - -"For the children to come?" - -"And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: "Unless, of course, we can prevent!" - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned -things over. "Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them -away." - -"And who's to make him?" - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish -face. "You, Miss." - -"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew -and niece mad?" - -"But if they _are_, Miss?" - -"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him -by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry." - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason----" - -"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his -indifference must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend, at any rate, -I shouldn't take him in." - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and -grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you." - -I stared. "To _me_?" I had a sudden fear of what she might -do. "'Him'?" - -"He ought to _be_ here--he ought to help." - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than -ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her eyes on -my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even--as a woman reads -another--she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, -his contempt for the break-down 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 none the less took -the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. "If you should -so lose your head as to appeal to him for me----" - -She was really frightened. "Yes, Miss?" - -"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you." - - -XIII - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as -much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a -month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above -all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the -part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, -my mere infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they -were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in -a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. I don't mean -that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for -that was not one of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that -the element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater -than any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so -successfully effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was -as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects -before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that -we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look -at each other--for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we -had intended--the doors we had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to -Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost -every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden -ground. Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead in -general and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of the -friends little children had lost. There were days when I could have -sworn that one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, said to the -other: "She thinks she'll do it this time--but she _won't_!" To -"do it" would have been to indulge for instance--and for once in a -way--in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for my -discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages in my -own history, to which I had again and again treated them; they were -in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had had, -with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of -those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, -as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of -the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation -of the old women of our village. There were things enough, taking -one with another, to chatter about, if one went very fast and knew -by instinct when to go round. They pulled with an art of their own -the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, -when I thought of such occasions afterwards, gave me so the suspicion -of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over _my_ life, -_my_ past, and _my_ friends alone that we could take anything like -our ease--a state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least -pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited--with no -visible connection--to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's celebrated _mot_ -or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the -vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different -ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, -as I have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed -for me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have -done something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that -second night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the -foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, -that one had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which -I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely -sinister way, would have favoured 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 grey sky -and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, -was like a theatre 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 recognised the signs, the portents--I recognised -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 fulness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst -that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was that -my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened. Well, my -eyes _were_ sealed, it appeared, at present--a consummation for which -it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty -about that: I would have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in -a proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were -times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, -literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, -they had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, -had I not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might -prove greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have -broken out. "They're here, they're here, you little wretches," -I would have cried, "and you can't deny it now!" The little -wretches denied it with all the added volume of their sociability -and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths of which--like the -flash of a fish in a stream--the mockery of their advantage peeped -up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper than I knew on -the night when, looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel under -the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest I watched and who had -immediately brought in with him--had straightway, there, turned it on -me--the lovely upward look with which, from the battlements above me, -the hideous apparition of Quint had played. If it was a question of a -scare, my discovery on this occasion had scared me more than any other, -and it was in the condition of nerves produced by it that I made my -actual inductions. They harassed me so that sometimes, at odd moments, -I shut myself up audibly to rehearse--it was at once a fantastic relief -and a renewed despair--the manner in which I might come to the point. I -approached it from one side and the other while, in my room, I flung -myself about, but I always broke down in the monstrous utterance of -names. As they died away on my lips, I said to myself that I should -indeed help them to represent something infamous if, by pronouncing -them, I should violate as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy -as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said to myself: -"_They_ have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, -the baseness to speak!" I felt myself crimson and I covered my face -with my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, -going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes -occurred--I can call them nothing else--the strange, dizzy lift or -swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that -had nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we -might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened -exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then -it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. Though they were not -angels, they "passed," as the French, say, causing me, while they -stayed, to tremble with the fear of their addressing to their younger -victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image than they -had thought good enough for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw _more_--things terrible and -unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in -the past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, -a chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all -three, with repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, -each time, almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, -through the very same movements. It was striking of the children, at -all events, to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance -and never to fail--one or the other--of the precious question that -had helped us through many a peril. "When do you think he _will_ -come? Don't you think we _ought_ to write?"--there was nothing -like that inquiry, we found by experience, for carrying off an -awkwardness. "He" of course was their uncle in Harley Street; -and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any moment -arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have given less -encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not -had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other -of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them--that may -have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of -me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman -is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred -laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of the -pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that -their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too -beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this -hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect -of my being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be -among us. It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward -than anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, -as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere -fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost -patience with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now -reflect, that I didn't in these days hate them! Would exasperation, -however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed -me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it -was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a -thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it -came with a rush. - - -XIV - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my -side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in -sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some -time; the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, -bright and sharp, made the church-bells almost gay. It was an odd -accident of thought that I should have happened at such a moment to -be particularly and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my -little charges. Why did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual -society? Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had -all but pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions -were marshalled 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 -unmistakeably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see how, -with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful -drama and the catastrophe was precipitated. "Look here, my dear, you -know," he charmingly said, "when in the world, please, am I going -back to school?" - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly -as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all -interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off -intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in them -that always made one "catch" and I caught, at any rate, now so -effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the -park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, -between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognised it, though, -to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and -charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my -at first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had -gained. I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, -after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive -smile: "You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady -_always_----!" His "my dear" was constantly on his lips for me, -and nothing could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment -with which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It -was so respectfully easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I -remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see -in the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I -looked. "And always with the same lady?" I returned. - -He neither blenched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. "Ah, of course, she's a jolly, 'perfect' lady; but, -after all, I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's--well, getting -on." - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. "Yes, you're -getting on." Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed -to know that and to play with it. "And you can't say I've not -been awfully good, can you?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it -would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. "No, I can't -say that, Miles." - -"Except just that one night, you know----!" - -"That one night?" I couldn't look as straight as he. - -"Why, when I went down--went out of the house." - -"Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for." - -"You forget?"--he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish -reproach. "Why, it was to show you I could!" - -"Oh, yes, you could." - -"And I can again." - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits -about me. "Certainly. But you won't." - -"No, not _that_ again. It was nothing." - -"It was nothing," I said. "But we must go on." - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. "Then when -_am_ I going back?" - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. "Were you very -happy at school?" - -He just considered. "Oh, I'm happy enough anywhere!" - -"Well, then," I quavered, "if you're just as happy here----!" - -"Ah, but that isn't everything! Of course _you_ know a lot----" - -"But you hint that you know almost as much?" I risked as he paused. - -"Not half I want to!" Miles honestly professed. "But it isn't -so much that." - -"What is it, then?" - -"Well--I want to see more life." - -"I see; I see." We had arrived within sight of the church and of -various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their -way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened -our step; I wanted to get there before the question between us opened -up much further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he -would have to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative -dusk of the pew and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on -which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race -with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that -he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, -he threw out-- - -"I want my own sort!" - -It literally made me bound forward. "There are not many of your own -sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless perhaps dear little Flora!" - -"You really compare me to a baby girl?" - -This found me singularly weak. "Don't you, then, _love_ our sweet -Flora?" - -"If I didn't--and you too; if I didn't----!" he repeated as -if retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, -after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me -by the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora -had passed into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we -were, for the minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, -on the path from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -"Yes, if you didn't----?" - -He looked, while I waited, about at the graves. "Well, you know -what!" But he didn't move, and he presently produced something -that made me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to -rest. "Does my uncle think what _you_ think?" - -I markedly rested. "How do you know what I think?" - -"Ah, well, of course I don't; for it strikes me you never tell -me. But I mean does _he_ know?" - -"Know what, Miles?" - -"Why, the way I'm going on." - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, -no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my -employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently -sacrificed to make that venial. "I don't think your uncle much -cares." - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. "Then don't you think he can -be made to?" - -"In what way?" - -"Why, by his coming down." - -"But who'll get him to come down?" - -"_I_ will!" the boy said with extraordinary brightness and -emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that expression and then -marched off alone into church. - - -XV - -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed -him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware -of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my -tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fulness -of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had -also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my -pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay. What -I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of -me and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this awkward -collapse. He had got out of me that there was something I was much -afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear -to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to -deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from -school, for that was really but the question of the horrors gathered -behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things -was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to -bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it -that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to -my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to -say to me: "Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you -a life that's so unnatural for a boy." What was so unnatural for -the particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a -consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I -walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had -already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch -up nothing, and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into -the pew: he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into -mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with -his commentary on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I -wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window -and listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse -that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least -encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting -away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I -could give the whole thing up--turn my back and retreat. It was only a -question of hurrying again, for a few preparations, to the house which -the attendance at church of so many of the servants would practically -have left unoccupied. No one, in short, could blame me if I should just -drive desperately off. What was it to get away if I got away only till -dinner? That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which--I had -the acute prevision--my little pupils would play at innocent wonder -about my non-appearance in their train. - -"What _did_ you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to -worry us so--and take our thoughts off too, don't you know?--did you -desert us at the very door?" I couldn't meet such questions nor, -as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so -exactly what I should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to -me, I at last let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came -straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps -through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the -house I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both -of the approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly -excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, -this way, I should get off without a scene, without a word. My -quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the question of a -conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with -difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of -the staircase--suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, -with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month -before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, -I had seen the spectre of the most horrible of women. At this I was -able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in -my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging -to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, -in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled -straight back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first -blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look -after the place and who, availing herself of rare relief from -observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, -had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her -sweetheart. There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested -on the table, her hands with evident weariness supported her head; -but at the moment I took this in I had already become aware that, -in spite of my entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it -was--with the very act of its announcing itself--that her identity -flared up in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had heard -me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and -detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile -predecessor. Dishonoured 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 a feeling that -it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest against it -that, actually addressing her--"You terrible, miserable woman!"--I -heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through -the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard -me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was nothing -in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must -stay. - - -XVI - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be -marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to -take into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of -gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having -failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too -said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such -purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; -a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first -private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five -minutes with her in the housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, -amid a smell of lately-baked bread, but with the place all swept and -garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So -I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight -chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the "put -away"--of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. - -"Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long -as they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to -you?" - -"I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come -back to meet a friend." - -She showed her surprise. "A friend--_you_?" - -"Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give -you a reason?" - -"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like -it better. Do you like it better?" - -My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" But after an -instant I added: "Did they say why I should like it better?" - -"No; Master Miles only said, 'We must do nothing but what she -likes!'" - -"I wish indeed he would! And what did Flora say?" - -"Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, 'Oh, of course, of -course!'--and I said the same." - -I thought a moment. "You were too sweet too--I can hear you all. But -none the less, between Miles and me, it's now all out." - -"All out?" My companion stared. "But what, Miss?" - -"Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. I came -home, my dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally -well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, -as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her -comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?" - -"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom." - -"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the -candour of her stupefaction. - -"That she suffers the torments----!" - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, -gape. "Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?" - -"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them----" I -faltered myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. "To share -them----?" - -"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly -have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her -there, to show I was. "As I've told you, however, it doesn't -matter." - -"Because you've made up your mind? But to what?" - -"To everything." - -"And what do you call 'everything'?" - -"Why, sending for their uncle." - -"Oh, Miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. - -"Ah, but I will, I _will_! I see it's the only way. What's -'out,' as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks I'm -afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he shall see -he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on -the spot (and before the boy himself if necessary) that if I'm to be -reproached with having done nothing again about more school----" - -"Yes, Miss----" my companion pressed me. - -"Well, there's that awful reason." - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?" - -"Why, the letter from his old place." - -"You'll show it to the master?" - -"I ought to have done so on the instant." - -"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't -undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been -expelled----" - -"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. - -"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and -beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is -he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only _that_; and that -would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their -uncle's fault. If he left here such people----!" - -"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." -She had turned quite pale. - -"Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. - -"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell -him?" - -"You needn't tell him anything. _I'll_ tell him." - -I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write----?" Remembering she -couldn't, I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" - -"I tell the bailiff. _He_ writes." - -"And should you like him to write our story?" - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and -it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were -again in her eyes. "Ah, Miss, _you_ write!" - -"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - -XVII - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather -had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in -my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before -a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the -batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the -passage and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless -obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his -not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I -had expected. His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." -It was a gaiety in the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but -very much at his ease. "Well, what are _you_ up to?" he asked with -a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had -she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was -"out." - -I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?" - -"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? -You're like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed. - -"Then you weren't asleep?" - -"Not much! I lie awake and think." - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he -held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his -bed. "What is it," I asked, "that you think of?" - -"What in the world, my dear, but _you_?" - -"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on -that! I had so far rather you slept." - -"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours." - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. "Of what queer -business, Miles?" - -"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!" - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his -pillow. "What do you mean by all the rest?" - -"Oh, you know, you know!" - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand -and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of -admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was -perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly -you shall go back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles -you. But not to the old place--we must find another, a better. How -could I know it did trouble you, this question, when you never told -me so, never spoke of it at all?" His clear, listening face, framed -in its smooth whiteness, made him for the minute as appealing as some -wistful patient in a children's hospital; and I would have given, as -the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the -nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him. Well, -even as it was, I perhaps might help! "Do you know you've never -said a word to me about your school--I mean the old one; never -mentioned it in any way?" - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly -gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. "Haven't I?" It -wasn't for _me_ to help him--it was for the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this -from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet -known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled -and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, -a part of innocence and consistency. "No, never--from the hour you -came back. You've never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of -your comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at -school. Never, little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of -anything that _may_ have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how -much I'm in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, -you had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference -to anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept -the present." It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his -secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an influence -that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath -of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person--imposed -him almost as an intellectual equal. "I thought you wanted to go on -as you are." - -It struck me that at this he just faintly coloured. He gave, at any -rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his -head. "I don't--I don't. I want to get away." - -"You're tired of Bly?" - -"Oh, no, I like Bly." - -"Well, then----?" - -"Oh, _you_ know what a boy wants!" - -I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary -refuge. "You want to go to your uncle?" - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the -pillow. "Ah, you can't get off with that!" - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed -colour. "My dear, I don't want to get off!" - -"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"--he lay -beautifully staring. "My uncle must come down, and you must -completely settle things." - -"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it will -be to take you quite away." - -"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm -working for? You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it -all drop: you'll have to tell him a tremendous lot!" - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the -instant, to meet him rather more. "And how much will _you_, Miles, -have to tell him? There are things he'll ask you!" - -He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?" - -"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do -with you. He can't send you back----" - -"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new -field." - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable -gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the -poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance -at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more -dishonour. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear -that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the -tenderness of my pity I embraced him. "Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles----!" - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good-humour. "Well, old lady?" - -"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?" - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up -his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. "I've told -you--I told you this morning." - -Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?" - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding -him; then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made -me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God -knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, -to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose -him. "I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said. - -"Well, then, finish it!" - -I waited a minute. "What happened before?" - -He gazed up at me again. "Before what?" - -"Before you came back. And before you went away." - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. "What -happened?" - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that -I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting -consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize -once more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear -little Miles, if you _knew_ how I want to help you! It's only that, -it's nothing but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain -or do you a wrong--I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear -little Miles"--oh, I brought it out now even if I _should_ go too -far--"I just want you to help me to save you!" But I knew in a -moment after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my appeal was -instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and -chill, a gust of frozen air and a shake of the room as great as if, -in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, -high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have -seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of -jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of -darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw -that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. "Why, -the candle's out!" I then cried. - -"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles. - - -XVIII - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me -quietly: "Have you written, Miss?" - -"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that -my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would -be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the -village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more -brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both -had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed -the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of _my_ feeble -range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and -historical jokes. It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular -that he appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This -child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery -that no words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in -every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the -uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more -extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against -the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; -to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly -both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman -could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy -I knew, the imagination of all evil _had_ been opened up to him: -all the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have -flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after -our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if -I shouldn't like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing -to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was -literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite -tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights we love to read -about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you -mean that--to be let alone yourself and not followed up--you'll cease -to worry and spy upon me, won't keep me so close to you, will let me -go and come. Well, I 'come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll -be plenty of time for that. I do really delight in your society, -and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle." It -may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany -him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old -piano and played as he had never played, and if there are those who -think he had better have been kicking a football I can only say that -I wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his -influence I had quite ceased to measure I started up with a strange -sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, -and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't really, in the least, -slept: I had only done something much worse--I had forgotten. Where, -all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles he played on -a minute before answering, and then could only say: "Why, my dear, -how do _I_ know?"--breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, -immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged -into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before -going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere -about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of -that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I -had found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with -blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, -I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her -right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl -out of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed -she might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look -for her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; -but when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met -in the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded -inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, -apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with -what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first -given her. - -"She'll be above," she presently said--"in one of the rooms you -haven't searched." - -"No; she's at a distance." I had made up my mind. "She has gone -out." - -Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?" - -I naturally also looked volumes. "Isn't that woman always without -one?" - -"She's with _her_?" - -"She's with _her_!" I declared. "We must find them." - -My hand was on my friend's arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my -pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her -uneasiness. "And where's Master Miles?" - -"Oh, _he's_ with Quint. They're in the schoolroom." - -"Lord, Miss!" My view, I was myself aware--and therefore I suppose -my tone--had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -"The trick's played," I went on; "they've successfully worked -their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while -she went off." - -"'Divine'?" Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -"Infernal, then!" I almost cheerfully rejoined. "He has provided -for himself as well. But come!" - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. "You leave -him----?" - -"So long with Quint? Yes--I don't mind that now." - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, -and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after -gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, "Because of your -letter?" she eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, -held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great -hall-table. "Luke will take it," I said as I came back. I reached -the house-door and opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and grey. I came down -to the drive while she stood in the doorway. "You go with nothing -on?" - -"What do I care when the child has nothing? I can't wait to -dress," I cried, "and if you must do so, I leave you. Try -meanwhile, yourself, upstairs." - -"With _them_?" Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - -XIX - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I dare say -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untravelled eyes. My -acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at -all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection -of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat -moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and -its agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from -the house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora -might be, she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for -any small adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I -had shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of -the quarter to which she most inclined. This was why I had now given -to Mrs. Grose's steps so marked a direction--a direction that made -her, when she perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was -freshly mystified. "You're going to the water, Miss?--you think -she's _in_----?" - -"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But -what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, the -other day, we saw together what I told you." - -"When she pretended not to see----?" - -"With that astounding self-possession! I've always been sure she -wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her." - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they -really _talk_ of them?" - -I could meet this with a confidence! "They say things that, if we -heard them, would simply appal us." - -"And if she _is_ there----?" - -"Yes?" - -"Then Miss Jessel is?" - -"Beyond a doubt. You shall see." - -"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it -in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, -however, she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her -apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her -as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came -in sight of the greater part of the water without a sight of the -child. There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank -where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the -opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick -copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so -scant compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might -have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and -then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes. I knew what she meant -and I replied with a negative headshake. - -"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat." - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring-place and then again across -the lake. "Then where is it?" - -"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it." - -"All alone--that child?" - -"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's -an old, old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose -took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges -of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a -small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation -masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump -of trees growing close to the water. - -"But if the boat's there, where on earth's _she_?" my colleague -anxiously asked. - -"That's exactly what we must learn." And I started to walk -further. - -"By going all the way round?" - -"Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it's -far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over." - -"Laws!" cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too -much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had -got half-way 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 recognised, as I looked at the pair of short, thick -oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for -a little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders -and had panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the -fence, through which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling -interval, more into the open. Then, "There she is!" we both -exclaimed at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as -if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, -was to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it were all she was -there for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure -she had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself -taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which -we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it -was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose -was the first to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, -drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little -tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only -watch it--which I did the more intently when I saw Flora's face peep -at me over our companion's shoulder. It was serious now--the flicker -had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment -envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of _her_ relation. Still, all this -while, nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her -foolish fern again drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually -said to each other was that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose -finally got up she kept the child's hand, so that the two were still -before me; and the singular reticence of our communion was even more -marked in the frank look she launched me. "I'll be hanged," it -said, "if _I'll_ speak!" - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the -first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. "Why, where are -your things?" - -"Where yours are, my dear!" I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an -answer quite sufficient. "And where's Miles?" she went on. - -There was something in the small valour 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 and that now, even before speaking, -I felt overflow in a deluge. "I'll tell you if you'll tell -_me_----" I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in which it -broke. - -"Well, what?" - -Mrs. Grose's suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. "Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?" - - -XX - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much -as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between -us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child's -face now received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the -smash of a pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to -stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my -violence--the shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in -turn, within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized -my colleague's arm. "She's there, she's there!" - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had -stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling -now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She -was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither -cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was -there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps -so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her--with -the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and -understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect -on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, -in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell -short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a -few seconds, during which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where I -pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just -as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation -then of the manner in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, -far more than it would have done to find her also merely agitated, -for direct dismay was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and -on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she would repress -every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first -glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, -without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance -in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of -that, turn at _me_ an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression -absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse -and judge me--this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl -herself into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed -even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater -than at that instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself -I called it passionately to witness. "She's there, you little -unhappy thing--there, there, _there_, and you see her as well as you -see me!" I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at -these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description of her -could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, -for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an -admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed -suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time--if I can put -the whole thing at all together--more appalled at what I may properly -call her manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously -with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very -formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at -any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, -shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. "What a dreadful turn, -to be sure, Miss! Where on earth do you see anything?" - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the -hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already -lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, -quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my -pointing hand. "You don't see her exactly as _we_ see?--you mean -to say you don't now--_now_? She's as big as a blazing fire! Only -look, dearest woman, _look_----!" She looked, even as I did, and -gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion--the -mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption--a sense, touching -to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might -well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her -eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, -I felt--I saw--my livid predecessor press, from her position, on my -defeat, and I was conscious, more than all, of what I should have -from this instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude -of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently -entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a -prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. - -"She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there--and you -never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel--when poor Miss -Jessel's dead and buried? _We_ know, don't we, love?"--and she -appealed, blundering in, to the child. "It's all a mere mistake and -a worry and a joke--and we'll go home as fast as we can!" - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness -of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, -as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with -her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to -forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight -to our friend's dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly -failed, had quite vanished. I've said it already--she was literally, -she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. "I -don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never -_have_. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!" Then, after -this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little -girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in -her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an -almost furious wail. "Take me away, take me away--oh, take me away -from _her_!" - -"From _me_?" I panted. - -"From you--from you!" she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing -to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite -bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the -interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was -not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if -she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, -and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, -but sadly shake my head at her. "If I had ever doubted, all my doubt -would at present have gone. I've been living with the miserable -truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course -I've lost you: I've interfered, and you've seen--under _her_ -dictation"--with which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal -witness--"the easy and perfect way to meet it. I've done my best, -but I've lost you. Good-bye." For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, -an almost frantic "Go, go!" before which, in infinite distress, -but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite -of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse -engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she -could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent -memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an -hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my -trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on -my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must -have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head -the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the -twilight, at the grey pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then -I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I -reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, -so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Flora's extraordinary -command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, -and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the -happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on -my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, -I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw--I can use no other phrase--so much -of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening -I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite -of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that -had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, in the ebbing actual, -an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so -much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to -change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material -testimony to Flora's rupture. Her little belongings had all been -removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea -by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, -in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom now--he might have it to -the end! Well, he did have it; and it consisted--in part at least--of -his coming in at about eight o'clock and sitting down with me in -silence. On the removal of the tea-things I had blown out the candles -and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness and -felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was -sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as -if to look at me; then--as if to share them--came to the other side of -the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; -yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. - - -XXI - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to -Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so -markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed -a night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had -for their subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, -governess. It was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel -on the scene that she protested--it was conspicuously and passionately -against mine. I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense -deal to ask; the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her -loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her -the question of her sense of the child's sincerity as against my -own. "She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, -anything?" - -My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, Miss, it isn't a -matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn't either, I must say, as -if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old." - -"Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world -like some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness -and, as it were, her respectability. 'Miss Jessel indeed--_she_!' -Ah, she's 'respectable,' the chit! The impression she gave me -there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was -quite beyond any of the others. I _did_ put my foot in it! She'll -never speak to me again." - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more -behind it. "I think indeed, Miss, she never will. She do have a grand -manner about it!" - -"And that manner"--I summed it up--"is practically what's the -matter with her now!" - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's face, and not a little -else besides! "She asks me every three minutes if I think you're -coming in." - -"I see--I see." I too, on my side, had so much more than worked it -out. "Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her -familiarity with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss -Jessel?" - -"Not one, Miss. And of course you know," my friend added, "I took -it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there -_was_ nobody." - -"Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still." - -"I don't contradict her. What else can I do?" - -"Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal -with. They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer -even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora -has now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end." - -"Yes, Miss; but to _what_ end?" - -"Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to -him the lowest creature----!" - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; she -looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. "And him who -thinks so well of you!" - -"He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed, "--of -proving it! But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is -to get rid of me." - -My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at -you." - -"So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed -me on my way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in -check. "I've a better idea--the result of my reflections. My going -_would_ seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet -that won't do. It's _you_ who must go. You must take Flora." - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But where in the world----?" - -"Away from here. Away from _them_. Away, even most of all, now, from -me. Straight to her uncle." - -"Only to tell on you----?" - -"No, not 'only'! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy." - -She was still vague. "And what _is_ your remedy?" - -"Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles's." - -She looked at me hard. "Do you think he----?" - -"Won't if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still -to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister -as soon as possible and leave me with him alone." I was amazed, -myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a -trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine -example of it, she hesitated. "There's one thing, of course," I -went on: "they mustn't, before she goes, see each other for three -seconds." Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's presumable -sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might -already be too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, "that they -_have_ met?" - -At this she quite flushed. "Ah, Miss, I'm not such a fool as -that! If I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has -been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though she's -alone, she's locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" There were too many -things. - -"And yet what?" - -"Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?" - -"I'm not sure of anything but _you_. But I have, since last -evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do -believe that--poor little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last -evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours -as if it were just coming." - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the grey, gathering -day. "And did it come?" - -"No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it -was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion -to his sister's condition and absence that we at last kissed for -good-night. All the same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle -sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given -the boy--and most of all because things have got so bad--a little more -time." - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite -understand. "What do you mean by more time?" - -"Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on _my_ -side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only -fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your -arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." So I put it -before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed -that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you -really want _not_ to go." - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand -to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. I'll go this morning." - -I wanted to be very just. "If you _should_ wish still to wait, I -would engage she shouldn't see me." - -"No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." She held me a -moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the -right one. I myself, Miss----" - -"Well?" - -"I can't stay." - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. "You mean -that, since yesterday, you _have_ seen----?" - -She shook her head with dignity. "I've _heard_----!" - -"Heard?" - -"From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic -relief. "On my honour, Miss, she says things----!" But at this -evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa -and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself -go. "Oh, thank God!" - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. "'Thank -God'?" - -"It so justifies me!" - -"It does that, Miss!" - -I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. -"She's so horrible?" - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. "Really shocking." - -"And about me?" - -"About you, Miss--since you must have it. It's beyond everything, -for a young lady; and I can't think wherever she must have picked -up----" - -"The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!" I broke in -with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. "Well, perhaps -I ought to also--since I've heard some of it before! Yet I can't -bear it," the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she -glanced, on my dressing-table, at the face of my watch. "But I must -go back." - -I kept her, however. "Ah, if you can't bear it----!" - -"How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just _for_ that: to get her -away. Far from this," she pursued, "far from _them_----" - -"She may be different? she may be free?" I seized her almost with -joy. "Then, in spite of yesterday, you _believe_----" - -"In such doings?" Her simple description of them required, in the -light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the -whole thing as she had never done. "I believe." - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My -support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been -in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my -honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave -of her, none the less, I was to some extent embarrassed. "There's -one thing of course--it occurs to me--to remember. My letter, giving -the alarm, will have reached town before you." - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush -and how weary at last it had made her. "Your letter won't have got -there. Your letter never went." - -"What then became of it?" - -"Goodness knows! Master Miles----" - -"Do you mean _he_ took it?" I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. "I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where -you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, -and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could -only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was -Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elate "You -see!" - -"Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read -it and destroyed it." - -"And don't you see anything else?" - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. "It strikes me that by this -time your eyes are open even wider than mine." - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to -show it. "I make out now what he must have done at school." And she -gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. "He -stole!" - -I turned it over--I tried to be more judicial. "Well--perhaps." - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. "He stole -_letters_!" - -She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty -shallow; so I showed them off as I might. "I hope then it was to -more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on -the table yesterday," I pursued, "will have given him so scant an -advantage--for it contained only the bare demand for an interview--that -he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and -that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of -confession." I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered -it, to see it all. "Leave us, leave us"--I was already, at the -door, hurrying her off. "I'll get it out of him. He'll meet -me--he'll confess. If he confesses, he's saved. And if he's -saved----" - -"Then _you_ are?" The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her -farewell. "I'll save you without him!" she cried as she went. - - -XXII - -Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--that -the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give -me to find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, -that it would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so -assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that -the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already -rolled out of the gates. Now I _was_, I said to myself, face to face -with the elements, and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought -my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a -tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, -for the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused -reflection of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused them all -to stare; there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we -might, in the suddenness of my colleague's act. The maids and the men -looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation until -I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid. It was precisely, -in short, by just clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and -I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that morning, very grand -and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much -to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, -I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next -hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I -were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, -I paraded with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, -little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no -glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change -taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the -piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled -and befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by -her confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered -in by our non-observance 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 now permit this office to consist of was yet -to be settled: there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean for -myself in especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much -had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that -what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging -the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently -stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself -he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to -let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He -had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I -had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom -the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval -just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this -moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived the difficulty of -applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight -home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred -had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that -my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; -so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room -outside of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first -scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call -light. Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and -again--how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, -the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what -I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get -on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, -by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of -course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, -only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, -none the less, 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 a 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 forgo the help -one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence -been given him for but to save him? Mightn't one, to reach his mind, -risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, -when we were face to face in the dining-room, he had literally shown me -the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with -attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands -in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point -of passing some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: -"I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill?" - -"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better. -London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come -here and take your mutton." - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, -when he was established, went on. "Did Bly disagree with her so -terribly suddenly?" - -"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on." - -"Then why didn't you get her off before?" - -"Before what?" - -"Before she became too ill to travel." - -I found myself prompt. "She's _not_ too ill to travel: she only -might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment -to seize. The journey will dissipate the influence"--oh, I was -grand!--"and carry it off." - -"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand too. He settled -to his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, -from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of -admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not -for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was -unmistakeably 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 pretence, and I had the things -immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his -hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of -the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled -me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us--as silent, -it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their -wedding-journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He -turned round only when the waiter had left us. "Well--so we're -alone!" - - -XXIII - -"Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. -We shouldn't like that!" I went on. - -"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others." - -"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred. - -"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his hands -in his pockets and planted there in front of me, "they don't much -count, do they?" - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It depends on what you call -'much'!" - -"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" On this, -however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with -his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with -his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs -I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of -"work," behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with -it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I -have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to -something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of -being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped -on me as I extracted a meaning from the boy's embarrassed back--none -other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference -grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the -direct perception that it was positively _he_ who was. The frames and -squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of -failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He -was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of -hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he -couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in the whole business -that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it -a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; -he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little -manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give -it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as -if this genius had succumbed. "Well, I think I'm glad Bly agrees -with _me_!" - -"You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, -a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," I went on -bravely, "that you've been enjoying yourself." - -"Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles -away. I've never been so free." - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with -him. "Well, do you like it?" - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do -_you_?"--more discrimination than I had ever heard two words -contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he -continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be -softened. "Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, -for of course if we're alone together now it's you that are alone -most. But I hope," he threw in, "you don't particularly mind!" - -"Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help -minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company,--you're -so beyond me,--I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay -on for?" - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver -now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. "You -stay on just for _that_?" - -"Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest -I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth -your while. That needn't surprise you." My voice trembled so that I -felt it impossible to suppress the shake. "Don't you remember how I -told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that -there was nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you?" - -"Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had -a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, -laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly -jesting. "Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for -_you_!" - -"It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. "But, you -know, you didn't do it." - -"Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, "you -wanted me to tell you something." - -"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you -know." - -"Ah, then, is _that_ what you've stayed over for?" - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can't begin to express -the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It -was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish -me. "Well, yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it. It was -precisely for that." - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating -the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally -said was: "Do you mean now--here?" - -"There couldn't be a better place or time." He looked round him -uneasily, and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very -first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It -was as if he were suddenly afraid of me--which struck me indeed as -perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort -I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so -gentle as to be almost grotesque. "You want so to go out again?" - -"Awfully!" He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little -bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He -had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling -it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a -perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in _any_ way was an act -of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea -of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for -me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't -it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I -suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have -had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted -with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come. So -we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring -to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little -longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll tell you everything," -Miles said--"I mean I'll tell you anything you like. You'll stay -on with me, and we shall both be all right and I _will_ tell you--I -_will_. But not now." - -"Why not now?" - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin -drop. Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, -outside, someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. "I -have to see Luke." - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my -truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. "Well, -then, go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise. Only, in -return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller -request." - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a -little to bargain. "Very much smaller----?" - -"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work -preoccupied me, and I was off-hand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from -the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter." - - -XXIV - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke -that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind -movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just -fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively -keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon -us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into -view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, -from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to -the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room -his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place -within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time -recovered her grasp of the _act_. It came to me in the very horror of -the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what -I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I -can call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how -transcendently, I _might_. It was like fighting with a demon for a -human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human -soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--had a -perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was -close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it -presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further -away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -"Yes--I took it." - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I -held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his -little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes -on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I -have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was -rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, -however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, -as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at -the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the -very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive -certitude, by this time, of the child's unconsciousness, that made me -go on. "What did you take it for?" - -"To see what you said about me." - -"You opened the letter?" - -"I opened it." - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles's -own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete -was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, -by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: -he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still -less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of -trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that -the air was clear again and--by my personal triumph--the influence -quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and -that I should surely get _all_. "And you found nothing!"--I let my -elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing." - -"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy. - -"Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with -it?" - -"I've burnt it." - -"Burnt it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at -school?" - -Oh, what this brought up! "At school?" - -"Did you take letters?--or other things?" - -"Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far off -and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it -did reach him. "Did I _steal_?" - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it -were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him -take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the -world. "Was it for that you mightn't go back?" - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. "Did you -know I mightn't go back?" - -"I know everything." - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?" - -"Everything. Therefore _did_ you----?" But I couldn't say it -again. - -Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal." - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but -it was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was -all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. "What then -did you do?" - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his -breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have -been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some -faint green twilight. "Well--I said things." - -"Only that?" - -"They thought it was enough!" - -"To turn you out for?" - -Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little to explain -it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in -a manner quite detached and almost helpless. "Well, I suppose I -oughtn't." - -"But to whom did you say them?" - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. "I -don't know!" - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was -indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left -it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even -then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was -already that of added separation. "Was it to everyone?" I asked. - -"No; it was only to----" But he gave a sick little headshake. "I -don't remember their names." - -"Were they then so many?" - -"No--only a few. Those I liked." - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity -the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the -instant confounding and bottomless, for if he _were_ innocent, what -then on earth was _I_? Paralysed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of -the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, -he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear -window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep -him from. "And did they repeat what you said?" I went on after -a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again -with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined -against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the -dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but -an unspeakable anxiety. "Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they -must have repeated them. To those _they_ liked," he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it -over. "And these things came round----?" - -"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. "But I -didn't know they'd tell." - -"The masters? They didn't--they've never told. That's why I -ask you." - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. "Yes, it was -too bad." - -"Too bad?" - -"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home." - -I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such -a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard -myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" But the -next after that I must have sounded stern enough. "What _were_ these -things?" - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made _me_, with a single bound -and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, -against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, -was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I -felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my -battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a -great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with -a divination, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, -and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse -flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his -liberation. "No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to -press him against me, to my visitant. - -"Is she _here_?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the -direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, -with a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a -sudden fury gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had -done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was -better still than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the -window--straight before us. It's _there_--the coward horror, there -for the last time!" - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of -a baffled dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake -for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring -vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, -filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming -presence. "It's _he_?" - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to -challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?" - -"Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its -convulsed supplication. "_Where?_" - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his -tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own?--what will -he _ever_ matter? _I_ have you," I launched at the beast, "but -he has lost you for ever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, -"There, _there_!" I said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and -seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of -he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp -with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his -fall. I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a -passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was -that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - -COVERING END - - -I - -At the foot of the staircase he waited and listened, thinking he had -heard her call to him from the gallery, high aloft but out of view, -to which he had allowed her independent access and whence indeed, on -her first going up, the sound of her appreciation had reached him in -rapid movements, evident rushes and dashes, and in droll, charming -cries that echoed through the place. He had afterwards, expectant -and restless, been, for another look, to the house-door, and then had -fidgeted back into the hall, where her voice again caught him. It was -many a day since such a voice had sounded in those empty chambers, and -never perhaps, in all the years, for poor Chivers, had any voice at all -launched a note so friendly and so free. - -"Oh, no, mum, there ain't no one whatever come yet. It's quite -all right, mum,--you can please yourself!" If he left her to range, -all his pensive little economy seemed to say, wasn't it just his -poor pickings? He quitted the stairs, but stopped again, with his -hand to his ear, as he heard her once more appeal to him. "Lots of -lovely----? Lovely _what_, mum? Little ups and downs?" he quavered -aloft. "Oh, as you say, mum: as many as in a poor man's life!" -She was clearly disposed, as she roamed in delight from point to point, -to continue to talk, and, with his better ear and his scooped hand, -he continued to listen hard. "'Dear little crooked steps'? Yes, -mum; please mind 'em, mum: they be cruel in the dark corners!" She -appeared to take another of her light scampers, the sign of a fresh -discovery and a fresh response; at which he felt his heart warm with -the success of a trust of her that might after all have been rash. Once -more her voice reached him and once more he gossiped back. "Coming -up too? Not if you'll kindly indulge me, mum--I must be where I can -watch the bell. It takes watching as well as hearing!"--he dropped, -as he resumed his round, to a murmur of great patience. This was taken -up the next moment by the husky plaint of the signal itself, which -seemed to confess equally to short wind and creaking joints. It moved, -however, distinguishably, and its motion made him start much more as -if he had been guilty of sleeping at his post than as if he had waited -half the day. "Mercy, if I _didn't_ watch----!" He shuffled -across the wide stone-paved hall and, losing himself beneath the great -arch of the short passage to the entrance-front, hastened to admit his -new visitor. He gives us thereby the use of his momentary absence for a -look at the place he has left. - -This is the central hall, high and square, brown and grey, flagged -beneath and timbered above, of an old English country-house; an -apartment in which a single survey is a perception of long and lucky -continuities. It would have been difficult to find elsewhere anything -at once so old and so actual, anything that had plainly come so far, -far down without, at any moment of the endless journey, losing its -way. To stand there and look round was to wonder a good deal--yet -without arriving at an answer--whether it had been most neglected or -most cherished; there was such resignation in its long survival and yet -such bravery in its high polish. If it had never been spoiled, this -was partly, no doubt, because it had been, for a century, given up; -but what it had been given up to was, after all, homely and familiar -use. It had in it at the present moment indeed much of the chill of -fallen fortunes; but there was no concession in its humility and no -hypocrisy in its welcome. It was magnificent and shabby, and the eyes -of the dozen dark old portraits seemed, in their eternal attention, to -count the cracks in the pavement, the rents in the seats of the chairs, -and the missing tones in the Flemish tapestry. Above the tapestry, -which, in its turn, was above the high oak wainscot, most of these -stiff images--on the side on which it principally reigned--were placed; -and they held up their heads to assure all comers that a tone or two -was all that _was_ missing, and that they had never waked up in winter -dawns to any glimmer of bereavement, in the long night, of any relic or -any feature. Such as it was, the company was all there; every inch of -old oak, every yard of old arras, every object of ornament or of use -to which these surfaces formed so rare a background. If the watchers -on the walls had ever found a gap in their own rank, the ancient roof, -of a certainty, would have been shaken by their collective gasp. As -a matter of fact it was rich and firm--it had almost the dignity of -the vault of a church. On this Saturday afternoon in August, a hot, -still day, such of the casements as freely worked in the discoloured -glass of the windows stood open in one quarter to a terrace that -overlooked a park and in another to a wonderful old empty court that -communicated with a wonderful old empty garden. The staircase, wide and -straight, mounted, full in sight, to a landing that was half-way up; -and on the right, as you faced this staircase, a door opened out of -the brown panelling into a glimpse of a little morning-room, where, -in a slanted, gilded light, there was brownness too, mixed with notes -of old yellow. On the left, toward court and garden, another door stood -open to the warm air. Still as you faced the staircase you had at your -right, between that monument and the morning-room, the arch through -which Chivers had disappeared. - -His reappearance interrupts and yet in a manner, after all, quickens -our intense impression; Chivers on the spot, and in this severe but -spacious setting, was so perfect an image of immemorial domesticity. It -would have been impossible perhaps, however, either to tell his age -or to name his use: he was of the age of all the history that lurked -in all the corners and of any use whatever you might be so good as -still to find for him. Considerably shrunken and completely silvered, -he had perpetual agreement in the droop of his kind white head and -perpetual inquiry in the jerk of the idle old hands now almost covered -by the sleeves of the black dress-coat which, twenty years before, -must have been by a century or two the newest thing in the house and -into which his years appeared to have declined very much as a shrunken -family moves into a part of its habitation. This attire was completed -by a white necktie that, in honour of the day, he himself had this -morning done up. The humility he betrayed and the oddity he concealed -were alike brought out by his juxtaposition with the gentleman he had -admitted. - -To admit Mr. Prodmore was anywhere and at any time, as you would -immediately have recognised, an immense admission. He was a personage -of great presence and weight, with a large smooth face in which -a small sharp meaning was planted like a single pin in the tight -red toilet-cushion of a guest-chamber. He wore a blue frock-coat -and a stiff white waistcoat and a high white hat that he kept on -his head with a kind of protesting cock, while in his buttonhole -nestled a bold prize plant on which he occasionally lowered a -proprietary eye that seemed to remind it of its being born to a public -career. Mr. Prodmore's appearance had evidently been thought out, -but it might have struck you that the old portraits took it in with -a sterner stare, with a fixedness indeed in which a visitor more -sensitive would have read a consciousness of his remaining, in their -presence, so jauntily, so vulgarly covered. He had never a glance for -them, and it would have been easy after a minute to see that this was -an old story between them. Their manner, as it were, sensibly increased -the coolness. This coolness became a high rigour as Mr. Prodmore -encountered, from the very threshold, a disappointment. - -"No one here?" he indignantly demanded. - -"I'm sorry to say no one has come, sir," Chivers replied; "but -I've had a telegram from Captain Yule." - -Mr. Prodmore's apprehension flared out. "Not to say he ain't -coming?" - -"He was to take the 2.20 from Paddington; he certainly _should_ -be here!" The old man spoke as if his non-arrival were the most -unaccountable thing in the world, especially for a poor person ever -respectful of the mystery of causes. - -"He should have been here this hour or more. And so should my -fly-away daughter!" - -Chivers surrounded this description of Miss Prodmore with the deep -discretion of silence, and then, after a moment, evidently reflected -that silence, in a world bestrewn with traps to irreverence, might be -as rash as speech. "Were they coming--a--together, sir?" - -He had scarcely mended the matter, for his visitor gave an inconsequent -stare. "Together?--for what do you take Miss Prodmore?" This young -lady's parent glared about him again as if to alight on something -else that was out of place; but the good intentions expressed in the -attitude of every object might presently have been presumed to soothe -his irritation. It had at any rate the effect of bridging, for poor -Chivers, some of his gaps. "It _is_ in a sense true that their -'coming together,' as you call it, is exactly what I've made -my plans for today: my calculation was that we should all punctually -converge on this spot. Attended by her trusty maid, Miss Prodmore, who -happens to be on a week's visit to her grandmother at Bellborough, -was to take the 1.40 from that place. I was to drive over--ten -miles--from the most convenient of my seats. Captain Yule"--the -speaker wound up his statement as with the mention of the last touch in -a masterpiece of his own sketching--"was finally to shake off for a -few hours the peculiar occupations that engage him." - -The old man listened with his head askance to favour his good ear, but -his visible attention all on a sad spot in one of the half-dozen worn -rugs. "They _must_ be peculiar, sir, when a gentleman comes into a -property like this and goes three months without so much as a nat'ral -curiosity----! I don't speak of anything but what _is_ nat'ral, -sir; but there have _been_ people here----" - -"There have repeatedly been people here!" Mr. Prodmore complacently -interrupted. - -"As you say, sir--to be shown over. With the master himself never -shown!" Chivers dismally commented. - -"He _shall_ be, so that nobody can miss him!" Mr. Prodmore, for his -own reassurance as well, hastened to retort. - -His companion risked a tiny explanation. "It will be a mercy indeed -to look on him; but I meant that he has not been taken round." - -"That's what I meant too. _I'll_ take him--round and round: -it's exactly what I've come for!" Mr. Prodmore rang out; and his -eyes made the lower circuit again, looking as pleased as such a pair of -eyes could look with nobody as yet quite good enough either to terrify -or to tickle. "He can't fail to be affected, though he _has_ been -up to his neck in such a different class of thing." - -Chivers clearly wondered awhile what class of thing it could be. Then -he expressed a timid hope. "In nothing, I dare say, but what's -right, sir----?" - -"In everything," Mr. Prodmore distinctly informed him, "that's -wrong! But here he is!" that gentleman added with elation as -the doorbell again sounded. Chivers, under the double agitation of -the appeal and the disclosure, proceeded to the front as fast as -circumstances allowed; while Mr. Prodmore, left alone, would have -been observed--had not his solitude been so bleak--to recover a -degree of cheerfulness. Cheerfulness in solitude at Covering End was -certainly not irresistible, but particular feelings and reasons had -pitched, for their campaign, the starched, if now somewhat ruffled, -tent of his large white waistcoat. If they had issued audibly from -that pavilion, they would have represented to us his consciousness -of the reinforcement he might bring up for attack should Captain -Yule really resist the house. The sound he next heard from the front -caused him none the less, for that matter, to articulate a certain -drop. "Only Cora?--Well," he added in a tone somewhat at variance -with his "only," "he shan't, at any rate, resist _her_!" -This announcement would have quickened a spectator's interest in -the young lady whom Chivers now introduced and followed, a young -lady who straightway found herself the subject of traditionary -discipline. "I've waited. What do you mean?" - -Cora Prodmore, who had a great deal of colour in her cheeks and a great -deal more--a bold variety of kinds--in the extremely high pitch of -her new, smart clothes, meant, on the whole, it was easy to see, very -little, and met this challenge with still less show of support either -from the sources I have mentioned or from any others. A dull, fresh, -honest, overdressed damsel of two-and-twenty, she was too much out -of breath, too much flurried and frightened, to do more than stammer: -"Waited, papa? Oh, I'm sorry!" - -Her regret appeared to strike her father still more as an impertinence -than as a vanity. "Would you then, if I had not had patience for you, -have wished not to find me? Why the dickens are you so late?" - -Agitated, embarrassed, the girl was at a loss. "I'll tell you, -papa!" But she followed up her pledge with an air of vacuity and -then, dropping into the nearest seat, simply closed her eyes to her -danger. If she desired relief, she had caught at the one way to get -it. "I feel rather faint. Could I have some tea?" - -Mr. Prodmore considered both the idea and his daughter's substantial -form. "Well, as I shall expect you to put forth _all_ your -powers--yes!" He turned to Chivers. "Some tea." - -The old man's eyes had attached themselves to Miss Prodmore's -symptoms with more solicitude than those of her parent. "I did -think it might be required!" Then as he gained the door of the -morning-room: "I'll lay it out here." - -The young lady, on his withdrawal, recovered herself sufficiently to -rise again. "It was my train, papa--so very awfully behind. I walked -up, you know, also, from the station--there's such a lovely footpath -across the park." - -"You've been roaming the country then alone?" Mr. Prodmore -inquired. - -The girl protested with instant eagerness against any such -picture. "Oh, dear no, not _alone_!" She spoke, absurdly, as if she -had had a train of attendants; but it was an instant before she could -complete the assurance. "There were ever so many people about." - -"Nothing is more possible than that there should be _too_ -many!" said her father, speaking as for his personal convenience, -but presenting that as enough. "But where, among them all," he -demanded, "is your trusty maid?" - -Cora's reply made up in promptitude what it lacked in felicity. "I -didn't bring her." She looked at the old portraits as if to appeal -to them to help her to remember why. Apparently indeed they gave a -sign, for she presently went on: "She was so extremely unwell." - -Mr. Prodmore met this with reprobation. "Wasn't she to understand -from the first that we don't permit----" - -"Anything of that sort?"--the girl recalled it at least as a -familiar law. "Oh, yes, papa--I _thought_ she did." - -"But she doesn't?"--Mr. Prodmore pressed the point. Poor Cora, at -a loss again, appeared to wonder if the point had better be a failure -of brain or of propriety, but her companion continued to press. "What -on earth's the matter with her?" - -She again communed with their silent witnesses. "I really don't -quite know, but I think that at Granny's she eats too much." - -"I'll soon put an end to _that_!" Mr. Prodmore returned with -decision. "You expect then to pursue your adventures quite into the -night--to return to Bellborough as you came?" - -The girl had by this time begun a little to find her feet. "Exactly -as I came, papa dear,--under the protection of a new friend I've just -made, a lady whom I met in the train and who is also going back by the -6.19. She was, like myself, on her way to this place, and I expected to -find her here." - -Mr. Prodmore chilled on the spot any such expectations. "What does -she want at this place?" - -Cora was clearly stronger for her new friend than for herself. "She -wants to see it." - -Mr. Prodmore reflected on this complication. "Today?" It was -practically presumptuous. "Today won't do." - -"So I suggested," the girl declared. "But do you know what she -said?" - -"How should I know," he coldly demanded, "what a nobody says?" - -But on this, as if with the returning taste of a new strength, his -daughter could categorically meet him. "She's not a nobody. She's -an American." - -Mr. Prodmore, for a moment, was struck: he embraced the place, -instinctively, in a flash of calculation. "An American?" - -"Yes, and she's wild----" - -He knew all about that. "Americans mostly _are_!" - -"I mean," said Cora, "to see this place. 'Wild' was what she -herself called it--and I think she also said she was 'mad.'" - -"She gave"--Mr. Prodmore reviewed the affair--"a fine account of -herself! But she won't do." - -The effect of her new acquaintance on his companion had been such that -she could, after an instant, react against this sentence. "Well, -when I told her that this particular day perhaps wouldn't, she said -it would just _have_ to." - -"Have to do?" Mr. Prodmore showed again, through a chink, his -speculative eye. "For _what_, then, with such grand airs?" - -"Why, I suppose, for what Americans want." - -He measured the quantity. "They want everything." - -"Then I wonder," said Cora, "that she hasn't arrived." - -"When she does arrive," he answered, "I'll tackle her; and I -shall thank you, in future, not to take up, in trains, with indelicate -women of whom you know nothing." - -"Oh, I did know something," his daughter pleaded; "for I saw her -yesterday at Bellborough." - -Mr. Prodmore contested even this freedom. "And what was she doing at -Bellborough?" - -"Staying at the Blue Dragon, to see the old abbey. She says she just -loves old abbeys. It seems to be the same feeling," the girl went on, -"that brought her over, today, to see this old house." - -"She 'just loves' old houses? Then why the deuce didn't she -accompany you properly, since she is so pushing, to the door?" - -"Because she went off in a fly," Cora explained, "to see, first, -the old hospital. She just loves old hospitals. She asked me if this -isn't a show-house. I told her"--the girl was anxious to disclaim -responsibility--"that I hadn't the least idea." - -"It _is_!" Mr. Prodmore cried almost with ferocity. "I wonder, -on such a speech, what she thought of _you_!" - -Miss Prodmore meditated with distinct humbleness. "I know. She told -me." - -He had looked her up and down. "That you're really a hopeless -frump?" - -Cora, oddly enough, seemed almost to court this description. "That -I'm not, as she rather funnily called it, a show-girl." - -"Think of your having to be reminded--by the very strangers you -pick up," Mr. Prodmore groaned, "of what my daughter should -pre-eminently be! Your friend, all the same," he bethought himself, -"is evidently loud." - -"Well, when she comes," the girl again so far agreed as to reply, -"you'll certainly hear her. But don't judge her, papa, till you -do. She's tremendously clever," she risked--"there seems to be -nothing she doesn't know." - -"And there seems to be nothing you do! You're _not_ tremendously -clever," Mr. Prodmore pursued; "so you'll permit me to demand of -you a slight effort of intelligence." Then, as for the benefit of the -listening walls themselves, he struck the high note. "I'm expecting -Captain Yule." - -Cora's consciousness blinked. "The owner of this property?" - -Her father's tone showed his reserves. "That's what it depends on -you to make him!" - -"On me?" the girl gasped. - -"He came into it three months ago by the death of his great-uncle, -who had lived to ninety-three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with -his father, had always refused to receive either sire or son." - -Our young lady bent her eyes on this page of family history, then -raised them but dimly lighted. "But now, at least, doesn't he live -here?" - -"So little," her companion replied, "that he comes here today -for the very first time. I've some business to discuss with him that -can best be discussed on this spot; and it's a vital part of that -business that you too should take pains to make him welcome." - -Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. "In his own house?" - -"That it's _not_ his own house is just the point I seek to -make! The way I look at it is that it's _my_ house! The way I look -at it even, my dear"--in his demonstration of his ways of looking -Mr. Prodmore literally expanded--"is that it's _our_ house. The -whole thing is mortgaged, as it stands, for every penny of its value; -and I'm in the pleasant position--do you follow me?" he trumpeted. - -Cora jumped. "Of holding the mortgages?" - -He caught her with a smile of approval and indeed of surprise. "You -keep up with me better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of paper, and -it's a precious collection." - -She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female sigh, glancing over the -place more attentively than she had yet done. "Do you mean that you -can come down on him?" - -"I don't need to 'come,' my dear--I _am_ 'down.' _This_ -is down!"--and the iron point of Mr. Prodmore's stick fairly -struck, as he rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. "I came many -weeks ago--commercially speaking--and haven't since budged from the -place." - -The girl moved a little about the hall, then turned with a spasm of -courage. "Are you going to be very hard?" - -If she read the eyes with which he met her she found in them, in spite -of a certain accompanying show of pleasantry, her answer. "Hard with -_you_?" - -"No--that doesn't matter. Hard with the Captain." - -Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. "'Hard' is a stupid, shuffling -term. What do you mean by it?" - -"Well, I don't understand business," Cora said; "but I think I -understand _you_, papa, enough to gather that you've got, as usual, -a striking advantage." - -"As usual, I _have_ scored; but my advantage won't be striking -perhaps till I have sent the blow home. What I appeal to you, as a -father, at present to do"--he continued broadly to demonstrate--"is -to nerve my arm. I look to you to see me through." - -"Through what, then?" - -"Through this most important transaction. Through the speculation -of which you've been the barely dissimulated subject. I've brought -you here to receive an impression, and I've brought you, even more, -to make one." - -The girl turned honestly flat. "But on whom?" - -"On me, to begin with--by not being a fool. And then, Miss, on -_him_." - -Erect, but as if paralysed, she had the air of facing the worst. "On -Captain Yule?" - -"By bringing him to the point." - -"But, father," she asked in evident anguish--"to _what_ point?" - -"The point where a gentleman _has_ to." - -Miss Prodmore faltered. "Go down on his knees?" - -Her father considered. "No--they don't do that now." - -"What _do_ they do?" - -Mr. Prodmore carried his eyes with a certain sustained majesty to a -remote point. "He will know himself." - -"Oh, no, indeed, he won't," the girl cried; "they don't -_ever_!" - -"Then the sooner they learn--whoever teaches 'em!--the better: the -better I mean in particular," Mr. Prodmore added with an intention -discernibly vicious, "for the master of this house. I'll guarantee -that he shall understand that," he concluded, "for I shall do my -part." - -She looked at him as if his part were really to be hated. "But how on -earth, sir, can I ever do mine? To begin with, you know, I've never -even seen him." - -Mr. Prodmore took out his watch; then, having consulted it, put it back -with a gesture that seemed to dispose at the same time and in the same -manner of the objection. "You'll see him _now_--from one moment to -the other. He's remarkably handsome, remarkably young, remarkably -ambitious, and remarkably clever. He has one of the best and oldest -names in this part of the country--a name that, far and wide here, -one could do so much with that I'm simply indignant to see him do -so little. I propose, my dear, to do with it all he hasn't, and I -further propose, to that end, first to get hold of it. It's you, Miss -Prodmore, who shall take it out of the fire." - -"The fire?"--he had terrible figures. - -"Out of the mud, if you prefer. You must pick it up, do you see? My -plan is, in short," Mr. Prodmore pursued, "that when we've -brushed it off and rubbed it down a bit, blown away the dust and -touched up the rust, my daughter shall gracefully bear it." - -She could only oppose, now, a stiff, thick transparency that yielded a -view of the course in her own veins, after all, however, mingled with a -feebler fluid, of the passionate blood of the Prodmores. "And pray is -it also Captain Yule's plan?" - -Her father's face warned her off the ground of irony, but he replied -without violence. "His plans have not yet quite matured. But nothing -is more natural," he added with an ominous smile, "than that -they shall do so on the sunny south wall of Miss Prodmore's best -manner." - -Miss Prodmore's spirit was visibly rising, and a note that might -have meant warning for warning sounded in the laugh produced by -this sally. "You speak of them, papa, as if they were sour little -plums! You exaggerate, I think, the warmth of Miss Prodmore's -nature. It has always been thought remarkably cold." - -"Then you'll be so good, my dear, as to confound--it mightn't be -amiss even a little to scandalise--that opinion. I've spent twenty -years in giving you what your poor mother used to call advantages, -and they've cost me hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It's now time -that, both as a parent and as a man of business, I should get my money -back. I couldn't help your temper," Mr. Prodmore conceded, "nor -your taste, nor even your unfortunate resemblance to the estimable, -but far from ornamental, woman who brought you forth; but I paid out -a small fortune that you should have, damn you, don't you know? a -good manner. You never show it to me, certainly; but do you mean to -tell me that, at this time of day--for other persons--you _haven't_ -got one?" - -This pulled our young lady perceptibly up; there was a directness in -the argument that was like the ache of old pinches. "If you mean by -'other persons' persons who are particularly civil--well, Captain -Yule may not see his way to be one of them. He may not _think_--don't -you see?--that I've a good manner." - -"Do your duty, Miss, and never mind what he thinks!" Her father's -conception of her duty momentarily sharpened. "Don't look at him -like a sick turkey, and he'll be sure to think right." - -The colour that sprang into Cora's face at this rude comparison -was such, unfortunately, as perhaps a little to justify it. Yet -she retained, in spite of her emotion, some remnant of presence of -mind. "I remember your saying once, some time ago, that that was just -what he would be sure _not_ to do: I mean when he began to go in for -his dreadful ideas----" - -Mr. Prodmore took her boldly up. "About the 'radical programme,' -the 'social revolution,' the spoliation of everyone, and the -destruction of everything? Why, you stupid thing, I've worked round -to a complete agreement with him. The taking from those who have by -those who haven't----" - -"Well?" said the girl, with some impatience, as he sought the right -way of expressing his notion. - -"What is it but to receive, from consenting hands, the principal -treasure of the rich? If I'm rich, my daughter is my largest -property, and I freely make her over. I shall, in other words, forgive -my young friend his low opinions if he renounces them for _you_." - -Cora, at this, started as with a glimpse of delight. "He won't -renounce them! He _shan't_!" - -Her father appeared still to enjoy the ingenious way he had put it, -so that he had good humour to spare. "If you suggest that you're -in political sympathy with him, you mean then that you'll take him as -he _is_?" - -"I won't take him at all!" she protested with her head very high; -but she had no sooner uttered the words than the sound of the approach -of wheels caused her dignity to drop. "A fly?--it must be _he_!" -She turned right and left, for a retreat or an escape, but her father -had already caught her by the wrist. "Surely," she pitifully -panted, "you don't want me to bounce on him _thus_?" - -Mr. Prodmore, as he held her, estimated the effect. "Your frock -won't do--with what it cost me?" - -"It's not my frock, papa,--it's his thinking I've come here for -him to see me!" - -He let her go and, as she moved away, had another look for the social -value of the view of her stout back. It appeared to determine him, for, -with a touch of mercy, he passed his word. "He doesn't think it, -and he shan't know it." - -The girl had made for the door of the morning-room, before reaching -which she flirted breathlessly round. "But he knows you want me to -hook him!" - -Mr. Prodmore was already in the parliamentary attitude the occasion -had suggested to him for the reception of his visitor. "The way -to 'hook' him will be not to be hopelessly vulgar. He doesn't -know that you know anything." The house-bell clinked, and he waved -his companion away. "Await us there with tea, and mind you toe the -mark!" - -Chivers, at this moment, summoned by the bell, reappeared in the -morning-room doorway, and Cora's dismay brushed him as he sidled past -her and off into the passage to the front. Then, from the threshold of -her refuge, she launched a last appeal. "Don't _kill_ me, father: -give me time!" With which she dashed into the room, closing the door -with a bang. - - -II - -Mr. Prodmore, in Chivers's absence, remained staring as if -at a sudden image of something rather fine. His child had left -with him the sense of a quick irradiation, and he failed to see -why, at the worst, such lightnings as she was thus able to dart -shouldn't strike somewhere. If he had spoken to her of her best -manner perhaps _that_ was her best manner. He heard steps and voices, -however, and immediately invited to his aid his own, which was simply -magnificent. Chivers, returning, announced solemnly "Captain Yule!" -and ushered in a tall young man in a darkish tweed suit and a red -necktie, attached in a sailor's knot, who, as he entered, removed -a soft brown hat. Mr. Prodmore, at this, immediately saluted him by -uncovering. "Delighted at last to see you here!" - -It was the young man who first, in his comparative simplicity, -put out a hand. "If I've not come before, Mr. Prodmore, it -was--very frankly speaking--from the dread of seeing _you_!" -His speech contradicted, to some extent, his gesture, but Clement -Yule's was an aspect in which contradictions were rather remarkably -at home. Erect and slender, but as strong as he was straight, he was -set up, as the phrase is, like a soldier, and yet finished, in certain -details--matters of expression and suggestion only indeed--like a man -in whom sensibility had been recklessly cultivated. He was hard and -fine, just as he was sharp and gentle, just as he was frank and shy, -just as he was serious and young, just as he looked, though you could -never have imitated it, distinctly "kept up" and yet considerably -reduced. His features were thoroughly regular, but his complete -shaving might have been designed to show that they were, after all, -not absurd. The face Mr. Prodmore offered him fairly glowed, on this -new showing, with instant pride of possession, and there was that in -Captain Yule's whole air which justified such a sentiment without -consciously rewarding it. - -"Ah, surely," said the elder man, "my presence is not without -a motive!" - -"It's just the motive," Captain Yule returned, "that makes me -wince at it! Certainly I've no illusions," he added, "about the -ground of our meeting. Your thorough knowledge of what you're about -has placed me at your mercy--you hold me in the hollow of your hand." - -It was vivid in every inch that Mr. Prodmore's was a nature to expand -in the warmth, or even in the chill, of any tribute to his financial -subtlety. "Well, I won't, on my side, deny that when, in general, -I go in deep I don't go in for nothing. I make it pay double!" he -smiled. - -"You make it pay so well--'double' surely doesn't do you -justice!--that, if I've understood you, you can do quite as you like -with this preposterous place. Haven't you brought me down exactly -that I may _see_ you do it?" - -"I've certainly brought you down that you may open your eyes!" -This, apparently, however, was not what Mr. Prodmore himself had -arrived to do with his own. These fine points of expression literally -contracted with intensity. "Of course, you know, you can always clear -the property. You can pay off the mortgages." - -Captain Yule, by this time, had, as he had not done at first, looked -up and down, round about and well over the scene, taking in, though -at a mere glance, it might have seemed, more particularly, the row, -high up, of strenuous ancestors. But Mr. Prodmore's last words rang -none the less on his ear, and he met them with mild amusement. "Pay -off----? What can I pay off with?" - -"You can always raise money." - -"What can I raise it on?" - -Mr. Prodmore looked massively gay. "On your great political -future." - -"Oh, I've not taken--for the short run at least--the lucrative -line," the young man said, "and I know what you think of _that_." - -Mr. Prodmore's blandness confessed, by its instant increase, to -this impeachment. There was always the glory of intimacy in Yule's -knowing what he thought. "I hold that you keep, in public, very -dangerous company; but I also hold that you're extravagant mainly -because you've nothing at stake. A man has the right opinions," he -developed with pleasant confidence, "as soon as he has something to -lose by having the wrong. Haven't I already hinted to you how to set -your political house in order? You drop into the lower regions because -you keep the best rooms empty. You're a firebrand, in other words my -dear Captain, simply because you're a bachelor. That's one of the -early complaints we all pass through, but it's soon over, and the -treatment for it quite simple. I have your remedy." - -The young man's eyes, wandering again about the house, might have -been those of an auditor of the fiddling before the rise of the -curtain. "A remedy worse than the disease?" - -"There's nothing worse, that I've ever heard of," Mr. Prodmore -sharply replied, "than your particular fix. Least of all a heap of -gold----" - -"A heap of gold?" His visitor idly settled, as if the curtain were -going up. - -Mr. Prodmore raised it bravely. "In the lap of a fine fresh -lass! Give pledges to fortune, as somebody says--_then_ we'll -talk. You want money--that's what you want. Well, marry it!" - -Clement Yule, for a little, never stirred, save that his eyes yet again -strayed vaguely. At last they stopped with a smile. "Of course I -could do that in a moment!" - -"It's even just my own danger from you," his companion returned. -"I perfectly recognise that any woman would now jump----" - -"I don't like jumping women," Captain Yule threw in; "but that -perhaps is a detail. It's more to the point that I've yet to see -the woman whom, by an advance of my own----" - -"You'd care to keep in the really attractive position----?" - -"Which can never, of course, be anything"--Yule took his friend up -again--"but that of waiting quietly." - -"Never, never anything!" Mr. Prodmore, most assentingly, banished -all other thought. "But I haven't asked you, you know, to make an -advance." - -"You've only asked me to receive one?" - -Mr. Prodmore waited a little. "Well, I've asked you--I asked you a -month ago--to think it all over." - -"I _have_ thought it all over," Clement Yule said; "and the -strange sequel seems to be that my eyes have got accustomed to my -darkness. I seem to make out, in the gloom of my meditations, that, at -the worst, I can let the whole thing slide." - -"The property?"--Mr. Prodmore jerked back as if it were about to -start. - -"Isn't it the property," his visitor inquired, "that positively -throws me up? If I can afford neither to live on it nor to disencumber -it, I can at least let it save its own bacon and pay its own debts. I -can say to you simply: 'Take it, my dear sir, and the devil take -_you_!'" - -Mr. Prodmore gave a quick, strained smile. "You wouldn't be so -shockingly rude!" - -"Why not--if I'm a firebrand and a keeper of low company and a -general nuisance? Sacrifice for sacrifice, that might very well be the -least!" - -This was put with such emphasis that Mr. Prodmore was for a moment -arrested. He could stop very short, however, and yet talk as still -going. "How do you know, if you haven't compared them? It's just -to make the comparison--in all the proper circumstances--that you're -here at this hour." He took, with a large, though vague, exhibitory -gesture, a few turns about. "Now that you stretch yourself--for an -hour's relaxation and rocked, as it were, by my friendly hand--in the -ancient cradle of your race, can you seriously entertain the idea of -parting with such a venerable family relic?" - -It was evident that, as he decorously embraced the scene, the young -man, in spite of this dissuasive tone, was entertaining ideas. It -might have appeared at the moment to a spectator in whom fancy was -at all alert that the place, becoming in a manner conscious of the -question, felt itself on its honour, and that its honour could make -no compromise. It met Clement Yule with no grimace of invitation, -with no attenuation of its rich old sadness. It was as if the two -hard spirits, the grim _genius loci_ and the quick modern conscience, -stood an instant confronted. "The cradle of my race bears, for me, -Mr. Prodmore, a striking resemblance to its tomb." The sigh that -dropped from him, however, was not quite void of tenderness. It -might, for that matter, have been a long, sad creak, portending -collapse, of some immemorial support of the Yules. "Heavens, how -melancholy----!" - -Mr. Prodmore, somewhat ambiguously, took up the sound. "Melancholy?"--he -just balanced. That well might be, even a little _should_ -be--yet agreement might depreciate. - -"Musty, mouldy;" then with a poke of his stick at a gap in the -stuff with which an old chair was covered, "mangy!" Captain Yule -responded. "Is this the character throughout?" - -Mr. Prodmore fixed a minute the tell-tale tatter. "You must judge -for yourself--you must go over the house." He hesitated again; then -his indecision vanished--the right line was clear. "It does look a -bit run down, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do it up for -you--neatly: I'll throw _that_ in!" - -His young friend turned on him an eye that, though markedly enlivened -by his offer, was somehow only the more inscrutable. "Will you put in -the electric light?" - -Mr. Prodmore's own twinkle--at this touch of a spring he had not -expected to work--was, on the other hand, temporarily veiled. "Well, -if you'll meet me half-way! We're dealing here"--he backed up his -gravity--"with fancy-values. Don't you feel," he appealed, "as -you take it all in, a kind of a something-or-other down your back?" - -Clement Yule gazed awhile at one of the pompous quarterings in the -faded old glass that, in tones as of late autumn, crowned with armorial -figures the top of the great hall-window; then with abruptness he -turned away. "Perhaps I _don't_ take it all in; but what I do feel -is--since you mention it--a sort of stiffening of the spine! The whole -thing is too queer--too cold--too cruel." - -"Cruel?"--Mr. Prodmore's demur was virtuous. - -"Like the face of some stuck-up distant relation who won't speak -first. I see in the stare of the old dragon, I taste in his very -breath, all the helpless mortality he has tucked away!" - -"Lord, sir--you _have_ fancies!" Mr. Prodmore was almost -scandalised. - -But the young man's fancies only multiplied as he moved, not at -all critical, but altogether nervous, from object to object. "I -don't know what's the matter--but there _is_ more here than meets -the eye." He tried as for his amusement or his relief to figure it -out. "I miss the old presences. I feel the old absences. I hear the -old voices. I see the old ghosts." - -This last was a profession that offered some common ground. "The -old ghosts, Captain Yule," his companion promptly replied, "are -worth so much a dozen, and with no reduction, I must remind you--with -the price indeed rather raised--for the quantity taken!" Feeling -then apparently that he had cleared the air a little by this sally, -Mr. Prodmore proceeded to pat his interlocutor on a back that he by no -means wished to cause to be put to the wall. "Look about you, at any -rate, a little more." He crossed with his toes well out the line that -divides encouragement from patronage. "Do make yourself at home." - -"Thank you very much, Mr. Prodmore. May I light a cigarette?" his -visitor asked. - -"In your own house, Captain?" - -"That's just the question: it seems so much less my own house -than before I had come into it!" The Captain offered Mr. Prodmore a -cigarette which that gentleman, also taking a light from him, accepted; -then he lit his own and began to smoke. "As I understand you," he -went on, "you _lump_ your two conditions? I mean I must accept both -or neither?" - -Mr. Prodmore threw back his shoulders with a high recognition of the -long stride represented by this question. "You _will_ accept both, -for, by doing so, you'll clear the property at a stroke. The way -I put it is--see?--that if you'll stand for Gossage, you'll get -returned for Gossage." - -"And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall marry your daughter. -Accordingly," the young man pursued, "if I marry your daughter----" - -"I'll burn up, before your eyes," said this young lady's -proprietor, "every scratch of your pen. It will be a bonfire of -signatures. There won't be a penny to pay--there'll only be a -position to take. You'll take it with peculiar grace." - -"Peculiar, Mr. Prodmore--very!" - -The young man had assented more than he desired, but he was not -deterred by it from completing the picture. "You'll settle down -here in comfort and honour." - -Clement Yule took several steps; the effect of his host was the reverse -of soothing; yet the latter watched his irritation as if it were the -working of a charm. "Are you very sure of the 'honour' if I turn -my political coat?" - -"You'll only be turning it back again to the way it was always -worn. Gossage will receive you with open arms and press you to a -heaving Tory bosom. That bosom"--Mr. Prodmore followed himself -up--"has never heaved but to sound Conservative principles. The -cradle, as I've called it,--or at least the rich, warm coverlet,--of -your race, Gossage was the political property, so to speak, of -generations of your family. Stand therefore in the good old interest -and you'll stand like a lion." - -"I'm afraid you mean," Captain Yule laughed, "that I must first -roar like one." - -"Oh, _I'll_ do the roaring!"--and Mr. Prodmore shook his -mane. "Leave that to me." - -"Then why the deuce don't you stand yourself?" - -Mr. Prodmore knew so familiarly why! "Because I'm not a -remarkably handsome young man with the grand old home and the right -old name. Because I'm a different sort of matter altogether. But if I -haven't these advantages," he went on, "you'll do justice to my -natural desire that my daughter at least shall have them." - -Clement Yule watched himself smoke a minute. "Doing justice to -natural desires is just what, of late, I've tried to make a study -of. But I confess I don't quite grasp the deep attraction you appear -to discover in so large a surrender of your interests." - -"My surrenders are my own affair," Mr. Prodmore rang out, "and as -for my interests, as I never, on principle, give anything for nothing, -I dare say I may be trusted to know them when I see them. You come -high--I don't for a moment deny it; but when I look at you, in -this pleasant, intimate way, my dear boy--if you'll allow me so to -describe things--I recognise one of those cases, unmistakeable when -really met, in which one must put down one's money. There's not -an article in the whole shop, if you don't mind the comparison, -that strikes me as better value. I intend you shall be, Captain," -Mr. Prodmore wound up in a frank, bold burst, "the true comfort of -my life!" - -The young man was as hushed for a little as if an organ-tone were -still in the air. "May I inquire," he at last returned, "if Miss -Prodmore's ideas of comfort are as well defined--and in her case, I -may add, as touchingly modest--as her father's? Is she a responsible -party of this ingenious arrangement?" - -Mr. Prodmore rendered homage--his appreciation was marked--to the -elevated character of his young friend's scruple. "Miss Prodmore, -Captain Yule, may be perhaps best described as a large smooth sheet -of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true -and perfect filial has yet, I can answer for it, formed itself on the -considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected----" - -"I've only, in person, to appear?" Yule asked with an embarrassment -that he tried to laugh off. - -"And, naturally, in person," Mr. Prodmore intelligently assented, -"do yourself, as well as the young lady, justice. Do you remember -what you said when I first, in London, laid the matter before you?" - -Clement Yule did remember, but his amusement increased. "I think -I said it struck me I should first take a look at--what do you call -it?--the _corpus delicti_." - -"You should first see for yourself what you had really come into? I -was not only eager for that," said Mr. Prodmore, "but I'm willing -to go further: I'm quite ready to hear you say that you think you -should also first see the young lady." - -Captain Yule continued to laugh. "There is something in that then, -since you mention it!" - -"I think you'll find that there's everything." Mr. Prodmore -again looked at his watch. "Which will you take first?" - -"First?" - -"The young lady or the house?" - -His companion, at this, unmistakeably started. "Do you mean your -daughter's _here_?" - -Mr. Prodmore glowed with consciousness. "In the morning-room." - -"Waiting for me?" - -The tone showed a consternation that Mr. Prodmore's was alert to -soothe. "Ah, as long, you know, as you like!" - -Yule's alarm, however, was not assuaged; it appeared to grow as he -stared, much discomposed, yet sharply thinking, at the door to which -his friend had pointed. "Oh, longer than _this_, please!" Then as -he turned away: "Do you mean she knows----?" - -"That she's here on view?" Mr. Prodmore hung fire a moment, but -was equal to the occasion. "She knows nothing whatever. She's as -unconscious as the rose on its stem!" - -His companion was visibly relieved. "That's right--let her remain -so! I'll first take the house," said Clement Yule. - -"Shall I go round _with_ you?" Mr. Prodmore asked. - -The young man's reflection was brief. "Thank you. I'd rather, on -the whole, go round alone." - -The old servant who had admitted the gentlemen came back at this crisis -from the morning-room, looking from under a bent brow and with much -limpid earnestness from one of them to the other. The one he first -addressed had evidently, though quite unaware of it, inspired him with -a sympathy from which he now took a hint. "There's tea on, sir!" -he persuasively jerked as he passed the younger man. - -The elder answered. "Then I'll join my daughter." He gained -the morning-room door, whence he repeated with an appropriate -gesture--that of offering proudly, with light, firm fingers, a flower -of his own celebrated raising--his happy formula of Miss Prodmore's -state. "The rose on its stem!" Scattering petals, diffusing -fragrance, he thus passed out. - -Chivers, meanwhile, had rather pointlessly settled once more in its -place some small object that had not strayed; to whom Clement Yule, -absently watching him, abruptly broke out. "I say, my friend, what -colour is the rose?" - -The old man looked up with a dimness that presently glimmered. "The -rose, sir?" He turned to the open door and the shining day. "Rather -a brilliant----" - -"A brilliant----?" Yule was interested. - -"Kind of old-fashioned red." Chivers smiled with the pride of -being thus able to testify, but the next instant his smile went -out. "It's the only one left--on the old west wall." - -His visitor's mirth, at this, quickly enough revived. "My dear -fellow, I'm not alluding to the sole ornament of the garden, but to -the young lady at present in the morning-room. Do you happen to have -noticed if she's pretty?" - -Chivers stood queerly rueful. "Laws, sir--it's a matter I mostly -notice; but isn't it, at the same time, sir, a matter--like--of -taste?" - -"Pre-eminently. That's just why I appeal with such confidence to -yours." - -The old man acknowledged with a flush of real embarrassment a -responsibility he had so little invited. "Well, sir,--mine was always -a sort of fancy for something more merry-like." - -"She isn't merry-like then, poor Miss Prodmore?" Captain Yule's -attention, however, dropped before the answer came, and he turned off -the subject with an "Ah, if you come to that, neither am I! But -it doesn't signify," he went on. "What are _you_?" he more -sociably demanded. - -Chivers clearly had to think a bit. "Well, sir, I'm not quite -_that_. Whatever has there been to make me, sir?" he asked in dim -extenuation. - -"How in the world do _I_ know? I mean to whom do you belong?" - -Chivers seemed to scan impartially the whole field. "If you could -just only _tell_ me, sir! I quite seem to waste away--for someone to -take an order of." - -Clement Yule, by this time, had become aware he was amusing. "Who -pays your wages?" - -"No one at all, sir," said the old man very simply. - -His friend, fumbling an instant in a waistcoat pocket, produced -something that his hand, in obedience to a little peremptory gesture -and by a trick of which he had unlearned, through scant custom, the -neatness, though the propriety was instinctive, placed itself in a shy -practical relation to. "Then there's a sovereign. And I haven't -many!" the young man, turning away resignedly, threw after it. - -Chivers, for an instant, intensely studied him. "Ah, then, -shouldn't it stay in the family?" - -Clement Yule wheeled round, first struck, then, at the sight of the -figure made by his companion in this offer, visibly touched. "I think -it does, old boy." - -Chivers kept his eyes on him now. "I've served your house, sir." - -"How long?" - -"All my life." - -So, for a time, they faced each other, and something in Chivers made -Yule at last speak. "Then I won't give _you_ up!" - -"Indeed, sir, I hope you won't give up anything." - -The Captain took up his hat. "It remains to be seen." He looked -over the place again; his eyes wandered to the open door. "Is that -the garden?" - -"It _was_!"--and the old man's sigh was like the creak of the -wheel of time. "Shall I show you how it used to be?" - -"It's just as it _is_, alas, that I happen to require it!" -Captain Yule reached the door and stood looking beyond. "Don't -come," he then said; "I want to think." With which he walked out. - -Chivers, left alone, appeared to wonder at it, and his wonder, -like that of most old people, lay near his lips. "What does he -want, poor dear, to think about?" This speculation, however, was -immediately checked by a high, clear voice that preceded the appearance -on the stairs, before she had reached the middlemost landing, of the -wonderful figure of a lady, a lady who, with the almost trumpeted -cheer of her peremptory but friendly call--"Housekeeper, Butler, old -Family Servant!"--fairly waked the sleeping echoes. Chivers gazed up -at her in quick remembrance, half dismayed, half dazzled, of a duty -neglected. She appeared now; she shone at him out of the upper dusk; -reaching the middle, she had begun to descend, with beautiful laughter -and rustling garments; and though she was alone she gave him the sense -of coming in a crowd and with music. "Oh, I should have told him of -_her_!" - - -III - -She was indeed an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and -explanation just in the degree in which it seemed to show itself in a -relation quite of its own to all social preliminaries. It evidently -either assumed them to be already over or wished to forestall them -altogether; what was clear at any rate was that it allowed them scant -existence. She was young, tall, radiant, lovely, and dressed in a -manner determined at once, obviously, by the fact and by the humour -of her journey--it might have proclaimed her so a pilgrim or so set -her up as a priestess. Most journeys, for this lady, at all events, -were clearly a brush of Paris. "Did you think I had got snapped down -in an old box like that poor girl--what's her name? the one who was -poking round too--in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful man, why -didn't you tell me?" - -"Tell you, mum----?" - -"Well, that you're so perfectly--perfect! You're ever so much -better than anyone has ever said. Why, in the name of common sense, has -nobody ever said _anything_? You're everything in the world you ought -to be, and not the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn't!" - -It was a higher character to be turned out with than poor Chivers had -ever dreamed. "Well, mum, I try!" he gaped. - -"Oh, no, you don't--that's just your charm! _I_ try," cried his -friend, "but you do nothing: here you simply _are_--you can't help -it!" - -He stood overwhelmed. "Me, mum?" - -She took him in at the eyes--she could take everything at once. "Yes, -you too, you positive old picture! I've seen the old masters--but -you're the old master!" - -"The master--I?" He fairly fell back. - -"'The good and faithful servant'--Rembrandt van Rhyn: with -three stars. _That's_ what you are!" Nothing would have been more -droll to a spectator than her manner of meeting his humbleness, or more -charming indeed than the practical sweetness of her want of imagination -of it. "The house is a vision of beauty, and you're simply worthy -of the house. I can't say more for you!" - -"I find it a bit of a strain, mum," Chivers candidly replied, "to -keep up--fairly to call it--with what you _do_ say." - -"That's just what everyone finds it!"--she broke into the -happiest laugh. "Yet I haven't come here to suffer in silence, you -know--to suffer, I mean, from envy and despair." She was in constant -movement, from side to side, observing, comparing, returning, taking -notes while she gossiped and gossiping, too, for remembrance. The -intention of remembrance even had in it, however, some prevision of -failure or some alloy of irritation. "You're so fatally right and -so deadly complete, all the same, that I can really scarcely bear it: -with every fascinating feature that I had already heard of and thought -I was prepared for, and ever so many others that, strange to say, -I hadn't and wasn't, and that you just spring right _at_ me like -a series of things going off. What do you call it," she asked--"a -royal salute, a hundred guns?" - -Her enthusiasm had a bewildering form, but it had by this time warmed -the air, and the old man rubbed his hands as over a fire to which the -bellows had been applied. "I saw as soon as you arrived, mum, that -you were looking for more things than ever _I_ heard tell of!" - -"Oh, I had got you by heart," she returned, "from books and -drawings and photos; I had you in my pocket when I came: so, you see, -as soon as you were so good as to give me my head and let me loose, -I knew my way about. It's all here, every inch of it," she -competently continued, "and now at last I can do what I want!" - -A light of consternation, at this, just glimmered in Chivers's -face. "And pray, mum, what might that be?" - -"Why, take you right back with me--to Missoura Top." - -This answer seemed to fix his bewilderment, but he was there for the -general convenience. - -"Do I understand you, mum, that you require to take _me_?" - -Her particular convenience, on the spot, embraced him, so new and -delightful a sense had he suddenly read into her words. "Do you -mean to say you'd come--as the old Family Servant? Then _do_, -you nice real thing: it's just what I'm dying for--an old Family -Servant! You're somebody's else, yes--but everything, over here, -is somebody's else, and I want, too, a first-rate second-hand one, -all ready made, as you are, but not too much done up. You're the -best I've seen yet, and I wish I could have you packed--put up in -paper and bran--as I shall have my old pot there." She whisked about, -remembering, recovering, eager: "Don't let me _forget_ my precious -pot!" Excited, with quick transitions, she quite sociably appealed -to her companion, who shuffled sympathetically to where, out of harm, -the object had been placed on a table. "Don't you just love old -crockery? That's awfully sweet old Chelsea." - -He took up the piece with tenderness, though, in his general agitation, -not perhaps with all the caution with which, for daily service, he -handled ancient frailties. He at any rate turned on this fresh subject -an interested, puzzled eye. "Where is it I've known this very -bit--though not to say, as _you_ do, by name?" Suddenly it came to -him. "In the pew-opener's front parlour!" - -"No," his interlocutress cried, "in the pew-opener's best -bedroom: on the old chest of drawers, you know--with those ducks of -brass handles. I've got the handles too--I mean the whole thing; -and the brass fender and fire-irons, and the chair her grandmother died -in. Not in the fly," she added--"it was such a bore that they have -to be sent." - -Chivers, with the pot still in his hands, fairly rocked in the high -wind of so much confidence and such great transactions. He had nothing -for these, however, but approval. "You did right to take this out, -mum, when the fly went to the stables. Them flymen do be cruel rash -with anything that's delicate." Of the delicacy of the vessel -it now rested with him to deposit safely again he was by this time -so appreciatively aware that in returning with it to its safe niche -he stumbled into some obscure trap literally laid for him by his -nervousness. It was the matter of a few seconds, of a false movement, -a knock of the elbow, a gasp, a shriek, a complete little crash. There -was the pot on the pavement, in several pieces, and the clumsy -cup-bearer blue with fear. "Mercy _on_ us, mum,--I've brought shame -on my old grey hairs!" - -The little shriek of his companion had smothered itself in the -utterance, and the next minute, with the ruin between them, they -were contrastedly face to face. The charming woman, who had already -found more voices in the air than anyone had found before, could, in -the happy play of this power, find a poetry in her accident. "Oh, -but the way you _take_ it!" she laughed--"you're too quaint -to live!" She looked at him as if he alone had suffered--as if his -suffering indeed positively added to his charm. "The way you said -that now--it's just the very 'type'! That's all I want of -you now--to _be_ the very type. It's what you are, you poor dear -thing--for you _can't_ help it; and it's what everything and -everyone else is, over here; so that you had just better all make -up your minds to it and not try to shirk it. There was a type in the -train with me--the 'awfully nice girl' of all the English novels, -the 'simple maiden in her flower' of--who is it?--your great -poet. _She_ couldn't help it either--in fact I wouldn't have _let_ -her!" With this, while Chivers picked up his fragments, his lady had -a happy recall. His face, as he stood there with the shapeless elements -of his humiliation fairly rattling again in his hands, was a reflection -of her extraordinary manner of enlarging the subject, or rather, more -beneficently perhaps, the space that contained it. "By the way, the -girl was coming right here. Has she come?" - -Chivers crept solemnly away, as if to bury his dead, which he -consigned, with dumb rites, to a situation of honourable publicity; -then, as he came back, he replied without elation: "Miss Prodmore is -here, mum. She's having her tea." - -This, for his friend, was a confirmatory touch to be fitted with -eagerness into the picture. "Yes, that's exactly it--they're -always having their tea!" - -"With Mr. Prodmore--in the morning-room," the old man supplemented. -"Captain Yule's in the garden." - -"Captain Yule?" - -"The new master. He's also just arrived." - -The wonderful lady gave an immediate "Oh!" to the effect of which -her silence for another moment seemed to add. "She didn't tell me -about _him_." - -"Well, mum," said Chivers, "it do be a strange thing to tell. He -had never--like, mum--so much as seen the place." - -"Before today--his very own?" This too, for the visitor, was an -impression among impressions, and, like most of her others, it ended -after an instant as a laugh. "Well, I hope he likes it!" - -"I haven't seen many, mum," Chivers boldly declared, "that like -it as much as _you_." - -She made with her handsome head a motion that appeared to signify -still deeper things than he had caught. Her beautiful wondering eyes -played high and low, like the flight of an imprisoned swallow, then, as -she sank upon a seat, dropped at last as if the creature were bruised -with its limits. "I should like it still better if it were _my_ very -own!" - -"Well, mum," Chivers sighed, "if it wasn't against my duty I -could wish indeed it were! But the Captain, mum," he conscientiously -added, "is the lawful heir." - -It was a wonder what she found in whatever he said; he touched with -every word the spring of her friendly joy. "That's another of your -lovely old things--I adore your lawful heirs!" She appeared to have, -about everything that came up, a general lucid vision that almost -glorified the particular case. "He has come to take possession?" - -Chivers accepted, for the credit of the house, this sustaining -suggestion. "He's a-taking of it now." - -This evoked, for his companion, an instantaneous show. "What -does he do and how does he do it? Can't I _see_?" She was all -impatience, but she dropped to disappointment as her guide looked -blank. "There's no grand fuss----?" - -"I scarce think him, mum," Chivers with propriety hastened to -respond, "the gentleman to make any about anything." - -She had to resign herself, but she smiled as she thought. "Well, -perhaps I like them better when they don't!" She had clearly a -great range of taste, and it all came out in the wistfulness with -which, before the notice apparently served on her, she prepared -to make way. "I also"--she lingered and sighed--"have taken -possession!" - -Poor Chivers really rose to her. "It was you, mum," he smiled, -"took it first!" - -She sadly shook her head. "Ah, but for a poor little hour! _He's_ -for life." - -The old man gave up, after a little, with equal depression, the -pretence of dealing with such realities. "For mine, mum, I do at -least hope." - -She made again the circuit of the great place, picking up without -interest the jacket she had on her previous entrance laid down. "I -shall think of you, you know, here together." She vaguely looked -about her as for anything else to take; then abruptly, with her eyes -again on Chivers: "Do you suppose he'll be kind to you?" - -His hand, in his trousers-pocket, seemed to turn the matter over. "He -has already been, mum." - -"Then be sure to be so to _him_!" she replied with some -emphasis. The house-bell sounded as she spoke, giving her quickly -another thought. "Is that his bell?" - -Chivers was hardly less struck. "I must see whose!"--and hurrying, -on this, to the front, he presently again vanished. - -His companion, left alone, stood a minute with an air in which happy -possession was oddly and charmingly mingled with desperate surrender; -so much as to have left you in doubt if the next of her lively motions -were curiosity or disgust. Impressed, in her divided state, with a -small framed plaque of enamel, she impulsively detached it from the -wall and examined it with hungry tenderness. Her hovering thought was -so vivid that you might almost have traced it in sound. "Why, bless -me if it isn't Limoges! I wish awfully I were a _bad_ woman: then, -I do devoutly hope, I'd just quietly take it!" It testified to the -force of this temptation that on hearing a sound behind her she started -like a guilty thing; recovering herself, however, and--just, of course, -not to appear at fault--keeping the object familiarly in her hand as -she jumped to a recognition of the gentleman who, coming in from the -garden, had stopped in the open doorway. She gathered indeed from his -being there a positive advantage, the full confidence of which was -already in her charming tone. "Oh, Captain Yule, I'm delighted to -meet you! It's such a comfort to ask you if I _may_!" - -His surprise kept him an instant dumb, but the effort not too -closely to betray it appeared in his persuasive inflection. "If you -'may,' madam----?" - -"Why, just _be_ here, don't you know? and poke round!" She -presented such a course as almost vulgarly natural. "Don't tell -me I can't now, because I already _have_: I've been upstairs -and downstairs and in my lady's chamber--I won't answer for -it even perhaps that I've not been in my lord's! I got round -your lovely servant--if you don't look out I'll grab him. If -you don't look out, you know, I'll grab everything." She -gave fair notice and went on with amazing serenity; she gathered -positive gaiety from his frank stupefaction. "That's what I came -over for--just to lay your country waste. Your house is a wild old -dream; and besides"--she dropped, oddly and quaintly, into real -responsible judgment--"you've got some quite good things. Oh, -yes, you _have_--several: don't coyly pretend you haven't!" Her -familiarity took these flying leaps, and she alighted, as her victim -must have phrased it to himself, without turning a hair. "Don't -you _know_ you have? Just look at that!" She thrust her enamel -before him, but he took it and held it so blankly, with an attention -so absorbed in the mere woman, that at the sight of his manner her -zeal for his interest and her pity for his detachment again flashed -out. "Don't you know _anything_? Why, it's Limoges!" - -Clement Yule simply broke into a laugh--though his laugh indeed -was comprehensive. "It seems absurd, but I'm not in the least -acquainted with my house. I've never happened to see it." - -She seized his arm. "Then do let me show it to you!" - -"I shall be delighted." His laughter had redoubled in a way that -spoke of his previous tension; yet his tone, as he saw Chivers return -breathless from the front, showed that he had responded sincerely -enough to desire a clear field. "Who in the world's there?" - -The old man was full of it. "A party!" - -"A party?" - -Chivers confessed to the worst. "Over from Gossage--to see the -house." - -The worst, however, clearly, was quite good enough for their -companion, who embraced the incident with sudden enthusiasm. "Oh, -let _me_ show it!" But before either of the men could reply she had, -addressing herself to Chivers, one of those droll drops that betrayed -the quickness of her wit and the freedom of her fancy. "Dear me, I -forgot--_you_ get the tips! But, you dear old creature," she went on, -"I'll get them, too, and I'll simply make them over to you." -She again pressed Yule--pressed him into this service. "Perhaps -they'll be bigger--for me!" - -He continued to be highly amused. "I should think they'd -be enormous--for you! But I _should_ like," he added with more -concentration--"I should like extremely, you know, to go over with -you alone." - -She was held a moment. "Just you and me?" - -"Just you and me--as you kindly proposed." - -She stood reminded; but, throwing it off, she had her first -inconsequence. "That must be for after----!" - -"Ah, but not too late." He looked at his watch. "I go back -tonight." - -"Laws, sir!" Chivers irrepressibly groaned. - -"You want to keep him?" the stranger asked. Captain Yule turned -away at the question, but her look went after him, and she found -herself, somehow, instantly answered. "Then I'll help you," she -said to Chivers; "and the oftener we go over the better." - -Something further, on this, quite immaterial, but quite adequate, -passed, while the young man's back was turned, between the two -others; in consequence of which Chivers again appealed to his -master. "Shall I show them straight in, sir?" - -His master, still detached, replied without looking at him. "By all -means--if there's money in it!" This was jocose, but there would -have been, for an observer, an increase of hope in the old man's -departing step. The lady had exerted an influence. - -She continued, for that matter, with a start of genial remembrance, -to exert one in his absence. "Oh, and I promised to show it to Miss -Prodmore!" Her conscience, with a kind smile for the young person she -named, put the question to Clement Yule. "Won't you call her?" - -The coldness of his quick response made it practically none. -"'Call' her? Dear lady, I don't _know_ her!" - -"You must, then--she's wonderful." The face with which he met -this drew from the dear lady a sharper look; but, for the aid of her -good-nature, Cora Prodmore, at the moment she spoke, presented herself -in the doorway of the morning-room. "See? She's charming!" The -girl, with a glare of recognition, dashed across the open as if under -heavy fire; but heavy fire, alas--the extremity of exposure--was -promptly embodied in her friend's public embrace. "Miss -Prodmore," said this terrible friend, "let me present Captain -Yule." Never had so great a gulf been bridged in so free a -span. "Captain Yule, Miss Prodmore. Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule." - -There was stiffness, the cold mask of terror, in such notice as either -party took of this demonstration, the convenience of which was not -enhanced for the divided pair by the perception that Mr. Prodmore -had now followed his daughter. Cora threw herself confusedly -into it indeed, as with a vain rebound into the open. "Papa, -let me 'present' you to Mrs. Gracedew. Mrs. Gracedew, Mr. -Prodmore. Mr. Prodmore, Mrs. Gracedew." - -Mrs. Gracedew, with a free salute and a distinct repetition, took in -Mr. Prodmore as she had taken everything else. "Mr. Prodmore"--oh, -she pronounced him, spared him nothing of himself. "So happy to meet -your daughter's father. Your daughter's so perfect a specimen." - -Mr. Prodmore, for the first moment, had simply looked large and at -sea; then, like a practical man and without more question, had quickly -seized the long perch held out to him in this statement. "So perfect -a specimen, yes!"--he seemed to pass it on to his young friend. - -Mrs. Gracedew, if she observed his emphasis, drew from it no -deterrence; she only continued to cover Cora with a gaze that kept her -well in the middle. "So fresh, so quaint, so droll!" - -It was apparently a result of what had passed in the morning-room that -Mr. Prodmore had grasped afresh the need for effective action, which -he clearly felt he did something to meet in clutching precipitately the -helping hand popped so suddenly out of space, yet so beautifully gloved -and so pressingly and gracefully brandished. "So fresh, so quaint, so -droll!"--he again gave Captain Yule the advantage of the stranger's -impression. - -To what further appreciation this might have prompted the lady herself -was not, however, just then manifest; for the return of Chivers had -been almost simultaneous with the advance of the Prodmores, and it had -taken place with forms that made it something of a circumstance. There -was positive pomp in the way he preceded several persons of both sexes, -not tourists at large, but simple sightseers of the half-holiday order, -plain provincial folk already, on the spot, rather awestruck. The old -man, with suppressed pulls and prayers, had drawn them up in a broken -line, and the habit of more peopled years, the dull drone of the dead -lesson, sounded out in his prompt beginning. The party stood close, -in this manner, on one side of the apartment, while the master of the -house and his little circle were grouped on the other. But as Chivers, -guiding his squad, reached the centre of the space, Mrs. Gracedew, -markedly moved, quite unreservedly engaged, came slowly forward to -meet him. "This, ladies and gentlemen," he mechanically quavered, -"is perhaps the most important feature--the grand old feudal, -baronial 'all. Being, from all accounts, the most ancient portion of -the edifice, it was erected in the very earliest ages." He paused a -moment, to mark his effect, then gave a little cough which had become, -obviously, in these great reaches of time, an essential part of the -trick. "Some do say," he dispassionately remarked, "in the course -of the fifteenth century." - -Mrs. Gracedew, who had visibly thrown herself into the working of the -charm, following him with vivid sympathy and hanging on his lips, took -the liberty, at this, of quite affectionately pouncing on him. "_I_ -say in the fourteenth, my dear--you're robbing us of a hundred -years!" - -Her victim yielded without a struggle. "I do seem, in them dark -old centuries, sometimes to trip a little." Yet the interruption of -his ancient order distinctly discomposed him, all the more that his -audience, gaping with a sense of the importance of the fine point, -moved in its mass a little nearer. Thus put upon his honour, he -endeavoured to address the group with a dignity undiminished. "The -Gothic roof is much admired, but the west gallery is a modern -addition." - -His discriminations had the note of culture, but his candour, all too -promptly, struck Mrs. Gracedew as excessive. "What in the name of -Methuselah do you call 'modern'? It was here at the visit of James -the First, in 1611, and is supposed to have served, in the charming -detail of its ornament, as a model for several that were constructed -in his reign. The great fireplace," she handsomely conceded, "_is_ -Jacobean." - -She had taken him up with such wondrous benignant authority--as if, -for her life, if they _were_ to have it, she couldn't help taking -care that they had it out; she had interposed with an assurance that -so converted her--as by the wave of a great wand, the motion of one of -her own free arms--from mere passive alien to domesticated dragon, that -poor Chivers could only assent with grateful obeisances. She so plunged -into the old book that he had quite lost his place. The two gentlemen -and the young lady, moreover, were held there by the magic of her -manner. His own, as he turned again to his cluster of sightseers, took -refuge in its last refinement. "The tapestry on the left Italian--the -elegant wood-work Flemish." - -Mrs. Gracedew was upon him again. "Excuse me if I just deprecate a -misconception. The elegant wood-work Italian--the tapestry on the left -Flemish." Suddenly she put it to him before them all, pleading as -familiarly and gaily as she had done when alone with him, and looking -now at the others, all round, gentry and poor folk alike, for sympathy -and support. She had an idea that made her dance. "Do you really -mind if _I_ just do it? Oh, I know how: I can do quite beautifully -the housekeeper last week at Castle Gaunt." She fraternised with -the company as if it were a game they must play with her, though -this first stage sufficiently hushed them. "How do you do? Ain't -it thrilling?" Then with a laugh as free as if, for a disguise, -she had thrown her handkerchief over her head or made an apron of her -tucked-up skirt, she passed to the grand manner. "Keep well together, -please--we're not doing puss-in-the-corner. I've my duty to all -parties--I can't be partial to one!" - -The contingent from Gossage had, after all, like most contingents, its -spokesman--a very erect little personage in a very new suit and a very -green necktie, with a very long face and upstanding hair. It was on -an evident sense of having been practically selected for encouragement -that he, in turn, made choice of a question which drew all eyes. "How -many parties, now, can you manage?" - -Mrs. Gracedew was superbly definite. "Two. The party up and the -party down." Chivers gasped at the way she dealt with this liberty, -and his impression was conspicuously deepened as she pointed to -one of the escutcheons in the high hall-window. "Observe in the -centre compartment the family arms." She did take his breath -away, for before he knew it she had crossed with the lightest but -surest of gestures to the black old portrait, on the opposite wall, -of a long-limbed gentleman in white trunk-hose. "And observe the -family legs!" Her method was wholly her own, irregular and broad; -she flew, familiarly, from the pavement to the roof and then dropped -from the roof to the pavement as if the whole air of the place were an -element in which she floated. "Observe the suit of armour worn at -Tewkesbury--observe the tattered banner carried at Blenheim." They -bobbed their heads wherever she pointed, but it would have come home -to any spectator that they saw her alone. This was the case quite as -much with the opposite trio--the case especially with Clement Yule, -who indeed made no pretence of keeping up with her signs. It was the -signs themselves he looked at--not at the subjects indicated. But he -never took his eyes from her, and it was as if, at last, she had been -peculiarly affected by a glimpse of his attention. All her own, for -a moment, frankly went back to him and was immediately determined by -it. "Observe, above all, that you're in one of the most interesting -old houses, of its type, in England; for which the ages have been -tender and the generations wise: letting it change so slowly that -there's always more left than taken--living their lives in it, but -letting it shape their lives!" - -Though this pretty speech had been unmistakeably addressed to the -younger of the temporary occupants of Covering End, it was the elder -who, on the spot, took it up. "A most striking and appropriate -tribute to a real historical monument!" Mr. Prodmore had a natural -ease that could deal handsomely with compliments, and he manifestly, -moreover, like a clever man, saw even more in such an explosion of them -than fully met the ear. "You do, madam, bring the whole thing out!" - -The visitor who had already with such impunity ventured had, on -this, a loud renewal of boldness, but for the benefit of a near -neighbour. "Doesn't she indeed, Jane, bring it out?" - -Mrs. Gracedew, with a friendly laugh, caught the words in their -passage. "But who in the world wants to keep it _in_? It isn't -a secret--it isn't a strange cat or a political party!" The -housekeeper, as she talked, had already dropped from her; her sense of -the place was too fresh for control, though instead of half an hour -it might have taken six months to become so fond. She soared again, -at random, to the noble spring of the roof. "Just look at those -lovely lines!" They all looked, all but Clement Yule, and several -of the larger company, subdued, overwhelmed, nudged each other with -strange sounds. Wherever she turned Mrs. Gracedew appeared to find a -pretext for breaking out. "Just look at the tone of that glass, and -the gilding of that leather, and the cutting of that oak, and the dear -old flags of the very floor." It came back, came back easily, her -impulse to appeal to the lawful heir, and she seemed, with her smile -of universal intelligence, just to demand the charity of another moment -for it. "To look, in this place, is to love!" - -A voice from the party she had in hand took it up with an artless -guffaw that resounded more than had doubtless been meant and that, at -any rate, was evidently the accompaniment of some private pinch applied -to one of the ladies. "I _say_--to love!" - -It was one of the ladies who very properly replied. "It depends on -who you look at!" - -Mr. Prodmore, in the geniality of the hour, made his profit of the -simple joke. "Do you hear _that_, Captain? You must look at the right -person!" - -Mrs. Gracedew certainly had not been looking at the wrong one. "I -don't think Captain Yule cares. He doesn't do justice----!" - -Though her face was still gay, she had faltered, which seemed to strike -the young man even more than if she had gone on. "To what, madam?" - -Well, on the chance she let him have it. "To the value of your -house." - -He took it beautifully. "I like to hear _you_ express it!" - -"I _can't_ express it!" She once more looked all round, and so -much more gravely than she had yet done that she might have appeared -in trouble. She tried but, with a sigh, broke down. "It's too -inexpressible!" - -This was a view of the case to which Mr. Prodmore, for his own reasons, -was not prepared to assent. Expression and formulation were what he -naturally most desired, and he had just encountered a fountain of these -things that he couldn't prematurely suffer to fail him. "Do what -you can for it, madam. It would bring it quite home." - -Thus excited, she gave with sudden sombre clearness another -try. "Well--the value's a fancy value!" - -Mr. Prodmore, receiving it as more than he could have hoped, turned -triumphant to his young friend. "Exactly what I told you!" - -Mrs. Gracedew explained indeed as if Mr. Prodmore's triumph was -not perhaps exactly what she had argued for. Still, the truth was too -great. "When a thing's unique, it's unique!" - -That was every bit Mr. Prodmore required. "It's unique!" - -This met, moreover, the perception of the gentleman in the -green necktie. "It's unique!" They all, in fact, demonstratively--almost -vociferously now--caught the point. - -Mrs. Gracedew, finding herself so sustained, and still with her eyes -on the lawful heirs, put it yet more strongly. "It's worth anything -you like." - -What was this but precisely what Mr. Prodmore had always striven to -prove? "Anything you like!" he richly reverberated. - -The pleasant discussion and the general interest seemed to bring them -all together. "Twenty thousand now?" one of the gentlemen from -Gossage archly inquired--a very young gentleman with an almost coaxing -voice, who blushed immensely as soon as he had spoken. - -He blushed still more at the way Mrs. Gracedew faced him. "I -wouldn't _look_ at twenty thousand!" - -Mr. Prodmore, on the other hand, was proportionately uplifted. "She -wouldn't look at twenty thousand!" he announced with intensity to -the Captain. - -The visitor who had been the first to speak gave a shrewder -guess. "Thirty, then, as it stands?" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked more and more responsible; she communed afresh -with the place; but she too evidently had her conscience. "It would -be giving it away!" - -Mr. Prodmore, at this, could scarcely contain himself. "It would be -giving it away!" - -The second speaker had meanwhile conceived the design of showing that, -though still crimson, he was not ashamed. "You'd hold out for -forty----?" - -Mrs. Gracedew required a minute to answer--a very marked minute during -which the whole place, pale old portraits and lurking old echoes and -all, might have made you feel how much depended on her; to the degree -that the consciousness in her face became finally a reason for her not -turning it to Gossage. "Fifty thousand, Captain Yule, is what I think -I should propose." - -If the place had seemed to listen it might have been the place that, -in admiring accents from the gentleman with the green tie, took up the -prodigious figure. "Fifty thousand pound!" - -It was echoed in a high note from the lady he had previously -addressed. "Fifty thousand!" - -Yet it was Mr. Prodmore who caught it up loudest and appeared to make -it go furthest. "Fifty thousand--fifty thousand!" Mrs. Gracedew had -put him in such spirits that he found on the spot, indicating to her -his young friend, both the proper humour and the proper rigour for any -question of what anyone might "propose." "He'll never part with -the dear old home!" - -Mrs. Gracedew could match at least the confidence. "Then I'll go -over it again while I have the chance." Her own humour enjoined that -she should drop into the housekeeper, in the perfect tone of which -character she addressed herself once more to the party. "We now pass -to the grand staircase." She gathered her band with a brave gesture, -but before she had fairly impelled them to the ascent she heard herself -rather sharply challenged by Captain Yule, who, during the previous -scene, had uttered no sound, yet had remained as attentive as he was -impenetrable. "Please let them pass without you!" - -She was taken by surprise. "And stay here with _you_?" - -"If you'll be so good. I want to speak to you." Turning then to -Chivers and frowning on the party, he delivered himself for the first -time as a person in a position. "For God's sake, remove them!" - -The old man, at this blast of impatience, instantly fluttered -forward. "We now pass to the grand staircase." - -They all passed, Chivers covering their scattered ascent as a shepherd -scales a hillside with his flock; but it became evident during the -manoeuvre that Cora Prodmore was quite out of tune. She had been -standing beyond and rather behind Captain Yule; but she now moved -quickly round and reached her new friend's right. "Mrs. Gracedew, -may _I_ speak to you?" - -Her father, before the reply could come, had taken up the -place. "_After_ Captain Yule, my dear." He was in a state of -positively polished lucidity. "You must make the most--don't you -see?--of the opportunity of the others!" - -He waved her to the staircase as one who knew what he was about, -but, while the young man, turning his back, moved consciously and -nervously away, the girl renewed her effort to provoke Mrs. Gracedew -to detain her. It happened, to her sorrow, that this lady appeared for -the moment, to the detriment of any free attention, to be absorbed -in Captain Yule's manner; so that Cora could scarce disengage her -without some air of invidious reference to it. Recognising as much, -she could only for two seconds, but with great yearning, parry her own -antagonist. "She'll _help_ me, I think, papa!" - -"That's exactly what strikes me, love!" he cheerfully replied. -"But _I'll_ help you too!" He gave her, toward the stairs, -a push proportioned both to his authority and to her weight; -and while she reluctantly climbed in the wake of the visitors, he laid -on Mrs. Gracedew's arm, with a portentous glance at Captain Yule, -a hand of commanding significance. "Just pile it on!" - -Her attention came back--she seemed to see. "He doesn't like it?" - -"Not half enough. Bring him round." - -Her eyes rested again on their companion, who had fidgeted further -away and who now, with his hands in his pockets and unaware of this -private passage, stood again in the open doorway and gazed into the -grey court. Something in the sight determined her. "I'll bring him -round." - -But at this moment Cora, pausing half-way up, sent down another -entreaty. "Mrs. Gracedew, will you see _me_?" - -The charming woman looked at her watch. "In ten minutes," she -smiled back. - -Mr. Prodmore, bland and assured, looked at his own. "You could -put him through in five--but I'll allow you twenty. There!" he -decisively cried to his daughter, whom he quickly rejoined and hustled -on her course. Mrs. Gracedew kissed after her a hand of vague comfort. - - -IV - -The silence that reigned between the pair might have been registered -as embarrassing had it lasted a trifle longer. Yule had continued to -turn his back, but he faced about, though he was distinctly grave, in -time to avert an awkwardness. "How do you come to know so much about -my house?" - -She was as distinctly not grave. "How do _you_ come to know so -little?" - -"It's not my fault," he said very gently. "A particular -combination of misfortunes has forbidden me, till this hour, to come -within a mile of it." - -These words evidently struck her as so exactly the right ones to -proceed from the lawful heir that such a felicity of misery could only -quicken her interest. He was plainly as good in his way as the old -butler--the particular combination of misfortunes corresponded to the -lifelong service. Her interest, none the less, in its turn, could only -quicken her pity, and all her emotions, we have already seen, found -prompt enough expression. What could any expression do indeed now but -mark the romantic reality? "Why, you poor thing!"--she came toward -him on the weary road. "Now that you've got here I hope at least -you'll stay." Their intercourse must pitch itself--so far as she -was concerned--in some key that would make up for things. "Do make -yourself comfortable. Don't mind me." - -Yule looked a shade less serious. "That's exactly what I wanted to -say to _you_!" - -She was struck with the way it came in. "Well, if you _had_ been -haughty, I shouldn't have been quite crushed, should I?" - -The young man's gravity, at this, completely yielded. "I'm never -haughty--oh, no!" - -She seemed even more amused. "Fortunately then, as _I'm_ never -crushed. I don't think," she added, "that I'm really as -crushable as you." - -The smile with which he received this failed to conceal completely -that it was something of a home thrust. "Aren't we really _all_ -crushable--by the right thing?" - -She considered a little. "Don't you mean rather by the wrong?" - -He had got, clearly, a trifle more accustomed to her being -extraordinary. "Are you sure we always know them apart?" - -She weighed the responsibility. "I always do. Don't you?" - -"Not quite every time!" - -"Oh," she replied, "I don't think, thank goodness, we have -positively 'every time' to distinguish." - -"Yet we must always act," he objected. - -She turned this over; then with her wonderful living look, "I'm -glad to hear it," she exclaimed, "because, I fear, I always -_do_! You'll certainly think," she added with more gravity, "that -I've taken a line today!" - -"Do you mean that of mistress of the house? Yes--you do seem in -possession!" - -"_You_ don't!" she honestly answered; after which, as to -attenuate a little the rigour of the charge: "You don't comfortably -look it, I mean. You don't look"--she was very serious--"as I -want you to." - -It was when she was most serious that she was funniest. "How do you -'want' me to look?" - -She endeavoured, while he watched her, to make up her mind, but seemed -only, after an instant, to recognise a difficulty. "When you look -at _me_, you're all right!" she sighed. It was an obstacle to her -lesson, and she cast her eyes about. "Look at that chimneypiece." - -"Well----?" he inquired as his eyes came back from it. - -"You mean to say it isn't lovely?" - -He returned to it without passion--gave a vivid sign of mere -disability. "I'm sure I don't know. I don't mean to say -anything. I'm a rank outsider." - -It had an instant effect on her--she almost pounced upon him. "Then -you must let me put you up!" - -"Up to what?" - -"Up to everything!"--his levity added to her earnestness. "You -were smoking when you came in," she said as she glanced -about. "Where's your cigarette?" - -The young man appreciatively produced another. "I thought perhaps I -mightn't--here." - -"You may everywhere." - -He bent his head to the information. "Everywhere." - -She laughed at his docility, yet could only wish to presume upon -it. "It's a rule of the house!" - -He took in the place with greater pleasure. "What delightful -rules!" - -"How could such a house have any others?"--she was already -launched again in her brave relation to it. "I _may_ go up just once -more--mayn't I--to the long gallery?" - -How could he tell? "The long gallery?" - -With an added glow she remembered. "I forgot you've never seen -it. Why, it's the leading thing about you!" She was full, on the -spot, of the pride of showing it. "Come right up!" - -Clement Yule, half seated on a table from which his long left leg -nervously swung, only looked at her and smiled and smoked. "There's -a party up." - -She remembered afresh. "So _we_ must be the party down? Well, you -must give me a chance. That long gallery's the principal thing I came -over for." - -She was strangest of all when she explained. "Where in heaven's -name did you come over from?" - -"Missoura Top, where I'm building--just in this style. I came for -plans and ideas," Mrs. Gracedew serenely pursued. "I felt I must -look right _at_ you." - -"But what did you know about us?" - -She kept it a moment as if it were too good to give him all at -once. "Everything!" - -He seemed indeed almost afraid to touch it. "At 'Missoura -Top'?" - -"Why not? It's a growing place--forty thousand the last census." -She hesitated; then as if her warrant should be slightly more personal: -"My husband left it to me." - -The young man presently changed his posture. "You're a widow?" - -Nothing was wanting to the simplicity of her quiet assent. "A -very lone woman." Her face, for a moment, had the vision of a long -distance. "My loneliness is great enough to want something big to -hold it--and my taste good enough to want something beautiful. You see, -I had your picture." - -Yule's innocence made a movement. "Mine?" - -Her smile reassured him; she nodded toward the main entrance. "A -water colour I chanced on in Boston." - -"In Boston?" - -She stared. "Haven't you heard of Boston either?" - -"Yes--but what has Boston heard of _me_?" - -"It wasn't 'you,' unfortunately--it was your divine south -front. The drawing struck me so that I got you up--in the books." - -He appeared, however, rather comically, but half to make it out, -or to gather at any rate that there was even more of it than he -feared. "Are we in the books?" - -"Did you never discover it?" Before his blankness, the dim -apprehension in his fine amused and troubled face of how much -there was of it, her frank, gay concern for him sprang again to the -front. "Where in heaven's name, Captain Yule, have _you_ come over -from?" - -He looked at her very kindly, but as if scarce expecting her to -follow. "The East End of London." - -She had followed perfectly, he saw the next instant, but she had by no -means equally accepted. "What were you doing there?" - -He could only put it, though a little over-consciously, very -simply. "Working, you see. When I left the army--it was much too -slow, unless one was personally a whirlwind of war--I began to make out -that, for a fighting man----" - -"There's always," she took him up, "somebody or other to go -for?" - -He considered her, while he smoked, with more confidence; as if she -might after all understand. "The enemy, yes--everywhere in force. I -went for _him_: misery and ignorance and vice--injustice and privilege -and wrong. Such as you see me----" - -"You're a rabid reformer?"--she understood beautifully. "I wish -we had you at Missoura Top!" - -He literally, for a moment, in the light of her beauty and familiarity, -appeared to measure his possible use there; then, looking round him -again, announced with a sigh that, predicament for predicament, his own -would do. "I fear my work is nearer home. I hope," he continued, -"since you're so good as to seem to care, to perform a part of that -work in the next House of Commons. My electors have wanted me----" - -"And you've wanted _them_," she lucidly put in, "and that has -been why you couldn't come down." - -"Yes, for all this last time. And before that, from my childhood up, -there was another reason." He took a few steps away and brought it -out as rather a shabby one. "A family feud." - -She proved to be quite delighted with it. "Oh, I'm so glad--I -_hoped_ I'd strike a 'feud'! That rounds it off, and spices it -up, and, for the heartbreak with which I take leave of you, just neatly -completes the fracture!" Her reference to her going seemed suddenly, -on this, to bring her back to a sense of proportion and propriety, and -she glanced about once more for some wrap or reticule. This, in turn, -however, was another recall. "Must I really wait--to go up?" - -He had watched her movement, had changed colour, had shifted his place, -had tossed away, plainly unwitting, a cigarette but half smoked; and -now he stood in her path to the staircase as if, still unsatisfied, -he abruptly sought a way to turn the tables. "Only till you tell me -this: if you absolutely meant, awhile ago, that this old thing is so -precious." - -She met his doubt with amazement and his density with compassion. "Do -you literally need I should _say_ it? Can you stand here and not feel -it?" If he had the misfortune of bandaged eyes, she could at least -rejoice in her own vision, which grew intenser with her having to speak -for it. She spoke as with a new rush of her impression. "It's a -place to love----" Yet to say the whole thing was not easy. - -"To love----?" he impatiently insisted. - -"Well, as you'd love a person!" If that was saying the whole -thing, saying the whole thing could only be to go. A sound from the -"party up" came down at that moment, and she took it so clearly -as a call that, for a sign of separation, she passed straight to the -stairs. "Good-bye!" - -The young man let her reach the foot, but then, though the greatest -width of the hall now divided them, spoke, anxiously and nervously, as -if the point she had just made brought them still more together. "I -think I 'feel' it, you know; but it's simply you--your presence, -as I may say, and the remarkable way you put it--that make me. I'm -afraid that in your absence----" He struck a match to smoke again. - -It gave her time apparently to make out something to pause for. "In -my absence?" - -He lit his cigarette. "I may come back----" - -"Come back?" she took him almost sharply up. "I should like to -see you _not_!" - -He smoked a moment. "I mean to my old idea----" - -She had quite turned round on him now. "Your old idea----?" - -He faced her over the width still between them. "Well--that one -_could_ give it up." - -Her stare, at this, fairly filled the space. "Give up Covering? How -in the world--or why?" - -"Because I can't afford to keep it." - -It brought her straight back, but only half-way: she pulled up short as -at a flash. "Can't you let it?" - -Again he smoked before answering. "Let it to _you_?" - -She gave a laugh, and her laugh brought her nearer. "I'd take it in -a minute!" - -Clement Yule remained grave. "I shouldn't have the face to charge -you a rent that would make it worth one's while, and I think -even you, dear lady"--his voice just trembled as he risked that -address--"wouldn't have the face to offer me one." He paused, -but something in his aspect and manner checked in her now any impulse -to read his meaning too soon. "My lovely inheritance is Dead Sea -fruit. It's mortgaged for all it's worth and I haven't the -means to pay the interest. If by a miracle I could scrape the money -together, it would leave me without a penny to live on." He puffed -his cigarette profusely. "So if I find the old home at last--I lose -it by the same luck!" - -Mrs. Gracedew had hung upon his words, and she seemed still to wait, -in visible horror, for something that would improve on them. But when -she had to take them for his last, "I never heard of anything -so awful!" she broke out. "Do you mean to say you can't -arrange----?" - -"Oh, yes," he promptly replied, "an arrangement--if that be the -name to give it--has been definitely proposed to me." - -"What's the matter, then?"--she had dropped into relief. "For -heaven's sake, you poor thing, definitely accept it!" - -He laughed, though with little joy, at her sweet simplifications. -"I've made up my mind in the last quarter of an hour that -I can't. It's such a peculiar case." - -Mrs. Gracedew frankly wondered; her bias was clearly sceptical. -"_How_ peculiar----?" - -He found the measure difficult to give. "Well--more peculiar than -most cases." - -Still she was not satisfied. "More peculiar than mine?" - -"Than yours?"--Clement Yule knew nothing about that. - -Something, at this, in his tone, his face--it might have been his -"British" density--seemed to pull her up. "I forgot--you don't -know mine. No matter. What _is_ yours?" - -He took a few steps in thought. "Well, the fact that I'm asked to -change." - -"To change what?" - -He wondered how he could put it; then at last, on his own side, -simplified. "My attitude." - -"Is that all?"--she was relieved again. "Well, you're not a -statue." - -"No, I'm not a statue; but on the other hand, don't you -see? I'm not a windmill." There was good-humour, none the less, in -his rigour. "The mortgages I speak of have all found their way, like -gregarious silly sheep, into the hands of one person--a devouring wolf, -a very rich, a very sharp man of money. He holds me in this manner -at his mercy. He consents to make things comfortable for me, but he -requires that, in return, I shall do something for him that--don't -you know?--rather sticks in my crop." - -It appeared on this light showing to stick for a moment even in -Mrs. Gracedew's. "Do you mean something wrong?" - -He had not a moment's hesitation. "Exceedingly so!" - -She turned it over as if pricing a Greek Aldus. "Anything immoral?" - -"Yes--I may literally call it immoral." - -She courted, however, frankly enough, the strict truth. "Too bad to -tell?" - -He indulged in another pensive fidget, then left her to judge. "He -wants me to give up----" Yet again he faltered. - -"To give up what?" What could it be, she appeared to ask, that was -barely nameable? - -He quite blushed to her indeed as he came to the point. "My -fundamental views." - -She was disappointed--she had waited for more. "Nothing but -_them_?" - -He met her with astonishment. "Surely they're quite enough, -when one has unfortunately"--he rather ruefully smiled--"so very -many!" - -She laughed aloud; this was frankly so odd a plea. "Well, _I've_ a -neat collection too, but I'd 'swap,' as they say in the West, the -whole set----!" She looked about the hall for something of equivalent -price; after which she pointed, as it caught her eye, to the great cave -of the fireplace. "I'd take _that_ set!" - -The young man scarcely followed. "The fire-irons?" - -"For the whole fundamental lot!" She gazed with real yearning at -the antique group. "_They're_ three hundred years old. Do you mean -to tell me your wretched 'views'----?" - -"Have anything like that age? No, thank God," Clement Yule -laughed, "my views--wretched as you please!--are quite in their -prime! They're a hungry little family that has got to be fed. They -keep me awake at night." - -"Then you must make up your sleep!" Her impatience grew with her -interest. "Listen to _me_!" - -"That would scarce be the way!" he returned. But he added -more sincerely: "You must surely see a fellow can't chuck his -politics." - -"'Chuck' them----?" - -"Well--sacrifice them." - -"I'd sacrifice mine," she cried, "for that old fire-back with -your arms!" He glanced at the object in question, but with such a -want of intelligence that she visibly resented it. "See how it has -stood!" - -"See how _I've_ stood!" he answered with spirit. "I've glowed -with a hotter fire than anything in any chimney, and the warmth and -light I diffuse have attracted no little attention. How can I consent -to reduce them to the state of that desolate hearth?" - -His companion, freshly struck with the fine details of the desolation, -had walked over to the chimney-corner, where, lost in her deeper -impression, she lingered and observed. At last she turned away with her -impatience controlled. "It's magnificent!" - -"The fire-back?" - -"Everything--everywhere. I don't understand your haggling." - -He hesitated. "That's because you're ignorant." Then seeing -in the light of her eye that he had applied to her the word in the -language she least liked, he hastened to attenuate. "I mean of -what's behind my reserves." - -She was silent in a way that made their talk more of a discussion than -if she had spoken. "What _is_ behind them?" she presently asked. - -"Why, my whole political history. Everything I've said, everything -I've done. My scorching addresses and letters, reproduced in all -the papers. I needn't go into details, but I'm a pure, passionate, -pledged Radical." - -Mrs. Gracedew looked him full in the face. "Well, what if you -_are_?" - -He broke into mirth at her tone. "Simply this--that I can't -therefore, from one day to the other, pop up at Gossage in the purple -pomp of the opposite camp. There's a want of transition. It may be -timid of me--it may be abject. But I can't." - -If she was not yet prepared to contest she was still less prepared to -surrender it, and she confined herself for the instant to smoothing -down with her foot the corner of an old rug. "Have you thought very -much about it?" - -He was vague. "About what?" - -"About what Mr. Prodmore wants you to do." - -He flushed up. "Oh, then, you know it's _he_?" - -"I'm not," she said, still gravely enough, "of an intelligence -absolutely infantile." - -"You're the cleverest Tory I've ever met!" he laughed. "I -didn't mean to mention my friend's name, but since _you've_ done -so----!" He gave up with a shrug his scruple. - -Oh, she had already cleared the ground of it! "It's he who's the -devouring wolf? It's he who holds your mortgages?" - -The very lucidity of her interest just checked his assent. "He holds -plenty of others, and he treats me very handsomely." - -She showed of a sudden an inconsequent face. "Do you call _that_ -handsome--such a condition?" - -He shed surprise. "Why, I thought it was just the condition you could -meet." - -She measured her inconsistency, but was not abashed. "We're -not talking of what _I_ can meet." Yet she found also a relief in -dropping the point. "Why doesn't he stand himself?" - -"Well, like other devouring wolves, he's not personally adored." - -"Not even," she asked, "when he offers such liberal terms?" - -Clement Yule had to explain. "I dare say he doesn't offer them to -everyone." - -"Only to you?"--at this she quite sprang. "You _are_ personally -adored; you will be still more if you stand; and that, you poor lamb, -is why he wants you!" - -The young man, obviously pleased to find her after all more at -one with him, accepted gracefully enough the burden her sympathy -imposed. "I'm the bearer of my name, I'm the representative of my -family; and to my family and my name--since you've led me to it--this -countryside has been for generations indulgently attached." - -She listened to him with a sentiment in her face that showed how now, -at last, she felt herself deal with the lawful heir. She seemed to -perceive it with a kind of passion. "You do of course what you will -with the countryside!" - -"Yes"--he went with her--"if we do it as genuine Yules. I'm -obliged of course to grant you that your genuine Yule's a Tory of -Tories. It's Mr. Prodmore's belief that I should carry Gossage in -that character, but in that character only. They won't look at me in -any other." - -It might have taxed a spectator to say in what character Mrs. Gracedew, -on this, for a little, considered him. "Don't be too sure of -people's not looking at you!" - -He blushed again, but he laughed. "We must leave out my personal -beauty." - -"We can't!" she replied with decision. "Don't we take in -Mr. Prodmore's?" - -Captain Yule was not prepared. "You call him beautiful?" - -"Hideous." She settled it; then pursued her investigation. -"What's the extraordinary interest that he attaches----?" - -"To the return of a Tory?" Here the young man _was_ prepared. -"Oh, his desire is born of his fear--his terror on behalf -of Property, which he sees, somehow, with an intensely Personal, with -a quite colossal 'P.' He has a great deal of that article, and very -little of anything else." - -Mrs. Gracedew, accepting provisionally his demonstration, had one -of her friendly recalls. "Do you call that nice daughter 'very -little'?" - -The young man looked quite at a loss. "Is she very big? I really -didn't notice her--and moreover she's just a part of the -Property. He thinks things are going too far." - -She sat straight down on a stiff chair; on which, with high -distinctness: "Well, they _are_!" - -He stood before her in the discomposure of her again thus appearing to -fail him. "Aren't you then a lover of justice?" - -"A passionate one!" She sat there as upright as if she held the -scales. "Where's the justice of your losing this house?" Generous -as well as strenuous, all her fairness thrown out by her dark old -high-backed seat, she put it to him as from the judicial bench. "To -keep Covering, you must carry Gossage!" - -The odd face he made at it might have betrayed a man dazzled. "As -a renegade?" - -"As a genuine Yule. What business have you to be anything -else?" She had already arranged it all. "You must close with -Mr. Prodmore--you must stand in the Tory interest." She hung fire -a moment; then as she got up: "If you will, I'll conduct your -canvass!" - -He stared at the distracting picture. "That puts the temptation -high!" - -But she brushed the mere picture away. "Ah, don't look at me as if -_I_ were the temptation! Look at this sweet old human home, and feel -all its gathered memories. Do you want to know what they do to me?" -She took the survey herself again, as if to be really sure. "They -speak to me for Mr. Prodmore." - -He followed with a systematic docility the direction of her eyes, -but as if with the result only of its again coming home to him that -there was no accounting for what things might do. "Well, there are -others than these, you know," he good-naturedly pleaded--"things -for which I've spoken, repeatedly and loudly, to others than you." -The very manner of his speaking on such occasions appeared, for that -matter, now to come back to him. "One's 'human home' is all -very well, but the rest of one's humanity is better!" She gave, -at this, a droll soft wail; she turned impatiently away. "I see -you're disgusted with me, and I'm sorry; but one must take one's -self as circumstances and experience have made one, and it's not my -fault, don't you know? if they've made me a very modern man. I see -something else in the world than the beauty of old show-houses and the -glory of old show-families. There are thousands of people in England -who can show no houses at all, and I don't feel it utterly shameful -to share their poor fate!" - -She had moved away with impatience, and it was the advantage of this -for her that the back she turned prevented him from seeing how intently -she listened. She seemed to continue to listen even after he had -stopped; but if that gave him a sense of success, he might have been -checked by the way she at last turned round with a sad and beautiful -headshake. "We share the poor fate of humanity whatever we do, and -we do something to help and console when we've something precious to -show. What on earth is more precious than what the ages have slowly -wrought? They've trusted us, in such a case, to keep it--to do -something, in our turn, for _them_." She shone out at him as if -her contention had the evidence of the noonday sun, and yet in her -generosity she superabounded and explained. "It's such a virtue, -in anything, to have lasted; it's such an honour, for anything, to -have been spared. To all strugglers from the wreck of time hold out a -pitying hand!" - -Yule, on this argument,--of a strain which even a good experience of -debate could scarce have prepared him to meet,--had not a congruous -rejoinder absolutely pat, and his hesitation unfortunately gave him -time to see how soon his companion made out that what had touched -him most in it was her particular air in presenting it. She would -manifestly have preferred he should have been floored by her mere moral -reach; yet he was aware that his own made no great show as he took -refuge in general pleasantry. "What a plea for looking backward, dear -lady, to come from Missoura Top!" - -"We're making a Past at Missoura Top as fast as ever we can, and -I should like to see you lay your hand on an hour of the one we've -made! It's a tight fit, as yet, I grant," she said, "and that's -just why I like, in yours, to find room, don't you see? to turn -round. You're _in_ it, over here, and you can't get out; so just -make the best of that and treat the thing as part of the fun!" - -"The whole of the fun, to me," the young man replied, "is in -hearing you defend it! It's like your defending hereditary gout or -chronic rheumatism and sore throat--the things I feel aching in every -old bone of these walls and groaning in every old draught that, I'm -sure, has for centuries blown through them." - -Mrs. Gracedew looked as if no woman could be shaken who was so prepared -to be just all round. "If there be aches--there may be--you're here -to soothe them, and if there be draughts--there _must_ be!--you're -here to stop them up. And do you know what _I'm_ here for? If I've -come so far and so straight, I've almost wondered myself. I've felt -with a kind of passion--but now I see _why_ I've felt." She moved -about the hall with the excitement of this perception, and, separated -from him at last by a distance across which he followed her discovery -with a visible suspense, she brought out the news. "I'm here for an -act of salvation--I'm here to avert a sacrifice!" - -So they stood a little, with more, for the minute, passing between them -than either really could say. She might have flung down a glove that -he decided on the whole, passing his hand over his head as the seat of -some confusion, not to pick up. Again, but flushed as well as smiling, -he sought the easiest cover. "You're here, I think, madam, to be a -memory for all my future!" - -Well, she was willing, she showed as she came nearer, to take it, -at the worst, for that. "You'll be one for mine, if I can see -you by that hearth. Why do you make such a fuss about changing your -politics? If you'd come to Missoura Top, you'd change them quick -enough!" Then, as she saw further and struck harder, her eyes grew -deep, her face even seemed to pale, and she paused, splendid and -serious, with the force of her plea. "What do politics amount to, -compared with religions? Parties and programmes come and go, but a -duty like this abides. There's nothing you can break with"--she -pressed him closer, ringing out--"that would be like breaking -_here_. The very words are violent and ugly--as much a sacrilege as -if you had been trusted with the key of the temple. This _is_ the -temple--don't profane it! Keep up the old altar kindly--you can't -set up a new one as good. You _must_ have beauty in your life, don't -you see?--that's the only way to make sure of it for the lives of -others. Keep leaving it to _them_, to all the poor others," she -went on with her bright irony, "and heaven only knows what will -become of it! Does it take one of _us_ to feel that?--to preach you -the truth? Then it's good, Captain Yule, we come right over--just to -see, you know, what you may happen to be about. We know," she went on -while her sense of proportion seemed to play into her sense of humour, -"what we haven't got, worse luck; so that if you've happily got -it you've got it also for _us_. You've got it in trust, you see, -and oh! we have an eye on you. You've had it so for me, all these -dear days that I've been drinking it in, that, to be grateful, I've -wanted regularly to _do_ something." With which, as if in the rich -confidence of having convinced him, she came so near as almost to touch -him. "Tell me now I shall have done it--I shall have kept you at your -post!" - -If he moved, on this, immediately further, it was with the oddest air -of seeking rather to study her remarks at his ease than to express an -independence of them. He kept, to this end, his face averted--he was -so completely now in intelligent possession of her own. The sacrifice -in question carried him even to the door of the court, where he once -more stood so long engaged that the persistent presentation of his back -might at last have suggested either a confession or a request. - -Mrs. Gracedew, meanwhile, a little spent with her sincerity, seated -herself again in the great chair, and if she sought, visibly enough, -to read a meaning into his movement, she had as little triumph for -one possible view of it as she had resentment for the other. The -possibility that he yielded left her after all as vague in respect to -a next step as the possibility that he merely wished to get rid of -her. The moments elapsed without her abdicating; and indeed when he -finally turned round his expression was an equal check to any power to -feel she might have won. "You have," he queerly smiled at her, "a -standpoint quite your own and a style of eloquence that the few scraps -of parliamentary training I've picked up don't seem at all to fit -me to deal with. Of course I don't pretend, you know, that I don't -_care_ for Covering." - -That, at all events, she could be glad to hear, if only perhaps for the -tone in it that was so almost comically ingenuous. But her relief was -reasonable and her exultation temperate. "You haven't even seen it -yet." She risked, however, a laugh. "Aren't you a bit afraid?" - -He took a minute to reply, then replied--as if to make it up--with a -grand collapse. "Yes; awfully. But if I am," he hastened in decency -to add, "it isn't only Covering that makes me." - -This left his friend apparently at a loss. "What else is it?" - -"Everything. But it doesn't in the least matter," he loosely -pursued. "You may be quite correct. When we talk of the house your -voice comes to me somehow as the wind in its old chimneys." - -Her amusement distinctly revived. "I hope you don't mean I roar!" - -He blushed again; there was no doubt he was confused. "No--nor yet -perhaps that you whistle! I don't believe the wind does either, -here. It only whispers," he sought gracefully to explain; "and it -sighs----" - -"And I hope," she broke in, "that it sometimes laughs!" - -The sound she gave only made him, as he looked at her, more -serious. "Whatever it does, it's all right." - -"All right?"--they were sufficiently together again for her to lay -her hand straight on his arm. "Then you promise?" - -"Promise what?" - -He had turned as pale as if she hurt him, and she took her hand -away. "To meet Mr. Prodmore." - -"Oh, dear, no; not yet!"--he quite recovered himself. "I must -wait--I must think." - -She looked disappointed, and there was a momentary silence. "When -have you to answer him?" - -"Oh, he gives me time!" Clement Yule spoke very much as he might -have said, "Oh, in two minutes!" - -"_I_ wouldn't give you time," Mrs. Gracedew cried with force--"I'd -give you a shaking! For God's sake, at any rate"--and she -really tried to push him off--"go upstairs!" - -"And literally _find_ the dreadful man?" This was so little his -personal idea that, distinctly dodging her pressure, he had already -reached the safe quarter. - -But it befell that at the same moment she saw Cora reappear on -the upper landing--a circumstance that promised her a still better -conclusion. "He's coming down!" - -Cora, in spite of this announcement, came down boldly enough without -him and made directly for Mrs. Gracedew, to whom her eyes had attached -themselves with an undeviating glare. Her plain purpose of treating -this lady as an isolated presence allowed their companion perfect -freedom to consider her arrival with sharp alarm. His disconcerted -stare seemed for a moment to balance; it wandered, gave a wild glance -at the open door, then searched the ascent of the staircase, in which, -apparently, it now found a coercion. "I'll go up!" he gasped; and -he took three steps at a time. - - -V - -The girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, straight upon the -wonderful lady. "I've come back to you--I want to speak to you!" -The need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly immense. "May I -confide in you?" - -Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both astonished and -amused. "You too?" she laughed. "Why it _is_ good we come -over!" - -"It is, indeed!" Cora gratefully echoed. "You were so very kind -to me and seemed to think me so curious." - -The mirth of her friend redoubled. "Well, I loved you for it, and it -was nothing moreover to what you thought _me_!" - -Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial--she only presented her frank -high colour. "I loved _you_. But I'm the worst!" she generously -added. "And I'm solitary." - -"Ah, so am I!" Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with -emphasis. "A _very_ queer thing always _is_ solitary! But, since we -have that link, by all means confide." - -"Well, I was met here by tremendous news." Cora produced it with a -purple glow. "He wants me to marry him!" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to -follow. "'He' wants you?" - -"Papa, of course. He has settled it!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. "Settled what?" - -"Why, the whole question. That I must take him." - -Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. "But, my -dear, take _whom_?" - -The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. "Why, Captain -Yule, who just went up." - -"Oh!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. "Oh!" she repeated, -looking straight away. - -"I thought you would know," Cora gently explained. - -Her friend's eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. "I -didn't know." Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been -sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things -more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. "Has Captain -Yule asked you?" - -"No, but he _will_"--Cora was clear as a bell. "He'll do it -to keep the house. It's mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it -back." - -Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it -spread. "By marrying you?" she quavered. - -Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the -subject. "By giving me his name and his position. They're awfully -great, and they're the price, don't you see?" she modestly -mentioned. "_My_ price. Papa's price. Papa wants them." - -Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp -was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. "But -his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful -politics!" - -Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. "You _know_ about -his dreadful politics? He's to change them," she recited, "to get -_me_. And if he gets me----" - -"He keeps the house?"--Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up. - -Cora continued to show her schooling. "I go _with_ it--he's to have -us both. But only," she admonishingly added, "if he changes. The -question is--_will_ he change?" - -Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. "I see. _Will_ -he change?" - -Cora's consideration of it went even further. "_Has_ he changed?" - -It went--and the effect was odd--a little too far for her companion, in -whom, just discernibly, it had touched the spring of impatience. "My -dear child, how in the world should _I_ know?" - -But Cora knew exactly how anyone would know. "He hasn't seemed to -care enough for the house. _Does_ he care?" - -Mrs. Gracedew moved away, passed over to the fireplace, and stood a -moment looking at the old armorial fire-back she had praised to its -master--yet not, it must be added, as if she particularly saw it. Then -as she faced about: "You had better ask him!" - -They stood thus confronted, with the fine old interval between them, -and the girl's air was for a moment that of considering such a -course. "If he does care," she said at last, "he'll propose." - -Mrs. Gracedew, from where she stood in relation to the stairs, saw at -this point the subject of their colloquy restored to view: Captain Yule -was just upon them--he had turned the upper landing. The sight of him -forced from her in a flash an ejaculation that she tried, however, -to keep private--"He does care!" She passed swiftly, before he -reached them, back to the girl and, in a quick whisper, but with full -conviction, let her have it: "He'll propose!" - -Her movement had made her friend aware, and the young man, hurrying -down, was now in the hall. Cora, at his hurry, looked dismay--"Then I -fly!" With which, casting about for a direction, she reached the door -to the court. - -Captain Yule, however, at this result of his return, expressed instant -regret. "I drive Miss Prodmore away!" - -Mrs. Gracedew, more quickly still, eased off the situation. "It's -all right!" She had embraced both parties with a smile, but it was -most liberal now for Cora. "Do you mind, one moment?"--it conveyed, -unmistakeably, a full intelligence and a fine explanation. "I've -something to say to Captain Yule." - -Cora stood in the doorway, robust against the garden-light, and looking -from one to the other. "Yes--but I've also something more to say -to _you_." - -"Do you mean now?" the young man asked. - -It was the first time he had spoken to her, and her hesitation might -have signified a maidenly flutter. "No--but before she goes." - -Mrs. Gracedew took it amiably up. "Come back, then; I'm not -going." And there was both dismissal and encouragement in the way -that, as on the occasion of the girl's former retreat, she blew her -a familiar kiss. Cora, still with her face to them, waited just enough -to show that she took it without a response; then, with a quick turn, -dashed out, while Mrs. Gracedew looked at their visitor in vague -surprise. "What's the matter with her?" - -She had turned away as soon as she spoke, moving as far from him as -she had moved a few moments before from Cora. The silence that, as he -watched her, followed her question would have been seen by a spectator -to be a hard one for either to break. "I don't know what's -the matter with her," he said at last; "I'm afraid I only know -what's the matter with _me_. It will doubtless give you pleasure to -learn," he added, "that I've closed with Mr. Prodmore." - -It was a speech that, strangely enough, seemed but half to dissipate -the hush. Mrs. Gracedew reached the great chimney again; again she -stood there with her face averted; and when she finally replied it -was in other words than he might have supposed himself naturally to -inspire. "I thought you said he gave you time." - -"Yes; but you produced just now so deep an effect on me that I -thought best not to take any." He appeared to listen to a sound from -above, and, for a moment, under this impulse, his eyes travelled about -almost as if he were alone. Then he completed, with deliberation, his -statement. "I came upon him right there, and I burnt my ships." - -Mrs. Gracedew continued not to meet his face. "You do what he -requires?" - -The young man was markedly, consciously caught. "I do what he -requires. I felt the tremendous force of all you said to me." - -She turned round on him now, as if perhaps with a slight sharpness, the -face of responsibility--even, it might be, of reproach. "So did I--or -I shouldn't have said it!" - -It was doubtless this element of justification in her tone that drew -from him a laugh a tiny trifle dry. "You're perhaps not aware that -you wield an influence of which it's not too much to say----" - -But he paused at the important point so long that she took him -up. "To say what?" - -"Well, that it's practically irresistible!" - -It sounded a little as if it had not been what he first meant; -but it made her, none the less, still graver and just faintly -ironical. "You've given me the most flattering proof of my -influence that I've ever enjoyed in my life!" - -He fixed her very hard, now distinctly so mystified that he could only -wonder what different recall of her previous attitude she would have -looked for. "This was inevitable, dear madam, from the moment you had -converted me--and in about three minutes too!--into the absolute echo -of your raptures." - -Nothing was, indeed, more extraordinary than her air of having suddenly -forgotten them. "My 'raptures'?" - -He was amazed. "Why, about my home." - -He might look her through and through, but she had no eyes for himself, -though she had now quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this -allusion. "Oh, yes--your home!" From where had she come back to -it? "It's a nice tattered, battered old thing." This account -of it was the more shrunken that her observation, even as she spoke, -freshly went the rounds. "It has defects of course"--with this -renewed attention they appeared suddenly to strike her. They had -popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might have been a matter -of conscience. However, her conscience dropped. "But it's no use -mentioning them now!" - -They had half an hour earlier been vividly present to himself, but -to see her thus oddly pulled up by them was to forget on the spot the -ground he had taken. "I'm particularly sorry," he returned with -some spirit, "that you didn't mention them before!" - -At this imputation of inconsequence, of a levity not, after all, -without its excuse, Mrs. Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her -resentment down, to an effort not quite successfully disguised. It -was in a tone, nevertheless, all the more mild in intention that she -reminded him of where he had equally failed. "If you had really gone -over the house, as I almost went on my knees to you to do, you might -have discovered some of them yourself!" - -"How can you say that," the young man asked with heat, "when -I was precisely in the very act of it? It was just _because_ I was -that the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore; on which, feeling -that I must come to it sooner or later, I simply gave in to him on the -spot--yielded him, to have it well over, the whole of his point." - -She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, -from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It -left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered -her tone. "Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you -want!" - -But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons -for that. "I only know it so far as _you_ know it! I struck while the -iron was hot--or at any rate while the hammer was." - -"Of course I recognise"--she adopted his image with her restored -gaiety--"that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I -blazed up, and I know that when I burn----" - -She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. "When you burn?" - -"Well, I do it as Chicago does." - -He also could laugh out now. "Isn't that usually down to the -ground?" - -Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. "As high as -the sky!" Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real -question. "I suppose you've still formalities to go through." - -"With Mr. Prodmore?" Well, he would suppose it too if she -liked. "Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!" - -This sketch of them made her wonder. "You mean they'll take so -very, very long?" - -He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. "Every hour, -every month, that I can possibly make them last!" - -She was with him here, however, but to a certain point. "You -mustn't drag them out _too_ much--must you? Won't he think in that -case you may want to retract?" - -Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore under this delusion, and -with a success that had a quick, odd result. "I shouldn't be so -terribly upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did!" - -His manner, with its slight bravado, left her proportionately -shocked. "Oh, it would never do to give him any colour whatever for -supposing you to have any doubt that, as one may say, you've pledged -your honour." - -He devoted to this proposition more thought than its simplicity -would have seemed to demand; but after a minute, at all events, his -intelligence triumphed. "Of course not--not when I _haven't_ any -doubt!" - -Though his intelligence had triumphed, she still wished to show she was -there to support it. "How can you _possibly_ have any--any more than -you can possibly have that one's honour is everything in life?" And -her charming eyes expressed to him her need to feel that he was quite -at one with her on _that_ point. - -He could give her every assurance. "Oh, yes--everything in life!" - -It did her much good, brought back the rest of her brightness. -"Wasn't it just of the question of the honour of things -that we talked awhile ago--and of the difficulty of sometimes keeping -our sense of it clear? There's no more to be said therefore," she -went on with the faintest soft sigh about it, "except that I leave -you to your ancient glory as I leave you to your strict duty." She -had these things there before her; they might have been a well-spread -board from which she turned away fasting. "I hope you'll do justice -to dear old Covering in spite of its weak points, and I hope above all -you'll not be incommoded----" - -As she hesitated here he was too intent. "Incommoded----?" - -She saw it better than she could express it. "Well, by such a -rage----!" - -He challenged this description with a strange gleam. "You suppose it -will be a rage?" - -She laughed out at his look. "Are you afraid of the love that -kills?" - -He grew singularly grave. "_Will_ it kill----?" - -"Great passions _have_!"--she was highly amused. - -But he could only stare. "Is it a great passion?" - -"Surely--when so many feel it!" - -He was fairly bewildered. "But how many----?" - -She reckoned them up. "Let's see. If you count them all----" - -"'All'?" Clement Yule gasped. - -She looked at him, in turn, slightly mystified. "I see. You knock off -some. About half?" - -It was too obscure--he broke down. "Whom on earth are you talking -about?" - -"Why, the electors----" - -"Of Gossage?"--he leaped at it. "Oh!" - -"I got the whole thing up--there are six thousand. It's such a fine -figure!" said Mrs. Gracedew. - -He had sharply passed from her, to cover his mistake, and it carried -him half round the hall. Then, as if aware that this pause itself -compromised him, he came back confusedly and with her last words in his -ear. "_Has_ she a fine figure?" - -But her own thoughts were off. "'She'?" - -He blushed and recovered himself. "Aren't we talking----" - -"Of Gossage? Oh, yes--she has every charm! Good-bye," said -Mrs. Gracedew. - -He pulled, at this, the longest face, but was kept dumb a moment by -the very decision with which she again began to gather herself. It -held him helpless, and there was finally real despair in his retarded -protest. "You don't mean to say you're going?" - -"You don't mean to say you're surprised at it? Haven't I -done," she luminously asked, "what I told you I had been so -mystically moved to come for?" She recalled to him by her renewed -supreme survey the limited character of this errand, which she then in -a brisk familiar word expressed to the house itself. "You dear old -thing--you're saved!" - -Clement Yule might on the other hand, by his simultaneous action, -have given himself out for lost. "For God's sake," he cried as -he circled earnestly round her, "don't go till I can come back -to thank you!" He pulled out his watch. "I promised to return -immediately to Prodmore." - -This completely settled his visitor. "Then don't let me, for a -moment more, keep you away from him. You must have such lots"--it -went almost without saying--"to talk comfortably over." - -The young man's embrace of that was, in his restless movement, to -roam to the end of the hall furthest from the stairs. But here his -assent was entire. "I certainly feel, you know, that I must see him -again." He rambled even to the open door and looked with incoherence -into the court. "Yes, decidedly, I _must_!" - -"Is he out there?" Mrs. Gracedew lightly asked. - -He turned short round. "No--I left him in the long gallery." - -"You _saw_ that, then?"--she flashed back into eagerness. -"Isn't it lovely?" - -Clement Yule rather wondered. "I didn't notice it. How _could_ -I?" - -His face was so woeful that she broke into a laugh. "How _couldn't_ -you? Notice it now, then. Go up to him!" - -He crossed at last to the staircase, but at the foot he stopped -again. "Will you wait for me?" - -He had such an air of proposing a bargain, of making the wait a -condition, that she had to look it well in the face. The result of -her doing so, however, was apparently a strong sense that she could -give him no pledge. Her silence, after a moment, expressed that; but, -for a further emphasis, moving away, she sank suddenly into the chair -she had already occupied and in which, serious again and very upright, -she continued to withhold her promise. "Go up to him!" she simply -repeated. He obeyed, with an abrupt turn, mounting briskly enough -several steps, but pausing midway and looking back at her as if he were -after all irresolute. He was in fact so much so that, at the sight of -her still in her chair and alone by his cold hearth, he descended a -few steps again and seemed, with too much decidedly on his mind, on the -point of breaking out. She had sat a minute in such thought, figuring -him clearly as gone, that at the sound of his return she sprang up -with a protest. This checked him afresh, and he remained where he had -paused, still on the ascent and exchanging with her a look to which -neither party was inspired, oddly enough, to contribute a word. It -struck him, without words, at all events, as enough, and he now took -his upward course at such a pace that he presently disappeared. She -listened awhile to his retreating tread; then her own, on the old flags -of the hall, became rapid, though, it may perhaps be added, directed -to no visible end. It conveyed her, in the great space, from point to -point, but she now for the first time moved there without attention and -without joy, her course determined by a series of such inward throbs as -might have been the suppressed beats of a speech. A real observer, had -such a monster been present, would have followed this tacit evolution -from sign to sign and from shade to shade. "Why didn't he tell me -_all_?--But it was none of my business!--What does he mean to do?--What -should he do but what he _has_ done?--And what _can_ he do, when he's -so deeply committed, when he's practically engaged, when he's just -the same as married--and buried?--The thing for _me_ to 'do' is -just to pull up short and bundle out: to remove from the scene they -encumber the numerous fragments--well, of what?" - -Her thought was plainly arrested by the sight of Cora Prodmore, who, -returning from the garden, reappeared first in the court and then in -the open doorway. Mrs. Gracedew's was a thought, however, that, even -when desperate, was never quite vanquished, and it found a presentable -public solution in the pieces of the vase smashed by Chivers and just -then, on the table where he had laid them, catching her eye. "Of -my old Chelsea pot!" Her gay, sad headshake as she took one of them -up pronounced for Cora's benefit its funeral oration. She laid the -morsel thoughtfully down, while her visitor seemed with simple dismay -to read the story. - - -VI - -"Has he been _breaking_----?" the girl asked in horror. - -Mrs. Gracedew laughingly tapped her heart. "Yes, we've had a -scene! He went up again to your father." - -Cora was disconcerted. "Papa's not there. He just came down to me -by the other way." - -"Then he can join you here," said Mrs. Gracedew with instant -resignation. "I'm going." - -"Just when I've come back to you--at the risk," Cora made bold to -throw off, "of again interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone, -your conversation with Captain Yule?" - -But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. "I've nothing to say to -Captain Yule." - -Cora picked it up for another toss. "You had a good deal to say a few -minutes ago!" - -"Well, I've said it, and it's over. I've nothing more to say -at all," Mrs. Gracedew insisted. But her announcement of departure -left her on this occasion, as each of its predecessors had done, with -a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. "What has become of my -delightful 'party'?" - -"They've been dismissed, through the grounds, by the other -door. But they mentioned," the girl pursued, "the probable arrival -of a fresh lot." - -Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival of interest as fairly -amounted to yearning. "Why, what times you have! _You_," she -nevertheless promptly decreed, "must take the fresh lot--since the -house is now practically yours!" - -Poor Cora looked blank. "Mine?" - -Her companion matched her stare. "Why, if you're going to marry -Captain Yule." - -Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. "I'm _not_ going to marry -Captain Yule!" - -Her friend as quickly paled again. "Why on earth then did you tell me -only ten minutes ago that you were?" - -Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. "I told you -nothing of the sort. I only told you"--she was almost indignantly -positive--"that he had been ordered me!" - -It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away to indulge an emotion that -presently put on the form of extravagant mirth. "Like a dose of -medicine or a course of baths?" - -The girl's gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. "As a remedy -for the single life." Oh, she had mastered the matter now! "But I -won't take him!" - -"Ah, then, why didn't you let me know?" Mrs. Gracedew panted. - -"I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted -us." Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not -stupid. "It's just to let you know that I'm here now." - -Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew, -suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion's fixed -eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. "Excuse me--I -misunderstood. I somehow took for granted----!" She stopped, a trifle -awkwardly--suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably -seen it. - -"You took for granted I'd jump at him? Well, you can take it for -granted I won't!" - -Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. "You -prefer the single life?" - -"No--but I don't prefer _him_!" Cora was crystal-bright. - -Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding; -it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish--which she then did, -however, with immense eagerness. "You prefer someone else?" -Cora's promptitude dropped at this, and, starting to hear it, as -you might well have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she -abruptly moved away. A minute's sense of her scruple was enough for -Mrs. Gracedew: this was proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and -high benevolence with which that lady went on. She had looked very -hard, first, at one of the old warriors hung on the old wall, and -almost spoke as if he represented their host. "He seems remarkably -clever." - -Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped about. "Then why -don't you marry him yourself?" - -Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. "Well, I've got fifty -reasons! I rather think one of them must be that he hasn't happened -to ask me." - -It was a speech, however, that her visitor could easily better. "I -haven't got fifty reasons, but I _have_ got one." - -Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a stroke of wit. "You mean -your case is one of those in which safety is _not_ in numbers?" And -then on Cora's visibly not understanding: "It _is_ when reasons are -bad that one needs so many!" - -The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the -simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. "My reason is -awfully good." - -Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. "I see. An older friend." - -Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time -practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew's extended -encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing -out. "I've been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice, -to tell you about him!" It came in a small clear torrent, a soft -tumble-out of sincerity. "After we parted--you and I--at the station, -he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him -which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in -a state of ignorance that I don't know whether to regard as desirable -or dreadful." - -Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the -old family solicitor. "You want me then to _inform_ your father?" -It was a wonderful intonation. - -Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly have become under this -touch the prodigal with a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look -out of a blurred office window-pane at a grey London sky; then she -broke away. "I really don't know _what_ I want. I think," she -honestly admitted, "I just want kindness." - -Mrs. Gracedew's expression might have hinted--but not for too -long--that Bedford Row was an odd place to apply for it; she appeared -for an instant to make the revolving office-chair creak. "What do you -mean by kindness?" - -Cora was a model client--she perfectly knew. "I mean help." - -Mrs. Gracedew closed an inkstand with a clap and locked a couple of -drawers. "What do you mean by help?" - -The client's inevitable answer seemed to perch on the girl's lips: -"A thousand pounds." But it came out in another, in a much more -charming form. "I mean that I love him." - -The family solicitor got up: it was a high figure. "And does he love -_you_?" - -Cora hesitated. "Ask _him_." - -Mrs. Gracedew weighed the necessity. "Where is he?" - -"Waiting." And the girl's glance, removed from her companion and -wandering aloft and through space, gave the scale of his patience. - -Her adviser, however, required the detail. "But _where_?" - -Cora briefly demurred again. "In that funny old grotto." - -Mrs. Gracedew thought. "Funny?" - -"Half-way from the park gate. It's very _nice_!" Cora more -eagerly added. - -Mrs. Gracedew continued to reflect. "Oh, I know it!" She spoke as -if she had known it most of her life. - -Her tone encouraged her client. "Then will you see him?" - -"No." This time it was almost dry. - -"No?" - -"No. If you want help----" Mrs. Gracedew, still musing, explained. - -"Yes?" - -"Well--you want a great deal." - -"Oh, so much!"--Cora but too woefully took it in. "I want," she -quavered, "all there is!" - -"Well--you shall have it." - -"All there is?"--she convulsively held her to it. - -Mrs. Gracedew had finally mastered it. "I'll see your father." - -"You dear, delicious lady!" Her young friend had again encompassed -her; but, passive and preoccupied, she showed some of the chill of -apprehension. It was indeed as if to meet this that Cora went earnestly -on: "He's intensely sympathetic!" - -"Your father?" Mrs. Gracedew had her reserves. - -"Oh, no--the other person. I so believe in him!" Cora cried. - -Mrs. Gracedew looked at her a moment. "Then so do I--and I like him -for believing in _you_." - -"Oh, he does that," the girl hurried on, "far more than Captain -Yule--I could see just with one glance that _he_ doesn't at all. Papa -has of course seen the young man I mean, but we've been so sure -papa would hate it that we've had to be awfully careful. He's the -son of the richest man at Bellborough, he's Granny's godson, and -he'll inherit his father's business, which is simply immense. Oh, -from the point of view of the things he's _in_"--and Cora found -herself sharp on this--"he's quite as good as papa himself. He -has been away for three days, and if he met me at the station, where, -on his way back, he has to change, it was by the merest chance in the -world. I wouldn't love him," she brilliantly wound up, "if he -wasn't nice." - -"A man's always nice if you _will_ love him!" Mrs. Gracedew -laughed. - -Her young friend more than met it. "He's nicer still if he -'will' love _you_!" - -But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. "Nicer of course than if he -won't! But are you sure this gentleman _does_ love you?" - -"As sure as that the other one doesn't." - -"Ah, but the other one doesn't know you." - -"Yes, thank goodness--and never shall!" - -Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the girl's meeting her -eyes turned away with a quick laugh. "You mean of course till it's -too late." - -"Altogether!" Cora spoke as with quite the measure of the time. - -Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, appeared to accept her -showing. "Then what's the matter?" she impatiently asked. - -"The matter?" - -"Your father's objection to the gentleman in the grotto." - -Cora now for the first time faltered. "His name." - -This for a moment pulled up her friend, in whom, however, relief seemed -to contend with alarm. "Only his name?" - -"Yes, but----" Cora's eyes rolled. - -Her companion invitingly laughed. "But it's enough?" - -Her roll confessingly fixed itself. "_Not_ enough--that's just the -trouble!" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. "What then _is_ it?" - -Cora faced the music. "Pegg." - -Mrs. Gracedew stared. "Nothing else?" - -"Nothing to speak of." The girl was quite candid now. "Hall." - -"Nothing before----?" - -"Not a letter." - -"Hall Pegg?" Mrs. Gracedew had winced, but she quickly recovered -herself, and, for a further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to -form the sound only with her mind. The sound she formed with her lips -was, after an instant, simply "Oh!" - -It was to the combination of the spoken and the unspoken that Cora -desperately replied. "It sounds like a hat-rack!" - -"'Hall Pegg'? 'Hall Pegg'?" Mrs. Gracedew now made it, like -a questionable coin, ring upon the counter. But it lay there as lead -and without, for a moment, her taking it up again. "How many has your -father?" she inquired instead. - -"How many names?" Miss Prodmore seemed dimly to see that there was -no hope in that. "He somehow makes out five." - -"Oh, that's _too_ many!" Mrs. Gracedew jeeringly declared. - -"Papa unfortunately doesn't think so, when Captain Yule, I believe, -has six." - -"Six?" Mrs. Gracedew, alert, looked as if that might be different. - -"Papa, in the morning-room, told me them all." - -Mrs. Gracedew visibly considered, then for a moment dropped -Mr. Pegg. "And what _are_ they!" - -"Oh, all sorts. 'Marmaduke Clement----'" Cora tried to recall. - -Mrs. Gracedew, however, had already checked her. "I see--'Marmaduke -Clement' will do." She appeared for a minute intent, but, as with -an energetic stoop, she picked up Mr. Pegg. "But so will yours," -she said, with decision. - -"Mine?--you mean _his_!" - -"The same thing--what you'll _be_." - -"Mrs. Hall Pegg!"--Cora tried it, with resolution, loudly. - -It fell a little flat in the noble space, but Mrs. Gracedew's manner -quickly covered it. "It won't make you a bit less charming." - -Cora wondered--she hoped. "Only for papa." - -And what was _he_? Mrs. Gracedew by this time seemed assentingly to -ask. "Never for _me_!" she soothingly declared. - -Cora took this in with deep thanks that gripped and patted her -companion's hand. "You accept it more than gracefully. But if you -could only make _him_----!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. "'Him'? Mr. Pegg?" - -"No--he naturally _has_ to accept it. But papa." - -She looked harder still at this greater feat, then seemed to see -light. "Well, it will be difficult--but I will." - -Doubt paled before it. "Oh, you heavenly thing!" - -Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by this appreciation, went a -step further. "And I'll make him _say_ he does!" - -Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. "Oh, if I could only hear -him!" - -Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. "It will be enough if -_I_ do." - -Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt accommodation, gave the -comfortable measure of her faith. "Yes--I think it will." She was -quite ready to retire. "I'll give you time." - -"Thank you," said Mrs. Gracedew; "but before you give me time -give me something better." - -This pulled the girl up a little, as if in parting with her secret she -had parted with her all. "Something better?" - -"If I help you, you know," Mrs. Gracedew explained, "you must -help me." - -"But how?" - -"By a clear assurance." The charming woman's fine face now gave -the real example of clearness. "That if Captain Yule should propose -to you, you would unconditionally refuse him." - -Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only that. "With my dying -breath!" - -Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. "Will you make it even -a promise?" - -The girl looked about her in solid certainty. "Do you want me to -sign----?" - -Mrs. Gracedew was quick. "No, don't sign!" - -Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. "Then what shall I do?" - -Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few vague steps faced her -again. "Kiss me." - -Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had scarce been sealed -before the younger of the parties was already at the passage to the -front. "We meet of course at the station." - -Mrs. Gracedew thought. "If all goes well. But where shall you be -meanwhile?" - -Her confederate had no need to think. "Can't you guess?" - -The bang of the house-door, the next minute, so helped the answer to -the riddle as fairly to force it, when she found herself alone, from -her lips. "At that funny old grotto? Well," she sighed, "I _like_ -funny old grottos!" She found herself alone, however, only for a -minute; Mr. Prodmore's formidable presence had darkened the door from -the court. - - -VII - -"My daughter's not here?" he demanded from the threshold. - -"Your daughter's not here." She had rapidly got under arms. -"But it's a convenience to me, Mr. Prodmore, that _you_ are, -for I've something very particular to ask you." - -Her interlocutor crossed straight to the morning-room. "I shall be -delighted to answer your question, but I must first put my hand on Miss -Prodmore." This hand the next instant stayed itself on the latch, and -he appealed to the amiable visitor. "Unless indeed she's occupied -in there with Captain Yule?" - -The amiable visitor met the appeal. "I don't think she's -occupied--anywhere--with Captain Yule." - -Mr. Prodmore came straight away from the door. "Then where the deuce -_is_ Captain Yule?" - -The amiable visitor turned a trifle less direct. "His absence, for -which I'm responsible, is just what renders the inquiry I speak of -to you possible." She had already assumed a most inquiring air, yet -it was soon clear that she needed every advantage her manner could give -her. "What will you take----? what will you take----?" - -It had the sound, as she faltered, of a general question, and -Mr. Prodmore raised his eyebrows. "Take? Nothing, thank you--I've -just had a cup of tea." Then suddenly, as if on the broad hint: -"Won't _you_ have one?" - -"Yes, with pleasure--but not yet." She looked about her again; she -was now at close quarters and, concentrated, anxious, pressed her hand -a moment to her brow. - -This struck her companion. "Don't you think you'd be better for -it immediately?" - -"No." She was positive. "No." Her eyes consciously wandered. -"I want to know how you'd value----" - -He took her, as his own followed them, more quickly up, expanding in -the presence of such a tribute from a real connoisseur. "One of these -charming old things that take your fancy?" - -She looked at him straight now. "They _all_ take my fancy!" - -"All?" He enjoyed it as the joke of a rich person--the kind of joke -he sometimes made himself. - -"Every single one!" said Mrs. Gracedew. Then with still a finer -shade of the familiar: "Should you be willing to treat, Mr. Prodmore, -for your interest in this property?" - -He threw back his head: she had scattered over the word "interest" -such a friendly, faded colour. She was either _not_ joking or was rich -indeed; and there was a place always kept in his conversation for the -arrival of money, as there is always a box in a well-appointed theatre -for that of royalty. "Am I to take it from you then that you _know_ -about my interest----?" - -"Everything!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a world of wit. - -"Excuse me, madam!"--he himself was now more reserved. "You -don't know everything if you don't know that my interest--considerable -as it might well have struck you--has just ceased to exist. -I've given it up"--Mr. Prodmore softened the blow--"for -a handsome equivalent." - -The blow fell indeed light enough. "You mean for a handsome -son-in-law?" - -"It will be by some such description as the term you use that I -shall doubtless, in the future, permit myself, in the common course, -to allude to Captain Yule. Unless indeed I call him----" But -Mr. Prodmore dropped the bolder thought. "It will depend on what he -calls _me_." - -Mrs. Gracedew covered him a moment with the largeness of her -charity. "Won't it depend a little on what your daughter herself -calls him?" - -Mr. Prodmore seriously considered. "No. That," he declared with -delicacy, "will be between the happy pair." - -"Am I to take it from you then--I adopt your excellent phrase," -Mrs. Gracedew said--"that Miss Prodmore has already accepted him?" - -Her companion, with his head still in the air, seemed to signify that -he simply put it down on the table and that she could take it or not -as she liked. "Her character--formed by my assiduous care--enables me -to locate her, I may say even to _time_ her, from moment to moment." -His massive watch, as he opened it, further sustained him in this -process. "It's my assured conviction that she's accepting him -while we stand here." - -Mrs. Gracedew was so affected by his assured conviction that, with -an odd, inarticulate sound, she forbore to stand longer--she rapidly -moved away, taking one of the brief excursions of step and sense that -had been for her, from the first, under the noble roof, so many dumb -but decisive communions. But it was soon over, and she floated back on -a wave that showed her to be, since she had let herself go, by this -time quite in the swing and describing a considerable curve. "Dear -Mr. Prodmore, why are you so imprudent as to make your daughter -afraid of you? You should have taught her to confide in you. She has -clearly shown me," she almost soothingly pursued, "that she _can_ -confide." - -Mr. Prodmore, however, suddenly starting, looked far from -soothed. "She confides in _you_?" - -"You may take it from me!" Mrs. Gracedew laughed. "Let me suggest -that, as fortune has thrown us together a minute, you follow her good -example." She put out a reassuring hand--she could perfectly show -him the way. "Tell me, for instance, the ground of your objection -to poor Mr. Pegg. I mean Mr. Pegg of Bellborough, Mr. Hall Pegg, the -godson of your daughter's grandmother and the associate of his father -in their flourishing house; to whom (as _he_ is to _it_ and to _her_) -Miss Prodmore's devotedly attached." - -Mr. Prodmore had in the course of this speech availed himself of the -support of the nearest chair, where, in spite of his subsidence, he -appeared in his amazement twice his natural size. "It has gone so far -as _that_?" - -She rose before him as if in triumph. "It has gone so far that you -had better let it go the rest of the way!" - -He had lost breath, but he had positively gained dignity. "It's too -monstrous, to have plotted to keep me in the dark!" - -"Why, it's only when you're kept in the dark that your daughter's -kept in the light!" She argued it with a candour that might -have served for brilliancy. "It's at her own earnest request -that I plead to you for her liberty of choice. She's an honest -girl--perhaps even a peculiar girl; and she's not a baby. You -over-do, I think, the nursing. She has a perfect right to her -preference." - -Poor Mr. Prodmore couldn't help taking it from her, and, this being -the case, he still took it in the most convenient way. "And pray -haven't I a perfect right to mine?" he asked from his chair. - -She fairly seemed to serve it up to him--to put down the dish with a -flourish. "Not at her expense. You expect her to give up too much." - -"And what has she," he appealed, "expected _me_ to give up? What -but the desire of my heart and the dream of my life? Captain Yule -announced to me but a few minutes since his intention to offer her his -hand." - -She faced him on it as over the table. "Well, if he does, I think -he'll simply find----" - -"Find what?" They looked at each other hard. - -"Why, that she won't have it." - -Oh, Mr. Prodmore now sprang up. "She _will_!" - -"She won't!" Mrs. Gracedew more distinctly repeated. - -"She _shall_!" returned her adversary, making for the staircase -with the evident sense of where reinforcement might be most required. - -Mrs. Gracedew, however, with a spring, was well before him. "She -shan't!" She spoke with positive passion and practically so barred -the way that he stood arrested and bewildered, and they faced each -other, for a flash, like enemies. But it all went out, on her part, in -a flash too--in a sudden wonderful smile. "Now tell me how much!" - -Mr. Prodmore continued to glare--the sweat was on his brow. But while -he slowly wiped it with a pocket-handkerchief of splendid scarlet -silk, he remained so silent that he would have had for a spectator the -effect of meeting in a manner her question. More formally to answer -it he had at last to turn away. "How can I tell you anything so -preposterous?" - -She was all ready to inform him. "Simply by computing the total -amount to which, for your benefit, this unhappy estate is burdened." -He listened with his back presented, but that appeared to strike her, -as she fixed this expanse, as an encouragement to proceed. "If -I've troubled you by showing you that your speculation is built on -the sand, let me atone for it by my eagerness to take off your hands an -investment from which you derive so little profit." - -He at last gave her his attention, but quite as if there were nothing -in it. "And pray what profit will _you_ derive----?" - -"Ah, that's my own secret!" She would show him as well no glimpse -of it--her laugh but rattled the box. "I want this house!" - -"So do I, damn me!" he roundly returned; "and that's why I've -practically paid for it!" He stuffed away his pocket-handkerchief. - -There was nevertheless something in her that could hold him, and it -came out, after an instant, quietly and reasonably enough. "I'll -practically pay for it, Mr. Prodmore--if you'll only tell me your -figure." - -"My figure?" - -"Your figure." - -Mr. Prodmore waited--then removed his eyes from her face. He appeared -to have waited on purpose to let her hope of a soft answer fall from a -greater height. "My figure would be quite my own!" - -"Then it will match, in that respect," Mrs. Gracedew laughed, -"this overture, which is quite _my_ own! As soon as you've let me -know it I cable to Missoura Top to have the money sent right out to -you." - -Mr. Prodmore surveyed in a superior manner this artless picture of a -stroke of business. "You imagine that having the money sent right out -to me will make you owner of this place?" - -She herself, with her head on one side, studied her sketch and seemed -to twirl her pencil. "No--not quite. But I'll settle the rest with -Captain Yule." - -Her companion looked, over his white waistcoat, at his large tense -shoes, the patent-leather shine of which so flashed propriety back at -him that he became, the next moment, doubly erect on it. "Captain -Yule has nothing to sell." - -She received the remark with surprise. "Then what have you been -trying to buy?" - -She had touched in himself even a sharper spring. "Do you mean to -say," he cried, "you want to buy _that_?" She stared at his -queer emphasis, which was intensified by a queer grimace; then she -turned from him with a change of colour and an ejaculation that led to -nothing more, after a few seconds, than a somewhat conscious silence--a -silence of which Mr. Prodmore made use to follow up his unanswered -question with another. "Is your proposal that I should transfer my -investment to you for the mere net amount of it your conception of a -fair bargain?" - -This second inquiry, however, she could, as she slowly came round, -substantially meet. "Pray, then, what is yours?" - -"Mine would be, not that I should simply get my money back, but that -I should get the effective value of the house." - -Mrs. Gracedew considered it. "But isn't the effective value of the -house just what your money expresses?" - -The lid of his hard left eye, the harder of the two, just dipped -with the effect of a wink. "No, madam. It's just what _yours_ -does. It's moreover just what your lips have already expressed so -distinctly!" - -She clearly did her best to follow him. "To those people--when I -showed the place off?" - -Mr. Prodmore laughed. "You seemed to be _taking_ bids then!" - -She was candid, but earnest. "Taking them?" - -"Oh, like an auctioneer! You ran it up high!" And Mr. Prodmore -laughed again. - -She turned a little pale, but it added to her brightness. "I -certainly did, if saying it was charming----" - -"Charming?" Mr. Prodmore broke in. "You said it was magnificent. -You said it was unique. That was your very word. You said -it was the _perfect_ specimen of its class in England." He was more -than accusatory, he was really crushing. "Oh, you got in deep!" - -It was indeed an indictment, and her smile was perhaps now rather -set. "Possibly. But taunting me with my absurd high spirits and -the dreadful liberties I took doesn't in the least tell me how deep -_you're_ in!" - -"For you, Mrs. Gracedew?" He took a few steps, looking at his -shoes again and as if to give her time to plead--since he wished to be -quite fair--that it was _not_ for her. "I'm in to the tune of fifty -thousand." - -She was silent, on this announcement, so long that he once more faced -her; but if what he showed her in doing so at last made her speak, it -also took the life from her tone. "That's a great deal of money, -Mr. Prodmore." - -The tone didn't matter, but only the truth it expressed, which he -so thoroughly liked to hear. "So I've often had occasion to say to -myself!" - -"If it's a large sum for you, then," said Mrs. Gracedew, -"it's a still larger one for me." She sank into a chair with -a vague melancholy; such a mass loomed huge, and she sat down before -it as a solitary herald, resigning himself with a sigh to wait, might -have leaned against a tree before a besieged city. "We women"--she -wished to conciliate--"have more modest ideas." - -But Mr. Prodmore would scarce condescend to parley. "Is it -as a 'modest idea' that you describe your extraordinary -intrusion----?" - -His question scarce reached her; she was so lost for the moment in the -sense of innocent community with her sex. "I mean I think we measure -things often rather more exactly." - -There would have been no doubt of Mr. Prodmore's very different -community as he rudely replied: "Then you measured _this_ thing -exactly half an hour ago!" - -It was a long way to go back, but Mrs. Gracedew, in her seat, musingly -made the journey, from which she then suddenly returned with a -harmless, indeed quite a happy, memento. "Was I _very_ grotesque?" - -He demurred. "Grotesque?" - -"I mean--_did_ I go on about it?" - -Mr. Prodmore would have no general descriptions; he was specific, he -was vivid. "You banged the desk. You raved. You shrieked." - -This was a note she appeared indulgently, almost tenderly, to -recognise. "We _do_ shriek at Missoura Top!" - -"I don't know what you do at Missoura Top, but I know what you did -at Covering End!" - -She warmed at last to his tone. "So do _I_ then! I surprised you. You -weren't at all prepared----" - -He took her briskly up. "No--and I'm not prepared yet!" - -Mrs. Gracedew could quite see it. "Yes, you're too astonished." - -"My astonishment's my own affair," he retorted--"not less so -than my memory!" - -"Oh, I yield to your memory," said the charming woman, "and I -confess my extravagance. But quite, you know, _as_ extravagance." - -"I don't at all know,"--Mr. Prodmore shook it off,--"nor what -you _call_ extravagance." - -"Why, banging the desk. Raving. Shrieking. I over-did it," she -exclaimed; "I wanted to please you!" - -She had too happy a beauty, as she sat in her high-backed chair, -to have been condemned to say that to any man without a certain -effect. The effect on Mr. Prodmore was striking. "So you said," he -sternly inquired, "what you didn't believe?" - -She flushed with the avowal. "Yes--for you." - -He looked at her hard. "For _me_?" - -Under his eye--for her flush continued--she slowly got up. "And for -those good people." - -"Oh!"--he sounded most sarcastic. "Should you like me to call -them back?" - -"No." She was still gay enough, but very decided. "I took them -in." - -"And now you want to take _me_?" - -"Oh, Mr. Prodmore!" she almost pitifully, but not quite adequately, -moaned. - -He appeared to feel he had gone a little far. "Well, if we're not -what you say----" - -"Yes?"--she looked up askance at the stroke. - -"Why the devil do you want us?" The question rang out and was -truly for the poor lady, as the quick suffusion of her eyes showed, -a challenge it would take more time than he left her properly to pick -up. He left her in fact no time at all before he went on: "Why the -devil did you say you'd offer fifty?" - -She looked quite wan and seemed to wonder. "_Did_ I say that?" She -could only let his challenge lie. "It was a figure of speech!" - -"Then that's the kind of figure we're talking about!" Mr. -Prodmore's sharpness would have struck an auditor as the more -effective that, on the heels of this thrust, seeing the ancient butler -reappear, he dropped the victim of it as comparatively unimportant and -directed his fierceness instantly to Chivers, who mildly gaped at him -from the threshold of the court. "Have you seen Miss Prodmore? If you -haven't, find her!" - -Mrs. Gracedew addressed their visitor in a very different tone, though -with the full authority of her benevolence. "You won't, my dear -man." To Mr. Prodmore also she continued bland. "I happen to know -she has gone for a walk." - -"A walk--alone?" Mr. Prodmore gasped. - -"No--not alone." Mrs. Gracedew looked at Chivers with a vague -smile of appeal for help, but he could only give her, from under his -bent old brow, the blank decency of his wonder. It seemed to make her -feel afresh that she was, after all, alone--so that in her loneliness, -which had also its fine sad charm, she risked another brush with their -formidable friend. "Cora has gone with Mr. Pegg." - -"Pegg has _been_ here?" - -It was like a splash in a full basin, but she launched the whole -craft. "He walked with her from the station." - -"When she arrived?" Mr. Prodmore rose like outraged Neptune. -"That's why she was so late?" - -Mrs. Gracedew assented. "Why I got here first. I get everywhere -first!" she bravely laughed. - -Mr. Prodmore looked round him in purple dismay--it was so clearly a -question for him where _he_ should get, and what! "In which direction -did they go?" he imperiously asked. - -His rudeness was too evident to be more than lightly recognised. "I -think I must let you ascertain for yourself!" - -All he could do then was to shout it to Chivers. "Call my carriage, -you ass!" After which, as the old man melted into the vestibule, -he dashed about blindly for his hat, pounced upon it and seemed, -furious but helpless, on the point of hurling it at his contradictress -as a gage of battle. "So you abetted and protected this wicked, low -intrigue?" - -She had something in her face now that was indifferent to any -violence. "You're too disappointed to see your real interest: -oughtn't I therefore in common charity to point it out to you?" - -He faced her question so far as to treat it as one. "What do _you_ -know of my disappointment?" - -There was something in his very harshness that even helped her, for it -added at this moment to her sense of making out in his narrowed glare a -couple of tears of rage. "I know everything." - -"What do you know of my real interest?" he went on as if he had not -heard her. - -"I know enough for my purpose--which is to offer you a handsome -condition. I think it's not I who have protected the happy -understanding that you call by so ugly a name; it's the happy -understanding that has put me"--she gained confidence--"well, in a -position. Do drive after them, if you like--but catch up with them only -to forgive them. If you'll do that, I'll pay your price." - -The particular air with which, a minute after Mrs. Gracedew had spoken -these words, Mr. Prodmore achieved a transfer of his attention to the -inside of his hat--this special shade of majesty would have taxed -the descriptive resources of the most accomplished reporter. It is -none the less certain that he appeared for some time absorbed in that -receptacle--appeared at last to breathe into it hard. "What do you -call my price?" - -"Why, the sum you just mentioned--fifty thousand!" Mrs. Gracedew -feverishly quavered. - -He looked at her as if stupefied. "_That's_ not my price--and it -never for a moment was!" If derision can be dry, Mr. Prodmore's was -of the driest. "Besides," he rang out, "my price is up!" - -She caught it with a long wail. "Up?" - -Oh, he let her have it now! "Seventy thousand." - -She turned away overwhelmed, but still with voice for her -despair. "Oh, deary me!" - -Mr. Prodmore was already at the door, from which he launched his -ultimatum. "It's to take or to leave!" - -She would have had to leave it, perhaps, had not something happened -at this moment to nerve her for the effort of staying him with a -quick motion. Captain Yule had come into sight on the staircase and, -after just faltering at what he himself saw, had marched resolutely -enough down. She watched him arrive--watched him with an attention that -visibly and responsively excited his own; after which she passed nearer -to their companion. "Seventy thousand, then!"--it gleamed between -them, in her muffled hiss, as if she had planted a dagger. - -Mr. Prodmore, to do him justice, took his wound in front. "Seventy -thousand--done!" And, without another look at Yule, he was presently -heard to bang the outer door after him for a sign. - - -VIII - -The young man, meanwhile, had approached in surprise. "He's -gone? I've been looking for him!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was out of breath; there was a disturbed whiteness of -bosom in her which needed time to subside and which she might have -appeared to retreat before him on purpose to veil. "I don't think, -you know, that you need him--now." - -Clement Yule was mystified. "Now?" - -She recovered herself enough to explain--made an effort at least to -be plausible. "I mean that--if you don't mind--you must deal with -_me_. I've arranged with Mr. Prodmore to take it over." - -Oh, he gave her no help! "Take what over?" - -She looked all about as if not quite thinking what it could be called; -at last, however, she offered with a smile a sort of substitute for a -name. "Why, your debt." - -But he was only the more bewildered. "_Can_ you--without arranging -with _me_?" - -She turned it round, but as if merely to oblige him. "That's -precisely what I want to do." Then, more brightly, as she thought -further: "That is, I mean, I want you to arrange with _me_. Surely -you will," she said encouragingly. - -His own processes, in spite of a marked earnestness, were much less -rapid. "But if I arrange with anybody----" - -"Yes?" She cheerfully waited. - -"How do I perform my engagement?" - -"The one to Mr. Prodmore?" - -He looked surprised at her speaking as if he had half-a-dozen. -"Yes--that's the worst." - -"Certainly--the worst!" And she gave a happy laugh that made him -stare. - -He broke into quite a different one. "You speak as if its being the -worst made it the best!" - -"It does--for me. You don't," said Mrs. Gracedew, "perform any -engagement." - -He required a moment to take it in; then something extraordinary leaped -into his face. "He lets me off?" - -Ah, she could ring out now! "He lets you off." - -It lifted him high, but only to drop him with an audible thud. "Oh, -I see--I lose my house!" - -"Dear, no--_that_ doesn't follow!" She spoke as if the absurdity -he indicated were the last conceivable, but there was a certain want of -sharpness of edge in her expression of the alternative. "You arrange -with _me_ to keep it." - -There was quite a corresponding want, clearly, in the image presented -to the Captain--of which, for a moment, he seemed with difficulty to -follow the contour. "How do I arrange?" - -"Well, we must think," said Mrs. Gracedew; "we must wait." -She spoke as if this were a detail for which she had not yet had -much attention; only bringing out, however, the next instant in an -encouraging cry and as if it were by itself almost a solution: "We -must find some way!" She might have been talking to a reasonable -child. - -But even reasonable children ask too many questions. "Yes--and what -way _can_ we find?" Clement Yule, glancing about him, was so struck -with the absence of ways that he appeared to remember with something of -regret how different it had been before. "With Prodmore it was simple -enough. You see I could marry his daughter." - -Mrs. Gracedew was silent just long enough for her soft ironic smile to -fill the cup of the pause. "_Could_ you?" - -It was as if he had tasted in the words the wine at the brim; for he -gave, under the effect of them, a sudden headshake and an awkward -laugh. "Well, never perhaps _that_ exactly--when it came to the -point. But I had to, you see----" It was difficult to say just what. - -She took advantage of it, looking hard, but not seeing at all. "You -had to----?" - -"Well," he repeated ruefully, "think a lot about it. You didn't -suspect that?" - -Oh, if he came to suspicions she could only break off! "Don't ask -me too many questions." - -He looked an instant as if he wondered why. "But isn't this just -the moment for them?" He fronted her, with a quickness he tried to -dissimulate, from the other side. "What _did_ you suppose?" - -She looked everywhere but into his face. "Why, I supposed you were -in distress." - -He was very grave. "About his terms?" - -"About his terms of course!" she laughed. "Not about his -religious opinions." - -His gratitude was too great for gaiety. "You really, in your -beautiful sympathy, _guessed_ my fix?" - -But she declined to be too solemn. "Dear Captain Yule, it all quite -stuck out of you!" - -"You mean I floundered like a drowning man----?" - -Well, she consented to have meant that. "Till I plunged in!" - -He appeared there for a few seconds, to see her again take the jump -and to listen again to the splash; then, with an odd, sharp impulse, -he turned his back. "You saved me." - -She wouldn't deny it--on the contrary. "What a pity, now, _I_ -haven't a daughter!" - -On this he slowly came round again. "What should I do with her?" - -"You'd treat her, I hope, better than you've treated Miss -Prodmore." - -The young man positively coloured. "But I haven't been bad----?" - -The sight of this effect of her small joke produced on Mrs. -Gracedew's part an emotion less controllable than any she had -yet felt. "Oh, you delightful goose!" she irrepressibly dropped. - -She made his blush deepen, but the aggravation was a relief. "Of -course--I'm all right, and there's only one pity in the -matter. I've nothing--nothing whatever, not a scrap of service nor a -thing you'd care for--to offer you in compensation." - -She looked at him ever so kindly. "I'm not, as they say, 'on -the make.'" Never had he been put right with a lighter hand. "I -didn't do it for payment." - -"Then what did you do it for?" - -For something, it might have seemed, as her eyes dropped and strayed, -that had got brushed into a crevice of the old pavement. "Because I -hated Mr. Prodmore." - -He conscientiously demurred. "So much as all that?" - -"Oh, well," she replied impatiently, "of course you also know how -much I like the house. My hates and my likes," she subtly explained, -"can never live together. I get one of them out. The one this time -was that man." - -He showed a candour of interest. "Yes--you got him out. Yes--I saw -him go." And his inner vision appeared to attend for some moments -Mr. Prodmore's departure. "But how did you do it?" - -"Oh, I don't know. Women----!" Mrs. Gracedew but vaguely sketched -it. - -A touch or two, however, for that subject, could of course almost -always suffice. "Precisely--women. May I smoke again?" Clement Yule -abruptly asked. - -"Certainly. But I managed Mr. Prodmore," she laughed as he -re-lighted, "without cigarettes." - -Her companion puffed. "_I_ couldn't manage him." - -"So I saw!" - -"_I_ couldn't get him out." - -"So _he_ saw!" - -Captain Yule, for a little, lost himself in his smoke. "Where is he -gone?" - -"I haven't the least idea. But I meet him again," she hastened to -add--"very soon." - -"And when do you meet _me_?" - -"Why, whenever you'll come to see me." For the twentieth time -she gathered herself as if the words she had just spoken were quite her -last hand. "At present, you see, I _have_ a train to catch." - -Absorbed in the trivial act that engaged him, he gave her no help. "A -train?" - -"Surely. I didn't walk." - -"No; but even trains----!" His eyes clung to her now. "You -fly?" - -"I try to. Good-bye." - -He had got between her and the door of departure quite as, on her -attempt to quit him half an hour before, he had anticipated her -approach to the stairs; and in this position he took no notice of her -farewell. "I said just now that I had nothing to offer you. But of -course I've the house itself." - -"The house?" She stared. "Why, I've _got_ it?" - -"Got it?" - -"All in my head, I mean. That's all I want." She had not yet, -save to Mr. Prodmore, made quite so light of it. - -This had its action in his markedly longer face. "Why, I thought you -loved it so!" - -Ah, she was perfectly consistent. "I love it far too much to deprive -_you_ of it." - -Yet Clement Yule could in a fashion meet her. "Oh, it wouldn't be -depriving----!" - -She altogether protested. "Not to turn you out----?" - -"Dear lady, I've never been _in_!" - -Oh, she was none the less downright. "You're in _now_--I've put -you, and you must stay." He looked round so woefully, however, that -she presently attenuated. "I don't mean _all_ the while, but long -enough----!" - -"Long enough for what?" - -"For me to feel you're here." - -"And how long will that take?" - -"Well, you think me very fast--but sometimes I'm slow. I told -you just now, at any rate," she went on, "that I had arranged you -should lose nothing. Is the very next thing I do, then, to make you -lose everything?" - -"It isn't a question of what I lose," the young man anxiously -cried; "it's a question of what I _do_! What _have_ I done to -find it all so plain?" Fate was really--fate reversed, improved, and -unnatural--too much for him, and his heated young face showed honest -stupefaction. "I haven't lifted a finger. It's you who have done -all." - -"Yes, but if you're just where you were before, how in the world -are you saved?" She put it to him with still superior lucidity. - -"By my life's being my own again--to do what I want." - -"What you 'want'"--Mrs. Gracedew's handsome uplifted head had -it all there, every inch of it--"is to keep your house." - -"Ah, but only," he perfectly assented, "if, as you said, you find -a way!" - -"I _have_ found a way--and there the way is: for _me_ just simply not -to touch the place. What you 'want,'" she argued more closely, -"is what made you give in to Prodmore. What you 'want' is these -walls and these acres. What you 'want' is to take the way I first -showed you." - -Her companion's eyes, quitting for the purpose her face, looked -to the quarter marked by her last words as at an horizon now -remote. "Why, the way you first showed me was to marry Cora!" - -She had to admit it, but as little as possible. "Practically--yes." - -"Well, it's just 'practically' that I can't!" - -"I didn't know that then," said Mrs. Gracedew. "You didn't -tell me." - -He passed, with an approach to a grimace, his hand over the back of his -head. "I felt a delicacy!" - -"I didn't even know _that_." She spoke it almost sadly. - -"It didn't strike you that I might?" - -She thought a moment. "No." She thought again. "No. But don't -quarrel with me about it _now_!" - -"Quarrel with you?" he looked amazement. - -She laughed, but she had changed colour. "Cora, at any rate, felt no -delicacy. Cora told me." - -Clement Yule fairly gaped. "Then she did know----?" - -"She knew all; and if her father said she didn't, he simply -told you what was not." She frankly gave him this, but the next -minute, as if she had startled him more than she meant, she jumped -to reassurance. "It was quite right of her. She would have refused -you." - -The young man stared. "Oh!" He was quick, however, to show--by -an amusement perhaps a trifle over-done--that he felt no personal -wound. "Do you call that quite right?" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked at it again. "For _her_--yes; and for -Prodmore." - -"Oh, for Prodmore"--his laugh grew more grim--"with all my -heart!" - -This, then,--her kind eyes seemed to drop it upon him,--was all she -meant. "To stay at your post--_that_ was the way I showed you." - -He had come round to it now, as mechanically, in intenser thought, he -smoothed down the thick hair he had rubbed up; but his face soon enough -gave out, in wonder and pain, that his freedom was somehow only a new -predicament. "How can I take any way at all, dear lady----?" - -"If I only stick here in your path?" She had taken him straight up, -and with spirit; and the same spirit bore her to the end. "I won't -stick a moment more! Haven't I been trying this age to leave you?" - -Clement Yule, for all answer, caught her sharply, in her passage, by -the arm. "You surrender your rights?" He was for an instant almost -terrible. - -She quite turned pale with it. "Weren't you ready to surrender -_yours_?" - -"I hadn't any, so it was deuced easy. I hadn't paid for them." - -Oh that, she let him see,--even though with his continued grasp he -might hurt her,--had nothing in it! "Your ancestors had paid: it's -the same thing." Erect there in the brightness of her triumph and -the force of her logic, she must yet, to anticipate his return, take a -stride--like a sudden dip into a gully and the scramble up on the other -bank--that put her dignity to the test. "You're just, in a manner, -my tenant." - -"But how can I treat that as such a mere detail? I'm your tenant on -what terms?" - -"Oh, _any_ terms--choose them for yourself!" She made an attempt to -free her arm--gave it a small vain shake. Then, as if to bribe him to -let her go: "You can write me about them." - -He appeared to consider it. "To Missoura Top?" - -She fully assented. "I go right back." As if it had put him off his -guard she broke away. "Farewell!" - -She broke away, but he broke faster, and once more, nearer the door, -he had barred her escape. "Just one little moment, please. If -you won't tell me your own terms, you must at least tell me -Prodmore's." - -Ah, the fiend--she could never squeeze past _that_! All she could do, -for the instant, was to reverberate foolishly "Prodmore's?" - -But there was nothing foolish, at last, about _him_. "How you did -it--how you managed him." His feet were firm while he waited, though -he had to wait some time. "You bought him out?" - -She made less of it than, clearly, he had ever heard made of a stroke -of business; it might have been a case of his owing her ninepence. "I -bought him out." - -He wanted at least the exact sum. "For how much?" Her silence -seemed to say that she had made no note of it, but his pressure only -increased. "I really must know." - -She continued to try to treat it as if she had merely paid for his -cab--she put even what she could of that suggestion into a tender, -helpless, obstinate headshake. "You shall never know!" - -The only thing his own manner met was the obstinacy. "I'll get it -from _him_!" - -She repeated her headshake, but with a world of sadness added, "Get -it if you can!" - -He looked into her eyes now as if it was the sadness that struck him -most. "He won't say, because he _did_ you?" - -They showed each other, on this, the least separated faces -yet. "He'll never, never say." - -The confidence in it was so tender that it sounded almost like pity, -and the young man took it up with all the flush of the sense that -pity could be but for _him_. This sense broke full in her face. "The -scoundrel!" - -"Not a bit!" she returned, with equal passion--"I was only too -clever for him!" The thought of it was again an exaltation in which -she pushed her friend aside. "So let me go!" - -The push was like a jar that made the vessel overflow, and he was -before her now as if he stretched across the hall. "With the heroic -view of your power and the barren beauty of your sacrifice? You -pour out money, you move a mountain, and to let you 'go,' to -close the door fast behind you, is all I can figure out to do for -you?" His emotion trembled out of him with the stammer of a new -language, but it was as if in a minute or two he had thrown over all -consciousness. "You're the most generous--you're the noblest of -women! The wonderful chance that brought you here----!" - -His own arm was grasped now--she knew better than he about the -wonderful chance. "It brought _you_ at the same happy hour! I've -done what I liked," she went on very simply; "and the only way to -thank me is to believe it." - -"You've done it for a proud, poor man"--his answer was quite -as direct. "He has nothing--in the light of such a magic as -yours--either to give or to hope; but you've made him, in a little -miraculous hour, think of you----" - -He stumbled with the rush of things, and if silence can, in its way, -be active, there was a collapse too, for an instant, on her closed -lips. These lips, however, she at last opened. "How have I made him -think of me?" - -"As he has thought of no other woman!" He had personal possession -of her now, and it broke, as he pressed her, as he pleaded, the -helpless fall of his eloquence. "Mrs. Gracedew--don't leave me." -He jerked his head passionately at the whole place and the yellow -afternoon. "If you made me care----" - -"It was surely that you had made _me_ first!" She laughed, and her -laugh disengaged her, so that before he could reply she had again put -space between them. - -He accepted the space now--he appeared so sure of his point. "Then -let me go on caring. When I asked you awhile back for some possible -adjustment to my new source of credit, you simply put off the -question--told me I must trust to time for it. Well," said Clement -Yule, "I've trusted to time so effectually that ten little minutes -have made me find it. I've found it because I've so quickly found -_you_. May I, Mrs. Gracedew, keep _all_ that I've found? I offer -you in return the only thing I have to give--I offer you my hand and -my life." - -She held him off, across the hall, for a time almost out of proportion -to the previous wait he had just made so little of. Then at last -also, when she answered, it might have passed for a plea for further -postponement, even for a plea for mercy. "Ah, Captain Yule----!" -But she turned suddenly off: the flower had been nipped in the bud by -the re-entrance of Chivers, at whom his master veritably glowered. - -"What the devil is it?" - -The old man showed the shock, but he had his duty. "Another party." - -Mrs. Gracedew, at this, wheeled round. "The 'party up'!" It -brought back her voice--indeed, all her gaiety. And her gaiety was -always determinant. "Show them in." - -Clement Yule's face fell while Chivers proceeded to obey. "You'll -_have_ them?" he wailed across the hall. - -"Ah! mayn't I be proud of my house?" she tossed back at him. - -At this, radiant, he had rushed at her. "Then you accept----?" - -Her raised hand checked him. "Hush!" - -He fell back--the party was there. Chivers ushered it as he had ushered -the other, making the most, this time, of more scanty material--four -persons so spectacled, satchelled, shawled, and handbooked that they -testified on the spot to a particular foreign origin and presented -themselves indeed very much as tourists who, at an hotel, casting up -the promise of comfort or the portent of cost, take possession, while -they wait for their keys, with expert looks and free sounds. Clement -Yule, who had receded, effacing himself, to the quarter opposed -to that of his companion, addressed to their visitors a covert but -dismayed stare and then, edging round, in his agitation, to the rear, -instinctively sought relief by escape through the open passage. One of -the invaders meanwhile--a broad-faced gentleman with long hair tucked -behind his ears and a ring on each forefinger--had lost no time in -showing he knew where to begin. He began at the top--the proper place, -and took in the dark pictures ranged above the tapestry. "Olt vamily -bortraits?"--he appealed to Chivers and spoke very loud. - -Chivers rose to the occasion and, gracefully pawing the air, began -also at the beginning. "Dame Dorothy Yule--who lived to a hundred -and one." - -"A hundred and one--ach _so_!" broke, with a resigned absence of -criticism, from each of the interested group; another member of which, -however, indicated with a somewhat fatigued skip the central figure of -the series, the personage with the long white legs that Mrs. Gracedew -had invited the previous inquirers to remark. "Who's dis?" the -present inquirer asked. - -The question affected the lovely lady over by the fireplace as the -trumpet of battle affects a generous steed. She flashed on the instant -into the middle of the hall and into the friendliest and most familiar -relation with everyone and with everything. "John Anthony Yule, -sir,--who passed away, poor duck, in his flower!" - -They met her with low salutations, a sweep of ugly shawls, and a brush -of queer German hats: she had issued, to their glazed convergence, -from the dusk of the Middle Ages and the shade of high pieces, and -now stood there, beautiful and human and happy, in a light that, -whatever it was for themselves, the very breadth of their attention, -the expression of their serious faces, converted straightway for her -into a new, and oh! into the right, one. To a detached observer of -the whole it would have been promptly clear that she found herself -striking these good people very much as the lawful heir had, half an -hour before, struck another stranger--that she produced in them, in -her setting of assured antiquity, quite the romantic vibration that -she had responded to in the presence of that personage. They read -her as she read _him_, and a bright and deepening cheer, reflected -dimly in their thick thoroughness, went out from her as she accepted -their reading. An impression was exchanged, for the minute, from side -to side--their grave admiration of the finest feature of the curious -house and the deep free radiance of her silent, grateful "Why not?" -It made a passage of some intensity and some duration, of which the -effect, indeed, the next minute, was to cause the only lady of the -party--a matron of rich Jewish type, with small nippers on a huge nose -and a face out of proportion to her little Freischütz hat--to break -the spell by an uneasy turn and a stray glance at one of the other -pictures. "Who's _dat_?" - -"That?" The picture chanced to be a portrait over the wide arch, -and something happened, at the very moment, to arrest Mrs. Gracedew's -eyes rather above than below. What took place, in a word, was that -Clement Yule, already fidgeting in his impatience back from the -front, just occupied the arch, completed her thought, and filled her -vision. "Oh, that's my future husband!" He caught the words, -but answered them only by a long look at her as he moved, with a -checked wildness of which she alone, of all the spectators, had a -sense, straight across the hall again and to the other opening. He -paused there as he had done before, then with a last dumb appeal to -her dropped into the court and passed into the garden. Mrs. Gracedew, -already so wonderful to their visitors, was, before she followed him, -wonderful with a greater wonder to poor Chivers. "You dear old -thing--I give it all back to you!" - - - - -WORKS BY HENRY JAMES. - - -EMBARRASSMENTS. - -12mo, cloth, $1.50. - -"Mr. Henry James has produced no more clever and subtle work than is -to be found in his latest volume.... There are in these tales passages -of splendid realism. The portrait of Geoffrey Dowling is a masterpiece -of characterization. And there are sentences, unobtrusive asides, which -flash with the brilliancy of true wit."--_New York Tribune._ - -"Mr. James's writings are distinctively works of art. One and all -of them appeal most strongly to cultivated minds. In no instance does -he descend from his transcendent ideals of literature. An acquaintance -with Henry James means an appreciation of the finer style of written -English, and an inhalation of the atmosphere of purest English -literature. No list of books for the summer will be complete without -'=Embarrassments=.'"--_Cambridge Press._ - - -THE OTHER HOUSE. - -12mo, cloth, $1.50. - -"The characters are original and well drawn. The incidents are -natural and clearly described. The dialogues are crisp and to the -point. Neither of 'padding' nor a vulgar sensationalism is there -any trace. A most meritorious work, then, and one which can hardly fail -to add to the author's reputation."--_New York Herald._ - -"'The Other House' shows Henry James at his best. That best -is a putting into words of an exquisite comprehension of motives and -shades of thought, a magic grasp of character variations, a bringing -to the surface of hidden nerve fibres ever unsuspected yet tremendously -potent."--_Chicago Daily News._ - - -THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA. - -12mo, $1.25. - -We find no fault with Mr. Henry James's "Princess Casamassima." -It is a great novel; it is his greatest, and it is incomparably the -greatest novel of the year in our language.... From first to last we -find no weakness in the book; the drama works simply and naturally; the -causes and effects are logically related; the theme is made literature -without ceasing to be life.--_Harper's New Monthly Magazine, -Editor's Study._ - - -THE REVERBERATOR. - -12mo, $1.00. - -The public will be glad to find Mr. James in his best vein. One is -thankful again that there is so brilliant an American author to give us -entertaining sketches of life.--_Boston Herald._ - - -THE ASPERN PAPERS, AND OTHER STORIES. - -12mo, $1.00. - -The stories are told with that mastery of the art of story-telling -which their writer possesses in a conspicuous degree.--_Literary -World._ - -It is as a short story writer that we think Mr. James appears at his -best, and in this volume he may be read in his most attractive and most -artistic vein.--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._ - -Mr. Henry James is at his best in "The Aspern Papers." ... For -careful finish, minute analysis, and vivid description of both the -scenes and the characters, "The Aspern Papers" may take high rank -among Mr. James's stories.--_Guardian._ - - -PARTIAL PORTRAITS. - -12mo, $1.75. - -Henry James has never appeared to better advantage as an author than -in this delightful volume of critical essays.... No one can fail to -acknowledge the exquisite charm of style which pervades the book, -and the kind appreciation the author evinces of the finer and subtler -qualities of the authors with whom he deals.--_Boston Saturday Evening -Gazette._ - - -THE BOSTONIANS. - -12mo, $1.25. - -Unquestionably "The Bostonians" is not only the most brilliant and -remarkable of Mr. James's novels, but it is one of the most important -of recent contributions to literature.--_Boston Courier._ - - -A LONDON LIFE, AND OTHER STORIES. - -12mo, $1.00. - -His short stories, which are always bright and sparkling, are -delightful.... Will bear reading again and again.--_Mail and Express._ - - -FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. - -12mo, $1.50. - - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, - 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. - - - - - [ Transcriber's Note: - - The following changes have been made to the original text. The first - line presents the text as printed in the original, the second the - amended text. - - with regard to certain matters. the question of how long they - with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they - - at random, to the noble spring of the roof. Just look at those - at random, to the noble spring of the roof. "Just look at those - - self as circumstances and experience have made one, and its not my - self as circumstances and experience have made one, and it's not my - - ] - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Magics, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO MAGICS *** - -***** This file should be named 42486-8.txt or 42486-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/8/42486/ - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Two Magics - The Turn of the Screw. Covering End - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: April 9, 2013 [EBook #42486] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO MAGICS *** - - - - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - [ Transcriber's Notes: - - Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully - as possible. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been - made. They are listed at the end of the text. - - Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. - Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=. - ] - - - - - THE TWO MAGICS - - THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - COVERING END - - BY - HENRY JAMES - - AUTHOR OF "DAISY MILLER," "THE EUROPEANS" - ETC., ETC. - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. - 1898 - - All rights reserved - - - Copyright, 1898, - By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Norwood Press - J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith - Norwood Mass. U.S.A. - - - - -THE TURN OF THE SCREW - - -The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but -except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve -in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no -comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case -he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, -I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as -had gathered us for the occasion--an appearance, of a dreadful kind, -to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up -in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe -him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had -succeeded in doing so, the same sight that had shaken him. It was this -observation that drew from Douglas--not immediately, but later in the -evening--a reply that had the interesting consequence to which I call -attention. Someone else told a story not particularly effective, which -I saw he was not following. This I took for a sign that he had himself -something to produce and that we should only have to wait. We waited in -fact till two nights later; but that same evening, before we scattered, -he brought out what was in his mind. - -"I quite agree--in regard to Griffin's ghost, or whatever it -was--that its appearing first to the little boy, at so tender an age, -adds a particular touch. But it's not the first occurrence of its -charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child -gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to _two_ -children----?" - -"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, "that they give two -turns! Also that we want to hear about them." - -I can see Douglas there before the fire, to which he had got up to -present his back, looking down at his interlocutor with his hands -in his pockets. "Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's -quite too horrible." This, naturally, was declared by several voices -to give the thing the utmost price, and our friend, with quiet art, -prepared his triumph by turning his eyes over the rest of us and going -on: "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches -it." - -"For sheer terror?" I remember asking. - -He seemed to say it was not so simple as that; to be really at a loss -how to qualify it. He passed his hand over his eyes, made a little -wincing grimace. "For dreadful--dreadfulness!" - -"Oh, how delicious!" cried one of the women. - -He took no notice of her; he looked at me, but as if, instead of me, -he saw what he spoke of. "For general uncanny ugliness and horror and -pain." - -"Well then," I said, "just sit right down and begin." - -He turned round to the fire, gave a kick to a log, watched it an -instant. Then as he faced us again: "I can't begin. I shall have -to send to town." There was a unanimous groan at this, and much -reproach; after which, in his preoccupied way, he explained. "The -story's written. It's in a locked drawer--it has not been out for -years. I could write to my man and enclose the key; he could send -down the packet as he finds it." It was to me in particular that -he appeared to propound this--appeared almost to appeal for aid not -to hesitate. He had broken a thickness of ice, the formation of many -a winter; had had his reasons for a long silence. The others resented -postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me. I adjured -him to write by the first post and to agree with us for an early -hearing; then I asked him if the experience in question had been his -own. To this his answer was prompt. "Oh, thank God, no!" - -"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?" - -"Nothing but the impression. I took that _here_"--he tapped his -heart. "I've never lost it." - -"Then your manuscript----?" - -"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung -fire again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. She -sent me the pages in question before she died." They were all -listening now, and of course there was somebody to be arch, or at any -rate to draw the inference. But if he put the inference by without -a smile it was also without irritation. "She was a most charming -person, but she was ten years older than I. She was my sister's -governess," he quietly said. "She was the most agreeable woman -I've ever known in her position; she would have been worthy of any -whatever. It was long ago, and this episode was long before. I was at -Trinity, and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer. I -was much there that year--it was a beautiful one; and we had, in her -off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden--talks in which she -struck me as awfully clever and nice. Oh yes; don't grin: I liked -her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me too. If -she hadn't she wouldn't have told me. She had never told anyone. It -wasn't simply that she said so, but that I knew she hadn't. I was -sure; I could see. You'll easily judge why when you hear." - -"Because the thing had been such a scare?" - -He continued to fix me. "You'll easily judge," he repeated: -"_you_ will." - -I fixed him too. "I see. She was in love." - -He laughed for the first time. "You _are_ acute. Yes, she was in -love. That is, she had been. That came out--she couldn't tell her -story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but -neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the -corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot -summer afternoon. It wasn't a scene for a shudder; but oh----!" He -quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair. - -"You'll receive the packet Thursday morning?" I inquired. - -"Probably not till the second post." - -"Well then; after dinner----" - -"You'll all meet me here?" He looked us round again. "Isn't -anybody going?" It was almost the tone of hope. - -"Everybody will stay!" - -"_I_ will--and _I_ will!" cried the ladies whose departure had -been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more -light. "Who was it she was in love with?" - -"The story will tell," I took upon myself to reply. - -"Oh, I can't wait for the story!" - -"The story _won't_ tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, -vulgar way." - -"More's the pity, then. That's the only way I ever understand." - -"Won't _you_ tell, Douglas?" somebody else inquired. - -He sprang to his feet again. "Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to -bed. Good-night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us -slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his -step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. "Well, if I don't -know who she was in love with, I know who _he_ was." - -"She was ten years older," said her husband. - -"_Raison de plus_--at that age! But it's rather nice, his long -reticence." - -"Forty years!" Griffin put in. - -"With this outbreak at last." - -"The outbreak," I returned, "will make a tremendous occasion of -Thursday night;" and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of -it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however -incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we -handshook and "candlestuck," as somebody said, and went to bed. - -I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first -post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps -just on account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite -let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, -in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our -hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire -and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him -again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of -the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised -to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of -prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this -narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what -I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death--when it was in -sight--committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of -these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began -to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The -departing ladies who had said they would stay didn't, of course, -thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made, -in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with -which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final -auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to -a common thrill. - -The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took -up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to -be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of -several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty, -on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to -London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had -already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This -person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house -in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing--this -prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life, -such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, -before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could -easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome -and bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her, -inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and -gave her the courage she afterwards showed was that he put the whole -thing to her as a kind of favour, an obligation he should gratefully -incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--saw him -all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of -charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house -filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it -was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished -her immediately to proceed. - -He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to -a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military -brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were, -by the strangest of chances for a man in his position,--a lone man -without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience,--very -heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own -part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor -chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to -his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country, -and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could -find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait -on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they -were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other -relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put -them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed -at the head of their little establishment--but below stairs only--an -excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like -and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper -and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl, -of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely -fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young -lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She -would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been -for a term at school--young as he was to be sent, but what else could -be done?--and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back -from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first -a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done -for them quite beautifully--she was a most respectable person--till -her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no -alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then, -in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and -there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony, -an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable. - -So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a -question. "And what did the former governess die of?--of so much -respectability?" - -Our friend's answer was prompt. "That will come out. I don't -anticipate." - -"Excuse me--I thought that was just what you _are_ doing." - -"In her successor's place," I suggested, "I should have wished -to learn if the office brought with it----" - -"Necessary danger to life?" Douglas completed my thought. "She -did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow -what she learnt. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as -slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of -serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She -hesitated--took a couple of days to consult and consider. But the -salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second -interview she faced the music, she engaged." And Douglas, with this, -made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw -in-- - -"The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the -splendid young man. She succumbed to it." - -He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave -a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to -us. "She saw him only twice." - -"Yes, but that's just the beauty of her passion." - -A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. "It -_was_ the beauty of it. There were others," he went on, "who -hadn't succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty--that for -several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were, -somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull--it sounded strange; and all -the more so because of his main condition." - -"Which was----?" - -"That she should never trouble him--but never, never: neither appeal -nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, -receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and -let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that -when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking -her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded." - -"But was that all her reward?" one of the ladies asked. - -"She never saw him again." - -"Oh!" said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us -again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject -till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair, -he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged -album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the -first occasion the same lady put another question. "What is your -title?" - -"I haven't one." - -"Oh, _I_ have!" I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun -to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of -the beauty of his author's hand. - - -I - -I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, -a little see-saw 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 curtsey as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished -visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the -place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still -more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be -something beyond his promise. - -I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly -through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my -pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on -the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have -to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, -and I afterwards wondered that my employer had not told me more of -her. I slept little that night--I was too much excited; and this -astonished me too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense -of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room, -one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, -the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first -time, I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the -extraordinary charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It -was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with -Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear -I had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook -might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being -so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so -glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--as to be positively -on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little -why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with -suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy. - -But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection -with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, -the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything -else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several -times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and -prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look -at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to -listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, -for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not -without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a -moment when I believed I recognised, 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 felt quite sure she would presently like -me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the -pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at -supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a -bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were -naturally things that in Flora's presence could pass between us only -as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. - -"And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very -remarkable?" - -One wouldn't flatter a child. "Oh, Miss, _most_ remarkable. If you -think well of this one!"--and she stood there with a plate in her -hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other -with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. - -"Yes; if I do----?" - -"You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!" - -"Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I'm -afraid, however," I remember feeling the impulse to add, "I'm -rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!" - -I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she took this in. "In -Harley Street?" - -"In Harley Street." - -"Well, Miss, you're not the first--and you won't be the last." - -"Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, "to being the only -one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back -tomorrow?" - -"Not tomorrow--Friday, Miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, -under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage." - -I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and -friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public -conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an -idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took -her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, thank -heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was -glad I was there! - -What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly -called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at -the most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of -the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in, -of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for -which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found -myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons, -in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that -my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the -child into the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out of -doors; I arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should -be she, she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by -step and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful, -childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our -becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout -our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in -empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made -me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower -that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so -many more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not -seen Bly since the day I left it, and I dare say 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 colour out of -storybooks and fairy-tales. Wasn't it just a storybook over which -I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique, -but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still -older, half replaced and half utilised, in which I had the fancy of -our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting -ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm! - - -II - -This came home to me when, two days later, I drove over with Flora -to meet, as Mrs. Grose said, the little gentleman; and all the -more for an incident that, presenting itself the second evening, -had deeply disconcerted me. The first day had been, on the whole, -as I have expressed, reassuring; but I was to see it wind up in keen -apprehension. The postbag, that evening,--it came late,--contained a -letter for me, which, however, in the hand of my employer, I found -to be composed but of a few words enclosing another, addressed to -himself, with a seal still unbroken. "This, I recognise, is from the -head-master, and the head-master's an awful bore. Read him, please; -deal with him; but mind you don't report. Not a word. I'm off!" -I broke the seal with a great effort--so great a one that I was a long -time coming to it; took the unopened missive at last up to my room -and only attacked it just before going to bed. I had better have let -it wait till morning, for it gave me a second sleepless night. With no -counsel to take, the next day, I was full of distress; and it finally -got so the better of me that I determined to open myself at least to -Mrs. Grose. - -"What does it mean? The child's dismissed his school." - -She gave me a look that I remarked at the moment; then, visibly, with -a quick blankness, seemed to try to take it back. "But aren't they -all----?" - -"Sent home--yes. But only for the holidays. Miles may never go back -at all." - -Consciously, under my attention, she reddened. "They won't take -him?" - -"They absolutely decline." - -At this she raised her eyes, which she had turned from me; I saw them -fill with good tears. "What has he done?" - -I hesitated; then I judged best simply to hand her my letter--which, -however, had the effect of making her, without taking it, simply put -her hands behind her. She shook her head sadly. "Such things are not -for me, Miss." - -My counsellor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I -attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; -then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back -in my pocket. "Is he really _bad_?" - -The tears were still in her eyes. "Do the gentlemen say so?" - -"They go into no particulars. They simply express their regret that -it should be impossible to keep him. That can have only one meaning." -Mrs. Grose listened with dumb emotion; she forbore to ask me what -this meaning might be; so that, presently, to put the thing with some -coherence and with the mere aid of her presence to my own mind, I went -on: "That he's an injury to the others." - -At this, with one of the quick turns of simple folk, she suddenly -flamed up. "Master Miles! _him_ an injury?" - -There was such a flood of good faith in it that, though I had not yet -seen the child, my very fears made me jump to the absurdity of the -idea. I found myself, to meet my friend the better, offering it, on the -spot, sarcastically. "To his poor little innocent mates!" - -"It's too dreadful," cried Mrs. Grose, "to say such cruel -things! Why, he's scarce ten years old." - -"Yes, yes; it would be incredible." - -She was evidently grateful for such a profession. "See him, Miss, -first. _Then_ believe it!" I felt forthwith a new impatience to -see him; it was the beginning of a curiosity that, for all the next -hours, was to deepen almost to pain. Mrs. Grose was aware, I could -judge, of what she had produced in me, and she followed it up with -assurance. "You might as well believe it of the little lady. Bless -her," she added the next moment--"_look_ at her!" - -I turned and saw that Flora, whom, ten minutes before, I had -established in the schoolroom with a sheet of white paper, a pencil, -and a copy of nice "round O's," now presented herself to view -at the open door. She expressed in her little way an extraordinary -detachment from disagreeable duties, looking to me, however, with a -great childish light that seemed to offer it as a mere result of the -affection she had conceived for my person, which had rendered necessary -that she should follow me. I needed nothing more than this to feel the -full force of Mrs. Grose's comparison, and, catching my pupil in my -arms, covered her with kisses in which there was a sob of atonement. - -None the less, the rest of the day, I watched for further occasion -to approach my colleague, especially as, toward evening, I began to -fancy she rather sought to avoid me. I overtook her, I remember, on -the staircase; we went down together, and at the bottom I detained her, -holding her there with a hand on her arm. "I take what you said to me -at noon as a declaration that _you've_ never known him to be bad." - -She threw back her head; she had clearly, by this time, and very -honestly, adopted an attitude. "Oh, never known him--I don't -pretend _that_!" - -I was upset again. "Then you _have_ known him----?" - -"Yes indeed, Miss, thank God!" - -On reflection I accepted this. "You mean that a boy who never -is----?" - -"Is no boy for _me_!" - -I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?" -Then, keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought -out. "But not to the degree to contaminate----" - -"To contaminate?"--my big word left her at a loss. I explained -it. "To corrupt." - -She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd -laugh. "Are you afraid he'll corrupt _you_?" She put the -question with such a fine bold humour that, with a laugh, a little -silly doubtless, to match her own, I gave way for the time to the -apprehension of ridicule. - -But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped up in -another place. "What was the lady who was here before?" - -"The last governess? She was also young and pretty--almost as young -and almost as pretty, Miss, even as you." - -"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!" I recollect -throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!" - -"Oh, he _did_," Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the way he liked -everyone!" She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself -up. "I mean that's _his_ way--the master's." - -I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?" - -She looked blank, but she coloured. "Why, of _him_." - -"Of the master?" - -"Of who else?" - -There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my -impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I -merely asked what I wanted to know. "Did _she_ see anything in the -boy----?" - -"That wasn't right? She never told me." - -I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?" - -Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious. "About some -things--yes." - -"But not about all?" - -Again she considered. "Well, Miss--she's gone. I won't tell -tales." - -"I quite understand your feeling," I hastened to reply; but I -thought it, after an instant, not opposed to this concession to pursue: -"Did she die here?" - -"No--she went off." - -I don't know what there was in this brevity of Mrs. Grose's that -struck me as ambiguous. "Went off to die?" Mrs. Grose looked -straight out of the window, but I felt that, hypothetically, I had -a right to know what young persons engaged for Bly were expected to -do. "She was taken ill, you mean, and went home?" - -"She was not taken ill, so far as appeared, in this house. She -left it, at the end of the year, to go home, as she said, for a short -holiday, to which the time she had put in had certainly given her a -right. We had then a young woman--a nursemaid who had stayed on and -who was a good girl and clever; and _she_ took the children altogether -for the interval. But our young lady never came back, and at the -very moment I was expecting her I heard from the master that she was -dead." - -I turned this over. "But of what?" - -"He never told me! But please, Miss," said Mrs. Grose, "I must -get to my work." - - -III - -Her thus turning her back on me was fortunately not, for my just -preoccupations, a snub that could check the growth of our mutual -esteem. We met, after I had brought home little Miles, more intimately -than ever on the ground of my stupefaction, my general emotion: so -monstrous was I then ready to pronounce it that such a child as had -now been revealed to me should be under an interdict. I was a little -late on the scene, and I felt, as he stood wistfully looking out for me -before the door of the inn at which the coach had put him down, that I -had seen him, on the instant, without and within, in the great glow of -freshness, the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from -the first moment, seen his little sister. He was incredibly beautiful, -and Mrs. Grose had put her finger on it: everything but a sort of -passion of tenderness for him was swept away by his presence. What -I then and there took him to my heart for was something divine that -I have never found to the same degree in any child--his indescribable -little air of knowing nothing in the world but love. It would have been -impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence, -and by the time I had got back to Bly with him I remained merely -bewildered--so far, that is, as I was not outraged--by the sense of the -horrible letter locked up in my room, in a drawer. As soon as I could -compass a private word with Mrs. Grose I declared to her that it was -grotesque. - -She promptly understood me. "You mean the cruel charge----?" - -"It doesn't live an instant. My dear woman, _look_ at him!" - -She smiled at my pretension to have discovered his charm. "I -assure you, Miss, I do nothing else! What will you say, then?" she -immediately added. - -"In answer to the letter?" I had made up my mind. "Nothing." - -"And to his uncle?" - -I was incisive. "Nothing." - -"And to the boy himself?" - -I was wonderful. "Nothing." - -She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand -by you. We'll see it out." - -"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make -it a vow. - -She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her -detached hand. "Would you mind, Miss, if I used the freedom----" - -"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we -had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant. - -This, at all events, was for the time: a time so full that, as I -recall the way it went, it reminds me of all the art I now need to -make it a little distinct. What I look back at with amazement is the -situation I accepted. I had undertaken, with my companion, to see it -out, and I was under a charm, apparently, that could smooth away the -extent and the far and difficult connections of such an effort. I -was lifted aloft on a great wave of infatuation and pity. I found -it simple, in my ignorance, my confusion, and perhaps my conceit, -to assume that I could deal with a boy whose education for the world -was all on the point of beginning. I am unable even to remember at -this day what proposal I framed for the end of his holidays and the -resumption of his studies. Lessons with me, indeed, that charming -summer, we all had a theory that he was to have; but I now feel -that, for weeks, the lessons must have been rather my own. I learnt -something--at first certainly--that had not been one of the teachings -of my small, smothered life; learnt 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 after-years could take for them was that of a -romantic, a really royal extension of the garden and the park. It may -be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives -the previous time a charm of stillness--that hush in which something -gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a -beast. - -In the first weeks the days were long; they often, at their finest, -gave me what I used to call my own hour, the hour when, for my pupils, -tea-time and bed-time 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 dare say -I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort -in the faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to -be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently -gave their first sign. - -It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the -children were tucked away and I had come out for my stroll. One of the -thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used -to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming -as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear -there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and -approve. I didn't ask more than that--I only asked that he should -_know_; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and -the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present -to me--by which I mean the face was--when, on the first of these -occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging -from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What -arrested me on the spot--and with a shock much greater than any vision -had allowed for--was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, -turned real. He did stand there!--but high up, beyond the lawn and at -the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora -had conducted me. This tower was one of a pair--square, incongruous, -crenelated structures--that were distinguished, for some reason, though -I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked -opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, -redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a -height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a -romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I admired them, -had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially -when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual -battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I had -so often invoked seemed most in place. - -It produced in me, this figure, in the clear twilight, I remember, two -distinct gasps of emotion, which were, sharply, the shock of my first -and that of my second surprise. My second was a violent perception of -the mistake of my first: the man who met my eyes was not the person -I had precipitately supposed. There came to me thus a bewilderment -of vision of which, after these years, there is no living view that -I can hope to give. An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted -object of fear to a young woman privately bred; and the figure that -faced me was--a few more seconds assured me--as little anyone else I -knew as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it -in Harley Street--I had not seen it anywhere. The place, moreover, in -the strangest way in the world, had, on the instant, and by the very -fact of its appearance, become a solitude. To me at least, making my -statement here with a deliberation with which I have never made it, -the whole feeling of the moment returns. It was as if, while I took -in--what I did take in--all the rest of the scene had been stricken -with death. I can hear again, as I write, the intense hush in which the -sounds of evening dropped. The rooks stopped cawing in the golden sky -and the friendly hour lost, for the minute, all its voice. But there -was no other change in nature, unless indeed it were a change that -I saw with a stranger sharpness. The gold was still in the sky, the -clearness in the air, and the man who looked at me over the battlements -was as definite as a picture in a frame. That's how I thought, -with extraordinary quickness, of each person that he might have been -and that he was not. We were confronted across our distance quite long -enough for me to ask myself with intensity who then he was and to feel, -as an effect of my inability to say, a wonder that in a few instants -more became intense. - -The great question, or one of these, is, afterwards, I know, -with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they -have lasted. Well, this matter of mine, think what you will of it, -lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities, none of which made -a difference for the better, that I could see, in there having been -in the house--and for how long, above all?--a person of whom I was in -ignorance. It lasted while I just bridled a little with the sense that -my office demanded that there should be no such ignorance and no such -person. It lasted while this visitant, at all events,--and there was a -touch of the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity -of his wearing no hat,--seemed to fix me, from his position, with just -the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light, that his own -presence provoked. We were too far apart to call to each other, but -there was a moment at which, at shorter range, some challenge between -us, breaking the hush, would have been the right result of our straight -mutual stare. He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house, -very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge. So -I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page; then, exactly, -after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle, he slowly changed -his place--passed, looking at me hard all the while, to the opposite -corner of the platform. Yes, I had the sharpest sense that during this -transit he never took his eyes from me, and I can see at this moment -the way his hand, as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to -the next. He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even as -he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away; that was all -I knew. - - -IV - -It was not that I didn't wait, on this occasion, for more, for I was -rooted as deeply as I was shaken. Was there a "secret" at Bly--a -mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in -unsuspected confinement? I can't say how long I turned it over, -or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where -I had had my collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house -darkness had quite closed in. Agitation, in the interval, certainly had -held me and driven me, for I must, in circling about the place, have -walked three miles; but I was to be, later on, so much more overwhelmed -that this mere dawn of alarm was a comparatively human chill. The -most singular part of it in fact--singular as the rest had been--was -the part I became, in the hall, aware of in meeting Mrs. Grose. This -picture comes back to me in the general train--the impression, as I -received it on my return, of the wide white panelled space, bright in -the lamplight and with its portraits and red carpet, and of the good -surprised look of my friend, which immediately told me she had missed -me. It came to me straightway, under her contact, that, with plain -heartiness, mere relieved anxiety at my appearance, she knew nothing -whatever that could bear upon the incident I had there ready for her. I -had not suspected in advance that her comfortable face would pull me -up, and I somehow measured the importance of what I had seen by my thus -finding myself hesitate to mention it. Scarce anything in the whole -history seems to me so odd as this fact that my real beginning of fear -was one, as I may say, with the instinct of sparing my companion. On -the spot, accordingly, in the pleasant hall and with her eyes on me, -I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased, achieved an inward -revolution--offered a vague pretext for my lateness and, with the plea -of the beauty of the night and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as -soon as possible to my room. - -Here it was another affair; here, for many days after, it was a queer -affair enough. There were hours, from day to day,--or at least there -were moments, snatched even from clear duties,--when I had to shut -myself up to think. It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than -I could bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so; for -the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly, the truth -that I could arrive at no account whatever of the visitor with whom -I had been so inexplicably and yet, as it seemed to me, so intimately -concerned. It took little time to see that I could sound without forms -of inquiry and without exciting remark any domestic complication. 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 practised 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 traveller, curious in old houses, had -made his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point of -view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me such a bold -hard stare, that was but a part of his indiscretion. The good thing, -after all, was that we should surely see no more of him. - -This was not so good a thing, I admit, as not to leave me to judge -that what, essentially, made nothing else much signify was simply my -charming work. My charming work was just my life with Miles and Flora, -and through nothing could I so like it as through feeling that I could -throw myself into it in trouble. The attraction of my small charges -was a constant joy, leading me to wonder afresh at the vanity of my -original fears, the distaste I had begun by entertaining for the -probable grey prose of my office. There was to be no grey 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 -head-masters--turns infallibly to the vindictive. - -Both the children had a gentleness (it was their only fault, and -it never made Miles a muff) that kept them--how shall I express -it?--almost impersonal and certainly quite unpunishable. They were like -the cherubs of the anecdote, who had--morally, at any rate--nothing to -whack! I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as -it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there -was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinarily sensitive, -yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age -I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a -second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really -been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have "caught" it, -and I should have caught it by the rebound--I should have found the -trace. I found nothing at all, and he was therefore an angel. He never -spoke of his school, never mentioned a comrade or a master; and I, for -my part, was quite too much disgusted to allude to them. Of course I -was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, -I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote -to any pain, and I had more pains than one. I was in receipt in these -days of disturbing letters from home, where things were not going -well. But with my children, what things in the world mattered? That was -the question I used to put to my scrappy retirements. I was dazzled by -their loveliness. - -There was a Sunday--to get on--when it rained with such force and -for so many hours that there could be no procession to church; -in consequence of which, as the day declined, I had arranged with -Mrs. Grose that, should the evening show improvement, we would attend -together the late service. The rain happily stopped, and I prepared -for our walk, which, through the park and by the good road to the -village, would be a matter of twenty minutes. Coming downstairs to -meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had -required three stitches and that had received them--with a publicity -perhaps not edifying--while I sat with the children at their tea, -served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany -and brass, the "grown-up" dining-room. The gloves had been dropped -there, and I turned in to recover them. The day was grey enough, but -the afternoon light still lingered, and it enabled me, on crossing -the threshold, not only to recognise, 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 recognised; but it was as if I had been looking at him -for years and had known him always. Something, however, happened this -time that had not happened before; his stare into my face, through -the glass and across the room, was as deep and hard as then, but it -quitted me for a moment during which I could still watch it, see it -fix successively several other things. On the spot there came to me the -added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there. He -had come for someone else. - -The flash of this knowledge--for it was knowledge in the midst of -dread--produced in me the most extraordinary effect, started, as I -stood there, a sudden vibration of duty and courage. I say courage -because I was beyond all doubt already far gone. I bounded straight -out of the door again, reached that of the house, got, in an instant, -upon the drive, and, passing along the terrace as fast as I could rush, -turned a corner and came full in sight. But it was in sight of nothing -now--my visitor had vanished. I stopped, I almost dropped, with the -real relief of this; but I took in the whole scene--I gave him time -to reappear. I call it time, but how long was it? I can't speak -to the purpose today of the duration of these things. That kind of -measure must have left me: they couldn't have lasted as they actually -appeared to me to last. The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and -the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a -great emptiness. There were shrubberies and big trees, but I remember -the clear assurance I felt that none of them concealed him. He was -there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him. I got hold of -this; then, instinctively, instead of returning as I had come, went -to the window. It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place -myself where he had stood. I did so; I applied my face to the pane -and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to -show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for -himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full -image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I -had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her -something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this -made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. She stared, in short, -and retreated on just _my_ lines, and I knew she had then passed out -and come round to me and that I should presently meet her. I remained -where I was, and while I waited I thought of more things than one. But -there's only one I take space to mention. I wondered why _she_ should -be scared. - - -V - -Oh, she let me know as soon as, round the corner of the house, -she loomed again into view. "What in the name of goodness is the -matter----?" She was now flushed and out of breath. - -I said nothing till she came quite near. "With me?" I must have -made a wonderful face. "Do I show it?" - -"You're as white as a sheet. You look awful." - -I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My -need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose's had dropped, without a -rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not -with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held -her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind -of support in the shy heave of her surprise. "You came for me for -church, of course, but I can't go." - -"Has anything happened?" - -"Yes. You must know now. Did I look very queer?" - -"Through this window? Dreadful!" - -"Well," I said, "I've been frightened." Mrs. Grose's eyes -expressed plainly that _she_ had no wish to be, yet also that she -knew too well her place not to be ready to share with me any marked -inconvenience. Oh, it was quite settled that she _must_ share! "Just -what you saw from the dining-room a minute ago was the effect of -that. What _I_ saw--just before--was much worse." - -Her hand tightened. "What was it?" - -"An extraordinary man. Looking in." - -"What extraordinary man?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Mrs. Grose gazed round us in vain. "Then where is he gone?" - -"I know still less." - -"Have you seen him before?" - -"Yes--once. On the old tower." - -She could only look at me harder. "Do you mean he's a stranger?" - -"Oh, very much!" - -"Yet you didn't tell me?" - -"No--for reasons. But now that you've guessed----" - -Mrs. Grose's round eyes encountered this charge. "Ah, I haven't -guessed!" she said very simply. "How can I if _you_ don't -imagine?" - -"I don't in the very least." - -"You've seen him nowhere but on the tower?" - -"And on this spot just now." - -Mrs. Grose looked round again. "What was he doing on the tower?" - -"Only standing there and looking down at me." - -She thought a minute. "Was he a gentleman?" - -I found I had no need to think. "No." She gazed in deeper -wonder. "No." - -"Then nobody about the place? Nobody from the village?" - -"Nobody--nobody. I didn't tell you, but I made sure." - -She breathed a vague relief: this was, oddly, so much to the good. It -only went indeed a little way. "But if he isn't a gentleman----" - -"What _is_ he? He's a horror." - -"A horror?" - -"He's--God help me if I know _what_ he is!" - -Mrs. Grose looked round once more; she fixed her eyes on the duskier -distance, then, pulling herself together, turned to me with abrupt -inconsequence. "It's time we should be at church." - -"Oh, I'm not fit for church!" - -"Won't it do you good?" - -"It won't do _them_----!" I nodded at the house. - -"The children?" - -"I can't leave them now." - -"You're afraid----?" - -I spoke boldly. "I'm afraid of _him_." - -Mrs. Grose's large face showed me, at this, for the first time, the -far-away faint glimmer of a consciousness more acute: I somehow made -out in it the delayed dawn of an idea I myself had not given her and -that was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought -instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to -be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. "When -was it--on the tower?" - -"About the middle of the month. At this same hour." - -"Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. - -"Oh no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." - -"Then how did he get in?" - -"And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask -him! This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to -get in." - -"He only peeps?" - -"I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand; -she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: -"Go to church. Good-bye. I must watch." - -Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?" - -We met in another long look. "Don't _you_?" Instead of answering -she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to -the glass. "You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. - -She didn't move. "How long was he here?" - -"Till I came out. I came to meet him." - -Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her -face. "_I_ couldn't have come out." - -"Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. I have my -duty." - -"So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: "What is -he like?" - -"I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody." - -"Nobody?" she echoed. - -"He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, in -this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added -stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and -a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, -rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, -somehow, darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might -move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know -clearly that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, -and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's quite -clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor." - -"An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than -Mrs. Grose at that moment. - -"I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, -erect," I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman." - -My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started -and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, -stupefied: "a gentleman _he_?" - -"You know him then?" - -She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he _is_ handsome?" - -I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!" - -"And dressed----?" - -"In somebody's clothes. They're smart, but they're not his -own." - -She broke into a breathless affirmative groan. "They're the -master's!" - -I caught it up. "You _do_ know him?" - -She faltered but a second. "Quint!" she cried. - -"Quint?" - -"Peter Quint--his own man, his valet, when he was here!" - -"When the master was?" - -Gaping still, but meeting me, she pieced it all together. "He -never wore his hat, but he did wear--well, there were waistcoats -missed! They were both here--last year. Then the master went, and Quint -was alone." - -I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?" - -"Alone with _us_." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," -she added. - -"And what became of him?" - -She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. "He went -too," she brought out at last. - -"Went where?" - -Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where! He -died." - -"Died?" I almost shrieked. - -She seemed fairly to square herself, plant herself more firmly to utter -the wonder of it. "Yes. Mr. Quint is dead." - - -VI - -It took of course more than that particular passage to place -us together in presence of what we had now to live with as we -could--my dreadful liability to impressions of the order so vividly -exemplified, and my companion's knowledge, henceforth,--a knowledge -half consternation and half compassion,--of that liability. There had -been, this evening, after the revelation that 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 -rigour 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 awe-stricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of my -more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has remained -with me as that of the sweetest of human charities. - -What was settled between us, accordingly, that night, was that we -thought we might bear things together; and I was not even sure that, -in spite of her exemption, it was she who had the best of the burden. I -knew at this hour, I think, as well as I knew later what I was capable -of meeting to shelter my pupils; but it took me some time to be wholly -sure of what my honest ally was prepared for to keep terms with so -compromising a contract. I was queer company enough--quite as queer as -the company I received; but as I trace over what we went through I see -how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good -fortune, _could_ steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that -led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I -could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could -join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to -me before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every -feature of what I had seen. - -"He was looking for someone else, you say--someone who was not -you?" - -"He was looking for little Miles." A portentous clearness now -possessed me. "_That's_ whom he was looking for." - -"But how do you know?" - -"I know, I know, I know!" My exaltation grew. "And _you_ know, -my dear!" - -She didn't deny this, but I required, I felt, not even so much -telling as that. She resumed in a moment, at any rate: "What if _he_ -should see him?" - -"Little Miles? That's what he wants!" - -She looked immensely scared again. "The child?" - -"Heaven forbid! The man. He wants to appear to _them_." That he -might was an awful conception, and yet, somehow, I could keep it at -bay; which, moreover, as we lingered there, was what I succeeded in -practically proving. I had an absolute certainty that I should see -again what I had already seen, but something within me said that -by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experience, -by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should serve as -an expiatory victim and guard the tranquillity of my companions. The -children, in especial, I should thus fence about and absolutely save. I -recall one of the last things I said that night to Mrs. Grose. - -"It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned----" - -She looked at me hard as I musingly pulled up. "His having been here -and the time they were with him?" - -"The time they were with him, and his name, his presence, his -history, in any way." - -"Oh, the little lady doesn't remember. She never heard or knew." - -"The circumstances of his death?" I thought with some intensity. -"Perhaps not. But Miles would remember--Miles would know." - -"Ah, don't try him!" broke from Mrs. Grose. - -I returned her the look she had given me. "Don't be afraid." I -continued to think. "It is rather odd." - -"That he has never spoken of him?" - -"Never by the least allusion. And you tell me they were 'great -friends'?" - -"Oh, it wasn't _him_!" Mrs. Grose with emphasis declared. "It -was Quint's own fancy. To play with him, I mean--to spoil him." She -paused a moment; then she added: "Quint was much too free." - -This gave me, straight from my vision of his face--_such_ a face!--a -sudden sickness of disgust. "Too free with _my_ boy?" - -"Too free with everyone!" - -I forbore, for the moment, to analyse this description further than by -the reflection that a part of it applied to several of the members of -the household, of the half-dozen maids and men who were still of our -small colony. But there was everything, for our apprehension, in the -lucky fact that no discomfortable legend, no perturbation of scullions, -had ever, within anyone's memory, attached to the kind old place. It -had neither bad name nor ill fame, and Mrs. Grose, most apparently, -only desired to cling to me and to quake in silence. I even put her, -the very last thing of all, to the test. It was when, at midnight, she -had her hand on the schoolroom door to take leave. "I have it from -you then--for it's of great importance--that he was definitely and -admittedly bad?" - -"Oh, not admittedly. _I_ knew it--but the master didn't." - -"And you never told him?" - -"Well, he didn't like tale-bearing--he hated complaints. He was -terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right -to _him_----" - -"He wouldn't be bothered with more?" This squared well enough -with my impression of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor -so very particular perhaps about some of the company _he_ kept. All -the same, I pressed my interlocutress. "I promise you _I_ would have -told!" - -She felt my discrimination. "I dare say I was wrong. But, really, -I was afraid." - -"Afraid of what?" - -"Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever--he was so deep." - -I took this in still more than, probably, I showed. "You weren't -afraid of anything else? Not of his effect----?" - -"His effect?" she repeated with a face of anguish and waiting while -I faltered. - -"On innocent little precious lives. They were in your charge." - -"No, they were not in mine!" she roundly and distressfully -returned. "The master believed in him and placed him here because he -was supposed not to be well and the country air so good for him. So -he had everything to say. Yes"--she let me have it--"even about -_them_." - -"Them--that creature?" I had to smother a kind of howl. "And you -could bear it!" - -"No. I couldn't--and I can't now!" And the poor woman burst -into tears. - -A rigid control, from the next day, was, as I have said, to follow -them; yet how often and how passionately, for a week, we came back -together to the subject! Much as we had discussed it that Sunday night, -I was, in the immediate later hours in especial--for it may be imagined -whether I slept--still haunted with the shadow of something she had -not told me. I myself had kept back nothing, but there was a word -Mrs. Grose had kept back. I was sure, moreover, by morning, that this -was not from a failure of frankness, but because on every side there -were fears. It seems to me indeed, in retrospect, that by the time the -morrow's sun was high I had restlessly read into the facts before us -almost all the meaning they were to receive from subsequent and more -cruel occurrences. What they gave me above all was just the sinister -figure of the living man--the dead one would keep awhile!--and of -the months he had continuously passed at Bly, which, added 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 -labourer going to early work, stone dead on the road from the village: -a catastrophe explained--superficially at least--by a visible wound -to his head; such a wound as might have been produced--and as, on the -final evidence, _had_ been--by a fatal slip, in the dark and after -leaving the public house, on the steepish icy slope, a wrong path -altogether, at the bottom of which he lay. The icy slope, the turn -mistaken at night and in liquor, accounted for much--practically, in -the end and after the inquest and boundless chatter, for everything; -but there had been matters in his life--strange passages and perils, -secret disorders, vices more than suspected--that would have accounted -for a good deal more. - -I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible -picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to -find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded -of me. I now saw that I had been asked for a service admirable and -difficult; and there would be a greatness in letting it be seen--oh, -in the right quarter!--that I could succeed where many another girl -might have failed. It was an immense help to me--I confess I rather -applaud myself as I look back!--that I saw my service so strongly and -so simply. I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in -the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose -helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant -ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; -we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I--well, I -had _them_. It was in short a magnificent chance. This chance presented -itself to me in an image richly material. I was a screen--I was to -stand before them. The more I saw, the less they would. I began -to watch them in a stifled suspense, a disguised excitement that -might well, had it continued too long, have turned to something like -madness. What saved me, as I now see, was that it turned to something -else altogether. It didn't last as suspense--it was superseded by -horrible proofs. Proofs, I say, yes--from the moment I really took -hold. - -This moment dated from an afternoon hour that I happened to spend in -the grounds with the younger of my pupils alone. We had left Miles -indoors, on the red cushion of a deep window-seat; he had wished to -finish a book, and I had been glad to encourage a purpose so laudable -in a young man whose only defect was an occasional excess of the -restless. His sister, on the contrary, had been alert to come out, -and I strolled with her half an hour, seeking the shade, for the sun -was still high and the day exceptionally warm. I was aware afresh, with -her, as we went, of how, like her brother, she contrived--it was the -charming thing in both children--to let me alone without appearing to -drop me and to accompany me without appearing to surround. They were -never importunate and yet never listless. My attention to them all -really went to seeing them amuse themselves immensely without me: this -was a spectacle they seemed actively to prepare and that engaged me as -an active admirer. I walked in a world of their invention--they had no -occasion whatever to draw upon mine; so that my time was taken only -with being, for them, some remarkable person or thing that the game -of the moment required and that was merely, thanks to my superior, my -exalted stamp, a happy and highly distinguished sinecure. I forget what -I was on the present occasion; I only remember that I was something -very important and very quiet and that Flora was playing very hard. We -were on the edge of the lake, and, as we had lately begun geography, -the lake was the Sea of Azof. - -Suddenly, in these circumstances, I became aware that, on the other -side of the Sea of Azof, we had an interested spectator. The way this -knowledge gathered in me was the strangest thing in the world--the -strangest, that is, except the very much stranger in which it quickly -merged itself. I had sat down with a piece of work--for I was something -or other that could sit--on the old stone bench which overlooked the -pond; and in this position I began to take in with certitude, and -yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third -person. The old trees, the thick shrubbery, made a great and pleasant -shade, but it was all suffused with the brightness of the hot, still -hour. There was no ambiguity in anything; none whatever, at least, -in the conviction I from one moment to another found myself forming -as to what I should see straight before me and across the lake as a -consequence of raising my eyes. They were attached at this juncture -to the stitching in which I was engaged, and I can feel once more the -spasm of my effort not to move them till I should so have steadied -myself as to be able to make up my mind what to do. There was an -alien object in view--a figure whose right of presence I instantly, -passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the -possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for -instance, than the appearance of one of the men about the place, -or even of a messenger, a postman or a tradesman's boy, from the -village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude -as I was conscious--still even without looking--of its having upon the -character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than -that these things should be the other things that they absolutely were -not. - -Of the positive identity of the apparition I would assure myself -as soon as the small clock of my courage should have ticked out the -right second; meanwhile, with an effort that was already sharp enough, -I transferred my eyes straight to little Flora, who, at the moment, -was about ten yards away. My heart had stood still for an instant with -the wonder and terror of the question whether she too would see; and I -held my breath while I waited for what a cry from her, what some sudden -innocent sign either of interest or of alarm, would tell me. I waited, -but nothing came; then, in the first place--and there is something -more dire in this, I feel, than in anything I have to relate--I was -determined by a sense that, within a minute, all sounds from her had -previously dropped; and, in the second, by the circumstance that, -also within the minute, she had, in her play, turned her back to the -water. This was her attitude when I at last looked at her--looked with -the confirmed conviction that we were still, together, under direct -personal notice. She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, which -happened to have in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to -her the idea of sticking in another fragment that might figure as -a mast and make the thing a boat. This second morsel, as I watched -her, she was very markedly and intently attempting to tighten in -its place. My apprehension of what she was doing sustained me so that -after some seconds I felt I was ready for more. Then I again shifted my -eyes--I faced what I had to face. - - -VII - -I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can -give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I -still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: "They -_know_--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!" - -"And what on earth----?" I felt her incredulity as she held me. - -"Why, all that _we_ know--and heaven knows what else besides!" -Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps -only now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the -garden"--I could scarce articulate--"Flora _saw_!" - -Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the -stomach. "She has told you?" she panted. - -"Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The -child of eight, _that_ child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the -stupefaction of it. - -Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. "Then how do you -know?" - -"I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly -aware." - -"Do you mean aware of _him_?" - -"No--of _her_." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked -prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my -companion's face. "Another person--this time; but a figure of -quite as unmistakeable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and -dreadful--with such an air also, and such a face!--on the other side -of the lake. I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the -midst of it she came." - -"Came how--from where?" - -"From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but -not so near." - -"And without coming nearer?" - -"Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close -as you!" - -My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. "Was she someone -you've never seen?" - -"Yes. But someone the child has. Someone _you_ have." Then, to show -how I had thought it all out: "My predecessor--the one who died." - -"Miss Jessel?" - -"Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed. - -She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?" - -This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of -impatience. "Then ask Flora--_she's_ sure!" But I had no -sooner spoken than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, -_don't_! She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!" - -Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. "Ah, how -_can_ you?" - -"Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know." - -"It's only then to spare you." - -"No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more -I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I don't know -what I _don't_ see--what I _don't_ fear!" - -Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid of -seeing her again?" - -"Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained. "It's of -_not_ seeing her." - -But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you." - -"Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child -assuredly _will_--without my knowing it." - -At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet -presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force -of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be -to give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! And after all, -if she doesn't mind it----!" She even tried a grim joke. "Perhaps -she likes it!" - -"Likes _such_ things--a scrap of an infant!" - -"Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend -bravely inquired. - -She brought me, for the instant, almost round. "Oh, we must clutch -at _that_--we must cling to it! If it isn't a proof of what you -say, it's a proof of--God knows what! For the woman's a horror of -horrors." - -Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at -last raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said. - -"Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried. - -"Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated. - -"Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked." - -"At you, do you mean--so wickedly?" - -"Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a -glance. She only fixed the child." - -Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" - -"Ah, with such awful eyes!" - -She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. "Do -you mean of dislike?" - -"God help us, no. Of something much worse." - -"Worse than dislike?"--this left her indeed at a loss. - -"With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of -intention." - -I made her turn pale. "Intention?" - -"To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering on -mine--gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood -there looking out I completed my statement. "_That's_ what Flora -knows." - -After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you -say?" - -"In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with -extraordinary beauty." I now recognised to what I had at last, -stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite -visibly weighed this. "Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted; -"wonderfully handsome. But infamous." - -She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--_was_ infamous." She -once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if -to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this -disclosure. "They were both infamous," she finally said. - -So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found -absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I -appreciate," I said, "the great decency of your not having hitherto -spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing." -She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which -I went on: "I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was -something between them." - -"There was everything." - -"In spite of the difference----?" - -"Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully -out. "_She_ was a lady." - -I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady." - -"And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose. - -I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, on -the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent -an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's -abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more -readily for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's -late clever, good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, -depraved. "The fellow was a hound." - -Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense -of shades. "I've never seen one like him. He did what he wished." - -"With _her_?" - -"With them all." - -It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again -appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation -of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out -with decision: "It must have been also what _she_ wished!" - -Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at -the same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!" - -"Then you do know what she died of?" I asked. - -"No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I -didn't; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!" - -"Yet you had, then, your idea----" - -"Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn't -have stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterwards I -imagined--and I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful." - -"Not so dreadful as what _I_ do," I replied; on which I must have -shown her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable -defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the -renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, -as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to -her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. "I don't do -it!" I sobbed in despair; "I don't save or shield them! It's -far worse than I dreamed--they're lost!" - - -VIII - -What I had said to Mrs. Grose was true enough: there were in the matter -I had put before her depths and possibilities that I lacked resolution -to sound; so that when we met once more in the wonder of it we were of -a common mind about the duty of resistance to extravagant fancies. We -were to keep our heads if we should keep nothing else--difficult indeed -as that might be in the face of what, in our prodigious experience, -was least to be questioned. Late that night, while the house slept, -we had another talk in my room, when she went all the way with me as to -its being beyond doubt that I had seen exactly what I had seen. To hold -her perfectly in the pinch of that, I found I had only to ask her how, -if I had "made it up," I came to be able to give, of each of the -persons appearing to me, a picture disclosing, to the last detail, -their special marks--a portrait on the exhibition of which she had -instantly recognised and named them. She wished, of course,--small -blame to her!--to sink the whole subject; and I was quick to assure her -that my own interest in it had now violently taken the form of a search -for the way to escape from it. I encountered her on the ground of a -probability that with recurrence--for recurrence we took for granted--I -should get used to my danger, distinctly professing that my personal -exposure had suddenly become the least of my discomforts. It was my new -suspicion that was intolerable; and yet even to this complication the -later hours of the day had brought a little ease. - -On leaving her, after my first outbreak, I had of course returned to my -pupils, associating the right remedy for my dismay with that sense of -their charm which I had already found to be a thing I could positively -cultivate and which had never failed me yet. I had simply, in other -words, plunged afresh into Flora's special society and there become -aware--it was almost a luxury!--that she could put her little conscious -hand straight upon the spot that ached. She had looked at me in sweet -speculation and then had accused me to my face of having "cried." -I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could -literally--for the time, at all events--rejoice, under this fathomless -charity, that they had not entirely disappeared. To gaze into the -depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce their loveliness a -trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference -to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgment and, so far as -might be, my agitation. I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, -but I could repeat to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in -the small hours--that with their voices in the air, their pressure -on one's heart and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, -everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It -was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to -re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake, -had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be -obliged to re-investigate the certitude of the moment itself and repeat -how it had come to me as a revelation that the inconceivable communion -I then surprised was a matter, for either party, of habit. It was a -pity that I should have had to quaver out again the reasons for my not -having, in my delusion, so much as questioned that the little girl saw -our visitant even as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she -wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she -didn't, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at -a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once -more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to -divert my attention--the perceptible increase of movement, the greater -intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the -invitation to romp. - -Yet if I had not indulged, to prove there was nothing in it, in this -review, I should have missed the two or three dim elements of comfort -that still remained to me. I should not for instance have been able to -asseverate to my friend that I was certain--which was so much to the -good--that _I_ at least had not betrayed myself. I should not have -been prompted, by stress of need, by desperation of mind,--I scarce -know what to call it,--to invoke such further aid to intelligence -as might spring from pushing my colleague fairly to the wall. She -had told me, bit by bit, under pressure, a great deal; but a small -shifty spot on the wrong side of it all still sometimes brushed my -brow like the wing of a bat; and I remember how on this occasion--for -the sleeping house and the concentration alike of our danger and our -watch seemed to help--I felt the importance of giving the last jerk to -the curtain. "I don't believe anything so horrible," I recollect -saying; "no, let us put it definitely, my dear, that I don't. But -if I did, you know, there's a thing I should require now, just -without sparing you the least bit more--oh, not a scrap, come!--to get -out of you. What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before -Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my -insistence, that you didn't pretend for him that he had not literally -_ever_ been 'bad'? He has _not_ literally 'ever,' in these -weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; -he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, loveable -goodness. Therefore you might perfectly have made the claim for him if -you had not, as it happened, seen an exception to take. What was your -exception, and to what passage in your personal observation of him did -you refer?" - -It was a dreadfully austere inquiry, but levity was not our note, and, -at any rate, before the grey 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 criticise the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of -so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank -overture to Miss Jessel. Miss Jessel had, with a most strange manner, -requested her to mind her business, and the good woman had, on this, -directly approached little Miles. What she had said to him, since I -pressed, was that _she_ liked to see young gentlemen not forget their -station. - -I pressed again, of course, at this. "You reminded him that Quint was -only a base menial?" - -"As you might say! And it was his answer, for one thing, that was -bad." - -"And for another thing?" I waited. "He repeated your words to -Quint?" - -"No, not that. It's just what he _wouldn't_!" she could still -impress upon me. "I was sure, at any rate," she added, "that he -didn't. But he denied certain occasions." - -"What occasions?" - -"When they had been about together quite as if Quint were his -tutor--and a very grand one--and Miss Jessel only for the little -lady. When he had gone off with the fellow, I mean, and spent hours -with him." - -"He then prevaricated about it--he said he hadn't?" Her assent -was clear enough to cause me to add in a moment: "I see. He lied." - -"Oh!" Mrs. Grose mumbled. This was a suggestion that it didn't -matter; which indeed she backed up by a further remark. "You see, -after all, Miss Jessel didn't mind. She didn't forbid him." - -I considered. "Did he put that to you as a justification?" - -At this she dropped again. "No, he never spoke of it." - -"Never mentioned her in connection with Quint?" - -She saw, visibly flushing, where I was coming out. "Well, he didn't -show anything. He denied," she repeated; "he denied." - -Lord, how I pressed her now! "So that you could see he knew what was -between the two wretches?" - -"I don't know--I don't know!" the poor woman groaned. - -"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't -my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity and -modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past, when you -had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence, most of all made you -miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet! There was something in -the boy that suggested to you," I continued, "that he covered and -concealed their relation." - -"Oh, he couldn't prevent----" - -"Your learning the truth? I dare say! But, heavens," I fell, with -vehemence, a-thinking, "what it shows that they must, to that extent, -have succeeded in making of him!" - -"Ah, nothing that's not nice _now_!" Mrs. Grose lugubriously -pleaded. - -"I don't wonder you looked queer," I persisted, "when I -mentioned to you the letter from his school!" - -"I doubt if I looked as queer as you!" she retorted with homely -force. "And if he was so bad then as that comes to, how is he such an -angel now?" - -"Yes, indeed--and if he was a fiend at school! How, how, -how? Well," I said in my torment, "you must put it to me again, -but I shall not be able to tell you for some days. Only, put it to me -again!" I cried in a way that made my friend stare. "There are -directions in which I must not for the present let myself go." -Meanwhile I returned to her first example--the one to which she -had just previously referred--of the boy's happy capacity for an -occasional slip. "If Quint--on your remonstrance at the time you -speak of--was a base menial, one of the things Miles said to you, I -find myself guessing, was that you were another." Again her admission -was so adequate that I continued: "And you forgave him that?" - -"Wouldn't _you_?" - -"Oh, yes!" And we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the -oddest amusement. Then I went on: "At all events, while he was with -the man----" - -"Miss Flora was with the woman. It suited them all!" - -It suited me too, I felt, only too well; by which I mean that it -suited exactly the particularly deadly view I was in the very act of -forbidding myself to entertain. But I so far succeeded in checking the -expression of this view that I will throw, just here, no further light -on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to -Mrs. Grose. "His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less -engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in -him of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "they must do, for -they make me feel more than ever that I must watch." - -It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face how -much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck -me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came -out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you don't -accuse _him_----" - -"Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember -that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before -shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, "I must -just wait," I wound up. - - -IX - -I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from -my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant -sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to -grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the -sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish -grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined -if I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it -would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to -struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, -a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I -used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought -strange things about them; and the circumstance that these things only -made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping -them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they _were_ so -immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, -as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could -only be--blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for -taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, -I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As -soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they -think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been -easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; -but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still -enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement -still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was -studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite -suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, -so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness in the -traceable increase of their own demonstrations. - -They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of -me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful -response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of -which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite -as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to -catch them at a purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so -many things for their poor protectress; I mean--though they got their -lessons better and better, which was naturally what would please her -most--in the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading -her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out -at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and above -all astonishing her by the "pieces" they had secretly got by heart -and could interminably recite. I should never get to the bottom--were -I to let myself go even now--of the prodigious private commentary, -all under still more private correction, with which, in these days, -I overscored their full hours. They had shown me from the first -a facility for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh -start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks as if -they loved them, and indulged, from the mere exuberance of the gift, -in the most unimposed little miracles of memory. They not only popped -out at me as tigers and as Romans, but as Shakespeareans, astronomers, -and navigators. This was so singularly the case that it had presumably -much to do with the fact as to which, at the present day, I am at a -loss for a different explanation: I allude to my unnatural composure on -the subject of another school for Miles. What I remember is that I was -content not, for the time, to open the question, and that contentment -must have sprung from the sense of his perpetually striking show of -cleverness. He was too clever for a bad governess, for a parson's -daughter, to spoil; and the strangest if not the brightest thread in -the pensive embroidery I just spoke of was the impression I might have -got, if I had dared to work it out, that he was under some influence -operating in his small intellectual life as a tremendous incitement. - -If it was easy to reflect, however, that such a boy could postpone -school, it was at least as marked that for such a boy to have been -"kicked out" by a school-master 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 marvellous 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 quarrelled 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 _naif_ side, I -suppose, in all diplomacy; but if my pupils practised upon me, it was -surely with the minimum of grossness. It was all in the other quarter -that, after a lull, the grossness broke out. - -I find that I really hang back; but I must take my plunge. In going -on with the record of what was hideous at Bly, I not only challenge -the most liberal faith--for which I little care; but--and this is -another matter--I renew what I myself suffered, I again push my way -through it to the end. There came suddenly an hour after which, as -I look back, the affair seems to me to have been all pure suffering; -but I have at least reached the heart of it, and the straightest road -out is doubtless to advance. One evening--with nothing to lead up -or to prepare it--I felt the cold touch of the impression that had -breathed on me the night of my arrival and which, much lighter then, -as I have mentioned, I should probably have made little of in memory -had my subsequent sojourn been less agitated. I had not gone to bed; -I sat reading by a couple of candles. There was a roomful of old books -at Bly--last-century fiction, some of it, which, to the extent of a -distinctly deprecated renown, but never to so much as that of a stray -specimen, had reached the sequestered home and appealed to the unavowed -curiosity of my youth. I remember that the book I had in my hand was -Fielding's _Amelia_; also that I was wholly awake. I recall further -both a general conviction that it was horribly late and a particular -objection to looking at my watch. I figure, finally, that the white -curtain draping, in the fashion of those days, the head of Flora's -little bed, shrouded, as I had assured myself long before, the -perfection of childish rest. I recollect in short that, though I was -deeply interested in my author, I found myself, at the turn of a page -and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard -at the door of my room. There was a moment during which I listened, -reminded of the faint sense I had had, the first night, of there being -something undefineably astir in the house, and noted the soft breath of -the open casement just move the half-drawn blind. Then, with all the -marks of a deliberation that must have seemed magnificent had there -been anyone to admire it, I laid down my book, rose to my feet, and, -taking a candle, went straight out of the room and, from the passage, -on which my light made little impression, noiselessly closed and locked -the door. - -I can say now neither what determined nor what guided me, but I -went straight along the lobby, holding my candle high, till I came -within sight of the tall window that presided over the great turn -of the staircase. At this point I precipitately found myself aware -of three things. They were practically simultaneous, yet they had -flashes of succession. My candle, under a bold flourish, went out, -and I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of -earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, -I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I -required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter -with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing half-way 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 unmistakeably quitted me and that there was nothing in me -there that didn't meet and measure him. - -I had plenty of anguish after that extraordinary moment, but I had, -thank God, no terror. And he knew I had not--I found myself at the end -of an instant magnificently aware of this. I felt, in a fierce rigour -of confidence, that if I stood my ground a minute I should cease--for -the time, at least--to have him to reckon with; and during the minute, -accordingly, the thing was as human and hideous as a real interview: -hideous just because it _was_ human, as human as to have met alone, -in the small hours, in a sleeping house, some enemy, some adventurer, -some criminal. It was the dead silence of our long gaze at such close -quarters that gave the whole horror, huge as it was, its only note of -the unnatural. If I had met a murderer in such a place and at such -an hour, we still at least would have spoken. Something would have -passed, in life, between us; if nothing had passed one of us would have -moved. The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little -more to make me doubt if even _I_ were in life. I can't express what -followed it save by saying that the silence itself--which was indeed in -a manner an attestation of my strength--became the element into which I -saw the figure disappear; in which I definitely saw it turn as I might -have seen the low wretch to which it had once belonged turn on receipt -of an order, and pass, with my eyes on the villainous back that no -hunch could have more disfigured, straight down the staircase and into -the darkness in which the next bend was lost. - - -X - -I remained awhile at the top of the stair, but with the effect -presently of understanding that when my visitor had gone, he had -gone: then I returned to my room. The foremost thing I saw there -by the light of the candle I had left burning was that Flora's -little bed was empty; and on this I caught my breath with all the -terror that, five minutes before, I had been able to resist. I -dashed at the place in which I had left her lying and over which -(for the small silk counterpane and the sheets were disarranged) -the white curtains had been deceivingly pulled forward; then my step, -to my unutterable relief, produced an answering sound: I perceived an -agitation of the window-blind, and the child, ducking down, emerged -rosily from the other side of it. She stood there in so much of her -candour and so little of her nightgown, with her pink bare feet and -the golden glow of her curls. She looked intensely grave, and I had -never had such a sense of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill -of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that -she addressed me with a reproach. "You naughty: where _have_ you -been?"--instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself -arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with -the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay -there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had -become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back -into my chair--feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she -had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given -herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful -little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing -my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of -something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. "You were -looking for me out of the window?" I said. "You thought I might be -walking in the grounds?" - -"Well, you know, I thought someone was"--she never blanched as she -smiled out that at me. - -Oh, how I looked at her now! "And did you see anyone?" - -"Ah, _no_!" she returned, almost with the full privilege of -childish inconsequence, resentfully, though with a long sweetness in -her little drawl of the negative. - -At that moment, in the state of my nerves, I absolutely believed she -lied; and if I once more closed my eyes it was before the dazzle of -the three or four possible ways in which I might take this up. One -of these, for a moment, tempted me with such singular intensity that, -to withstand it, I must have gripped my little girl with a spasm that, -wonderfully, she submitted to without a cry or a sign of fright. Why -not break out at her on the spot and have it all over?--give it to her -straight in her lovely little lighted face? "You see, you see, you -_know_ that you do and that you already quite suspect I believe it; -therefore why not frankly confess it to me, so that we may at least -live with it together and learn perhaps, in the strangeness of our -fate, where we are and what it means?" This solicitation dropped, -alas, as it came: if I could immediately have succumbed to it I might -have spared myself----well you'll see what. Instead of succumbing I -sprang again to my feet, looked at her bed, and took a helpless middle -way. "Why did you pull the curtain over the place to make me think -you were still there?" - -Flora luminously considered; after which, with her little divine smile: -"Because I don't like to frighten you!" - -"But if I had, by your idea, gone out----?" - -She absolutely declined to be puzzled; she turned her eyes to the flame -of the candle as if the question were as irrelevant, or at any rate as -impersonal, as Mrs. Marcet or nine-times-nine. "Oh, but you know," -she quite adequately answered, "that you might come back, you dear, -and that you _have_!" And after a little, when she had got into bed, -I had, for a long time, by almost sitting on her to hold her hand, to -prove that I recognised the pertinence of my return. - -You may imagine the general complexion, from that moment, of my -nights. I repeatedly sat up till I didn't know when; I selected -moments when my room-mate unmistakeably 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 recognised 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, none the less, 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 afterwards knew, -till about one o'clock; but when I woke it was to sit straight up, -as completely roused as if a hand had shook me. I had left a light -burning, but it was now out, and I felt an instant certainty that -Flora had extinguished it. This brought me to my feet and straight, in -the darkness, to her bed, which I found she had left. A glance at the -window enlightened me further, and the striking of a match completed -the picture. - -The child had again got up--this time blowing out the taper, and had -again, for some purpose of observation or response, squeezed in behind -the blind and was peering out into the night. That she now saw--as -she had not, I had satisfied myself, the previous time--was proved to -me by the fact that she was disturbed neither by my re-illumination -nor by the haste I made to get into slippers and into a wrap. Hidden, -protected, absorbed, she evidently rested on the sill--the casement -opened forward--and gave herself up. There was a great still moon to -help her, and this fact had counted in my quick decision. She was -face to face with the apparition we had met at the lake, and could -now communicate with it as she had not then been able to do. What I, -on my side, had to care for was, without disturbing her, to reach, from -the corridor, some other window in the same quarter. I got to the door -without her hearing me; I got out of it, closed it and listened, from -the other side, for some sound from her. While I stood in the passage -I had my eyes on her brother's door, which was but ten steps off and -which, indescribably, produced in me a renewal of the strange impulse -that I lately spoke of as my temptation. What if I should go straight -in and march to _his_ window?--what if, by risking to his boyish -bewilderment a revelation of my motive, I should throw across the rest -of the mystery the long halter of my boldness? - -This thought held me sufficiently to make me cross to his threshold -and pause again. I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what -might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he -too were secretly at watch. It was a deep, soundless minute, at the -end of which my impulse failed. He was quiet; he might be innocent; the -risk was hideous; I turned away. There was a figure in the grounds--a -figure prowling for a sight, the visitor with whom Flora was engaged; -but it was not the visitor most concerned with my boy. I hesitated -afresh, but on other grounds and only a few seconds; then I had made -my choice. There were empty rooms at Bly, and it was only a question -of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself -to me as the lower one--though high above the gardens--in the solid -corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower. This was -a large, square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the -extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for -years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I -had often admired it and I knew my way about in it; I had only, after -just faltering at the first chill gloom of its disuse, to pass across -it and unbolt as quietly as I could one of the shutters. Achieving -this transit, I uncovered the glass without a sound and, applying -my face to the pane, was able, the darkness without being much less -than within, to see that I commanded the right direction. Then I saw -something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable -and showed me on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood -there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where I had -appeared--looking, that is, not so much straight at me as at something -that was apparently above me. There was clearly another person above -me--there was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was -not in the least what I had conceived and had confidently hurried to -meet. The presence on the lawn--I felt sick as I made it out--was poor -little Miles himself. - - -XI - -It was not till late next day that I spoke to Mrs. Grose; the rigour -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 of a discussion -of mysteries. I drew a great security in this particular from her mere -smooth aspect. There was nothing in her fresh face to pass on to others -my horrible confidences. She believed me, I was sure, absolutely: -if she hadn't I don't know what would have become of me, for I -couldn't have borne the business alone. But she was a magnificent -monument to the blessing of a want of imagination, and if she could -see in our little charges nothing but their beauty and amiability, -their happiness and cleverness, she had no direct communication with -the sources of my trouble. If they had been at all visibly blighted or -battered, she would doubtless have grown, on tracing it back, haggard -enough to match them; as matters stood, however, I could feel her, -when she surveyed them, with her large white arms folded and the -habit of serenity in all her look, thank the Lord's mercy that if -they were ruined the pieces would still serve. Flights of fancy gave -place, in her mind, to a steady fireside glow, and I had already begun -to perceive how, with the development of the conviction that--as time -went on without a public accident--our young things could, after all, -look out for themselves, she addressed her greatest solicitude to the -sad case presented by their instructress. That, for myself, was a sound -simplification: I could engage that, to the world, my face should tell -no tales, but it would have been, in the conditions, an immense added -strain to find myself anxious about hers. - -At the hour I now speak of she had joined me, under pressure, on the -terrace, where, with the lapse of the season, the afternoon sun was now -agreeable; and we sat there together while, before us, at a distance, -but within call if we wished, the children strolled to and fro in -one of their most manageable moods. They moved slowly, in unison, -below us, over the lawn, the boy, as they went, reading aloud from a -storybook and passing his arm round his sister to keep her quite in -touch. Mrs. Grose watched them with positive placidity; then I caught -the suppressed intellectual creak with which she conscientiously turned -to take from me a view of the back of the tapestry. I had made her -a receptacle of lurid things, but there was an odd recognition of my -superiority--my accomplishments and my function--in her patience under -my pain. She offered her mind to my disclosures as, had I wished to mix -a witch's broth and proposed it with assurance, she would have held -out a large clean saucepan. This had become thoroughly her attitude by -the time that, in my recital of the events of the night, I reached the -point of what Miles had said to me when, after seeing him, at such a -monstrous hour, almost on the very spot where he happened now to be, -I had gone down to bring him in; choosing then, at the window, with a -concentrated need of not alarming the house, rather that method than a -signal more resonant. I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my -small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy -my sense of the real splendour of the little inspiration with which, -after I had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate -challenge. As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace, he -had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken his hand -without a word and led him, through the dark spaces, up the staircase -where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him, along the lobby where I -had listened and trembled, and so to his forsaken room. - -Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered--oh, -_how_ I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his little mind for -something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, -certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a -curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He -couldn't play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get -out of it? There beat in me indeed, with the passionate throb of this -question, an equal dumb appeal as to how the deuce _I_ should. I was -confronted at last, as never yet, with all the risk attached even now -to sounding my own horrid note. I remember in fact that as we pushed -into his little chamber, where the bed had not been slept in at all -and the window, uncovered to the moonlight, made the place so clear -that there was no need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly -dropped, sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that -he must know how he really, as they say, "had" me. He could do what -he liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should -continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those -caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears. He -"had" me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve -me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest -tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect -intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to -convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to -suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly -shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; -never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such -tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held -him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, -to put it to him. - -"You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out -for? What were you doing there?" - -I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, -and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. "If -I tell you why, will you understand?" My heart, at this, leaped into -my mouth. _Would_ he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press -it, and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing -nod. He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he -stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness -indeed that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really -going to tell me? "Well," he said at last, "just exactly in order -that you should do this." - -"Do what?" - -"Think me--for a change--_bad_!" I shall never forget the sweetness -and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of -it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of -everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a -minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given -exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind -it, and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it -that, as I presently glanced about the room, I could say-- - -"Then you didn't undress at all?" - -He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. I sat up and read." - -"And when did you go down?" - -"At midnight. When I'm bad I _am_ bad!" - -"I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would -know it?" - -"Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His answers rang out with a -readiness! "She was to get up and look out." - -"Which is what she did do." It was I who fell into the trap! - -"So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also -looked--you saw." - -"While you," I concurred, "caught your death in the night air!" - -He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford -radiantly to assent. "How otherwise should I have been bad enough?" -he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview -closed on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his -joke, he had been able to draw upon. - - -XII - -The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, -I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I -reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made -before we separated. "It all lies in half-a-dozen words," I said to -her, "words that really settle the matter. 'Think, you know, what -I _might_ do!' He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows -down to the ground what he 'might' do. That's what he gave them a -taste of at school." - -"Lord, you do change!" cried my friend. - -"I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, -perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with -either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I've -watched and waited the more I've felt that if there were nothing -else to make it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of -each. _Never_, by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded -to either of their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to -his expulsion. Oh yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may -show off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend to -be lost in their fairy-tale they're steeped in their vision of the -dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared; "they're -talking of _them_--they're talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if I -were crazy; and it's a wonder I'm not. What I've seen would have -made _you_ so; but it has only made me more lucid, made me get hold of -still other things." - -My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were -victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, -gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she -held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them -still with her eyes. "Of what other things have you got hold?" - -"Why, of the very things that have delighted, fascinated, and yet, -at bottom, as I now so strangely see, mystified and troubled me. Their -more than earthly beauty, their absolutely unnatural goodness. It's a -game," I went on; "it's a policy and a fraud!" - -"On the part of little darlings----?" - -"As yet mere lovely babies? Yes, mad as that seems!" The very act -of bringing it out really helped me to trace it--follow it all up and -piece it all together. "They haven't been good--they've only -been absent. It has been easy to live with them, because they're -simply leading a life of their own. They're not mine--they're not -ours. They're his and they're hers!" - -"Quint's and that woman's?" - -"Quint's and that woman's. They want to get to them." - -Oh, how, at this, poor Mrs. Grose appeared to study them! "But for -what?" - -"For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair -put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the -work of demons, is what brings the others back." - -"Laws!" said my friend under her breath. The exclamation was -homely, but it revealed a real acceptance of my further proof of what, -in the bad time--for there had been a worse even than this!--must have -occurred. There could have been no such justification for me as the -plain assent of her experience to whatever depth of depravity I found -credible in our brace of scoundrels. It was in obvious submission of -memory that she brought out after a moment: "They _were_ rascals! But -what can they now do?" she pursued. - -"Do?" I echoed so loud that Miles and Flora, as they passed -at their distance, paused an instant in their walk and looked at -us. "Don't they do enough?" I demanded in a lower tone, while -the children, having smiled and nodded and kissed hands to us, resumed -their exhibition. We were held by it a minute; then I answered: "They -can destroy them!" At this my companion did turn, but the inquiry -she launched was a silent one, the effect of which was to make me more -explicit. "They don't know, as yet, quite how--but they're trying -hard. They're seen only across, as it were, and beyond--in strange -places and on high places, the top of towers, the roof of houses, -the outside of windows, the further edge of pools; but there's a -deep design, on either side, to shorten the distance and overcome -the obstacle; and the success of the tempters is only a question of -time. They've only to keep to their suggestions of danger." - -"For the children to come?" - -"And perish in the attempt!" Mrs. Grose slowly got up, and I -scrupulously added: "Unless, of course, we can prevent!" - -Standing there before me while I kept my seat, she visibly turned -things over. "Their uncle must do the preventing. He must take them -away." - -"And who's to make him?" - -She had been scanning the distance, but she now dropped on me a foolish -face. "You, Miss." - -"By writing to him that his house is poisoned and his little nephew -and niece mad?" - -"But if they _are_, Miss?" - -"And if I am myself, you mean? That's charming news to be sent him -by a governess whose prime undertaking was to give him no worry." - -Mrs. Grose considered, following the children again. "Yes, he do hate -worry. That was the great reason----" - -"Why those fiends took him in so long? No doubt, though his -indifference must have been awful. As I'm not a fiend, at any rate, -I shouldn't take him in." - -My companion, after an instant and for all answer, sat down again and -grasped my arm. "Make him at any rate come to you." - -I stared. "To _me_?" I had a sudden fear of what she might -do. "'Him'?" - -"He ought to _be_ here--he ought to help." - -I quickly rose, and I think I must have shown her a queerer face than -ever yet. "You see me asking him for a visit?" No, with her eyes on -my face she evidently couldn't. Instead of it even--as a woman reads -another--she could see what I myself saw: his derision, his amusement, -his contempt for the break-down 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 none the less took -the measure, I think, of the warning I now gave her. "If you should -so lose your head as to appeal to him for me----" - -She was really frightened. "Yes, Miss?" - -"I would leave, on the spot, both him and you." - - -XIII - -It was all very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as -much as ever an effort beyond my strength--offered, in close quarters, -difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a -month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above -all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the -part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, -my mere infernal imagination: it was absolutely traceable that they -were aware of my predicament and that this strange relation made, in -a manner, for a long time, the air in which we moved. I don't mean -that they had their tongues in their cheeks or did anything vulgar, for -that was not one of their dangers: I do mean, on the other hand, that -the element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater -than any other, and that so much avoidance could not have been so -successfully effected without a great deal of tacit arrangement. It was -as if, at moments, we were perpetually coming into sight of subjects -before which we must stop short, turning suddenly out of alleys that -we perceived to be blind, closing with a little bang that made us look -at each other--for, like all bangs, it was something louder than we -had intended--the doors we had indiscreetly opened. All roads lead to -Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost -every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden -ground. Forbidden ground was the question of the return of the dead in -general and of whatever, in especial, might survive, in memory, of the -friends little children had lost. There were days when I could have -sworn that one of them had, with a small invisible nudge, said to the -other: "She thinks she'll do it this time--but she _won't_!" To -"do it" would have been to indulge for instance--and for once in a -way--in some direct reference to the lady who had prepared them for my -discipline. They had a delightful endless appetite for passages in my -own history, to which I had again and again treated them; they were -in possession of everything that had ever happened to me, had had, -with every circumstance the story of my smallest adventures and of -those of my brothers and sisters and of the cat and the dog at home, -as well as many particulars of the eccentric nature of my father, of -the furniture and arrangement of our house, and of the conversation -of the old women of our village. There were things enough, taking -one with another, to chatter about, if one went very fast and knew -by instinct when to go round. They pulled with an art of their own -the strings of my invention and my memory; and nothing else perhaps, -when I thought of such occasions afterwards, gave me so the suspicion -of being watched from under cover. It was in any case over _my_ life, -_my_ past, and _my_ friends alone that we could take anything like -our ease--a state of affairs that led them sometimes without the least -pertinence to break out into sociable reminders. I was invited--with no -visible connection--to repeat afresh Goody Gosling's celebrated _mot_ -or to confirm the details already supplied as to the cleverness of the -vicarage pony. - -It was partly at such junctures as these and partly at quite different -ones that, with the turn my matters had now taken, my predicament, -as I have called it, grew most sensible. The fact that the days passed -for me without another encounter ought, it would have appeared, to have -done something toward soothing my nerves. Since the light brush, that -second night on the upper landing, of the presence of a woman at the -foot of the stair, I had seen nothing, whether in or out of the house, -that one had better not have seen. There was many a corner round which -I expected to come upon Quint, and many a situation that, in a merely -sinister way, would have favoured 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 grey sky -and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, -was like a theatre 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 recognised the signs, the portents--I recognised -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 fulness of my own exposure. I was ready to know the very worst -that was to be known. What I had then had an ugly glimpse of was that -my eyes might be sealed just while theirs were most opened. Well, my -eyes _were_ sealed, it appeared, at present--a consummation for which -it seemed blasphemous not to thank God. There was, alas, a difficulty -about that: I would have thanked him with all my soul had I not had in -a proportionate measure this conviction of the secret of my pupils. - -How can I retrace today the strange steps of my obsession? There were -times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, -literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, -they had visitors who were known and were welcome. Then it was that, -had I not been deterred by the very chance that such an injury might -prove greater than the injury to be averted, my exultation would have -broken out. "They're here, they're here, you little wretches," -I would have cried, "and you can't deny it now!" The little -wretches denied it with all the added volume of their sociability -and their tenderness, in just the crystal depths of which--like the -flash of a fish in a stream--the mockery of their advantage peeped -up. The shock, in truth, had sunk into me still deeper than I knew on -the night when, looking out to see either Quint or Miss Jessel under -the stars, I had beheld the boy over whose rest I watched and who had -immediately brought in with him--had straightway, there, turned it on -me--the lovely upward look with which, from the battlements above me, -the hideous apparition of Quint had played. If it was a question of a -scare, my discovery on this occasion had scared me more than any other, -and it was in the condition of nerves produced by it that I made my -actual inductions. They harassed me so that sometimes, at odd moments, -I shut myself up audibly to rehearse--it was at once a fantastic relief -and a renewed despair--the manner in which I might come to the point. I -approached it from one side and the other while, in my room, I flung -myself about, but I always broke down in the monstrous utterance of -names. As they died away on my lips, I said to myself that I should -indeed help them to represent something infamous if, by pronouncing -them, I should violate as rare a little case of instinctive delicacy -as any schoolroom, probably, had ever known. When I said to myself: -"_They_ have the manners to be silent, and you, trusted as you are, -the baseness to speak!" I felt myself crimson and I covered my face -with my hands. After these secret scenes I chattered more than ever, -going on volubly enough till one of our prodigious, palpable hushes -occurred--I can call them nothing else--the strange, dizzy lift or -swim (I try for terms!) into a stillness, a pause of all life, that -had nothing to do with the more or less noise that at the moment we -might be engaged in making and that I could hear through any deepened -exhilaration or quickened recitation or louder strum of the piano. Then -it was that the others, the outsiders, were there. Though they were not -angels, they "passed," as the French, say, causing me, while they -stayed, to tremble with the fear of their addressing to their younger -victims some yet more infernal message or more vivid image than they -had thought good enough for myself. - -What it was most impossible to get rid of was the cruel idea that, -whatever I had seen, Miles and Flora saw _more_--things terrible and -unguessable and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in -the past. Such things naturally left on the surface, for the time, -a chill which we vociferously denied that we felt; and we had, all -three, with repetition, got into such splendid training that we went, -each time, almost automatically, to mark the close of the incident, -through the very same movements. It was striking of the children, at -all events, to kiss me inveterately with a kind of wild irrelevance -and never to fail--one or the other--of the precious question that -had helped us through many a peril. "When do you think he _will_ -come? Don't you think we _ought_ to write?"--there was nothing -like that inquiry, we found by experience, for carrying off an -awkwardness. "He" of course was their uncle in Harley Street; -and we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any moment -arrive to mingle in our circle. It was impossible to have given less -encouragement than he had done to such a doctrine, but if we had not -had the doctrine to fall back upon we should have deprived each other -of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them--that may -have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of -me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman -is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred -laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of the -pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that -their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too -beautiful to be posted; I kept them myself; I have them all to this -hour. This was a rule indeed which only added to the satiric effect -of my being plied with the supposition that he might at any moment be -among us. It was exactly as if my charges knew how almost more awkward -than anything else that might be for me. There appears to me, moreover, -as I look back, no note in all this more extraordinary than the mere -fact that, in spite of my tension and of their triumph, I never lost -patience with them. Adorable they must in truth have been, I now -reflect, that I didn't in these days hate them! Would exasperation, -however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed -me? It little matters, for relief arrived. I call it relief, though it -was only the relief that a snap brings to a strain or the burst of a -thunderstorm to a day of suffocation. It was at least change, and it -came with a rush. - - -XIV - -Walking to church a certain Sunday morning, I had little Miles at my -side and his sister, in advance of us and at Mrs. Grose's, well in -sight. It was a crisp, clear day, the first of its order for some -time; the night had brought a touch of frost, and the autumn air, -bright and sharp, made the church-bells almost gay. It was an odd -accident of thought that I should have happened at such a moment to -be particularly and very gratefully struck with the obedience of my -little charges. Why did they never resent my inexorable, my perpetual -society? Something or other had brought nearer home to me that I had -all but pinned the boy to my shawl and that, in the way our companions -were marshalled 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 -unmistakeably occurred. I call it a revolution because I now see how, -with the word he spoke, the curtain rose on the last act of my dreadful -drama and the catastrophe was precipitated. "Look here, my dear, you -know," he charmingly said, "when in the world, please, am I going -back to school?" - -Transcribed here the speech sounds harmless enough, particularly -as uttered in the sweet, high, casual pipe with which, at all -interlocutors, but above all at his eternal governess, he threw off -intonations as if he were tossing roses. There was something in them -that always made one "catch" and I caught, at any rate, now so -effectually that I stopped as short as if one of the trees of the -park had fallen across the road. There was something new, on the spot, -between us, and he was perfectly aware that I recognised it, though, -to enable me to do so, he had no need to look a whit less candid and -charming than usual. I could feel in him how he already, from my -at first finding nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had -gained. I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time, -after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive -smile: "You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady -_always_----!" His "my dear" was constantly on his lips for me, -and nothing could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment -with which I desired to inspire my pupils than its fond familiarity. It -was so respectfully easy. - -But, oh, how I felt that at present I must pick my own phrases! I -remember that, to gain time, I tried to laugh, and I seemed to see -in the beautiful face with which he watched me how ugly and queer I -looked. "And always with the same lady?" I returned. - -He neither blenched nor winked. The whole thing was virtually out -between us. "Ah, of course, she's a jolly, 'perfect' lady; but, -after all, I'm a fellow, don't you see? that's--well, getting -on." - -I lingered there with him an instant ever so kindly. "Yes, you're -getting on." Oh, but I felt helpless! - -I have kept to this day the heartbreaking little idea of how he seemed -to know that and to play with it. "And you can't say I've not -been awfully good, can you?" - -I laid my hand on his shoulder, for, though I felt how much better it -would have been to walk on, I was not yet quite able. "No, I can't -say that, Miles." - -"Except just that one night, you know----!" - -"That one night?" I couldn't look as straight as he. - -"Why, when I went down--went out of the house." - -"Oh, yes. But I forget what you did it for." - -"You forget?"--he spoke with the sweet extravagance of childish -reproach. "Why, it was to show you I could!" - -"Oh, yes, you could." - -"And I can again." - -I felt that I might, perhaps, after all, succeed in keeping my wits -about me. "Certainly. But you won't." - -"No, not _that_ again. It was nothing." - -"It was nothing," I said. "But we must go on." - -He resumed our walk with me, passing his hand into my arm. "Then when -_am_ I going back?" - -I wore, in turning it over, my most responsible air. "Were you very -happy at school?" - -He just considered. "Oh, I'm happy enough anywhere!" - -"Well, then," I quavered, "if you're just as happy here----!" - -"Ah, but that isn't everything! Of course _you_ know a lot----" - -"But you hint that you know almost as much?" I risked as he paused. - -"Not half I want to!" Miles honestly professed. "But it isn't -so much that." - -"What is it, then?" - -"Well--I want to see more life." - -"I see; I see." We had arrived within sight of the church and of -various persons, including several of the household of Bly, on their -way to it and clustered about the door to see us go in. I quickened -our step; I wanted to get there before the question between us opened -up much further; I reflected hungrily that, for more than an hour, he -would have to be silent; and I thought with envy of the comparative -dusk of the pew and of the almost spiritual help of the hassock on -which I might bend my knees. I seemed literally to be running a race -with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that -he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, -he threw out-- - -"I want my own sort!" - -It literally made me bound forward. "There are not many of your own -sort, Miles!" I laughed. "Unless perhaps dear little Flora!" - -"You really compare me to a baby girl?" - -This found me singularly weak. "Don't you, then, _love_ our sweet -Flora?" - -"If I didn't--and you too; if I didn't----!" he repeated as -if retreating for a jump, yet leaving his thought so unfinished that, -after we had come into the gate, another stop, which he imposed on me -by the pressure of his arm, had become inevitable. Mrs. Grose and Flora -had passed into the church, the other worshippers had followed, and we -were, for the minute, alone among the old, thick graves. We had paused, -on the path from the gate, by a low, oblong, tablelike tomb. - -"Yes, if you didn't----?" - -He looked, while I waited, about at the graves. "Well, you know -what!" But he didn't move, and he presently produced something -that made me drop straight down on the stone slab, as if suddenly to -rest. "Does my uncle think what _you_ think?" - -I markedly rested. "How do you know what I think?" - -"Ah, well, of course I don't; for it strikes me you never tell -me. But I mean does _he_ know?" - -"Know what, Miles?" - -"Why, the way I'm going on." - -I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry, -no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my -employer. Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently -sacrificed to make that venial. "I don't think your uncle much -cares." - -Miles, on this, stood looking at me. "Then don't you think he can -be made to?" - -"In what way?" - -"Why, by his coming down." - -"But who'll get him to come down?" - -"_I_ will!" the boy said with extraordinary brightness and -emphasis. He gave me another look charged with that expression and then -marched off alone into church. - - -XV - -The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed -him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware -of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my -tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fulness -of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had -also embraced, for absence, the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my -pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay. What -I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of -me and that the proof of it, for him, would be just this awkward -collapse. He had got out of me that there was something I was much -afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear -to gain, for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to -deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from -school, for that was really but the question of the horrors gathered -behind. That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things -was a solution that, strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to -bring on; but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it -that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth. The boy, to -my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to -say to me: "Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this -interruption of my studies, or you cease to expect me to lead with you -a life that's so unnatural for a boy." What was so unnatural for -the particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a -consciousness and a plan. - -That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I -walked round the church, hesitating, hovering; I reflected that I had -already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair. Therefore I could patch -up nothing, and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into -the pew: he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into -mine and make me sit there for an hour in close, silent contact with -his commentary on our talk. For the first minute since his arrival I -wanted to get away from him. As I paused beneath the high east window -and listened to the sounds of worship, I was taken with an impulse -that might master me, I felt, completely should I give it the least -encouragement. I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting -away altogether. Here was my chance; there was no one to stop me; I -could give the whole thing up--turn my back and retreat. It was only a -question of hurrying again, for a few preparations, to the house which -the attendance at church of so many of the servants would practically -have left unoccupied. No one, in short, could blame me if I should just -drive desperately off. What was it to get away if I got away only till -dinner? That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which--I had -the acute prevision--my little pupils would play at innocent wonder -about my non-appearance in their train. - -"What _did_ you do, you naughty, bad thing? Why in the world, to -worry us so--and take our thoughts off too, don't you know?--did you -desert us at the very door?" I couldn't meet such questions nor, -as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes; yet it was all so -exactly what I should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to -me, I at last let myself go. - -I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away; I came -straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps -through the park. It seemed to me that by the time I reached the -house I had made up my mind I would fly. The Sunday stillness both -of the approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one, fairly -excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, -this way, I should get off without a scene, without a word. My -quickness would have to be remarkable, however, and the question of a -conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall, with -difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of -the staircase--suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, -with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month -before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, -I had seen the spectre of the most horrible of women. At this I was -able to straighten myself; I went the rest of the way up; I made, in -my bewilderment, for the schoolroom, where there were objects belonging -to me that I should have to take. But I opened the door to find again, -in a flash, my eyes unsealed. In the presence of what I saw I reeled -straight back upon my resistance. - -Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, -without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first -blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look -after the place and who, availing herself of rare relief from -observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, -had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her -sweetheart. There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested -on the table, her hands with evident weariness supported her head; -but at the moment I took this in I had already become aware that, -in spite of my entrance, her attitude strangely persisted. Then it -was--with the very act of its announcing itself--that her identity -flared up in a change of posture. She rose, not as if she had heard -me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and -detachment, and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile -predecessor. Dishonoured 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 a feeling that -it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest against it -that, actually addressing her--"You terrible, miserable woman!"--I -heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through -the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard -me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air. There was nothing -in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must -stay. - - -XVI - -I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be -marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to -take into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of -gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having -failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too -said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such -purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; -a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first -private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five -minutes with her in the housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, -amid a smell of lately-baked bread, but with the place all swept and -garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So -I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight -chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the "put -away"--of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. - -"Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long -as they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to -you?" - -"I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come -back to meet a friend." - -She showed her surprise. "A friend--_you_?" - -"Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give -you a reason?" - -"For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like -it better. Do you like it better?" - -My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" But after an -instant I added: "Did they say why I should like it better?" - -"No; Master Miles only said, 'We must do nothing but what she -likes!'" - -"I wish indeed he would! And what did Flora say?" - -"Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, 'Oh, of course, of -course!'--and I said the same." - -I thought a moment. "You were too sweet too--I can hear you all. But -none the less, between Miles and me, it's now all out." - -"All out?" My companion stared. "But what, Miss?" - -"Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. I came -home, my dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." - -I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally -well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, -as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her -comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?" - -"It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom." - -"And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the -candour of her stupefaction. - -"That she suffers the torments----!" - -It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, -gape. "Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?" - -"Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them----" I -faltered myself with the horror of it. - -But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. "To share -them----?" - -"She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly -have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her -there, to show I was. "As I've told you, however, it doesn't -matter." - -"Because you've made up your mind? But to what?" - -"To everything." - -"And what do you call 'everything'?" - -"Why, sending for their uncle." - -"Oh, Miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. - -"Ah, but I will, I _will_! I see it's the only way. What's -'out,' as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks I'm -afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he shall see -he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on -the spot (and before the boy himself if necessary) that if I'm to be -reproached with having done nothing again about more school----" - -"Yes, Miss----" my companion pressed me. - -"Well, there's that awful reason." - -There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she -was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?" - -"Why, the letter from his old place." - -"You'll show it to the master?" - -"I ought to have done so on the instant." - -"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. - -"I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't -undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been -expelled----" - -"For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. - -"For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and -beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is -he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only _that_; and that -would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their -uncle's fault. If he left here such people----!" - -"He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." -She had turned quite pale. - -"Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. - -"The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. - -I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell -him?" - -"You needn't tell him anything. _I'll_ tell him." - -I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write----?" Remembering she -couldn't, I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" - -"I tell the bailiff. _He_ writes." - -"And should you like him to write our story?" - -My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and -it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were -again in her eyes. "Ah, Miss, _you_ write!" - -"Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated. - - -XVII - -I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather -had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in -my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before -a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the -batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the -passage and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless -obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his -not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I -had expected. His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." -It was a gaiety in the gloom! - -I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but -very much at his ease. "Well, what are _you_ up to?" he asked with -a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had -she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was -"out." - -I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?" - -"Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? -You're like a troop of cavalry!" he beautifully laughed. - -"Then you weren't asleep?" - -"Not much! I lie awake and think." - -I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then, as he -held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his -bed. "What is it," I asked, "that you think of?" - -"What in the world, my dear, but _you_?" - -"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on -that! I had so far rather you slept." - -"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours." - -I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. "Of what queer -business, Miles?" - -"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!" - -I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper -there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his -pillow. "What do you mean by all the rest?" - -"Oh, you know, you know!" - -I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand -and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of -admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was -perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly -you shall go back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles -you. But not to the old place--we must find another, a better. How -could I know it did trouble you, this question, when you never told -me so, never spoke of it at all?" His clear, listening face, framed -in its smooth whiteness, made him for the minute as appealing as some -wistful patient in a children's hospital; and I would have given, as -the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really to be the -nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him. Well, -even as it was, I perhaps might help! "Do you know you've never -said a word to me about your school--I mean the old one; never -mentioned it in any way?" - -He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly -gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. "Haven't I?" It -wasn't for _me_ to help him--it was for the thing I had met! - -Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this -from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet -known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled -and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, -a part of innocence and consistency. "No, never--from the hour you -came back. You've never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of -your comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at -school. Never, little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of -anything that _may_ have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how -much I'm in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, -you had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference -to anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept -the present." It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his -secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an influence -that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath -of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person--imposed -him almost as an intellectual equal. "I thought you wanted to go on -as you are." - -It struck me that at this he just faintly coloured. He gave, at any -rate, like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his -head. "I don't--I don't. I want to get away." - -"You're tired of Bly?" - -"Oh, no, I like Bly." - -"Well, then----?" - -"Oh, _you_ know what a boy wants!" - -I felt that I didn't know so well as Miles, and I took temporary -refuge. "You want to go to your uncle?" - -Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the -pillow. "Ah, you can't get off with that!" - -I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed -colour. "My dear, I don't want to get off!" - -"You can't, even if you do. You can't, you can't!"--he lay -beautifully staring. "My uncle must come down, and you must -completely settle things." - -"If we do," I returned with some spirit, "you may be sure it will -be to take you quite away." - -"Well, don't you understand that that's exactly what I'm -working for? You'll have to tell him--about the way you've let it -all drop: you'll have to tell him a tremendous lot!" - -The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the -instant, to meet him rather more. "And how much will _you_, Miles, -have to tell him? There are things he'll ask you!" - -He turned it over. "Very likely. But what things?" - -"The things you've never told me. To make up his mind what to do -with you. He can't send you back----" - -"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new -field." - -He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable -gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the -poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance -at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more -dishonour. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear -that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the -tenderness of my pity I embraced him. "Dear little Miles, dear little -Miles----!" - -My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with -indulgent good-humour. "Well, old lady?" - -"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?" - -He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up -his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. "I've told -you--I told you this morning." - -Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?" - -He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding -him; then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied. - -There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made -me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God -knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, -to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose -him. "I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said. - -"Well, then, finish it!" - -I waited a minute. "What happened before?" - -He gazed up at me again. "Before what?" - -"Before you came back. And before you went away." - -For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. "What -happened?" - -It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that -I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting -consciousness--it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize -once more the chance of possessing him. "Dear little Miles, dear -little Miles, if you _knew_ how I want to help you! It's only that, -it's nothing but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain -or do you a wrong--I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear -little Miles"--oh, I brought it out now even if I _should_ go too -far--"I just want you to help me to save you!" But I knew in a -moment after this that I had gone too far. The answer to my appeal was -instantaneous, but it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and -chill, a gust of frozen air and a shake of the room as great as if, -in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, -high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have -seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of -jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of -darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw -that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. "Why, -the candle's out!" I then cried. - -"It was I who blew it, dear!" said Miles. - - -XVIII - -The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me -quietly: "Have you written, Miss?" - -"Yes--I've written." But I didn't add--for the hour--that -my letter, sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would -be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the -village. Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more -brilliant, more exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both -had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction. They performed -the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of _my_ feeble -range, and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and -historical jokes. It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular -that he appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This -child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery -that no words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in -every impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the -uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more -extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against -the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; -to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly -both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman -could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy -I knew, the imagination of all evil _had_ been opened up to him: -all the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have -flowered into an act. - -He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after -our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if -I shouldn't like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing -to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was -literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite -tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights we love to read -about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you -mean that--to be let alone yourself and not followed up--you'll cease -to worry and spy upon me, won't keep me so close to you, will let me -go and come. Well, I 'come,' you see--but I don't go! There'll -be plenty of time for that. I do really delight in your society, -and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle." It -may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany -him again, hand in hand, to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old -piano and played as he had never played, and if there are those who -think he had better have been kicking a football I can only say that -I wholly agree with them. For at the end of a time that under his -influence I had quite ceased to measure I started up with a strange -sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon, -and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn't really, in the least, -slept: I had only done something much worse--I had forgotten. Where, -all this time, was Flora? When I put the question to Miles he played on -a minute before answering, and then could only say: "Why, my dear, -how do _I_ know?"--breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, -immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged -into incoherent, extravagant song. - -I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before -going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere -about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of -that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I -had found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with -blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast, -I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her -right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl -out of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed -she might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look -for her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; -but when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met -in the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded -inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there, -apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with -what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first -given her. - -"She'll be above," she presently said--"in one of the rooms you -haven't searched." - -"No; she's at a distance." I had made up my mind. "She has gone -out." - -Mrs. Grose stared. "Without a hat?" - -I naturally also looked volumes. "Isn't that woman always without -one?" - -"She's with _her_?" - -"She's with _her_!" I declared. "We must find them." - -My hand was on my friend's arm, but she failed for the moment, -confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my -pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her -uneasiness. "And where's Master Miles?" - -"Oh, _he's_ with Quint. They're in the schoolroom." - -"Lord, Miss!" My view, I was myself aware--and therefore I suppose -my tone--had never yet reached so calm an assurance. - -"The trick's played," I went on; "they've successfully worked -their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while -she went off." - -"'Divine'?" Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. - -"Infernal, then!" I almost cheerfully rejoined. "He has provided -for himself as well. But come!" - -She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. "You leave -him----?" - -"So long with Quint? Yes--I don't mind that now." - -She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, -and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after -gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, "Because of your -letter?" she eagerly brought out. - -I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, -held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great -hall-table. "Luke will take it," I said as I came back. I reached -the house-door and opened it; I was already on the steps. - -My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early -morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and grey. I came down -to the drive while she stood in the doorway. "You go with nothing -on?" - -"What do I care when the child has nothing? I can't wait to -dress," I cried, "and if you must do so, I leave you. Try -meanwhile, yourself, upstairs." - -"With _them_?" Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me! - - -XIX - -We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I dare say -rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet -of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untravelled eyes. My -acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at -all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection -of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat -moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and -its agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from -the house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora -might be, she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for -any small adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I -had shared with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of -the quarter to which she most inclined. This was why I had now given -to Mrs. Grose's steps so marked a direction--a direction that made -her, when she perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was -freshly mystified. "You're going to the water, Miss?--you think -she's _in_----?" - -"She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But -what I judge most likely is that she's on the spot from which, the -other day, we saw together what I told you." - -"When she pretended not to see----?" - -"With that astounding self-possession! I've always been sure she -wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her." - -Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. "You suppose they -really _talk_ of them?" - -I could meet this with a confidence! "They say things that, if we -heard them, would simply appal us." - -"And if she _is_ there----?" - -"Yes?" - -"Then Miss Jessel is?" - -"Beyond a doubt. You shall see." - -"Oh, thank you!" my friend cried, planted so firm that, taking it -in, I went straight on without her. By the time I reached the pool, -however, she was close behind me, and I knew that, whatever, to her -apprehension, might befall me, the exposure of my society struck her -as her least danger. She exhaled a moan of relief as we at last came -in sight of the greater part of the water without a sight of the -child. There was no trace of Flora on that nearer side of the bank -where my observation of her had been most startling, and none on the -opposite edge, where, save for a margin of some twenty yards, a thick -copse came down to the water. The pond, oblong in shape, had a width so -scant compared to its length that, with its ends out of view, it might -have been taken for a scant river. We looked at the empty expanse, and -then I felt the suggestion of my friend's eyes. I knew what she meant -and I replied with a negative headshake. - -"No, no; wait! She has taken the boat." - -My companion stared at the vacant mooring-place and then again across -the lake. "Then where is it?" - -"Our not seeing it is the strongest of proofs. She has used it to go -over, and then has managed to hide it." - -"All alone--that child?" - -"She's not alone, and at such times she's not a child: she's -an old, old woman." I scanned all the visible shore while Mrs. Grose -took again, into the queer element I offered her, one of her plunges -of submission; then I pointed out that the boat might perfectly be in a -small refuge formed by one of the recesses of the pool, an indentation -masked, for the hither side, by a projection of the bank and by a clump -of trees growing close to the water. - -"But if the boat's there, where on earth's _she_?" my colleague -anxiously asked. - -"That's exactly what we must learn." And I started to walk -further. - -"By going all the way round?" - -"Certainly, far as it is. It will take us but ten minutes, but it's -far enough to have made the child prefer not to walk. She went straight -over." - -"Laws!" cried my friend again; the chain of my logic was ever too -much for her. It dragged her at my heels even now, and when we had -got half-way 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 recognised, as I looked at the pair of short, thick -oars, quite safely drawn up, the prodigious character of the feat for -a little girl; but I had lived, by this time, too long among wonders -and had panted to too many livelier measures. There was a gate in the -fence, through which we passed, and that brought us, after a trifling -interval, more into the open. Then, "There she is!" we both -exclaimed at once. - -Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as -if her performance was now complete. The next thing she did, however, -was to stoop straight down and pluck--quite as if it were all she was -there for--a big, ugly spray of withered fern. I instantly became sure -she had just come out of the copse. She waited for us, not herself -taking a step, and I was conscious of the rare solemnity with which -we presently approached her. She smiled and smiled, and we met; but it -was all done in a silence by this time flagrantly ominous. Mrs. Grose -was the first to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, -drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little -tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only -watch it--which I did the more intently when I saw Flora's face peep -at me over our companion's shoulder. It was serious now--the flicker -had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment -envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of _her_ relation. Still, all this -while, nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her -foolish fern again drop to the ground. What she and I had virtually -said to each other was that pretexts were useless now. When Mrs. Grose -finally got up she kept the child's hand, so that the two were still -before me; and the singular reticence of our communion was even more -marked in the frank look she launched me. "I'll be hanged," it -said, "if _I'll_ speak!" - -It was Flora who, gazing all over me in candid wonder, was the -first. She was struck with our bareheaded aspect. "Why, where are -your things?" - -"Where yours are, my dear!" I promptly returned. - -She had already got back her gaiety, and appeared to take this as an -answer quite sufficient. "And where's Miles?" she went on. - -There was something in the small valour 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 and that now, even before speaking, -I felt overflow in a deluge. "I'll tell you if you'll tell -_me_----" I heard myself say, then heard the tremor in which it -broke. - -"Well, what?" - -Mrs. Grose's suspense blazed at me, but it was too late now, and I -brought the thing out handsomely. "Where, my pet, is Miss Jessel?" - - -XX - -Just as in the churchyard with Miles, the whole thing was upon us. Much -as I had made of the fact that this name had never once, between -us, been sounded, the quick, smitten glare with which the child's -face now received it fairly likened my breach of the silence to the -smash of a pane of glass. It added to the interposing cry, as if to -stay the blow, that Mrs. Grose, at the same instant, uttered over my -violence--the shriek of a creature scared, or rather wounded, which, in -turn, within a few seconds, was completed by a gasp of my own. I seized -my colleague's arm. "She's there, she's there!" - -Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had -stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling -now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She -was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither -cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was -there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps -so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her--with -the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and -understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude. She rose erect -on the spot my friend and I had lately quitted, and there was not, -in all the long reach of her desire, an inch of her evil that fell -short. This first vividness of vision and emotion were things of a -few seconds, during which Mrs. Grose's dazed blink across to where I -pointed struck me as a sovereign sign that she too at last saw, just -as it carried my own eyes precipitately to the child. The revelation -then of the manner in which Flora was affected startled me, in truth, -far more than it would have done to find her also merely agitated, -for direct dismay was of course not what I had expected. Prepared and -on her guard as our pursuit had actually made her, she would repress -every betrayal; and I was therefore shaken, on the spot, by my first -glimpse of the particular one for which I had not allowed. To see her, -without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance -in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, instead of -that, turn at _me_ an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression -absolutely new and unprecedented and that appeared to read and accuse -and judge me--this was a stroke that somehow converted the little girl -herself into the very presence that could make me quail. I quailed -even though my certitude that she thoroughly saw was never greater -than at that instant, and in the immediate need to defend myself -I called it passionately to witness. "She's there, you little -unhappy thing--there, there, _there_, and you see her as well as you -see me!" I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at -these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description of her -could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, -for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an -admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed -suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time--if I can put -the whole thing at all together--more appalled at what I may properly -call her manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously -with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very -formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at -any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, -shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. "What a dreadful turn, -to be sure, Miss! Where on earth do you see anything?" - -I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the -hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already -lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, -quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my -pointing hand. "You don't see her exactly as _we_ see?--you mean -to say you don't now--_now_? She's as big as a blazing fire! Only -look, dearest woman, _look_----!" She looked, even as I did, and -gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion--the -mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption--a sense, touching -to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might -well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her -eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble, -I felt--I saw--my livid predecessor press, from her position, on my -defeat, and I was conscious, more than all, of what I should have -from this instant to deal with in the astounding little attitude -of Flora. Into this attitude Mrs. Grose immediately and violently -entered, breaking, even while there pierced through my sense of ruin a -prodigious private triumph, into breathless reassurance. - -"She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there--and you -never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel--when poor Miss -Jessel's dead and buried? _We_ know, don't we, love?"--and she -appealed, blundering in, to the child. "It's all a mere mistake and -a worry and a joke--and we'll go home as fast as we can!" - -Our companion, on this, had responded with a strange, quick primness -of propriety, and they were again, with Mrs. Grose on her feet, united, -as it were, in pained opposition to me. Flora continued to fix me with -her small mask of reprobation, and even at that minute I prayed God to -forgive me for seeming to see that, as she stood there holding tight -to our friend's dress, her incomparable childish beauty had suddenly -failed, had quite vanished. I've said it already--she was literally, -she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. "I -don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never -_have_. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!" Then, after -this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little -girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in -her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an -almost furious wail. "Take me away, take me away--oh, take me away -from _her_!" - -"From _me_?" I panted. - -"From you--from you!" she cried. - -Even Mrs. Grose looked across at me dismayed, while I had nothing -to do but communicate again with the figure that, on the opposite -bank, without a movement, as rigidly still as if catching, beyond the -interval, our voices, was as vividly there for my disaster as it was -not there for my service. The wretched child had spoken exactly as if -she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, -and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, -but sadly shake my head at her. "If I had ever doubted, all my doubt -would at present have gone. I've been living with the miserable -truth, and now it has only too much closed round me. Of course -I've lost you: I've interfered, and you've seen--under _her_ -dictation"--with which I faced, over the pool again, our infernal -witness--"the easy and perfect way to meet it. I've done my best, -but I've lost you. Good-bye." For Mrs. Grose I had an imperative, -an almost frantic "Go, go!" before which, in infinite distress, -but mutely possessed of the little girl and clearly convinced, in spite -of her blindness, that something awful had occurred and some collapse -engulfed us, she retreated, by the way we had come, as fast as she -could move. - -Of what first happened when I was left alone I had no subsequent -memory. I only knew that at the end of, I suppose, a quarter of an -hour, an odorous dampness and roughness, chilling and piercing my -trouble, had made me understand that I must have thrown myself, on -my face, on the ground and given way to a wildness of grief. I must -have lain there long and cried and sobbed, for when I raised my head -the day was almost done. I got up and looked a moment, through the -twilight, at the grey pool and its blank, haunted edge, and then -I took, back to the house, my dreary and difficult course. When I -reached the gate in the fence the boat, to my surprise, was gone, -so that I had a fresh reflection to make on Flora's extraordinary -command of the situation. She passed that night, by the most tacit, -and I should add, were not the word so grotesque a false note, the -happiest of arrangements, with Mrs. Grose. I saw neither of them on -my return, but, on the other hand, as by an ambiguous compensation, -I saw a great deal of Miles. I saw--I can use no other phrase--so much -of him that it was as if it were more than it had ever been. No evening -I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite -of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that -had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, in the ebbing actual, -an extraordinarily sweet sadness. On reaching the house I had never so -much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to -change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material -testimony to Flora's rupture. Her little belongings had all been -removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea -by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, -in no inquiry whatever. He had his freedom now--he might have it to -the end! Well, he did have it; and it consisted--in part at least--of -his coming in at about eight o'clock and sitting down with me in -silence. On the removal of the tea-things I had blown out the candles -and drawn my chair closer: I was conscious of a mortal coldness and -felt as if I should never again be warm. So, when he appeared, I was -sitting in the glow with my thoughts. He paused a moment by the door as -if to look at me; then--as if to share them--came to the other side of -the hearth and sank into a chair. We sat there in absolute stillness; -yet he wanted, I felt, to be with me. - - -XXI - -Before a new day, in my room, had fully broken, my eyes opened to -Mrs. Grose, who had come to my bedside with worse news. Flora was so -markedly feverish that an illness was perhaps at hand; she had passed -a night of extreme unrest, a night agitated above all by fears that had -for their subject not in the least her former, but wholly her present, -governess. It was not against the possible re-entrance of Miss Jessel -on the scene that she protested--it was conspicuously and passionately -against mine. I was promptly on my feet of course, and with an immense -deal to ask; the more that my friend had discernibly now girded her -loins to meet me once more. This I felt as soon as I had put to her -the question of her sense of the child's sincerity as against my -own. "She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, -anything?" - -My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, Miss, it isn't a -matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn't either, I must say, as -if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old." - -"Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world -like some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness -and, as it were, her respectability. 'Miss Jessel indeed--_she_!' -Ah, she's 'respectable,' the chit! The impression she gave me -there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was -quite beyond any of the others. I _did_ put my foot in it! She'll -never speak to me again." - -Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; -then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more -behind it. "I think indeed, Miss, she never will. She do have a grand -manner about it!" - -"And that manner"--I summed it up--"is practically what's the -matter with her now!" - -Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's face, and not a little -else besides! "She asks me every three minutes if I think you're -coming in." - -"I see--I see." I too, on my side, had so much more than worked it -out. "Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her -familiarity with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss -Jessel?" - -"Not one, Miss. And of course you know," my friend added, "I took -it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there -_was_ nobody." - -"Rather! And, naturally, you take it from her still." - -"I don't contradict her. What else can I do?" - -"Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal -with. They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer -even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora -has now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end." - -"Yes, Miss; but to _what_ end?" - -"Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to -him the lowest creature----!" - -I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; she -looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. "And him who -thinks so well of you!" - -"He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed, "--of -proving it! But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is -to get rid of me." - -My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at -you." - -"So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed -me on my way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in -check. "I've a better idea--the result of my reflections. My going -_would_ seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet -that won't do. It's _you_ who must go. You must take Flora." - -My visitor, at this, did speculate. "But where in the world----?" - -"Away from here. Away from _them_. Away, even most of all, now, from -me. Straight to her uncle." - -"Only to tell on you----?" - -"No, not 'only'! To leave me, in addition, with my remedy." - -She was still vague. "And what _is_ your remedy?" - -"Your loyalty, to begin with. And then Miles's." - -She looked at me hard. "Do you think he----?" - -"Won't if he has the chance, turn on me? Yes, I venture still -to think it. At all events, I want to try. Get off with his sister -as soon as possible and leave me with him alone." I was amazed, -myself, at the spirit I had still in reserve, and therefore perhaps a -trifle the more disconcerted at the way in which, in spite of this fine -example of it, she hesitated. "There's one thing, of course," I -went on: "they mustn't, before she goes, see each other for three -seconds." Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's presumable -sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might -already be too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, "that they -_have_ met?" - -At this she quite flushed. "Ah, Miss, I'm not such a fool as -that! If I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has -been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though she's -alone, she's locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" There were too many -things. - -"And yet what?" - -"Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?" - -"I'm not sure of anything but _you_. But I have, since last -evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do -believe that--poor little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last -evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours -as if it were just coming." - -Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the grey, gathering -day. "And did it come?" - -"No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it -was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion -to his sister's condition and absence that we at last kissed for -good-night. All the same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle -sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given -the boy--and most of all because things have got so bad--a little more -time." - -My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite -understand. "What do you mean by more time?" - -"Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on _my_ -side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only -fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your -arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." So I put it -before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed -that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you -really want _not_ to go." - -I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand -to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. I'll go this morning." - -I wanted to be very just. "If you _should_ wish still to wait, I -would engage she shouldn't see me." - -"No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." She held me a -moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the -right one. I myself, Miss----" - -"Well?" - -"I can't stay." - -The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. "You mean -that, since yesterday, you _have_ seen----?" - -She shook her head with dignity. "I've _heard_----!" - -"Heard?" - -"From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic -relief. "On my honour, Miss, she says things----!" But at this -evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob, upon my sofa -and, as I had seen her do before, gave way to all the grief of it. - -It was quite in another manner that I, for my part, let myself -go. "Oh, thank God!" - -She sprang up again at this, drying her eyes with a groan. "'Thank -God'?" - -"It so justifies me!" - -"It does that, Miss!" - -I couldn't have desired more emphasis, but I just hesitated. -"She's so horrible?" - -I saw my colleague scarce knew how to put it. "Really shocking." - -"And about me?" - -"About you, Miss--since you must have it. It's beyond everything, -for a young lady; and I can't think wherever she must have picked -up----" - -"The appalling language she applied to me? I can, then!" I broke in -with a laugh that was doubtless significant enough. - -It only, in truth, left my friend still more grave. "Well, perhaps -I ought to also--since I've heard some of it before! Yet I can't -bear it," the poor woman went on while, with the same movement, she -glanced, on my dressing-table, at the face of my watch. "But I must -go back." - -I kept her, however. "Ah, if you can't bear it----!" - -"How can I stop with her, you mean? Why, just _for_ that: to get her -away. Far from this," she pursued, "far from _them_----" - -"She may be different? she may be free?" I seized her almost with -joy. "Then, in spite of yesterday, you _believe_----" - -"In such doings?" Her simple description of them required, in the -light of her expression, to be carried no further, and she gave me the -whole thing as she had never done. "I believe." - -Yes, it was a joy, and we were still shoulder to shoulder: if I might -continue sure of that I should care but little what else happened. My -support in the presence of disaster would be the same as it had been -in my early need of confidence, and if my friend would answer for my -honesty, I would answer for all the rest. On the point of taking leave -of her, none the less, I was to some extent embarrassed. "There's -one thing of course--it occurs to me--to remember. My letter, giving -the alarm, will have reached town before you." - -I now perceived still more how she had been beating about the bush -and how weary at last it had made her. "Your letter won't have got -there. Your letter never went." - -"What then became of it?" - -"Goodness knows! Master Miles----" - -"Do you mean _he_ took it?" I gasped. - -She hung fire, but she overcame her reluctance. "I mean that I saw -yesterday, when I came back with Miss Flora, that it wasn't where -you had put it. Later in the evening I had the chance to question Luke, -and he declared that he had neither noticed nor touched it." We could -only exchange, on this, one of our deeper mutual soundings, and it was -Mrs. Grose who first brought up the plumb with an almost elate "You -see!" - -"Yes, I see that if Miles took it instead he probably will have read -it and destroyed it." - -"And don't you see anything else?" - -I faced her a moment with a sad smile. "It strikes me that by this -time your eyes are open even wider than mine." - -They proved to be so indeed, but she could still blush, almost, to -show it. "I make out now what he must have done at school." And she -gave, in her simple sharpness, an almost droll disillusioned nod. "He -stole!" - -I turned it over--I tried to be more judicial. "Well--perhaps." - -She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. "He stole -_letters_!" - -She couldn't know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty -shallow; so I showed them off as I might. "I hope then it was to -more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on -the table yesterday," I pursued, "will have given him so scant an -advantage--for it contained only the bare demand for an interview--that -he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and -that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of -confession." I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered -it, to see it all. "Leave us, leave us"--I was already, at the -door, hurrying her off. "I'll get it out of him. He'll meet -me--he'll confess. If he confesses, he's saved. And if he's -saved----" - -"Then _you_ are?" The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her -farewell. "I'll save you without him!" she cried as she went. - - -XXII - -Yet it was when she had got off--and I missed her on the spot--that -the great pinch really came. If I had counted on what it would give -me to find myself alone with Miles, I speedily perceived, at least, -that it would give me a measure. No hour of my stay in fact was so -assailed with apprehensions as that of my coming down to learn that -the carriage containing Mrs. Grose and my younger pupil had already -rolled out of the gates. Now I _was_, I said to myself, face to face -with the elements, and for much of the rest of the day, while I fought -my weakness, I could consider that I had been supremely rash. It was a -tighter place still than I had yet turned round in; all the more that, -for the first time, I could see in the aspect of others a confused -reflection of the crisis. What had happened naturally caused them all -to stare; there was too little of the explained, throw out whatever we -might, in the suddenness of my colleague's act. The maids and the men -looked blank; the effect of which on my nerves was an aggravation until -I saw the necessity of making it a positive aid. It was precisely, -in short, by just clutching the helm that I avoided total wreck; and -I dare say that, to bear up at all, I became, that morning, very grand -and very dry. I welcomed the consciousness that I was charged with much -to do, and I caused it to be known as well that, left thus to myself, -I was quite remarkably firm. I wandered with that manner, for the next -hour or two, all over the place and looked, I have no doubt, as if I -were ready for any onset. So, for the benefit of whom it might concern, -I paraded with a sick heart. - -The person it appeared least to concern proved to be, till dinner, -little Miles himself. My perambulations had given me, meanwhile, no -glimpse of him, but they had tended to make more public the change -taking place in our relation as a consequence of his having at the -piano, the day before, kept me, in Flora's interest, so beguiled -and befooled. The stamp of publicity had of course been fully given by -her confinement and departure, and the change itself was now ushered -in by our non-observance 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 now permit this office to consist of was yet -to be settled: there was a queer relief, at all events--I mean for -myself in especial--in the renouncement of one pretension. If so much -had sprung to the surface, I scarce put it too strongly in saying that -what had perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging -the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently -stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself -he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to -let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He -had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I -had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom -the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval -just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. I had too much, from this -moment, my other ideas. Yet when he at last arrived the difficulty of -applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight -home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred -had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow. - -To mark, for the house, the high state I cultivated I decreed that -my meals with the boy should be served, as we called it, downstairs; -so that I had been awaiting him in the ponderous pomp of the room -outside of the window of which I had had from Mrs. Grose, that first -scared Sunday, my flash of something it would scarce have done to call -light. Here at present I felt afresh--for I had felt it again and -again--how my equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, -the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth that what -I had to deal with was, revoltingly, against nature. I could only get -on at all by taking "nature" into my confidence and my account, -by treating my monstrous ordeal as a push in a direction unusual, of -course, and unpleasant, but demanding, after all, for a fair front, -only another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue. No attempt, -none the less, 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 a 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 forgo the help -one might wrest from absolute intelligence? What had his intelligence -been given him for but to save him? Mightn't one, to reach his mind, -risk the stretch of an angular arm over his character? It was as if, -when we were face to face in the dining-room, he had literally shown me -the way. The roast mutton was on the table, and I had dispensed with -attendance. Miles, before he sat down, stood a moment with his hands -in his pockets and looked at the joint, on which he seemed on the point -of passing some humorous judgment. But what he presently produced was: -"I say, my dear, is she really very awfully ill?" - -"Little Flora? Not so bad but that she'll presently be better. -London will set her up. Bly had ceased to agree with her. Come -here and take your mutton." - -He alertly obeyed me, carried the plate carefully to his seat, and, -when he was established, went on. "Did Bly disagree with her so -terribly suddenly?" - -"Not so suddenly as you might think. One had seen it coming on." - -"Then why didn't you get her off before?" - -"Before what?" - -"Before she became too ill to travel." - -I found myself prompt. "She's _not_ too ill to travel: she only -might have become so if she had stayed. This was just the moment -to seize. The journey will dissipate the influence"--oh, I was -grand!--"and carry it off." - -"I see, I see"--Miles, for that matter, was grand too. He settled -to his repast with the charming little "table manner" that, -from the day of his arrival, had relieved me of all grossness of -admonition. Whatever he had been driven from school for, it was not -for ugly feeding. He was irreproachable, as always, today; but he was -unmistakeably 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 pretence, and I had the things -immediately removed. While this was done Miles stood again with his -hands in his little pockets and his back to me--stood and looked out of -the wide window through which, that other day, I had seen what pulled -me up. We continued silent while the maid was with us--as silent, -it whimsically occurred to me, as some young couple who, on their -wedding-journey, at the inn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He -turned round only when the waiter had left us. "Well--so we're -alone!" - - -XXIII - -"Oh, more or less." I fancy my smile was pale. "Not absolutely. -We shouldn't like that!" I went on. - -"No--I suppose we shouldn't. Of course we have the others." - -"We have the others--we have indeed the others," I concurred. - -"Yet even though we have them," he returned, still with his hands -in his pockets and planted there in front of me, "they don't much -count, do they?" - -I made the best of it, but I felt wan. "It depends on what you call -'much'!" - -"Yes"--with all accommodation--"everything depends!" On this, -however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with -his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with -his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs -I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of -"work," behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with -it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I -have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to -something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of -being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped -on me as I extracted a meaning from the boy's embarrassed back--none -other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference -grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the -direct perception that it was positively _he_ who was. The frames and -squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of -failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He -was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of -hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he -couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time in the whole business -that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it -a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; -he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little -manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give -it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as -if this genius had succumbed. "Well, I think I'm glad Bly agrees -with _me_!" - -"You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, -a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope," I went on -bravely, "that you've been enjoying yourself." - -"Oh, yes, I've been ever so far; all round about--miles and miles -away. I've never been so free." - -He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with -him. "Well, do you like it?" - -He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two words--"Do -_you_?"--more discrimination than I had ever heard two words -contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he -continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be -softened. "Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, -for of course if we're alone together now it's you that are alone -most. But I hope," he threw in, "you don't particularly mind!" - -"Having to do with you?" I asked. "My dear child, how can I help -minding? Though I've renounced all claim to your company,--you're -so beyond me,--I at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay -on for?" - -He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver -now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. "You -stay on just for _that_?" - -"Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest -I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth -your while. That needn't surprise you." My voice trembled so that I -felt it impossible to suppress the shake. "Don't you remember how I -told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that -there was nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you?" - -"Yes, yes!" He, on his side, more and more visibly nervous, had -a tone to master; but he was so much more successful than I that, -laughing out through his gravity, he could pretend we were pleasantly -jesting. "Only that, I think, was to get me to do something for -_you_!" - -"It was partly to get you to do something," I conceded. "But, you -know, you didn't do it." - -"Oh, yes," he said with the brightest superficial eagerness, "you -wanted me to tell you something." - -"That's it. Out, straight out. What you have on your mind, you -know." - -"Ah, then, is _that_ what you've stayed over for?" - -He spoke with a gaiety through which I could still catch the finest -little quiver of resentful passion; but I can't begin to express -the effect upon me of an implication of surrender even so faint. It -was as if what I had yearned for had come at last only to astonish -me. "Well, yes--I may as well make a clean breast of it. It was -precisely for that." - -He waited so long that I supposed it for the purpose of repudiating -the assumption on which my action had been founded; but what he finally -said was: "Do you mean now--here?" - -"There couldn't be a better place or time." He looked round him -uneasily, and I had the rare--oh, the queer!--impression of the very -first symptom I had seen in him of the approach of immediate fear. It -was as if he were suddenly afraid of me--which struck me indeed as -perhaps the best thing to make him. Yet in the very pang of the effort -I felt it vain to try sternness, and I heard myself the next instant so -gentle as to be almost grotesque. "You want so to go out again?" - -"Awfully!" He smiled at me heroically, and the touching little -bravery of it was enhanced by his actually flushing with pain. He -had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling -it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a -perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in _any_ way was an act -of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea -of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for -me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't -it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I -suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have -had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted -with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come. So -we circled about, with terrors and scruples, like fighters not daring -to close. But it was for each other we feared! That kept us a little -longer suspended and unbruised. "I'll tell you everything," -Miles said--"I mean I'll tell you anything you like. You'll stay -on with me, and we shall both be all right and I _will_ tell you--I -_will_. But not now." - -"Why not now?" - -My insistence turned him from me and kept him once more at his window -in a silence during which, between us, you might have heard a pin -drop. Then he was before me again with the air of a person for whom, -outside, someone who had frankly to be reckoned with was waiting. "I -have to see Luke." - -I had not yet reduced him to quite so vulgar a lie, and I felt -proportionately ashamed. But, horrible as it was, his lies made up my -truth. I achieved thoughtfully a few loops of my knitting. "Well, -then, go to Luke, and I'll wait for what you promise. Only, in -return for that, satisfy, before you leave me, one very much smaller -request." - -He looked as if he felt he had succeeded enough to be able still a -little to bargain. "Very much smaller----?" - -"Yes, a mere fraction of the whole. Tell me"--oh, my work -preoccupied me, and I was off-hand!--"if, yesterday afternoon, from -the table in the hall, you took, you know, my letter." - - -XXIV - -My sense of how he received this suffered for a minute from something -that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention--a stroke -that at first, as I sprang straight up, reduced me to the mere blind -movement of getting hold of him, drawing him close, and, while I just -fell for support against the nearest piece of furniture, instinctively -keeping him with his back to the window. The appearance was full upon -us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into -view like a sentinel before a prison. The next thing I saw was that, -from outside, he had reached the window, and then I knew that, close to -the glass and glaring in through it, he offered once more to the room -his white face of damnation. It represents but grossly what took place -within me at the sight to say that on the second my decision was made; -yet I believe that no woman so overwhelmed ever in so short a time -recovered her grasp of the _act_. It came to me in the very horror of -the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what -I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration--I -can call it by no other name--was that I felt how voluntarily, how -transcendently, I _might_. It was like fighting with a demon for a -human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human -soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--had a -perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead. The face that was -close to mine was as white as the face against the glass, and out of it -presently came a sound, not low nor weak, but as if from much further -away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance. - -"Yes--I took it." - -At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close; and while I -held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden fever of his -little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart, I kept my eyes -on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift its posture. I -have likened it to a sentinel, but its slow wheel, for a moment, was -rather the prowl of a baffled beast. My present quickened courage, -however, was such that, not too much to let it through, I had to shade, -as it were, my flame. Meanwhile the glare of the face was again at -the window, the scoundrel fixed as if to watch and wait. It was the -very confidence that I might now defy him, as well as the positive -certitude, by this time, of the child's unconsciousness, that made me -go on. "What did you take it for?" - -"To see what you said about me." - -"You opened the letter?" - -"I opened it." - -My eyes were now, as I held him off a little again, on Miles's -own face, in which the collapse of mockery showed me how complete -was the ravage of uneasiness. What was prodigious was that at last, -by my success, his sense was sealed and his communication stopped: -he knew that he was in presence, but knew not of what, and knew still -less that I also was and that I did know. And what did this strain of -trouble matter when my eyes went back to the window only to see that -the air was clear again and--by my personal triumph--the influence -quenched? There was nothing there. I felt that the cause was mine and -that I should surely get _all_. "And you found nothing!"--I let my -elation out. - -He gave the most mournful, thoughtful little headshake. "Nothing." - -"Nothing, nothing!" I almost shouted in my joy. - -"Nothing, nothing," he sadly repeated. - -I kissed his forehead; it was drenched. "So what have you done with -it?" - -"I've burnt it." - -"Burnt it?" It was now or never. "Is that what you did at -school?" - -Oh, what this brought up! "At school?" - -"Did you take letters?--or other things?" - -"Other things?" He appeared now to be thinking of something far off -and that reached him only through the pressure of his anxiety. Yet it -did reach him. "Did I _steal_?" - -I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair as well as wonder if it -were more strange to put to a gentleman such a question or to see him -take it with allowances that gave the very distance of his fall in the -world. "Was it for that you mightn't go back?" - -The only thing he felt was rather a dreary little surprise. "Did you -know I mightn't go back?" - -"I know everything." - -He gave me at this the longest and strangest look. "Everything?" - -"Everything. Therefore _did_ you----?" But I couldn't say it -again. - -Miles could, very simply. "No. I didn't steal." - -My face must have shown him I believed him utterly; yet my hands--but -it was for pure tenderness--shook him as if to ask him why, if it was -all for nothing, he had condemned me to months of torment. "What then -did you do?" - -He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his -breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty. He might have -been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some -faint green twilight. "Well--I said things." - -"Only that?" - -"They thought it was enough!" - -"To turn you out for?" - -Never, truly, had a person "turned out" shown so little to explain -it as this little person! He appeared to weigh my question, but in -a manner quite detached and almost helpless. "Well, I suppose I -oughtn't." - -"But to whom did you say them?" - -He evidently tried to remember, but it dropped--he had lost it. "I -don't know!" - -He almost smiled at me in the desolation of his surrender, which was -indeed practically, by this time, so complete that I ought to have left -it there. But I was infatuated--I was blind with victory, though even -then the very effect that was to have brought him so much nearer was -already that of added separation. "Was it to everyone?" I asked. - -"No; it was only to----" But he gave a sick little headshake. "I -don't remember their names." - -"Were they then so many?" - -"No--only a few. Those I liked." - -Those he liked? I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker -obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity -the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the -instant confounding and bottomless, for if he _were_ innocent, what -then on earth was _I_? Paralysed, while it lasted, by the mere brush of -the question, I let him go a little, so that, with a deep-drawn sigh, -he turned away from me again; which, as he faced toward the clear -window, I suffered, feeling that I had nothing now there to keep -him from. "And did they repeat what you said?" I went on after -a moment. - -He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again -with the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined -against his will. Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the -dim day as if, of what had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but -an unspeakable anxiety. "Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they -must have repeated them. To those _they_ liked," he added. - -There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it -over. "And these things came round----?" - -"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply. "But I -didn't know they'd tell." - -"The masters? They didn't--they've never told. That's why I -ask you." - -He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face. "Yes, it was -too bad." - -"Too bad?" - -"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home." - -I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such -a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I heard -myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!" But the -next after that I must have sounded stern enough. "What _were_ these -things?" - -My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him -avert himself again, and that movement made _me_, with a single bound -and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again, -against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer, -was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation. I -felt a sick swim at the drop of my victory and all the return of my -battle, so that the wildness of my veritable leap only served as a -great betrayal. I saw him, from the midst of my act, meet it with -a divination, and on the perception that even now he only guessed, -and that the window was still to his own eyes free, I let the impulse -flame up to convert the climax of his dismay into the very proof of his -liberation. "No more, no more, no more!" I shrieked, as I tried to -press him against me, to my visitant. - -"Is she _here_?" Miles panted as he caught with his sealed eyes the -direction of my words. Then as his strange "she" staggered me and, -with a gasp, I echoed it, "Miss Jessel, Miss Jessel!" he with a -sudden fury gave me back. - -I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had -done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was -better still than that. "It's not Miss Jessel! But it's at the -window--straight before us. It's _there_--the coward horror, there -for the last time!" - -At this, after a second in which his head made the movement of -a baffled dog's on a scent and then gave a frantic little shake -for air and light, he was at me in a white rage, bewildered, glaring -vainly over the place and missing wholly, though it now, to my sense, -filled the room like the taste of poison, the wide, overwhelming -presence. "It's _he_?" - -I was so determined to have all my proof that I flashed into ice to -challenge him. "Whom do you mean by 'he'?" - -"Peter Quint--you devil!" His face gave again, round the room, its -convulsed supplication. "_Where?_" - -They are in my ears still, his supreme surrender of the name and his -tribute to my devotion. "What does he matter now, my own?--what will -he _ever_ matter? _I_ have you," I launched at the beast, "but -he has lost you for ever!" Then, for the demonstration of my work, -"There, _there_!" I said to Miles. - -But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and -seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of -he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp -with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his -fall. I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a -passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was -that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, -dispossessed, had stopped. - - - - -COVERING END - - -I - -At the foot of the staircase he waited and listened, thinking he had -heard her call to him from the gallery, high aloft but out of view, -to which he had allowed her independent access and whence indeed, on -her first going up, the sound of her appreciation had reached him in -rapid movements, evident rushes and dashes, and in droll, charming -cries that echoed through the place. He had afterwards, expectant -and restless, been, for another look, to the house-door, and then had -fidgeted back into the hall, where her voice again caught him. It was -many a day since such a voice had sounded in those empty chambers, and -never perhaps, in all the years, for poor Chivers, had any voice at all -launched a note so friendly and so free. - -"Oh, no, mum, there ain't no one whatever come yet. It's quite -all right, mum,--you can please yourself!" If he left her to range, -all his pensive little economy seemed to say, wasn't it just his -poor pickings? He quitted the stairs, but stopped again, with his -hand to his ear, as he heard her once more appeal to him. "Lots of -lovely----? Lovely _what_, mum? Little ups and downs?" he quavered -aloft. "Oh, as you say, mum: as many as in a poor man's life!" -She was clearly disposed, as she roamed in delight from point to point, -to continue to talk, and, with his better ear and his scooped hand, -he continued to listen hard. "'Dear little crooked steps'? Yes, -mum; please mind 'em, mum: they be cruel in the dark corners!" She -appeared to take another of her light scampers, the sign of a fresh -discovery and a fresh response; at which he felt his heart warm with -the success of a trust of her that might after all have been rash. Once -more her voice reached him and once more he gossiped back. "Coming -up too? Not if you'll kindly indulge me, mum--I must be where I can -watch the bell. It takes watching as well as hearing!"--he dropped, -as he resumed his round, to a murmur of great patience. This was taken -up the next moment by the husky plaint of the signal itself, which -seemed to confess equally to short wind and creaking joints. It moved, -however, distinguishably, and its motion made him start much more as -if he had been guilty of sleeping at his post than as if he had waited -half the day. "Mercy, if I _didn't_ watch----!" He shuffled -across the wide stone-paved hall and, losing himself beneath the great -arch of the short passage to the entrance-front, hastened to admit his -new visitor. He gives us thereby the use of his momentary absence for a -look at the place he has left. - -This is the central hall, high and square, brown and grey, flagged -beneath and timbered above, of an old English country-house; an -apartment in which a single survey is a perception of long and lucky -continuities. It would have been difficult to find elsewhere anything -at once so old and so actual, anything that had plainly come so far, -far down without, at any moment of the endless journey, losing its -way. To stand there and look round was to wonder a good deal--yet -without arriving at an answer--whether it had been most neglected or -most cherished; there was such resignation in its long survival and yet -such bravery in its high polish. If it had never been spoiled, this -was partly, no doubt, because it had been, for a century, given up; -but what it had been given up to was, after all, homely and familiar -use. It had in it at the present moment indeed much of the chill of -fallen fortunes; but there was no concession in its humility and no -hypocrisy in its welcome. It was magnificent and shabby, and the eyes -of the dozen dark old portraits seemed, in their eternal attention, to -count the cracks in the pavement, the rents in the seats of the chairs, -and the missing tones in the Flemish tapestry. Above the tapestry, -which, in its turn, was above the high oak wainscot, most of these -stiff images--on the side on which it principally reigned--were placed; -and they held up their heads to assure all comers that a tone or two -was all that _was_ missing, and that they had never waked up in winter -dawns to any glimmer of bereavement, in the long night, of any relic or -any feature. Such as it was, the company was all there; every inch of -old oak, every yard of old arras, every object of ornament or of use -to which these surfaces formed so rare a background. If the watchers -on the walls had ever found a gap in their own rank, the ancient roof, -of a certainty, would have been shaken by their collective gasp. As -a matter of fact it was rich and firm--it had almost the dignity of -the vault of a church. On this Saturday afternoon in August, a hot, -still day, such of the casements as freely worked in the discoloured -glass of the windows stood open in one quarter to a terrace that -overlooked a park and in another to a wonderful old empty court that -communicated with a wonderful old empty garden. The staircase, wide and -straight, mounted, full in sight, to a landing that was half-way up; -and on the right, as you faced this staircase, a door opened out of -the brown panelling into a glimpse of a little morning-room, where, -in a slanted, gilded light, there was brownness too, mixed with notes -of old yellow. On the left, toward court and garden, another door stood -open to the warm air. Still as you faced the staircase you had at your -right, between that monument and the morning-room, the arch through -which Chivers had disappeared. - -His reappearance interrupts and yet in a manner, after all, quickens -our intense impression; Chivers on the spot, and in this severe but -spacious setting, was so perfect an image of immemorial domesticity. It -would have been impossible perhaps, however, either to tell his age -or to name his use: he was of the age of all the history that lurked -in all the corners and of any use whatever you might be so good as -still to find for him. Considerably shrunken and completely silvered, -he had perpetual agreement in the droop of his kind white head and -perpetual inquiry in the jerk of the idle old hands now almost covered -by the sleeves of the black dress-coat which, twenty years before, -must have been by a century or two the newest thing in the house and -into which his years appeared to have declined very much as a shrunken -family moves into a part of its habitation. This attire was completed -by a white necktie that, in honour of the day, he himself had this -morning done up. The humility he betrayed and the oddity he concealed -were alike brought out by his juxtaposition with the gentleman he had -admitted. - -To admit Mr. Prodmore was anywhere and at any time, as you would -immediately have recognised, an immense admission. He was a personage -of great presence and weight, with a large smooth face in which -a small sharp meaning was planted like a single pin in the tight -red toilet-cushion of a guest-chamber. He wore a blue frock-coat -and a stiff white waistcoat and a high white hat that he kept on -his head with a kind of protesting cock, while in his buttonhole -nestled a bold prize plant on which he occasionally lowered a -proprietary eye that seemed to remind it of its being born to a public -career. Mr. Prodmore's appearance had evidently been thought out, -but it might have struck you that the old portraits took it in with -a sterner stare, with a fixedness indeed in which a visitor more -sensitive would have read a consciousness of his remaining, in their -presence, so jauntily, so vulgarly covered. He had never a glance for -them, and it would have been easy after a minute to see that this was -an old story between them. Their manner, as it were, sensibly increased -the coolness. This coolness became a high rigour as Mr. Prodmore -encountered, from the very threshold, a disappointment. - -"No one here?" he indignantly demanded. - -"I'm sorry to say no one has come, sir," Chivers replied; "but -I've had a telegram from Captain Yule." - -Mr. Prodmore's apprehension flared out. "Not to say he ain't -coming?" - -"He was to take the 2.20 from Paddington; he certainly _should_ -be here!" The old man spoke as if his non-arrival were the most -unaccountable thing in the world, especially for a poor person ever -respectful of the mystery of causes. - -"He should have been here this hour or more. And so should my -fly-away daughter!" - -Chivers surrounded this description of Miss Prodmore with the deep -discretion of silence, and then, after a moment, evidently reflected -that silence, in a world bestrewn with traps to irreverence, might be -as rash as speech. "Were they coming--a--together, sir?" - -He had scarcely mended the matter, for his visitor gave an inconsequent -stare. "Together?--for what do you take Miss Prodmore?" This young -lady's parent glared about him again as if to alight on something -else that was out of place; but the good intentions expressed in the -attitude of every object might presently have been presumed to soothe -his irritation. It had at any rate the effect of bridging, for poor -Chivers, some of his gaps. "It _is_ in a sense true that their -'coming together,' as you call it, is exactly what I've made -my plans for today: my calculation was that we should all punctually -converge on this spot. Attended by her trusty maid, Miss Prodmore, who -happens to be on a week's visit to her grandmother at Bellborough, -was to take the 1.40 from that place. I was to drive over--ten -miles--from the most convenient of my seats. Captain Yule"--the -speaker wound up his statement as with the mention of the last touch in -a masterpiece of his own sketching--"was finally to shake off for a -few hours the peculiar occupations that engage him." - -The old man listened with his head askance to favour his good ear, but -his visible attention all on a sad spot in one of the half-dozen worn -rugs. "They _must_ be peculiar, sir, when a gentleman comes into a -property like this and goes three months without so much as a nat'ral -curiosity----! I don't speak of anything but what _is_ nat'ral, -sir; but there have _been_ people here----" - -"There have repeatedly been people here!" Mr. Prodmore complacently -interrupted. - -"As you say, sir--to be shown over. With the master himself never -shown!" Chivers dismally commented. - -"He _shall_ be, so that nobody can miss him!" Mr. Prodmore, for his -own reassurance as well, hastened to retort. - -His companion risked a tiny explanation. "It will be a mercy indeed -to look on him; but I meant that he has not been taken round." - -"That's what I meant too. _I'll_ take him--round and round: -it's exactly what I've come for!" Mr. Prodmore rang out; and his -eyes made the lower circuit again, looking as pleased as such a pair of -eyes could look with nobody as yet quite good enough either to terrify -or to tickle. "He can't fail to be affected, though he _has_ been -up to his neck in such a different class of thing." - -Chivers clearly wondered awhile what class of thing it could be. Then -he expressed a timid hope. "In nothing, I dare say, but what's -right, sir----?" - -"In everything," Mr. Prodmore distinctly informed him, "that's -wrong! But here he is!" that gentleman added with elation as -the doorbell again sounded. Chivers, under the double agitation of -the appeal and the disclosure, proceeded to the front as fast as -circumstances allowed; while Mr. Prodmore, left alone, would have -been observed--had not his solitude been so bleak--to recover a -degree of cheerfulness. Cheerfulness in solitude at Covering End was -certainly not irresistible, but particular feelings and reasons had -pitched, for their campaign, the starched, if now somewhat ruffled, -tent of his large white waistcoat. If they had issued audibly from -that pavilion, they would have represented to us his consciousness -of the reinforcement he might bring up for attack should Captain -Yule really resist the house. The sound he next heard from the front -caused him none the less, for that matter, to articulate a certain -drop. "Only Cora?--Well," he added in a tone somewhat at variance -with his "only," "he shan't, at any rate, resist _her_!" -This announcement would have quickened a spectator's interest in -the young lady whom Chivers now introduced and followed, a young -lady who straightway found herself the subject of traditionary -discipline. "I've waited. What do you mean?" - -Cora Prodmore, who had a great deal of colour in her cheeks and a great -deal more--a bold variety of kinds--in the extremely high pitch of -her new, smart clothes, meant, on the whole, it was easy to see, very -little, and met this challenge with still less show of support either -from the sources I have mentioned or from any others. A dull, fresh, -honest, overdressed damsel of two-and-twenty, she was too much out -of breath, too much flurried and frightened, to do more than stammer: -"Waited, papa? Oh, I'm sorry!" - -Her regret appeared to strike her father still more as an impertinence -than as a vanity. "Would you then, if I had not had patience for you, -have wished not to find me? Why the dickens are you so late?" - -Agitated, embarrassed, the girl was at a loss. "I'll tell you, -papa!" But she followed up her pledge with an air of vacuity and -then, dropping into the nearest seat, simply closed her eyes to her -danger. If she desired relief, she had caught at the one way to get -it. "I feel rather faint. Could I have some tea?" - -Mr. Prodmore considered both the idea and his daughter's substantial -form. "Well, as I shall expect you to put forth _all_ your -powers--yes!" He turned to Chivers. "Some tea." - -The old man's eyes had attached themselves to Miss Prodmore's -symptoms with more solicitude than those of her parent. "I did -think it might be required!" Then as he gained the door of the -morning-room: "I'll lay it out here." - -The young lady, on his withdrawal, recovered herself sufficiently to -rise again. "It was my train, papa--so very awfully behind. I walked -up, you know, also, from the station--there's such a lovely footpath -across the park." - -"You've been roaming the country then alone?" Mr. Prodmore -inquired. - -The girl protested with instant eagerness against any such -picture. "Oh, dear no, not _alone_!" She spoke, absurdly, as if she -had had a train of attendants; but it was an instant before she could -complete the assurance. "There were ever so many people about." - -"Nothing is more possible than that there should be _too_ -many!" said her father, speaking as for his personal convenience, -but presenting that as enough. "But where, among them all," he -demanded, "is your trusty maid?" - -Cora's reply made up in promptitude what it lacked in felicity. "I -didn't bring her." She looked at the old portraits as if to appeal -to them to help her to remember why. Apparently indeed they gave a -sign, for she presently went on: "She was so extremely unwell." - -Mr. Prodmore met this with reprobation. "Wasn't she to understand -from the first that we don't permit----" - -"Anything of that sort?"--the girl recalled it at least as a -familiar law. "Oh, yes, papa--I _thought_ she did." - -"But she doesn't?"--Mr. Prodmore pressed the point. Poor Cora, at -a loss again, appeared to wonder if the point had better be a failure -of brain or of propriety, but her companion continued to press. "What -on earth's the matter with her?" - -She again communed with their silent witnesses. "I really don't -quite know, but I think that at Granny's she eats too much." - -"I'll soon put an end to _that_!" Mr. Prodmore returned with -decision. "You expect then to pursue your adventures quite into the -night--to return to Bellborough as you came?" - -The girl had by this time begun a little to find her feet. "Exactly -as I came, papa dear,--under the protection of a new friend I've just -made, a lady whom I met in the train and who is also going back by the -6.19. She was, like myself, on her way to this place, and I expected to -find her here." - -Mr. Prodmore chilled on the spot any such expectations. "What does -she want at this place?" - -Cora was clearly stronger for her new friend than for herself. "She -wants to see it." - -Mr. Prodmore reflected on this complication. "Today?" It was -practically presumptuous. "Today won't do." - -"So I suggested," the girl declared. "But do you know what she -said?" - -"How should I know," he coldly demanded, "what a nobody says?" - -But on this, as if with the returning taste of a new strength, his -daughter could categorically meet him. "She's not a nobody. She's -an American." - -Mr. Prodmore, for a moment, was struck: he embraced the place, -instinctively, in a flash of calculation. "An American?" - -"Yes, and she's wild----" - -He knew all about that. "Americans mostly _are_!" - -"I mean," said Cora, "to see this place. 'Wild' was what she -herself called it--and I think she also said she was 'mad.'" - -"She gave"--Mr. Prodmore reviewed the affair--"a fine account of -herself! But she won't do." - -The effect of her new acquaintance on his companion had been such that -she could, after an instant, react against this sentence. "Well, -when I told her that this particular day perhaps wouldn't, she said -it would just _have_ to." - -"Have to do?" Mr. Prodmore showed again, through a chink, his -speculative eye. "For _what_, then, with such grand airs?" - -"Why, I suppose, for what Americans want." - -He measured the quantity. "They want everything." - -"Then I wonder," said Cora, "that she hasn't arrived." - -"When she does arrive," he answered, "I'll tackle her; and I -shall thank you, in future, not to take up, in trains, with indelicate -women of whom you know nothing." - -"Oh, I did know something," his daughter pleaded; "for I saw her -yesterday at Bellborough." - -Mr. Prodmore contested even this freedom. "And what was she doing at -Bellborough?" - -"Staying at the Blue Dragon, to see the old abbey. She says she just -loves old abbeys. It seems to be the same feeling," the girl went on, -"that brought her over, today, to see this old house." - -"She 'just loves' old houses? Then why the deuce didn't she -accompany you properly, since she is so pushing, to the door?" - -"Because she went off in a fly," Cora explained, "to see, first, -the old hospital. She just loves old hospitals. She asked me if this -isn't a show-house. I told her"--the girl was anxious to disclaim -responsibility--"that I hadn't the least idea." - -"It _is_!" Mr. Prodmore cried almost with ferocity. "I wonder, -on such a speech, what she thought of _you_!" - -Miss Prodmore meditated with distinct humbleness. "I know. She told -me." - -He had looked her up and down. "That you're really a hopeless -frump?" - -Cora, oddly enough, seemed almost to court this description. "That -I'm not, as she rather funnily called it, a show-girl." - -"Think of your having to be reminded--by the very strangers you -pick up," Mr. Prodmore groaned, "of what my daughter should -pre-eminently be! Your friend, all the same," he bethought himself, -"is evidently loud." - -"Well, when she comes," the girl again so far agreed as to reply, -"you'll certainly hear her. But don't judge her, papa, till you -do. She's tremendously clever," she risked--"there seems to be -nothing she doesn't know." - -"And there seems to be nothing you do! You're _not_ tremendously -clever," Mr. Prodmore pursued; "so you'll permit me to demand of -you a slight effort of intelligence." Then, as for the benefit of the -listening walls themselves, he struck the high note. "I'm expecting -Captain Yule." - -Cora's consciousness blinked. "The owner of this property?" - -Her father's tone showed his reserves. "That's what it depends on -you to make him!" - -"On me?" the girl gasped. - -"He came into it three months ago by the death of his great-uncle, -who had lived to ninety-three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with -his father, had always refused to receive either sire or son." - -Our young lady bent her eyes on this page of family history, then -raised them but dimly lighted. "But now, at least, doesn't he live -here?" - -"So little," her companion replied, "that he comes here today -for the very first time. I've some business to discuss with him that -can best be discussed on this spot; and it's a vital part of that -business that you too should take pains to make him welcome." - -Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. "In his own house?" - -"That it's _not_ his own house is just the point I seek to -make! The way I look at it is that it's _my_ house! The way I look -at it even, my dear"--in his demonstration of his ways of looking -Mr. Prodmore literally expanded--"is that it's _our_ house. The -whole thing is mortgaged, as it stands, for every penny of its value; -and I'm in the pleasant position--do you follow me?" he trumpeted. - -Cora jumped. "Of holding the mortgages?" - -He caught her with a smile of approval and indeed of surprise. "You -keep up with me better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of paper, and -it's a precious collection." - -She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female sigh, glancing over the -place more attentively than she had yet done. "Do you mean that you -can come down on him?" - -"I don't need to 'come,' my dear--I _am_ 'down.' _This_ -is down!"--and the iron point of Mr. Prodmore's stick fairly -struck, as he rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. "I came many -weeks ago--commercially speaking--and haven't since budged from the -place." - -The girl moved a little about the hall, then turned with a spasm of -courage. "Are you going to be very hard?" - -If she read the eyes with which he met her she found in them, in spite -of a certain accompanying show of pleasantry, her answer. "Hard with -_you_?" - -"No--that doesn't matter. Hard with the Captain." - -Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. "'Hard' is a stupid, shuffling -term. What do you mean by it?" - -"Well, I don't understand business," Cora said; "but I think I -understand _you_, papa, enough to gather that you've got, as usual, -a striking advantage." - -"As usual, I _have_ scored; but my advantage won't be striking -perhaps till I have sent the blow home. What I appeal to you, as a -father, at present to do"--he continued broadly to demonstrate--"is -to nerve my arm. I look to you to see me through." - -"Through what, then?" - -"Through this most important transaction. Through the speculation -of which you've been the barely dissimulated subject. I've brought -you here to receive an impression, and I've brought you, even more, -to make one." - -The girl turned honestly flat. "But on whom?" - -"On me, to begin with--by not being a fool. And then, Miss, on -_him_." - -Erect, but as if paralysed, she had the air of facing the worst. "On -Captain Yule?" - -"By bringing him to the point." - -"But, father," she asked in evident anguish--"to _what_ point?" - -"The point where a gentleman _has_ to." - -Miss Prodmore faltered. "Go down on his knees?" - -Her father considered. "No--they don't do that now." - -"What _do_ they do?" - -Mr. Prodmore carried his eyes with a certain sustained majesty to a -remote point. "He will know himself." - -"Oh, no, indeed, he won't," the girl cried; "they don't -_ever_!" - -"Then the sooner they learn--whoever teaches 'em!--the better: the -better I mean in particular," Mr. Prodmore added with an intention -discernibly vicious, "for the master of this house. I'll guarantee -that he shall understand that," he concluded, "for I shall do my -part." - -She looked at him as if his part were really to be hated. "But how on -earth, sir, can I ever do mine? To begin with, you know, I've never -even seen him." - -Mr. Prodmore took out his watch; then, having consulted it, put it back -with a gesture that seemed to dispose at the same time and in the same -manner of the objection. "You'll see him _now_--from one moment to -the other. He's remarkably handsome, remarkably young, remarkably -ambitious, and remarkably clever. He has one of the best and oldest -names in this part of the country--a name that, far and wide here, -one could do so much with that I'm simply indignant to see him do -so little. I propose, my dear, to do with it all he hasn't, and I -further propose, to that end, first to get hold of it. It's you, Miss -Prodmore, who shall take it out of the fire." - -"The fire?"--he had terrible figures. - -"Out of the mud, if you prefer. You must pick it up, do you see? My -plan is, in short," Mr. Prodmore pursued, "that when we've -brushed it off and rubbed it down a bit, blown away the dust and -touched up the rust, my daughter shall gracefully bear it." - -She could only oppose, now, a stiff, thick transparency that yielded a -view of the course in her own veins, after all, however, mingled with a -feebler fluid, of the passionate blood of the Prodmores. "And pray is -it also Captain Yule's plan?" - -Her father's face warned her off the ground of irony, but he replied -without violence. "His plans have not yet quite matured. But nothing -is more natural," he added with an ominous smile, "than that -they shall do so on the sunny south wall of Miss Prodmore's best -manner." - -Miss Prodmore's spirit was visibly rising, and a note that might -have meant warning for warning sounded in the laugh produced by -this sally. "You speak of them, papa, as if they were sour little -plums! You exaggerate, I think, the warmth of Miss Prodmore's -nature. It has always been thought remarkably cold." - -"Then you'll be so good, my dear, as to confound--it mightn't be -amiss even a little to scandalise--that opinion. I've spent twenty -years in giving you what your poor mother used to call advantages, -and they've cost me hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It's now time -that, both as a parent and as a man of business, I should get my money -back. I couldn't help your temper," Mr. Prodmore conceded, "nor -your taste, nor even your unfortunate resemblance to the estimable, -but far from ornamental, woman who brought you forth; but I paid out -a small fortune that you should have, damn you, don't you know? a -good manner. You never show it to me, certainly; but do you mean to -tell me that, at this time of day--for other persons--you _haven't_ -got one?" - -This pulled our young lady perceptibly up; there was a directness in -the argument that was like the ache of old pinches. "If you mean by -'other persons' persons who are particularly civil--well, Captain -Yule may not see his way to be one of them. He may not _think_--don't -you see?--that I've a good manner." - -"Do your duty, Miss, and never mind what he thinks!" Her father's -conception of her duty momentarily sharpened. "Don't look at him -like a sick turkey, and he'll be sure to think right." - -The colour that sprang into Cora's face at this rude comparison -was such, unfortunately, as perhaps a little to justify it. Yet -she retained, in spite of her emotion, some remnant of presence of -mind. "I remember your saying once, some time ago, that that was just -what he would be sure _not_ to do: I mean when he began to go in for -his dreadful ideas----" - -Mr. Prodmore took her boldly up. "About the 'radical programme,' -the 'social revolution,' the spoliation of everyone, and the -destruction of everything? Why, you stupid thing, I've worked round -to a complete agreement with him. The taking from those who have by -those who haven't----" - -"Well?" said the girl, with some impatience, as he sought the right -way of expressing his notion. - -"What is it but to receive, from consenting hands, the principal -treasure of the rich? If I'm rich, my daughter is my largest -property, and I freely make her over. I shall, in other words, forgive -my young friend his low opinions if he renounces them for _you_." - -Cora, at this, started as with a glimpse of delight. "He won't -renounce them! He _shan't_!" - -Her father appeared still to enjoy the ingenious way he had put it, -so that he had good humour to spare. "If you suggest that you're -in political sympathy with him, you mean then that you'll take him as -he _is_?" - -"I won't take him at all!" she protested with her head very high; -but she had no sooner uttered the words than the sound of the approach -of wheels caused her dignity to drop. "A fly?--it must be _he_!" -She turned right and left, for a retreat or an escape, but her father -had already caught her by the wrist. "Surely," she pitifully -panted, "you don't want me to bounce on him _thus_?" - -Mr. Prodmore, as he held her, estimated the effect. "Your frock -won't do--with what it cost me?" - -"It's not my frock, papa,--it's his thinking I've come here for -him to see me!" - -He let her go and, as she moved away, had another look for the social -value of the view of her stout back. It appeared to determine him, for, -with a touch of mercy, he passed his word. "He doesn't think it, -and he shan't know it." - -The girl had made for the door of the morning-room, before reaching -which she flirted breathlessly round. "But he knows you want me to -hook him!" - -Mr. Prodmore was already in the parliamentary attitude the occasion -had suggested to him for the reception of his visitor. "The way -to 'hook' him will be not to be hopelessly vulgar. He doesn't -know that you know anything." The house-bell clinked, and he waved -his companion away. "Await us there with tea, and mind you toe the -mark!" - -Chivers, at this moment, summoned by the bell, reappeared in the -morning-room doorway, and Cora's dismay brushed him as he sidled past -her and off into the passage to the front. Then, from the threshold of -her refuge, she launched a last appeal. "Don't _kill_ me, father: -give me time!" With which she dashed into the room, closing the door -with a bang. - - -II - -Mr. Prodmore, in Chivers's absence, remained staring as if -at a sudden image of something rather fine. His child had left -with him the sense of a quick irradiation, and he failed to see -why, at the worst, such lightnings as she was thus able to dart -shouldn't strike somewhere. If he had spoken to her of her best -manner perhaps _that_ was her best manner. He heard steps and voices, -however, and immediately invited to his aid his own, which was simply -magnificent. Chivers, returning, announced solemnly "Captain Yule!" -and ushered in a tall young man in a darkish tweed suit and a red -necktie, attached in a sailor's knot, who, as he entered, removed -a soft brown hat. Mr. Prodmore, at this, immediately saluted him by -uncovering. "Delighted at last to see you here!" - -It was the young man who first, in his comparative simplicity, -put out a hand. "If I've not come before, Mr. Prodmore, it -was--very frankly speaking--from the dread of seeing _you_!" -His speech contradicted, to some extent, his gesture, but Clement -Yule's was an aspect in which contradictions were rather remarkably -at home. Erect and slender, but as strong as he was straight, he was -set up, as the phrase is, like a soldier, and yet finished, in certain -details--matters of expression and suggestion only indeed--like a man -in whom sensibility had been recklessly cultivated. He was hard and -fine, just as he was sharp and gentle, just as he was frank and shy, -just as he was serious and young, just as he looked, though you could -never have imitated it, distinctly "kept up" and yet considerably -reduced. His features were thoroughly regular, but his complete -shaving might have been designed to show that they were, after all, -not absurd. The face Mr. Prodmore offered him fairly glowed, on this -new showing, with instant pride of possession, and there was that in -Captain Yule's whole air which justified such a sentiment without -consciously rewarding it. - -"Ah, surely," said the elder man, "my presence is not without -a motive!" - -"It's just the motive," Captain Yule returned, "that makes me -wince at it! Certainly I've no illusions," he added, "about the -ground of our meeting. Your thorough knowledge of what you're about -has placed me at your mercy--you hold me in the hollow of your hand." - -It was vivid in every inch that Mr. Prodmore's was a nature to expand -in the warmth, or even in the chill, of any tribute to his financial -subtlety. "Well, I won't, on my side, deny that when, in general, -I go in deep I don't go in for nothing. I make it pay double!" he -smiled. - -"You make it pay so well--'double' surely doesn't do you -justice!--that, if I've understood you, you can do quite as you like -with this preposterous place. Haven't you brought me down exactly -that I may _see_ you do it?" - -"I've certainly brought you down that you may open your eyes!" -This, apparently, however, was not what Mr. Prodmore himself had -arrived to do with his own. These fine points of expression literally -contracted with intensity. "Of course, you know, you can always clear -the property. You can pay off the mortgages." - -Captain Yule, by this time, had, as he had not done at first, looked -up and down, round about and well over the scene, taking in, though -at a mere glance, it might have seemed, more particularly, the row, -high up, of strenuous ancestors. But Mr. Prodmore's last words rang -none the less on his ear, and he met them with mild amusement. "Pay -off----? What can I pay off with?" - -"You can always raise money." - -"What can I raise it on?" - -Mr. Prodmore looked massively gay. "On your great political -future." - -"Oh, I've not taken--for the short run at least--the lucrative -line," the young man said, "and I know what you think of _that_." - -Mr. Prodmore's blandness confessed, by its instant increase, to -this impeachment. There was always the glory of intimacy in Yule's -knowing what he thought. "I hold that you keep, in public, very -dangerous company; but I also hold that you're extravagant mainly -because you've nothing at stake. A man has the right opinions," he -developed with pleasant confidence, "as soon as he has something to -lose by having the wrong. Haven't I already hinted to you how to set -your political house in order? You drop into the lower regions because -you keep the best rooms empty. You're a firebrand, in other words my -dear Captain, simply because you're a bachelor. That's one of the -early complaints we all pass through, but it's soon over, and the -treatment for it quite simple. I have your remedy." - -The young man's eyes, wandering again about the house, might have -been those of an auditor of the fiddling before the rise of the -curtain. "A remedy worse than the disease?" - -"There's nothing worse, that I've ever heard of," Mr. Prodmore -sharply replied, "than your particular fix. Least of all a heap of -gold----" - -"A heap of gold?" His visitor idly settled, as if the curtain were -going up. - -Mr. Prodmore raised it bravely. "In the lap of a fine fresh -lass! Give pledges to fortune, as somebody says--_then_ we'll -talk. You want money--that's what you want. Well, marry it!" - -Clement Yule, for a little, never stirred, save that his eyes yet again -strayed vaguely. At last they stopped with a smile. "Of course I -could do that in a moment!" - -"It's even just my own danger from you," his companion returned. -"I perfectly recognise that any woman would now jump----" - -"I don't like jumping women," Captain Yule threw in; "but that -perhaps is a detail. It's more to the point that I've yet to see -the woman whom, by an advance of my own----" - -"You'd care to keep in the really attractive position----?" - -"Which can never, of course, be anything"--Yule took his friend up -again--"but that of waiting quietly." - -"Never, never anything!" Mr. Prodmore, most assentingly, banished -all other thought. "But I haven't asked you, you know, to make an -advance." - -"You've only asked me to receive one?" - -Mr. Prodmore waited a little. "Well, I've asked you--I asked you a -month ago--to think it all over." - -"I _have_ thought it all over," Clement Yule said; "and the -strange sequel seems to be that my eyes have got accustomed to my -darkness. I seem to make out, in the gloom of my meditations, that, at -the worst, I can let the whole thing slide." - -"The property?"--Mr. Prodmore jerked back as if it were about to -start. - -"Isn't it the property," his visitor inquired, "that positively -throws me up? If I can afford neither to live on it nor to disencumber -it, I can at least let it save its own bacon and pay its own debts. I -can say to you simply: 'Take it, my dear sir, and the devil take -_you_!'" - -Mr. Prodmore gave a quick, strained smile. "You wouldn't be so -shockingly rude!" - -"Why not--if I'm a firebrand and a keeper of low company and a -general nuisance? Sacrifice for sacrifice, that might very well be the -least!" - -This was put with such emphasis that Mr. Prodmore was for a moment -arrested. He could stop very short, however, and yet talk as still -going. "How do you know, if you haven't compared them? It's just -to make the comparison--in all the proper circumstances--that you're -here at this hour." He took, with a large, though vague, exhibitory -gesture, a few turns about. "Now that you stretch yourself--for an -hour's relaxation and rocked, as it were, by my friendly hand--in the -ancient cradle of your race, can you seriously entertain the idea of -parting with such a venerable family relic?" - -It was evident that, as he decorously embraced the scene, the young -man, in spite of this dissuasive tone, was entertaining ideas. It -might have appeared at the moment to a spectator in whom fancy was -at all alert that the place, becoming in a manner conscious of the -question, felt itself on its honour, and that its honour could make -no compromise. It met Clement Yule with no grimace of invitation, -with no attenuation of its rich old sadness. It was as if the two -hard spirits, the grim _genius loci_ and the quick modern conscience, -stood an instant confronted. "The cradle of my race bears, for me, -Mr. Prodmore, a striking resemblance to its tomb." The sigh that -dropped from him, however, was not quite void of tenderness. It -might, for that matter, have been a long, sad creak, portending -collapse, of some immemorial support of the Yules. "Heavens, how -melancholy----!" - -Mr. Prodmore, somewhat ambiguously, took up the sound. "Melancholy?"--he -just balanced. That well might be, even a little _should_ -be--yet agreement might depreciate. - -"Musty, mouldy;" then with a poke of his stick at a gap in the -stuff with which an old chair was covered, "mangy!" Captain Yule -responded. "Is this the character throughout?" - -Mr. Prodmore fixed a minute the tell-tale tatter. "You must judge -for yourself--you must go over the house." He hesitated again; then -his indecision vanished--the right line was clear. "It does look a -bit run down, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll do it up for -you--neatly: I'll throw _that_ in!" - -His young friend turned on him an eye that, though markedly enlivened -by his offer, was somehow only the more inscrutable. "Will you put in -the electric light?" - -Mr. Prodmore's own twinkle--at this touch of a spring he had not -expected to work--was, on the other hand, temporarily veiled. "Well, -if you'll meet me half-way! We're dealing here"--he backed up his -gravity--"with fancy-values. Don't you feel," he appealed, "as -you take it all in, a kind of a something-or-other down your back?" - -Clement Yule gazed awhile at one of the pompous quarterings in the -faded old glass that, in tones as of late autumn, crowned with armorial -figures the top of the great hall-window; then with abruptness he -turned away. "Perhaps I _don't_ take it all in; but what I do feel -is--since you mention it--a sort of stiffening of the spine! The whole -thing is too queer--too cold--too cruel." - -"Cruel?"--Mr. Prodmore's demur was virtuous. - -"Like the face of some stuck-up distant relation who won't speak -first. I see in the stare of the old dragon, I taste in his very -breath, all the helpless mortality he has tucked away!" - -"Lord, sir--you _have_ fancies!" Mr. Prodmore was almost -scandalised. - -But the young man's fancies only multiplied as he moved, not at -all critical, but altogether nervous, from object to object. "I -don't know what's the matter--but there _is_ more here than meets -the eye." He tried as for his amusement or his relief to figure it -out. "I miss the old presences. I feel the old absences. I hear the -old voices. I see the old ghosts." - -This last was a profession that offered some common ground. "The -old ghosts, Captain Yule," his companion promptly replied, "are -worth so much a dozen, and with no reduction, I must remind you--with -the price indeed rather raised--for the quantity taken!" Feeling -then apparently that he had cleared the air a little by this sally, -Mr. Prodmore proceeded to pat his interlocutor on a back that he by no -means wished to cause to be put to the wall. "Look about you, at any -rate, a little more." He crossed with his toes well out the line that -divides encouragement from patronage. "Do make yourself at home." - -"Thank you very much, Mr. Prodmore. May I light a cigarette?" his -visitor asked. - -"In your own house, Captain?" - -"That's just the question: it seems so much less my own house -than before I had come into it!" The Captain offered Mr. Prodmore a -cigarette which that gentleman, also taking a light from him, accepted; -then he lit his own and began to smoke. "As I understand you," he -went on, "you _lump_ your two conditions? I mean I must accept both -or neither?" - -Mr. Prodmore threw back his shoulders with a high recognition of the -long stride represented by this question. "You _will_ accept both, -for, by doing so, you'll clear the property at a stroke. The way -I put it is--see?--that if you'll stand for Gossage, you'll get -returned for Gossage." - -"And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall marry your daughter. -Accordingly," the young man pursued, "if I marry your daughter----" - -"I'll burn up, before your eyes," said this young lady's -proprietor, "every scratch of your pen. It will be a bonfire of -signatures. There won't be a penny to pay--there'll only be a -position to take. You'll take it with peculiar grace." - -"Peculiar, Mr. Prodmore--very!" - -The young man had assented more than he desired, but he was not -deterred by it from completing the picture. "You'll settle down -here in comfort and honour." - -Clement Yule took several steps; the effect of his host was the reverse -of soothing; yet the latter watched his irritation as if it were the -working of a charm. "Are you very sure of the 'honour' if I turn -my political coat?" - -"You'll only be turning it back again to the way it was always -worn. Gossage will receive you with open arms and press you to a -heaving Tory bosom. That bosom"--Mr. Prodmore followed himself -up--"has never heaved but to sound Conservative principles. The -cradle, as I've called it,--or at least the rich, warm coverlet,--of -your race, Gossage was the political property, so to speak, of -generations of your family. Stand therefore in the good old interest -and you'll stand like a lion." - -"I'm afraid you mean," Captain Yule laughed, "that I must first -roar like one." - -"Oh, _I'll_ do the roaring!"--and Mr. Prodmore shook his -mane. "Leave that to me." - -"Then why the deuce don't you stand yourself?" - -Mr. Prodmore knew so familiarly why! "Because I'm not a -remarkably handsome young man with the grand old home and the right -old name. Because I'm a different sort of matter altogether. But if I -haven't these advantages," he went on, "you'll do justice to my -natural desire that my daughter at least shall have them." - -Clement Yule watched himself smoke a minute. "Doing justice to -natural desires is just what, of late, I've tried to make a study -of. But I confess I don't quite grasp the deep attraction you appear -to discover in so large a surrender of your interests." - -"My surrenders are my own affair," Mr. Prodmore rang out, "and as -for my interests, as I never, on principle, give anything for nothing, -I dare say I may be trusted to know them when I see them. You come -high--I don't for a moment deny it; but when I look at you, in -this pleasant, intimate way, my dear boy--if you'll allow me so to -describe things--I recognise one of those cases, unmistakeable when -really met, in which one must put down one's money. There's not -an article in the whole shop, if you don't mind the comparison, -that strikes me as better value. I intend you shall be, Captain," -Mr. Prodmore wound up in a frank, bold burst, "the true comfort of -my life!" - -The young man was as hushed for a little as if an organ-tone were -still in the air. "May I inquire," he at last returned, "if Miss -Prodmore's ideas of comfort are as well defined--and in her case, I -may add, as touchingly modest--as her father's? Is she a responsible -party of this ingenious arrangement?" - -Mr. Prodmore rendered homage--his appreciation was marked--to the -elevated character of his young friend's scruple. "Miss Prodmore, -Captain Yule, may be perhaps best described as a large smooth sheet -of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true -and perfect filial has yet, I can answer for it, formed itself on the -considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected----" - -"I've only, in person, to appear?" Yule asked with an embarrassment -that he tried to laugh off. - -"And, naturally, in person," Mr. Prodmore intelligently assented, -"do yourself, as well as the young lady, justice. Do you remember -what you said when I first, in London, laid the matter before you?" - -Clement Yule did remember, but his amusement increased. "I think -I said it struck me I should first take a look at--what do you call -it?--the _corpus delicti_." - -"You should first see for yourself what you had really come into? I -was not only eager for that," said Mr. Prodmore, "but I'm willing -to go further: I'm quite ready to hear you say that you think you -should also first see the young lady." - -Captain Yule continued to laugh. "There is something in that then, -since you mention it!" - -"I think you'll find that there's everything." Mr. Prodmore -again looked at his watch. "Which will you take first?" - -"First?" - -"The young lady or the house?" - -His companion, at this, unmistakeably started. "Do you mean your -daughter's _here_?" - -Mr. Prodmore glowed with consciousness. "In the morning-room." - -"Waiting for me?" - -The tone showed a consternation that Mr. Prodmore's was alert to -soothe. "Ah, as long, you know, as you like!" - -Yule's alarm, however, was not assuaged; it appeared to grow as he -stared, much discomposed, yet sharply thinking, at the door to which -his friend had pointed. "Oh, longer than _this_, please!" Then as -he turned away: "Do you mean she knows----?" - -"That she's here on view?" Mr. Prodmore hung fire a moment, but -was equal to the occasion. "She knows nothing whatever. She's as -unconscious as the rose on its stem!" - -His companion was visibly relieved. "That's right--let her remain -so! I'll first take the house," said Clement Yule. - -"Shall I go round _with_ you?" Mr. Prodmore asked. - -The young man's reflection was brief. "Thank you. I'd rather, on -the whole, go round alone." - -The old servant who had admitted the gentlemen came back at this crisis -from the morning-room, looking from under a bent brow and with much -limpid earnestness from one of them to the other. The one he first -addressed had evidently, though quite unaware of it, inspired him with -a sympathy from which he now took a hint. "There's tea on, sir!" -he persuasively jerked as he passed the younger man. - -The elder answered. "Then I'll join my daughter." He gained -the morning-room door, whence he repeated with an appropriate -gesture--that of offering proudly, with light, firm fingers, a flower -of his own celebrated raising--his happy formula of Miss Prodmore's -state. "The rose on its stem!" Scattering petals, diffusing -fragrance, he thus passed out. - -Chivers, meanwhile, had rather pointlessly settled once more in its -place some small object that had not strayed; to whom Clement Yule, -absently watching him, abruptly broke out. "I say, my friend, what -colour is the rose?" - -The old man looked up with a dimness that presently glimmered. "The -rose, sir?" He turned to the open door and the shining day. "Rather -a brilliant----" - -"A brilliant----?" Yule was interested. - -"Kind of old-fashioned red." Chivers smiled with the pride of -being thus able to testify, but the next instant his smile went -out. "It's the only one left--on the old west wall." - -His visitor's mirth, at this, quickly enough revived. "My dear -fellow, I'm not alluding to the sole ornament of the garden, but to -the young lady at present in the morning-room. Do you happen to have -noticed if she's pretty?" - -Chivers stood queerly rueful. "Laws, sir--it's a matter I mostly -notice; but isn't it, at the same time, sir, a matter--like--of -taste?" - -"Pre-eminently. That's just why I appeal with such confidence to -yours." - -The old man acknowledged with a flush of real embarrassment a -responsibility he had so little invited. "Well, sir,--mine was always -a sort of fancy for something more merry-like." - -"She isn't merry-like then, poor Miss Prodmore?" Captain Yule's -attention, however, dropped before the answer came, and he turned off -the subject with an "Ah, if you come to that, neither am I! But -it doesn't signify," he went on. "What are _you_?" he more -sociably demanded. - -Chivers clearly had to think a bit. "Well, sir, I'm not quite -_that_. Whatever has there been to make me, sir?" he asked in dim -extenuation. - -"How in the world do _I_ know? I mean to whom do you belong?" - -Chivers seemed to scan impartially the whole field. "If you could -just only _tell_ me, sir! I quite seem to waste away--for someone to -take an order of." - -Clement Yule, by this time, had become aware he was amusing. "Who -pays your wages?" - -"No one at all, sir," said the old man very simply. - -His friend, fumbling an instant in a waistcoat pocket, produced -something that his hand, in obedience to a little peremptory gesture -and by a trick of which he had unlearned, through scant custom, the -neatness, though the propriety was instinctive, placed itself in a shy -practical relation to. "Then there's a sovereign. And I haven't -many!" the young man, turning away resignedly, threw after it. - -Chivers, for an instant, intensely studied him. "Ah, then, -shouldn't it stay in the family?" - -Clement Yule wheeled round, first struck, then, at the sight of the -figure made by his companion in this offer, visibly touched. "I think -it does, old boy." - -Chivers kept his eyes on him now. "I've served your house, sir." - -"How long?" - -"All my life." - -So, for a time, they faced each other, and something in Chivers made -Yule at last speak. "Then I won't give _you_ up!" - -"Indeed, sir, I hope you won't give up anything." - -The Captain took up his hat. "It remains to be seen." He looked -over the place again; his eyes wandered to the open door. "Is that -the garden?" - -"It _was_!"--and the old man's sigh was like the creak of the -wheel of time. "Shall I show you how it used to be?" - -"It's just as it _is_, alas, that I happen to require it!" -Captain Yule reached the door and stood looking beyond. "Don't -come," he then said; "I want to think." With which he walked out. - -Chivers, left alone, appeared to wonder at it, and his wonder, -like that of most old people, lay near his lips. "What does he -want, poor dear, to think about?" This speculation, however, was -immediately checked by a high, clear voice that preceded the appearance -on the stairs, before she had reached the middlemost landing, of the -wonderful figure of a lady, a lady who, with the almost trumpeted -cheer of her peremptory but friendly call--"Housekeeper, Butler, old -Family Servant!"--fairly waked the sleeping echoes. Chivers gazed up -at her in quick remembrance, half dismayed, half dazzled, of a duty -neglected. She appeared now; she shone at him out of the upper dusk; -reaching the middle, she had begun to descend, with beautiful laughter -and rustling garments; and though she was alone she gave him the sense -of coming in a crowd and with music. "Oh, I should have told him of -_her_!" - - -III - -She was indeed an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and -explanation just in the degree in which it seemed to show itself in a -relation quite of its own to all social preliminaries. It evidently -either assumed them to be already over or wished to forestall them -altogether; what was clear at any rate was that it allowed them scant -existence. She was young, tall, radiant, lovely, and dressed in a -manner determined at once, obviously, by the fact and by the humour -of her journey--it might have proclaimed her so a pilgrim or so set -her up as a priestess. Most journeys, for this lady, at all events, -were clearly a brush of Paris. "Did you think I had got snapped down -in an old box like that poor girl--what's her name? the one who was -poking round too--in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful man, why -didn't you tell me?" - -"Tell you, mum----?" - -"Well, that you're so perfectly--perfect! You're ever so much -better than anyone has ever said. Why, in the name of common sense, has -nobody ever said _anything_? You're everything in the world you ought -to be, and not the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn't!" - -It was a higher character to be turned out with than poor Chivers had -ever dreamed. "Well, mum, I try!" he gaped. - -"Oh, no, you don't--that's just your charm! _I_ try," cried his -friend, "but you do nothing: here you simply _are_--you can't help -it!" - -He stood overwhelmed. "Me, mum?" - -She took him in at the eyes--she could take everything at once. "Yes, -you too, you positive old picture! I've seen the old masters--but -you're the old master!" - -"The master--I?" He fairly fell back. - -"'The good and faithful servant'--Rembrandt van Rhyn: with -three stars. _That's_ what you are!" Nothing would have been more -droll to a spectator than her manner of meeting his humbleness, or more -charming indeed than the practical sweetness of her want of imagination -of it. "The house is a vision of beauty, and you're simply worthy -of the house. I can't say more for you!" - -"I find it a bit of a strain, mum," Chivers candidly replied, "to -keep up--fairly to call it--with what you _do_ say." - -"That's just what everyone finds it!"--she broke into the -happiest laugh. "Yet I haven't come here to suffer in silence, you -know--to suffer, I mean, from envy and despair." She was in constant -movement, from side to side, observing, comparing, returning, taking -notes while she gossiped and gossiping, too, for remembrance. The -intention of remembrance even had in it, however, some prevision of -failure or some alloy of irritation. "You're so fatally right and -so deadly complete, all the same, that I can really scarcely bear it: -with every fascinating feature that I had already heard of and thought -I was prepared for, and ever so many others that, strange to say, -I hadn't and wasn't, and that you just spring right _at_ me like -a series of things going off. What do you call it," she asked--"a -royal salute, a hundred guns?" - -Her enthusiasm had a bewildering form, but it had by this time warmed -the air, and the old man rubbed his hands as over a fire to which the -bellows had been applied. "I saw as soon as you arrived, mum, that -you were looking for more things than ever _I_ heard tell of!" - -"Oh, I had got you by heart," she returned, "from books and -drawings and photos; I had you in my pocket when I came: so, you see, -as soon as you were so good as to give me my head and let me loose, -I knew my way about. It's all here, every inch of it," she -competently continued, "and now at last I can do what I want!" - -A light of consternation, at this, just glimmered in Chivers's -face. "And pray, mum, what might that be?" - -"Why, take you right back with me--to Missoura Top." - -This answer seemed to fix his bewilderment, but he was there for the -general convenience. - -"Do I understand you, mum, that you require to take _me_?" - -Her particular convenience, on the spot, embraced him, so new and -delightful a sense had he suddenly read into her words. "Do you -mean to say you'd come--as the old Family Servant? Then _do_, -you nice real thing: it's just what I'm dying for--an old Family -Servant! You're somebody's else, yes--but everything, over here, -is somebody's else, and I want, too, a first-rate second-hand one, -all ready made, as you are, but not too much done up. You're the -best I've seen yet, and I wish I could have you packed--put up in -paper and bran--as I shall have my old pot there." She whisked about, -remembering, recovering, eager: "Don't let me _forget_ my precious -pot!" Excited, with quick transitions, she quite sociably appealed -to her companion, who shuffled sympathetically to where, out of harm, -the object had been placed on a table. "Don't you just love old -crockery? That's awfully sweet old Chelsea." - -He took up the piece with tenderness, though, in his general agitation, -not perhaps with all the caution with which, for daily service, he -handled ancient frailties. He at any rate turned on this fresh subject -an interested, puzzled eye. "Where is it I've known this very -bit--though not to say, as _you_ do, by name?" Suddenly it came to -him. "In the pew-opener's front parlour!" - -"No," his interlocutress cried, "in the pew-opener's best -bedroom: on the old chest of drawers, you know--with those ducks of -brass handles. I've got the handles too--I mean the whole thing; -and the brass fender and fire-irons, and the chair her grandmother died -in. Not in the fly," she added--"it was such a bore that they have -to be sent." - -Chivers, with the pot still in his hands, fairly rocked in the high -wind of so much confidence and such great transactions. He had nothing -for these, however, but approval. "You did right to take this out, -mum, when the fly went to the stables. Them flymen do be cruel rash -with anything that's delicate." Of the delicacy of the vessel -it now rested with him to deposit safely again he was by this time -so appreciatively aware that in returning with it to its safe niche -he stumbled into some obscure trap literally laid for him by his -nervousness. It was the matter of a few seconds, of a false movement, -a knock of the elbow, a gasp, a shriek, a complete little crash. There -was the pot on the pavement, in several pieces, and the clumsy -cup-bearer blue with fear. "Mercy _on_ us, mum,--I've brought shame -on my old grey hairs!" - -The little shriek of his companion had smothered itself in the -utterance, and the next minute, with the ruin between them, they -were contrastedly face to face. The charming woman, who had already -found more voices in the air than anyone had found before, could, in -the happy play of this power, find a poetry in her accident. "Oh, -but the way you _take_ it!" she laughed--"you're too quaint -to live!" She looked at him as if he alone had suffered--as if his -suffering indeed positively added to his charm. "The way you said -that now--it's just the very 'type'! That's all I want of -you now--to _be_ the very type. It's what you are, you poor dear -thing--for you _can't_ help it; and it's what everything and -everyone else is, over here; so that you had just better all make -up your minds to it and not try to shirk it. There was a type in the -train with me--the 'awfully nice girl' of all the English novels, -the 'simple maiden in her flower' of--who is it?--your great -poet. _She_ couldn't help it either--in fact I wouldn't have _let_ -her!" With this, while Chivers picked up his fragments, his lady had -a happy recall. His face, as he stood there with the shapeless elements -of his humiliation fairly rattling again in his hands, was a reflection -of her extraordinary manner of enlarging the subject, or rather, more -beneficently perhaps, the space that contained it. "By the way, the -girl was coming right here. Has she come?" - -Chivers crept solemnly away, as if to bury his dead, which he -consigned, with dumb rites, to a situation of honourable publicity; -then, as he came back, he replied without elation: "Miss Prodmore is -here, mum. She's having her tea." - -This, for his friend, was a confirmatory touch to be fitted with -eagerness into the picture. "Yes, that's exactly it--they're -always having their tea!" - -"With Mr. Prodmore--in the morning-room," the old man supplemented. -"Captain Yule's in the garden." - -"Captain Yule?" - -"The new master. He's also just arrived." - -The wonderful lady gave an immediate "Oh!" to the effect of which -her silence for another moment seemed to add. "She didn't tell me -about _him_." - -"Well, mum," said Chivers, "it do be a strange thing to tell. He -had never--like, mum--so much as seen the place." - -"Before today--his very own?" This too, for the visitor, was an -impression among impressions, and, like most of her others, it ended -after an instant as a laugh. "Well, I hope he likes it!" - -"I haven't seen many, mum," Chivers boldly declared, "that like -it as much as _you_." - -She made with her handsome head a motion that appeared to signify -still deeper things than he had caught. Her beautiful wondering eyes -played high and low, like the flight of an imprisoned swallow, then, as -she sank upon a seat, dropped at last as if the creature were bruised -with its limits. "I should like it still better if it were _my_ very -own!" - -"Well, mum," Chivers sighed, "if it wasn't against my duty I -could wish indeed it were! But the Captain, mum," he conscientiously -added, "is the lawful heir." - -It was a wonder what she found in whatever he said; he touched with -every word the spring of her friendly joy. "That's another of your -lovely old things--I adore your lawful heirs!" She appeared to have, -about everything that came up, a general lucid vision that almost -glorified the particular case. "He has come to take possession?" - -Chivers accepted, for the credit of the house, this sustaining -suggestion. "He's a-taking of it now." - -This evoked, for his companion, an instantaneous show. "What -does he do and how does he do it? Can't I _see_?" She was all -impatience, but she dropped to disappointment as her guide looked -blank. "There's no grand fuss----?" - -"I scarce think him, mum," Chivers with propriety hastened to -respond, "the gentleman to make any about anything." - -She had to resign herself, but she smiled as she thought. "Well, -perhaps I like them better when they don't!" She had clearly a -great range of taste, and it all came out in the wistfulness with -which, before the notice apparently served on her, she prepared -to make way. "I also"--she lingered and sighed--"have taken -possession!" - -Poor Chivers really rose to her. "It was you, mum," he smiled, -"took it first!" - -She sadly shook her head. "Ah, but for a poor little hour! _He's_ -for life." - -The old man gave up, after a little, with equal depression, the -pretence of dealing with such realities. "For mine, mum, I do at -least hope." - -She made again the circuit of the great place, picking up without -interest the jacket she had on her previous entrance laid down. "I -shall think of you, you know, here together." She vaguely looked -about her as for anything else to take; then abruptly, with her eyes -again on Chivers: "Do you suppose he'll be kind to you?" - -His hand, in his trousers-pocket, seemed to turn the matter over. "He -has already been, mum." - -"Then be sure to be so to _him_!" she replied with some -emphasis. The house-bell sounded as she spoke, giving her quickly -another thought. "Is that his bell?" - -Chivers was hardly less struck. "I must see whose!"--and hurrying, -on this, to the front, he presently again vanished. - -His companion, left alone, stood a minute with an air in which happy -possession was oddly and charmingly mingled with desperate surrender; -so much as to have left you in doubt if the next of her lively motions -were curiosity or disgust. Impressed, in her divided state, with a -small framed plaque of enamel, she impulsively detached it from the -wall and examined it with hungry tenderness. Her hovering thought was -so vivid that you might almost have traced it in sound. "Why, bless -me if it isn't Limoges! I wish awfully I were a _bad_ woman: then, -I do devoutly hope, I'd just quietly take it!" It testified to the -force of this temptation that on hearing a sound behind her she started -like a guilty thing; recovering herself, however, and--just, of course, -not to appear at fault--keeping the object familiarly in her hand as -she jumped to a recognition of the gentleman who, coming in from the -garden, had stopped in the open doorway. She gathered indeed from his -being there a positive advantage, the full confidence of which was -already in her charming tone. "Oh, Captain Yule, I'm delighted to -meet you! It's such a comfort to ask you if I _may_!" - -His surprise kept him an instant dumb, but the effort not too -closely to betray it appeared in his persuasive inflection. "If you -'may,' madam----?" - -"Why, just _be_ here, don't you know? and poke round!" She -presented such a course as almost vulgarly natural. "Don't tell -me I can't now, because I already _have_: I've been upstairs -and downstairs and in my lady's chamber--I won't answer for -it even perhaps that I've not been in my lord's! I got round -your lovely servant--if you don't look out I'll grab him. If -you don't look out, you know, I'll grab everything." She -gave fair notice and went on with amazing serenity; she gathered -positive gaiety from his frank stupefaction. "That's what I came -over for--just to lay your country waste. Your house is a wild old -dream; and besides"--she dropped, oddly and quaintly, into real -responsible judgment--"you've got some quite good things. Oh, -yes, you _have_--several: don't coyly pretend you haven't!" Her -familiarity took these flying leaps, and she alighted, as her victim -must have phrased it to himself, without turning a hair. "Don't -you _know_ you have? Just look at that!" She thrust her enamel -before him, but he took it and held it so blankly, with an attention -so absorbed in the mere woman, that at the sight of his manner her -zeal for his interest and her pity for his detachment again flashed -out. "Don't you know _anything_? Why, it's Limoges!" - -Clement Yule simply broke into a laugh--though his laugh indeed -was comprehensive. "It seems absurd, but I'm not in the least -acquainted with my house. I've never happened to see it." - -She seized his arm. "Then do let me show it to you!" - -"I shall be delighted." His laughter had redoubled in a way that -spoke of his previous tension; yet his tone, as he saw Chivers return -breathless from the front, showed that he had responded sincerely -enough to desire a clear field. "Who in the world's there?" - -The old man was full of it. "A party!" - -"A party?" - -Chivers confessed to the worst. "Over from Gossage--to see the -house." - -The worst, however, clearly, was quite good enough for their -companion, who embraced the incident with sudden enthusiasm. "Oh, -let _me_ show it!" But before either of the men could reply she had, -addressing herself to Chivers, one of those droll drops that betrayed -the quickness of her wit and the freedom of her fancy. "Dear me, I -forgot--_you_ get the tips! But, you dear old creature," she went on, -"I'll get them, too, and I'll simply make them over to you." -She again pressed Yule--pressed him into this service. "Perhaps -they'll be bigger--for me!" - -He continued to be highly amused. "I should think they'd -be enormous--for you! But I _should_ like," he added with more -concentration--"I should like extremely, you know, to go over with -you alone." - -She was held a moment. "Just you and me?" - -"Just you and me--as you kindly proposed." - -She stood reminded; but, throwing it off, she had her first -inconsequence. "That must be for after----!" - -"Ah, but not too late." He looked at his watch. "I go back -tonight." - -"Laws, sir!" Chivers irrepressibly groaned. - -"You want to keep him?" the stranger asked. Captain Yule turned -away at the question, but her look went after him, and she found -herself, somehow, instantly answered. "Then I'll help you," she -said to Chivers; "and the oftener we go over the better." - -Something further, on this, quite immaterial, but quite adequate, -passed, while the young man's back was turned, between the two -others; in consequence of which Chivers again appealed to his -master. "Shall I show them straight in, sir?" - -His master, still detached, replied without looking at him. "By all -means--if there's money in it!" This was jocose, but there would -have been, for an observer, an increase of hope in the old man's -departing step. The lady had exerted an influence. - -She continued, for that matter, with a start of genial remembrance, -to exert one in his absence. "Oh, and I promised to show it to Miss -Prodmore!" Her conscience, with a kind smile for the young person she -named, put the question to Clement Yule. "Won't you call her?" - -The coldness of his quick response made it practically none. -"'Call' her? Dear lady, I don't _know_ her!" - -"You must, then--she's wonderful." The face with which he met -this drew from the dear lady a sharper look; but, for the aid of her -good-nature, Cora Prodmore, at the moment she spoke, presented herself -in the doorway of the morning-room. "See? She's charming!" The -girl, with a glare of recognition, dashed across the open as if under -heavy fire; but heavy fire, alas--the extremity of exposure--was -promptly embodied in her friend's public embrace. "Miss -Prodmore," said this terrible friend, "let me present Captain -Yule." Never had so great a gulf been bridged in so free a -span. "Captain Yule, Miss Prodmore. Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule." - -There was stiffness, the cold mask of terror, in such notice as either -party took of this demonstration, the convenience of which was not -enhanced for the divided pair by the perception that Mr. Prodmore -had now followed his daughter. Cora threw herself confusedly -into it indeed, as with a vain rebound into the open. "Papa, -let me 'present' you to Mrs. Gracedew. Mrs. Gracedew, Mr. -Prodmore. Mr. Prodmore, Mrs. Gracedew." - -Mrs. Gracedew, with a free salute and a distinct repetition, took in -Mr. Prodmore as she had taken everything else. "Mr. Prodmore"--oh, -she pronounced him, spared him nothing of himself. "So happy to meet -your daughter's father. Your daughter's so perfect a specimen." - -Mr. Prodmore, for the first moment, had simply looked large and at -sea; then, like a practical man and without more question, had quickly -seized the long perch held out to him in this statement. "So perfect -a specimen, yes!"--he seemed to pass it on to his young friend. - -Mrs. Gracedew, if she observed his emphasis, drew from it no -deterrence; she only continued to cover Cora with a gaze that kept her -well in the middle. "So fresh, so quaint, so droll!" - -It was apparently a result of what had passed in the morning-room that -Mr. Prodmore had grasped afresh the need for effective action, which -he clearly felt he did something to meet in clutching precipitately the -helping hand popped so suddenly out of space, yet so beautifully gloved -and so pressingly and gracefully brandished. "So fresh, so quaint, so -droll!"--he again gave Captain Yule the advantage of the stranger's -impression. - -To what further appreciation this might have prompted the lady herself -was not, however, just then manifest; for the return of Chivers had -been almost simultaneous with the advance of the Prodmores, and it had -taken place with forms that made it something of a circumstance. There -was positive pomp in the way he preceded several persons of both sexes, -not tourists at large, but simple sightseers of the half-holiday order, -plain provincial folk already, on the spot, rather awestruck. The old -man, with suppressed pulls and prayers, had drawn them up in a broken -line, and the habit of more peopled years, the dull drone of the dead -lesson, sounded out in his prompt beginning. The party stood close, -in this manner, on one side of the apartment, while the master of the -house and his little circle were grouped on the other. But as Chivers, -guiding his squad, reached the centre of the space, Mrs. Gracedew, -markedly moved, quite unreservedly engaged, came slowly forward to -meet him. "This, ladies and gentlemen," he mechanically quavered, -"is perhaps the most important feature--the grand old feudal, -baronial 'all. Being, from all accounts, the most ancient portion of -the edifice, it was erected in the very earliest ages." He paused a -moment, to mark his effect, then gave a little cough which had become, -obviously, in these great reaches of time, an essential part of the -trick. "Some do say," he dispassionately remarked, "in the course -of the fifteenth century." - -Mrs. Gracedew, who had visibly thrown herself into the working of the -charm, following him with vivid sympathy and hanging on his lips, took -the liberty, at this, of quite affectionately pouncing on him. "_I_ -say in the fourteenth, my dear--you're robbing us of a hundred -years!" - -Her victim yielded without a struggle. "I do seem, in them dark -old centuries, sometimes to trip a little." Yet the interruption of -his ancient order distinctly discomposed him, all the more that his -audience, gaping with a sense of the importance of the fine point, -moved in its mass a little nearer. Thus put upon his honour, he -endeavoured to address the group with a dignity undiminished. "The -Gothic roof is much admired, but the west gallery is a modern -addition." - -His discriminations had the note of culture, but his candour, all too -promptly, struck Mrs. Gracedew as excessive. "What in the name of -Methuselah do you call 'modern'? It was here at the visit of James -the First, in 1611, and is supposed to have served, in the charming -detail of its ornament, as a model for several that were constructed -in his reign. The great fireplace," she handsomely conceded, "_is_ -Jacobean." - -She had taken him up with such wondrous benignant authority--as if, -for her life, if they _were_ to have it, she couldn't help taking -care that they had it out; she had interposed with an assurance that -so converted her--as by the wave of a great wand, the motion of one of -her own free arms--from mere passive alien to domesticated dragon, that -poor Chivers could only assent with grateful obeisances. She so plunged -into the old book that he had quite lost his place. The two gentlemen -and the young lady, moreover, were held there by the magic of her -manner. His own, as he turned again to his cluster of sightseers, took -refuge in its last refinement. "The tapestry on the left Italian--the -elegant wood-work Flemish." - -Mrs. Gracedew was upon him again. "Excuse me if I just deprecate a -misconception. The elegant wood-work Italian--the tapestry on the left -Flemish." Suddenly she put it to him before them all, pleading as -familiarly and gaily as she had done when alone with him, and looking -now at the others, all round, gentry and poor folk alike, for sympathy -and support. She had an idea that made her dance. "Do you really -mind if _I_ just do it? Oh, I know how: I can do quite beautifully -the housekeeper last week at Castle Gaunt." She fraternised with -the company as if it were a game they must play with her, though -this first stage sufficiently hushed them. "How do you do? Ain't -it thrilling?" Then with a laugh as free as if, for a disguise, -she had thrown her handkerchief over her head or made an apron of her -tucked-up skirt, she passed to the grand manner. "Keep well together, -please--we're not doing puss-in-the-corner. I've my duty to all -parties--I can't be partial to one!" - -The contingent from Gossage had, after all, like most contingents, its -spokesman--a very erect little personage in a very new suit and a very -green necktie, with a very long face and upstanding hair. It was on -an evident sense of having been practically selected for encouragement -that he, in turn, made choice of a question which drew all eyes. "How -many parties, now, can you manage?" - -Mrs. Gracedew was superbly definite. "Two. The party up and the -party down." Chivers gasped at the way she dealt with this liberty, -and his impression was conspicuously deepened as she pointed to -one of the escutcheons in the high hall-window. "Observe in the -centre compartment the family arms." She did take his breath -away, for before he knew it she had crossed with the lightest but -surest of gestures to the black old portrait, on the opposite wall, -of a long-limbed gentleman in white trunk-hose. "And observe the -family legs!" Her method was wholly her own, irregular and broad; -she flew, familiarly, from the pavement to the roof and then dropped -from the roof to the pavement as if the whole air of the place were an -element in which she floated. "Observe the suit of armour worn at -Tewkesbury--observe the tattered banner carried at Blenheim." They -bobbed their heads wherever she pointed, but it would have come home -to any spectator that they saw her alone. This was the case quite as -much with the opposite trio--the case especially with Clement Yule, -who indeed made no pretence of keeping up with her signs. It was the -signs themselves he looked at--not at the subjects indicated. But he -never took his eyes from her, and it was as if, at last, she had been -peculiarly affected by a glimpse of his attention. All her own, for -a moment, frankly went back to him and was immediately determined by -it. "Observe, above all, that you're in one of the most interesting -old houses, of its type, in England; for which the ages have been -tender and the generations wise: letting it change so slowly that -there's always more left than taken--living their lives in it, but -letting it shape their lives!" - -Though this pretty speech had been unmistakeably addressed to the -younger of the temporary occupants of Covering End, it was the elder -who, on the spot, took it up. "A most striking and appropriate -tribute to a real historical monument!" Mr. Prodmore had a natural -ease that could deal handsomely with compliments, and he manifestly, -moreover, like a clever man, saw even more in such an explosion of them -than fully met the ear. "You do, madam, bring the whole thing out!" - -The visitor who had already with such impunity ventured had, on -this, a loud renewal of boldness, but for the benefit of a near -neighbour. "Doesn't she indeed, Jane, bring it out?" - -Mrs. Gracedew, with a friendly laugh, caught the words in their -passage. "But who in the world wants to keep it _in_? It isn't -a secret--it isn't a strange cat or a political party!" The -housekeeper, as she talked, had already dropped from her; her sense of -the place was too fresh for control, though instead of half an hour -it might have taken six months to become so fond. She soared again, -at random, to the noble spring of the roof. "Just look at those -lovely lines!" They all looked, all but Clement Yule, and several -of the larger company, subdued, overwhelmed, nudged each other with -strange sounds. Wherever she turned Mrs. Gracedew appeared to find a -pretext for breaking out. "Just look at the tone of that glass, and -the gilding of that leather, and the cutting of that oak, and the dear -old flags of the very floor." It came back, came back easily, her -impulse to appeal to the lawful heir, and she seemed, with her smile -of universal intelligence, just to demand the charity of another moment -for it. "To look, in this place, is to love!" - -A voice from the party she had in hand took it up with an artless -guffaw that resounded more than had doubtless been meant and that, at -any rate, was evidently the accompaniment of some private pinch applied -to one of the ladies. "I _say_--to love!" - -It was one of the ladies who very properly replied. "It depends on -who you look at!" - -Mr. Prodmore, in the geniality of the hour, made his profit of the -simple joke. "Do you hear _that_, Captain? You must look at the right -person!" - -Mrs. Gracedew certainly had not been looking at the wrong one. "I -don't think Captain Yule cares. He doesn't do justice----!" - -Though her face was still gay, she had faltered, which seemed to strike -the young man even more than if she had gone on. "To what, madam?" - -Well, on the chance she let him have it. "To the value of your -house." - -He took it beautifully. "I like to hear _you_ express it!" - -"I _can't_ express it!" She once more looked all round, and so -much more gravely than she had yet done that she might have appeared -in trouble. She tried but, with a sigh, broke down. "It's too -inexpressible!" - -This was a view of the case to which Mr. Prodmore, for his own reasons, -was not prepared to assent. Expression and formulation were what he -naturally most desired, and he had just encountered a fountain of these -things that he couldn't prematurely suffer to fail him. "Do what -you can for it, madam. It would bring it quite home." - -Thus excited, she gave with sudden sombre clearness another -try. "Well--the value's a fancy value!" - -Mr. Prodmore, receiving it as more than he could have hoped, turned -triumphant to his young friend. "Exactly what I told you!" - -Mrs. Gracedew explained indeed as if Mr. Prodmore's triumph was -not perhaps exactly what she had argued for. Still, the truth was too -great. "When a thing's unique, it's unique!" - -That was every bit Mr. Prodmore required. "It's unique!" - -This met, moreover, the perception of the gentleman in the -green necktie. "It's unique!" They all, in fact, demonstratively--almost -vociferously now--caught the point. - -Mrs. Gracedew, finding herself so sustained, and still with her eyes -on the lawful heirs, put it yet more strongly. "It's worth anything -you like." - -What was this but precisely what Mr. Prodmore had always striven to -prove? "Anything you like!" he richly reverberated. - -The pleasant discussion and the general interest seemed to bring them -all together. "Twenty thousand now?" one of the gentlemen from -Gossage archly inquired--a very young gentleman with an almost coaxing -voice, who blushed immensely as soon as he had spoken. - -He blushed still more at the way Mrs. Gracedew faced him. "I -wouldn't _look_ at twenty thousand!" - -Mr. Prodmore, on the other hand, was proportionately uplifted. "She -wouldn't look at twenty thousand!" he announced with intensity to -the Captain. - -The visitor who had been the first to speak gave a shrewder -guess. "Thirty, then, as it stands?" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked more and more responsible; she communed afresh -with the place; but she too evidently had her conscience. "It would -be giving it away!" - -Mr. Prodmore, at this, could scarcely contain himself. "It would be -giving it away!" - -The second speaker had meanwhile conceived the design of showing that, -though still crimson, he was not ashamed. "You'd hold out for -forty----?" - -Mrs. Gracedew required a minute to answer--a very marked minute during -which the whole place, pale old portraits and lurking old echoes and -all, might have made you feel how much depended on her; to the degree -that the consciousness in her face became finally a reason for her not -turning it to Gossage. "Fifty thousand, Captain Yule, is what I think -I should propose." - -If the place had seemed to listen it might have been the place that, -in admiring accents from the gentleman with the green tie, took up the -prodigious figure. "Fifty thousand pound!" - -It was echoed in a high note from the lady he had previously -addressed. "Fifty thousand!" - -Yet it was Mr. Prodmore who caught it up loudest and appeared to make -it go furthest. "Fifty thousand--fifty thousand!" Mrs. Gracedew had -put him in such spirits that he found on the spot, indicating to her -his young friend, both the proper humour and the proper rigour for any -question of what anyone might "propose." "He'll never part with -the dear old home!" - -Mrs. Gracedew could match at least the confidence. "Then I'll go -over it again while I have the chance." Her own humour enjoined that -she should drop into the housekeeper, in the perfect tone of which -character she addressed herself once more to the party. "We now pass -to the grand staircase." She gathered her band with a brave gesture, -but before she had fairly impelled them to the ascent she heard herself -rather sharply challenged by Captain Yule, who, during the previous -scene, had uttered no sound, yet had remained as attentive as he was -impenetrable. "Please let them pass without you!" - -She was taken by surprise. "And stay here with _you_?" - -"If you'll be so good. I want to speak to you." Turning then to -Chivers and frowning on the party, he delivered himself for the first -time as a person in a position. "For God's sake, remove them!" - -The old man, at this blast of impatience, instantly fluttered -forward. "We now pass to the grand staircase." - -They all passed, Chivers covering their scattered ascent as a shepherd -scales a hillside with his flock; but it became evident during the -manoeuvre that Cora Prodmore was quite out of tune. She had been -standing beyond and rather behind Captain Yule; but she now moved -quickly round and reached her new friend's right. "Mrs. Gracedew, -may _I_ speak to you?" - -Her father, before the reply could come, had taken up the -place. "_After_ Captain Yule, my dear." He was in a state of -positively polished lucidity. "You must make the most--don't you -see?--of the opportunity of the others!" - -He waved her to the staircase as one who knew what he was about, -but, while the young man, turning his back, moved consciously and -nervously away, the girl renewed her effort to provoke Mrs. Gracedew -to detain her. It happened, to her sorrow, that this lady appeared for -the moment, to the detriment of any free attention, to be absorbed -in Captain Yule's manner; so that Cora could scarce disengage her -without some air of invidious reference to it. Recognising as much, -she could only for two seconds, but with great yearning, parry her own -antagonist. "She'll _help_ me, I think, papa!" - -"That's exactly what strikes me, love!" he cheerfully replied. -"But _I'll_ help you too!" He gave her, toward the stairs, -a push proportioned both to his authority and to her weight; -and while she reluctantly climbed in the wake of the visitors, he laid -on Mrs. Gracedew's arm, with a portentous glance at Captain Yule, -a hand of commanding significance. "Just pile it on!" - -Her attention came back--she seemed to see. "He doesn't like it?" - -"Not half enough. Bring him round." - -Her eyes rested again on their companion, who had fidgeted further -away and who now, with his hands in his pockets and unaware of this -private passage, stood again in the open doorway and gazed into the -grey court. Something in the sight determined her. "I'll bring him -round." - -But at this moment Cora, pausing half-way up, sent down another -entreaty. "Mrs. Gracedew, will you see _me_?" - -The charming woman looked at her watch. "In ten minutes," she -smiled back. - -Mr. Prodmore, bland and assured, looked at his own. "You could -put him through in five--but I'll allow you twenty. There!" he -decisively cried to his daughter, whom he quickly rejoined and hustled -on her course. Mrs. Gracedew kissed after her a hand of vague comfort. - - -IV - -The silence that reigned between the pair might have been registered -as embarrassing had it lasted a trifle longer. Yule had continued to -turn his back, but he faced about, though he was distinctly grave, in -time to avert an awkwardness. "How do you come to know so much about -my house?" - -She was as distinctly not grave. "How do _you_ come to know so -little?" - -"It's not my fault," he said very gently. "A particular -combination of misfortunes has forbidden me, till this hour, to come -within a mile of it." - -These words evidently struck her as so exactly the right ones to -proceed from the lawful heir that such a felicity of misery could only -quicken her interest. He was plainly as good in his way as the old -butler--the particular combination of misfortunes corresponded to the -lifelong service. Her interest, none the less, in its turn, could only -quicken her pity, and all her emotions, we have already seen, found -prompt enough expression. What could any expression do indeed now but -mark the romantic reality? "Why, you poor thing!"--she came toward -him on the weary road. "Now that you've got here I hope at least -you'll stay." Their intercourse must pitch itself--so far as she -was concerned--in some key that would make up for things. "Do make -yourself comfortable. Don't mind me." - -Yule looked a shade less serious. "That's exactly what I wanted to -say to _you_!" - -She was struck with the way it came in. "Well, if you _had_ been -haughty, I shouldn't have been quite crushed, should I?" - -The young man's gravity, at this, completely yielded. "I'm never -haughty--oh, no!" - -She seemed even more amused. "Fortunately then, as _I'm_ never -crushed. I don't think," she added, "that I'm really as -crushable as you." - -The smile with which he received this failed to conceal completely -that it was something of a home thrust. "Aren't we really _all_ -crushable--by the right thing?" - -She considered a little. "Don't you mean rather by the wrong?" - -He had got, clearly, a trifle more accustomed to her being -extraordinary. "Are you sure we always know them apart?" - -She weighed the responsibility. "I always do. Don't you?" - -"Not quite every time!" - -"Oh," she replied, "I don't think, thank goodness, we have -positively 'every time' to distinguish." - -"Yet we must always act," he objected. - -She turned this over; then with her wonderful living look, "I'm -glad to hear it," she exclaimed, "because, I fear, I always -_do_! You'll certainly think," she added with more gravity, "that -I've taken a line today!" - -"Do you mean that of mistress of the house? Yes--you do seem in -possession!" - -"_You_ don't!" she honestly answered; after which, as to -attenuate a little the rigour of the charge: "You don't comfortably -look it, I mean. You don't look"--she was very serious--"as I -want you to." - -It was when she was most serious that she was funniest. "How do you -'want' me to look?" - -She endeavoured, while he watched her, to make up her mind, but seemed -only, after an instant, to recognise a difficulty. "When you look -at _me_, you're all right!" she sighed. It was an obstacle to her -lesson, and she cast her eyes about. "Look at that chimneypiece." - -"Well----?" he inquired as his eyes came back from it. - -"You mean to say it isn't lovely?" - -He returned to it without passion--gave a vivid sign of mere -disability. "I'm sure I don't know. I don't mean to say -anything. I'm a rank outsider." - -It had an instant effect on her--she almost pounced upon him. "Then -you must let me put you up!" - -"Up to what?" - -"Up to everything!"--his levity added to her earnestness. "You -were smoking when you came in," she said as she glanced -about. "Where's your cigarette?" - -The young man appreciatively produced another. "I thought perhaps I -mightn't--here." - -"You may everywhere." - -He bent his head to the information. "Everywhere." - -She laughed at his docility, yet could only wish to presume upon -it. "It's a rule of the house!" - -He took in the place with greater pleasure. "What delightful -rules!" - -"How could such a house have any others?"--she was already -launched again in her brave relation to it. "I _may_ go up just once -more--mayn't I--to the long gallery?" - -How could he tell? "The long gallery?" - -With an added glow she remembered. "I forgot you've never seen -it. Why, it's the leading thing about you!" She was full, on the -spot, of the pride of showing it. "Come right up!" - -Clement Yule, half seated on a table from which his long left leg -nervously swung, only looked at her and smiled and smoked. "There's -a party up." - -She remembered afresh. "So _we_ must be the party down? Well, you -must give me a chance. That long gallery's the principal thing I came -over for." - -She was strangest of all when she explained. "Where in heaven's -name did you come over from?" - -"Missoura Top, where I'm building--just in this style. I came for -plans and ideas," Mrs. Gracedew serenely pursued. "I felt I must -look right _at_ you." - -"But what did you know about us?" - -She kept it a moment as if it were too good to give him all at -once. "Everything!" - -He seemed indeed almost afraid to touch it. "At 'Missoura -Top'?" - -"Why not? It's a growing place--forty thousand the last census." -She hesitated; then as if her warrant should be slightly more personal: -"My husband left it to me." - -The young man presently changed his posture. "You're a widow?" - -Nothing was wanting to the simplicity of her quiet assent. "A -very lone woman." Her face, for a moment, had the vision of a long -distance. "My loneliness is great enough to want something big to -hold it--and my taste good enough to want something beautiful. You see, -I had your picture." - -Yule's innocence made a movement. "Mine?" - -Her smile reassured him; she nodded toward the main entrance. "A -water colour I chanced on in Boston." - -"In Boston?" - -She stared. "Haven't you heard of Boston either?" - -"Yes--but what has Boston heard of _me_?" - -"It wasn't 'you,' unfortunately--it was your divine south -front. The drawing struck me so that I got you up--in the books." - -He appeared, however, rather comically, but half to make it out, -or to gather at any rate that there was even more of it than he -feared. "Are we in the books?" - -"Did you never discover it?" Before his blankness, the dim -apprehension in his fine amused and troubled face of how much -there was of it, her frank, gay concern for him sprang again to the -front. "Where in heaven's name, Captain Yule, have _you_ come over -from?" - -He looked at her very kindly, but as if scarce expecting her to -follow. "The East End of London." - -She had followed perfectly, he saw the next instant, but she had by no -means equally accepted. "What were you doing there?" - -He could only put it, though a little over-consciously, very -simply. "Working, you see. When I left the army--it was much too -slow, unless one was personally a whirlwind of war--I began to make out -that, for a fighting man----" - -"There's always," she took him up, "somebody or other to go -for?" - -He considered her, while he smoked, with more confidence; as if she -might after all understand. "The enemy, yes--everywhere in force. I -went for _him_: misery and ignorance and vice--injustice and privilege -and wrong. Such as you see me----" - -"You're a rabid reformer?"--she understood beautifully. "I wish -we had you at Missoura Top!" - -He literally, for a moment, in the light of her beauty and familiarity, -appeared to measure his possible use there; then, looking round him -again, announced with a sigh that, predicament for predicament, his own -would do. "I fear my work is nearer home. I hope," he continued, -"since you're so good as to seem to care, to perform a part of that -work in the next House of Commons. My electors have wanted me----" - -"And you've wanted _them_," she lucidly put in, "and that has -been why you couldn't come down." - -"Yes, for all this last time. And before that, from my childhood up, -there was another reason." He took a few steps away and brought it -out as rather a shabby one. "A family feud." - -She proved to be quite delighted with it. "Oh, I'm so glad--I -_hoped_ I'd strike a 'feud'! That rounds it off, and spices it -up, and, for the heartbreak with which I take leave of you, just neatly -completes the fracture!" Her reference to her going seemed suddenly, -on this, to bring her back to a sense of proportion and propriety, and -she glanced about once more for some wrap or reticule. This, in turn, -however, was another recall. "Must I really wait--to go up?" - -He had watched her movement, had changed colour, had shifted his place, -had tossed away, plainly unwitting, a cigarette but half smoked; and -now he stood in her path to the staircase as if, still unsatisfied, -he abruptly sought a way to turn the tables. "Only till you tell me -this: if you absolutely meant, awhile ago, that this old thing is so -precious." - -She met his doubt with amazement and his density with compassion. "Do -you literally need I should _say_ it? Can you stand here and not feel -it?" If he had the misfortune of bandaged eyes, she could at least -rejoice in her own vision, which grew intenser with her having to speak -for it. She spoke as with a new rush of her impression. "It's a -place to love----" Yet to say the whole thing was not easy. - -"To love----?" he impatiently insisted. - -"Well, as you'd love a person!" If that was saying the whole -thing, saying the whole thing could only be to go. A sound from the -"party up" came down at that moment, and she took it so clearly -as a call that, for a sign of separation, she passed straight to the -stairs. "Good-bye!" - -The young man let her reach the foot, but then, though the greatest -width of the hall now divided them, spoke, anxiously and nervously, as -if the point she had just made brought them still more together. "I -think I 'feel' it, you know; but it's simply you--your presence, -as I may say, and the remarkable way you put it--that make me. I'm -afraid that in your absence----" He struck a match to smoke again. - -It gave her time apparently to make out something to pause for. "In -my absence?" - -He lit his cigarette. "I may come back----" - -"Come back?" she took him almost sharply up. "I should like to -see you _not_!" - -He smoked a moment. "I mean to my old idea----" - -She had quite turned round on him now. "Your old idea----?" - -He faced her over the width still between them. "Well--that one -_could_ give it up." - -Her stare, at this, fairly filled the space. "Give up Covering? How -in the world--or why?" - -"Because I can't afford to keep it." - -It brought her straight back, but only half-way: she pulled up short as -at a flash. "Can't you let it?" - -Again he smoked before answering. "Let it to _you_?" - -She gave a laugh, and her laugh brought her nearer. "I'd take it in -a minute!" - -Clement Yule remained grave. "I shouldn't have the face to charge -you a rent that would make it worth one's while, and I think -even you, dear lady"--his voice just trembled as he risked that -address--"wouldn't have the face to offer me one." He paused, -but something in his aspect and manner checked in her now any impulse -to read his meaning too soon. "My lovely inheritance is Dead Sea -fruit. It's mortgaged for all it's worth and I haven't the -means to pay the interest. If by a miracle I could scrape the money -together, it would leave me without a penny to live on." He puffed -his cigarette profusely. "So if I find the old home at last--I lose -it by the same luck!" - -Mrs. Gracedew had hung upon his words, and she seemed still to wait, -in visible horror, for something that would improve on them. But when -she had to take them for his last, "I never heard of anything -so awful!" she broke out. "Do you mean to say you can't -arrange----?" - -"Oh, yes," he promptly replied, "an arrangement--if that be the -name to give it--has been definitely proposed to me." - -"What's the matter, then?"--she had dropped into relief. "For -heaven's sake, you poor thing, definitely accept it!" - -He laughed, though with little joy, at her sweet simplifications. -"I've made up my mind in the last quarter of an hour that -I can't. It's such a peculiar case." - -Mrs. Gracedew frankly wondered; her bias was clearly sceptical. -"_How_ peculiar----?" - -He found the measure difficult to give. "Well--more peculiar than -most cases." - -Still she was not satisfied. "More peculiar than mine?" - -"Than yours?"--Clement Yule knew nothing about that. - -Something, at this, in his tone, his face--it might have been his -"British" density--seemed to pull her up. "I forgot--you don't -know mine. No matter. What _is_ yours?" - -He took a few steps in thought. "Well, the fact that I'm asked to -change." - -"To change what?" - -He wondered how he could put it; then at last, on his own side, -simplified. "My attitude." - -"Is that all?"--she was relieved again. "Well, you're not a -statue." - -"No, I'm not a statue; but on the other hand, don't you -see? I'm not a windmill." There was good-humour, none the less, in -his rigour. "The mortgages I speak of have all found their way, like -gregarious silly sheep, into the hands of one person--a devouring wolf, -a very rich, a very sharp man of money. He holds me in this manner -at his mercy. He consents to make things comfortable for me, but he -requires that, in return, I shall do something for him that--don't -you know?--rather sticks in my crop." - -It appeared on this light showing to stick for a moment even in -Mrs. Gracedew's. "Do you mean something wrong?" - -He had not a moment's hesitation. "Exceedingly so!" - -She turned it over as if pricing a Greek Aldus. "Anything immoral?" - -"Yes--I may literally call it immoral." - -She courted, however, frankly enough, the strict truth. "Too bad to -tell?" - -He indulged in another pensive fidget, then left her to judge. "He -wants me to give up----" Yet again he faltered. - -"To give up what?" What could it be, she appeared to ask, that was -barely nameable? - -He quite blushed to her indeed as he came to the point. "My -fundamental views." - -She was disappointed--she had waited for more. "Nothing but -_them_?" - -He met her with astonishment. "Surely they're quite enough, -when one has unfortunately"--he rather ruefully smiled--"so very -many!" - -She laughed aloud; this was frankly so odd a plea. "Well, _I've_ a -neat collection too, but I'd 'swap,' as they say in the West, the -whole set----!" She looked about the hall for something of equivalent -price; after which she pointed, as it caught her eye, to the great cave -of the fireplace. "I'd take _that_ set!" - -The young man scarcely followed. "The fire-irons?" - -"For the whole fundamental lot!" She gazed with real yearning at -the antique group. "_They're_ three hundred years old. Do you mean -to tell me your wretched 'views'----?" - -"Have anything like that age? No, thank God," Clement Yule -laughed, "my views--wretched as you please!--are quite in their -prime! They're a hungry little family that has got to be fed. They -keep me awake at night." - -"Then you must make up your sleep!" Her impatience grew with her -interest. "Listen to _me_!" - -"That would scarce be the way!" he returned. But he added -more sincerely: "You must surely see a fellow can't chuck his -politics." - -"'Chuck' them----?" - -"Well--sacrifice them." - -"I'd sacrifice mine," she cried, "for that old fire-back with -your arms!" He glanced at the object in question, but with such a -want of intelligence that she visibly resented it. "See how it has -stood!" - -"See how _I've_ stood!" he answered with spirit. "I've glowed -with a hotter fire than anything in any chimney, and the warmth and -light I diffuse have attracted no little attention. How can I consent -to reduce them to the state of that desolate hearth?" - -His companion, freshly struck with the fine details of the desolation, -had walked over to the chimney-corner, where, lost in her deeper -impression, she lingered and observed. At last she turned away with her -impatience controlled. "It's magnificent!" - -"The fire-back?" - -"Everything--everywhere. I don't understand your haggling." - -He hesitated. "That's because you're ignorant." Then seeing -in the light of her eye that he had applied to her the word in the -language she least liked, he hastened to attenuate. "I mean of -what's behind my reserves." - -She was silent in a way that made their talk more of a discussion than -if she had spoken. "What _is_ behind them?" she presently asked. - -"Why, my whole political history. Everything I've said, everything -I've done. My scorching addresses and letters, reproduced in all -the papers. I needn't go into details, but I'm a pure, passionate, -pledged Radical." - -Mrs. Gracedew looked him full in the face. "Well, what if you -_are_?" - -He broke into mirth at her tone. "Simply this--that I can't -therefore, from one day to the other, pop up at Gossage in the purple -pomp of the opposite camp. There's a want of transition. It may be -timid of me--it may be abject. But I can't." - -If she was not yet prepared to contest she was still less prepared to -surrender it, and she confined herself for the instant to smoothing -down with her foot the corner of an old rug. "Have you thought very -much about it?" - -He was vague. "About what?" - -"About what Mr. Prodmore wants you to do." - -He flushed up. "Oh, then, you know it's _he_?" - -"I'm not," she said, still gravely enough, "of an intelligence -absolutely infantile." - -"You're the cleverest Tory I've ever met!" he laughed. "I -didn't mean to mention my friend's name, but since _you've_ done -so----!" He gave up with a shrug his scruple. - -Oh, she had already cleared the ground of it! "It's he who's the -devouring wolf? It's he who holds your mortgages?" - -The very lucidity of her interest just checked his assent. "He holds -plenty of others, and he treats me very handsomely." - -She showed of a sudden an inconsequent face. "Do you call _that_ -handsome--such a condition?" - -He shed surprise. "Why, I thought it was just the condition you could -meet." - -She measured her inconsistency, but was not abashed. "We're -not talking of what _I_ can meet." Yet she found also a relief in -dropping the point. "Why doesn't he stand himself?" - -"Well, like other devouring wolves, he's not personally adored." - -"Not even," she asked, "when he offers such liberal terms?" - -Clement Yule had to explain. "I dare say he doesn't offer them to -everyone." - -"Only to you?"--at this she quite sprang. "You _are_ personally -adored; you will be still more if you stand; and that, you poor lamb, -is why he wants you!" - -The young man, obviously pleased to find her after all more at -one with him, accepted gracefully enough the burden her sympathy -imposed. "I'm the bearer of my name, I'm the representative of my -family; and to my family and my name--since you've led me to it--this -countryside has been for generations indulgently attached." - -She listened to him with a sentiment in her face that showed how now, -at last, she felt herself deal with the lawful heir. She seemed to -perceive it with a kind of passion. "You do of course what you will -with the countryside!" - -"Yes"--he went with her--"if we do it as genuine Yules. I'm -obliged of course to grant you that your genuine Yule's a Tory of -Tories. It's Mr. Prodmore's belief that I should carry Gossage in -that character, but in that character only. They won't look at me in -any other." - -It might have taxed a spectator to say in what character Mrs. Gracedew, -on this, for a little, considered him. "Don't be too sure of -people's not looking at you!" - -He blushed again, but he laughed. "We must leave out my personal -beauty." - -"We can't!" she replied with decision. "Don't we take in -Mr. Prodmore's?" - -Captain Yule was not prepared. "You call him beautiful?" - -"Hideous." She settled it; then pursued her investigation. -"What's the extraordinary interest that he attaches----?" - -"To the return of a Tory?" Here the young man _was_ prepared. -"Oh, his desire is born of his fear--his terror on behalf -of Property, which he sees, somehow, with an intensely Personal, with -a quite colossal 'P.' He has a great deal of that article, and very -little of anything else." - -Mrs. Gracedew, accepting provisionally his demonstration, had one -of her friendly recalls. "Do you call that nice daughter 'very -little'?" - -The young man looked quite at a loss. "Is she very big? I really -didn't notice her--and moreover she's just a part of the -Property. He thinks things are going too far." - -She sat straight down on a stiff chair; on which, with high -distinctness: "Well, they _are_!" - -He stood before her in the discomposure of her again thus appearing to -fail him. "Aren't you then a lover of justice?" - -"A passionate one!" She sat there as upright as if she held the -scales. "Where's the justice of your losing this house?" Generous -as well as strenuous, all her fairness thrown out by her dark old -high-backed seat, she put it to him as from the judicial bench. "To -keep Covering, you must carry Gossage!" - -The odd face he made at it might have betrayed a man dazzled. "As -a renegade?" - -"As a genuine Yule. What business have you to be anything -else?" She had already arranged it all. "You must close with -Mr. Prodmore--you must stand in the Tory interest." She hung fire -a moment; then as she got up: "If you will, I'll conduct your -canvass!" - -He stared at the distracting picture. "That puts the temptation -high!" - -But she brushed the mere picture away. "Ah, don't look at me as if -_I_ were the temptation! Look at this sweet old human home, and feel -all its gathered memories. Do you want to know what they do to me?" -She took the survey herself again, as if to be really sure. "They -speak to me for Mr. Prodmore." - -He followed with a systematic docility the direction of her eyes, -but as if with the result only of its again coming home to him that -there was no accounting for what things might do. "Well, there are -others than these, you know," he good-naturedly pleaded--"things -for which I've spoken, repeatedly and loudly, to others than you." -The very manner of his speaking on such occasions appeared, for that -matter, now to come back to him. "One's 'human home' is all -very well, but the rest of one's humanity is better!" She gave, -at this, a droll soft wail; she turned impatiently away. "I see -you're disgusted with me, and I'm sorry; but one must take one's -self as circumstances and experience have made one, and it's not my -fault, don't you know? if they've made me a very modern man. I see -something else in the world than the beauty of old show-houses and the -glory of old show-families. There are thousands of people in England -who can show no houses at all, and I don't feel it utterly shameful -to share their poor fate!" - -She had moved away with impatience, and it was the advantage of this -for her that the back she turned prevented him from seeing how intently -she listened. She seemed to continue to listen even after he had -stopped; but if that gave him a sense of success, he might have been -checked by the way she at last turned round with a sad and beautiful -headshake. "We share the poor fate of humanity whatever we do, and -we do something to help and console when we've something precious to -show. What on earth is more precious than what the ages have slowly -wrought? They've trusted us, in such a case, to keep it--to do -something, in our turn, for _them_." She shone out at him as if -her contention had the evidence of the noonday sun, and yet in her -generosity she superabounded and explained. "It's such a virtue, -in anything, to have lasted; it's such an honour, for anything, to -have been spared. To all strugglers from the wreck of time hold out a -pitying hand!" - -Yule, on this argument,--of a strain which even a good experience of -debate could scarce have prepared him to meet,--had not a congruous -rejoinder absolutely pat, and his hesitation unfortunately gave him -time to see how soon his companion made out that what had touched -him most in it was her particular air in presenting it. She would -manifestly have preferred he should have been floored by her mere moral -reach; yet he was aware that his own made no great show as he took -refuge in general pleasantry. "What a plea for looking backward, dear -lady, to come from Missoura Top!" - -"We're making a Past at Missoura Top as fast as ever we can, and -I should like to see you lay your hand on an hour of the one we've -made! It's a tight fit, as yet, I grant," she said, "and that's -just why I like, in yours, to find room, don't you see? to turn -round. You're _in_ it, over here, and you can't get out; so just -make the best of that and treat the thing as part of the fun!" - -"The whole of the fun, to me," the young man replied, "is in -hearing you defend it! It's like your defending hereditary gout or -chronic rheumatism and sore throat--the things I feel aching in every -old bone of these walls and groaning in every old draught that, I'm -sure, has for centuries blown through them." - -Mrs. Gracedew looked as if no woman could be shaken who was so prepared -to be just all round. "If there be aches--there may be--you're here -to soothe them, and if there be draughts--there _must_ be!--you're -here to stop them up. And do you know what _I'm_ here for? If I've -come so far and so straight, I've almost wondered myself. I've felt -with a kind of passion--but now I see _why_ I've felt." She moved -about the hall with the excitement of this perception, and, separated -from him at last by a distance across which he followed her discovery -with a visible suspense, she brought out the news. "I'm here for an -act of salvation--I'm here to avert a sacrifice!" - -So they stood a little, with more, for the minute, passing between them -than either really could say. She might have flung down a glove that -he decided on the whole, passing his hand over his head as the seat of -some confusion, not to pick up. Again, but flushed as well as smiling, -he sought the easiest cover. "You're here, I think, madam, to be a -memory for all my future!" - -Well, she was willing, she showed as she came nearer, to take it, -at the worst, for that. "You'll be one for mine, if I can see -you by that hearth. Why do you make such a fuss about changing your -politics? If you'd come to Missoura Top, you'd change them quick -enough!" Then, as she saw further and struck harder, her eyes grew -deep, her face even seemed to pale, and she paused, splendid and -serious, with the force of her plea. "What do politics amount to, -compared with religions? Parties and programmes come and go, but a -duty like this abides. There's nothing you can break with"--she -pressed him closer, ringing out--"that would be like breaking -_here_. The very words are violent and ugly--as much a sacrilege as -if you had been trusted with the key of the temple. This _is_ the -temple--don't profane it! Keep up the old altar kindly--you can't -set up a new one as good. You _must_ have beauty in your life, don't -you see?--that's the only way to make sure of it for the lives of -others. Keep leaving it to _them_, to all the poor others," she -went on with her bright irony, "and heaven only knows what will -become of it! Does it take one of _us_ to feel that?--to preach you -the truth? Then it's good, Captain Yule, we come right over--just to -see, you know, what you may happen to be about. We know," she went on -while her sense of proportion seemed to play into her sense of humour, -"what we haven't got, worse luck; so that if you've happily got -it you've got it also for _us_. You've got it in trust, you see, -and oh! we have an eye on you. You've had it so for me, all these -dear days that I've been drinking it in, that, to be grateful, I've -wanted regularly to _do_ something." With which, as if in the rich -confidence of having convinced him, she came so near as almost to touch -him. "Tell me now I shall have done it--I shall have kept you at your -post!" - -If he moved, on this, immediately further, it was with the oddest air -of seeking rather to study her remarks at his ease than to express an -independence of them. He kept, to this end, his face averted--he was -so completely now in intelligent possession of her own. The sacrifice -in question carried him even to the door of the court, where he once -more stood so long engaged that the persistent presentation of his back -might at last have suggested either a confession or a request. - -Mrs. Gracedew, meanwhile, a little spent with her sincerity, seated -herself again in the great chair, and if she sought, visibly enough, -to read a meaning into his movement, she had as little triumph for -one possible view of it as she had resentment for the other. The -possibility that he yielded left her after all as vague in respect to -a next step as the possibility that he merely wished to get rid of -her. The moments elapsed without her abdicating; and indeed when he -finally turned round his expression was an equal check to any power to -feel she might have won. "You have," he queerly smiled at her, "a -standpoint quite your own and a style of eloquence that the few scraps -of parliamentary training I've picked up don't seem at all to fit -me to deal with. Of course I don't pretend, you know, that I don't -_care_ for Covering." - -That, at all events, she could be glad to hear, if only perhaps for the -tone in it that was so almost comically ingenuous. But her relief was -reasonable and her exultation temperate. "You haven't even seen it -yet." She risked, however, a laugh. "Aren't you a bit afraid?" - -He took a minute to reply, then replied--as if to make it up--with a -grand collapse. "Yes; awfully. But if I am," he hastened in decency -to add, "it isn't only Covering that makes me." - -This left his friend apparently at a loss. "What else is it?" - -"Everything. But it doesn't in the least matter," he loosely -pursued. "You may be quite correct. When we talk of the house your -voice comes to me somehow as the wind in its old chimneys." - -Her amusement distinctly revived. "I hope you don't mean I roar!" - -He blushed again; there was no doubt he was confused. "No--nor yet -perhaps that you whistle! I don't believe the wind does either, -here. It only whispers," he sought gracefully to explain; "and it -sighs----" - -"And I hope," she broke in, "that it sometimes laughs!" - -The sound she gave only made him, as he looked at her, more -serious. "Whatever it does, it's all right." - -"All right?"--they were sufficiently together again for her to lay -her hand straight on his arm. "Then you promise?" - -"Promise what?" - -He had turned as pale as if she hurt him, and she took her hand -away. "To meet Mr. Prodmore." - -"Oh, dear, no; not yet!"--he quite recovered himself. "I must -wait--I must think." - -She looked disappointed, and there was a momentary silence. "When -have you to answer him?" - -"Oh, he gives me time!" Clement Yule spoke very much as he might -have said, "Oh, in two minutes!" - -"_I_ wouldn't give you time," Mrs. Gracedew cried with force--"I'd -give you a shaking! For God's sake, at any rate"--and she -really tried to push him off--"go upstairs!" - -"And literally _find_ the dreadful man?" This was so little his -personal idea that, distinctly dodging her pressure, he had already -reached the safe quarter. - -But it befell that at the same moment she saw Cora reappear on -the upper landing--a circumstance that promised her a still better -conclusion. "He's coming down!" - -Cora, in spite of this announcement, came down boldly enough without -him and made directly for Mrs. Gracedew, to whom her eyes had attached -themselves with an undeviating glare. Her plain purpose of treating -this lady as an isolated presence allowed their companion perfect -freedom to consider her arrival with sharp alarm. His disconcerted -stare seemed for a moment to balance; it wandered, gave a wild glance -at the open door, then searched the ascent of the staircase, in which, -apparently, it now found a coercion. "I'll go up!" he gasped; and -he took three steps at a time. - - -V - -The girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, straight upon the -wonderful lady. "I've come back to you--I want to speak to you!" -The need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly immense. "May I -confide in you?" - -Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both astonished and -amused. "You too?" she laughed. "Why it _is_ good we come -over!" - -"It is, indeed!" Cora gratefully echoed. "You were so very kind -to me and seemed to think me so curious." - -The mirth of her friend redoubled. "Well, I loved you for it, and it -was nothing moreover to what you thought _me_!" - -Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial--she only presented her frank -high colour. "I loved _you_. But I'm the worst!" she generously -added. "And I'm solitary." - -"Ah, so am I!" Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with -emphasis. "A _very_ queer thing always _is_ solitary! But, since we -have that link, by all means confide." - -"Well, I was met here by tremendous news." Cora produced it with a -purple glow. "He wants me to marry him!" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to -follow. "'He' wants you?" - -"Papa, of course. He has settled it!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. "Settled what?" - -"Why, the whole question. That I must take him." - -Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. "But, my -dear, take _whom_?" - -The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. "Why, Captain -Yule, who just went up." - -"Oh!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. "Oh!" she repeated, -looking straight away. - -"I thought you would know," Cora gently explained. - -Her friend's eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. "I -didn't know." Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been -sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things -more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. "Has Captain -Yule asked you?" - -"No, but he _will_"--Cora was clear as a bell. "He'll do it -to keep the house. It's mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it -back." - -Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it -spread. "By marrying you?" she quavered. - -Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the -subject. "By giving me his name and his position. They're awfully -great, and they're the price, don't you see?" she modestly -mentioned. "_My_ price. Papa's price. Papa wants them." - -Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp -was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. "But -his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful -politics!" - -Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. "You _know_ about -his dreadful politics? He's to change them," she recited, "to get -_me_. And if he gets me----" - -"He keeps the house?"--Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up. - -Cora continued to show her schooling. "I go _with_ it--he's to have -us both. But only," she admonishingly added, "if he changes. The -question is--_will_ he change?" - -Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. "I see. _Will_ -he change?" - -Cora's consideration of it went even further. "_Has_ he changed?" - -It went--and the effect was odd--a little too far for her companion, in -whom, just discernibly, it had touched the spring of impatience. "My -dear child, how in the world should _I_ know?" - -But Cora knew exactly how anyone would know. "He hasn't seemed to -care enough for the house. _Does_ he care?" - -Mrs. Gracedew moved away, passed over to the fireplace, and stood a -moment looking at the old armorial fire-back she had praised to its -master--yet not, it must be added, as if she particularly saw it. Then -as she faced about: "You had better ask him!" - -They stood thus confronted, with the fine old interval between them, -and the girl's air was for a moment that of considering such a -course. "If he does care," she said at last, "he'll propose." - -Mrs. Gracedew, from where she stood in relation to the stairs, saw at -this point the subject of their colloquy restored to view: Captain Yule -was just upon them--he had turned the upper landing. The sight of him -forced from her in a flash an ejaculation that she tried, however, -to keep private--"He does care!" She passed swiftly, before he -reached them, back to the girl and, in a quick whisper, but with full -conviction, let her have it: "He'll propose!" - -Her movement had made her friend aware, and the young man, hurrying -down, was now in the hall. Cora, at his hurry, looked dismay--"Then I -fly!" With which, casting about for a direction, she reached the door -to the court. - -Captain Yule, however, at this result of his return, expressed instant -regret. "I drive Miss Prodmore away!" - -Mrs. Gracedew, more quickly still, eased off the situation. "It's -all right!" She had embraced both parties with a smile, but it was -most liberal now for Cora. "Do you mind, one moment?"--it conveyed, -unmistakeably, a full intelligence and a fine explanation. "I've -something to say to Captain Yule." - -Cora stood in the doorway, robust against the garden-light, and looking -from one to the other. "Yes--but I've also something more to say -to _you_." - -"Do you mean now?" the young man asked. - -It was the first time he had spoken to her, and her hesitation might -have signified a maidenly flutter. "No--but before she goes." - -Mrs. Gracedew took it amiably up. "Come back, then; I'm not -going." And there was both dismissal and encouragement in the way -that, as on the occasion of the girl's former retreat, she blew her -a familiar kiss. Cora, still with her face to them, waited just enough -to show that she took it without a response; then, with a quick turn, -dashed out, while Mrs. Gracedew looked at their visitor in vague -surprise. "What's the matter with her?" - -She had turned away as soon as she spoke, moving as far from him as -she had moved a few moments before from Cora. The silence that, as he -watched her, followed her question would have been seen by a spectator -to be a hard one for either to break. "I don't know what's -the matter with her," he said at last; "I'm afraid I only know -what's the matter with _me_. It will doubtless give you pleasure to -learn," he added, "that I've closed with Mr. Prodmore." - -It was a speech that, strangely enough, seemed but half to dissipate -the hush. Mrs. Gracedew reached the great chimney again; again she -stood there with her face averted; and when she finally replied it -was in other words than he might have supposed himself naturally to -inspire. "I thought you said he gave you time." - -"Yes; but you produced just now so deep an effect on me that I -thought best not to take any." He appeared to listen to a sound from -above, and, for a moment, under this impulse, his eyes travelled about -almost as if he were alone. Then he completed, with deliberation, his -statement. "I came upon him right there, and I burnt my ships." - -Mrs. Gracedew continued not to meet his face. "You do what he -requires?" - -The young man was markedly, consciously caught. "I do what he -requires. I felt the tremendous force of all you said to me." - -She turned round on him now, as if perhaps with a slight sharpness, the -face of responsibility--even, it might be, of reproach. "So did I--or -I shouldn't have said it!" - -It was doubtless this element of justification in her tone that drew -from him a laugh a tiny trifle dry. "You're perhaps not aware that -you wield an influence of which it's not too much to say----" - -But he paused at the important point so long that she took him -up. "To say what?" - -"Well, that it's practically irresistible!" - -It sounded a little as if it had not been what he first meant; -but it made her, none the less, still graver and just faintly -ironical. "You've given me the most flattering proof of my -influence that I've ever enjoyed in my life!" - -He fixed her very hard, now distinctly so mystified that he could only -wonder what different recall of her previous attitude she would have -looked for. "This was inevitable, dear madam, from the moment you had -converted me--and in about three minutes too!--into the absolute echo -of your raptures." - -Nothing was, indeed, more extraordinary than her air of having suddenly -forgotten them. "My 'raptures'?" - -He was amazed. "Why, about my home." - -He might look her through and through, but she had no eyes for himself, -though she had now quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this -allusion. "Oh, yes--your home!" From where had she come back to -it? "It's a nice tattered, battered old thing." This account -of it was the more shrunken that her observation, even as she spoke, -freshly went the rounds. "It has defects of course"--with this -renewed attention they appeared suddenly to strike her. They had -popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might have been a matter -of conscience. However, her conscience dropped. "But it's no use -mentioning them now!" - -They had half an hour earlier been vividly present to himself, but -to see her thus oddly pulled up by them was to forget on the spot the -ground he had taken. "I'm particularly sorry," he returned with -some spirit, "that you didn't mention them before!" - -At this imputation of inconsequence, of a levity not, after all, -without its excuse, Mrs. Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her -resentment down, to an effort not quite successfully disguised. It -was in a tone, nevertheless, all the more mild in intention that she -reminded him of where he had equally failed. "If you had really gone -over the house, as I almost went on my knees to you to do, you might -have discovered some of them yourself!" - -"How can you say that," the young man asked with heat, "when -I was precisely in the very act of it? It was just _because_ I was -that the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore; on which, feeling -that I must come to it sooner or later, I simply gave in to him on the -spot--yielded him, to have it well over, the whole of his point." - -She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, -from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It -left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered -her tone. "Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you -want!" - -But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons -for that. "I only know it so far as _you_ know it! I struck while the -iron was hot--or at any rate while the hammer was." - -"Of course I recognise"--she adopted his image with her restored -gaiety--"that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I -blazed up, and I know that when I burn----" - -She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. "When you burn?" - -"Well, I do it as Chicago does." - -He also could laugh out now. "Isn't that usually down to the -ground?" - -Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. "As high as -the sky!" Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real -question. "I suppose you've still formalities to go through." - -"With Mr. Prodmore?" Well, he would suppose it too if she -liked. "Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!" - -This sketch of them made her wonder. "You mean they'll take so -very, very long?" - -He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. "Every hour, -every month, that I can possibly make them last!" - -She was with him here, however, but to a certain point. "You -mustn't drag them out _too_ much--must you? Won't he think in that -case you may want to retract?" - -Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore under this delusion, and -with a success that had a quick, odd result. "I shouldn't be so -terribly upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did!" - -His manner, with its slight bravado, left her proportionately -shocked. "Oh, it would never do to give him any colour whatever for -supposing you to have any doubt that, as one may say, you've pledged -your honour." - -He devoted to this proposition more thought than its simplicity -would have seemed to demand; but after a minute, at all events, his -intelligence triumphed. "Of course not--not when I _haven't_ any -doubt!" - -Though his intelligence had triumphed, she still wished to show she was -there to support it. "How can you _possibly_ have any--any more than -you can possibly have that one's honour is everything in life?" And -her charming eyes expressed to him her need to feel that he was quite -at one with her on _that_ point. - -He could give her every assurance. "Oh, yes--everything in life!" - -It did her much good, brought back the rest of her brightness. -"Wasn't it just of the question of the honour of things -that we talked awhile ago--and of the difficulty of sometimes keeping -our sense of it clear? There's no more to be said therefore," she -went on with the faintest soft sigh about it, "except that I leave -you to your ancient glory as I leave you to your strict duty." She -had these things there before her; they might have been a well-spread -board from which she turned away fasting. "I hope you'll do justice -to dear old Covering in spite of its weak points, and I hope above all -you'll not be incommoded----" - -As she hesitated here he was too intent. "Incommoded----?" - -She saw it better than she could express it. "Well, by such a -rage----!" - -He challenged this description with a strange gleam. "You suppose it -will be a rage?" - -She laughed out at his look. "Are you afraid of the love that -kills?" - -He grew singularly grave. "_Will_ it kill----?" - -"Great passions _have_!"--she was highly amused. - -But he could only stare. "Is it a great passion?" - -"Surely--when so many feel it!" - -He was fairly bewildered. "But how many----?" - -She reckoned them up. "Let's see. If you count them all----" - -"'All'?" Clement Yule gasped. - -She looked at him, in turn, slightly mystified. "I see. You knock off -some. About half?" - -It was too obscure--he broke down. "Whom on earth are you talking -about?" - -"Why, the electors----" - -"Of Gossage?"--he leaped at it. "Oh!" - -"I got the whole thing up--there are six thousand. It's such a fine -figure!" said Mrs. Gracedew. - -He had sharply passed from her, to cover his mistake, and it carried -him half round the hall. Then, as if aware that this pause itself -compromised him, he came back confusedly and with her last words in his -ear. "_Has_ she a fine figure?" - -But her own thoughts were off. "'She'?" - -He blushed and recovered himself. "Aren't we talking----" - -"Of Gossage? Oh, yes--she has every charm! Good-bye," said -Mrs. Gracedew. - -He pulled, at this, the longest face, but was kept dumb a moment by -the very decision with which she again began to gather herself. It -held him helpless, and there was finally real despair in his retarded -protest. "You don't mean to say you're going?" - -"You don't mean to say you're surprised at it? Haven't I -done," she luminously asked, "what I told you I had been so -mystically moved to come for?" She recalled to him by her renewed -supreme survey the limited character of this errand, which she then in -a brisk familiar word expressed to the house itself. "You dear old -thing--you're saved!" - -Clement Yule might on the other hand, by his simultaneous action, -have given himself out for lost. "For God's sake," he cried as -he circled earnestly round her, "don't go till I can come back -to thank you!" He pulled out his watch. "I promised to return -immediately to Prodmore." - -This completely settled his visitor. "Then don't let me, for a -moment more, keep you away from him. You must have such lots"--it -went almost without saying--"to talk comfortably over." - -The young man's embrace of that was, in his restless movement, to -roam to the end of the hall furthest from the stairs. But here his -assent was entire. "I certainly feel, you know, that I must see him -again." He rambled even to the open door and looked with incoherence -into the court. "Yes, decidedly, I _must_!" - -"Is he out there?" Mrs. Gracedew lightly asked. - -He turned short round. "No--I left him in the long gallery." - -"You _saw_ that, then?"--she flashed back into eagerness. -"Isn't it lovely?" - -Clement Yule rather wondered. "I didn't notice it. How _could_ -I?" - -His face was so woeful that she broke into a laugh. "How _couldn't_ -you? Notice it now, then. Go up to him!" - -He crossed at last to the staircase, but at the foot he stopped -again. "Will you wait for me?" - -He had such an air of proposing a bargain, of making the wait a -condition, that she had to look it well in the face. The result of -her doing so, however, was apparently a strong sense that she could -give him no pledge. Her silence, after a moment, expressed that; but, -for a further emphasis, moving away, she sank suddenly into the chair -she had already occupied and in which, serious again and very upright, -she continued to withhold her promise. "Go up to him!" she simply -repeated. He obeyed, with an abrupt turn, mounting briskly enough -several steps, but pausing midway and looking back at her as if he were -after all irresolute. He was in fact so much so that, at the sight of -her still in her chair and alone by his cold hearth, he descended a -few steps again and seemed, with too much decidedly on his mind, on the -point of breaking out. She had sat a minute in such thought, figuring -him clearly as gone, that at the sound of his return she sprang up -with a protest. This checked him afresh, and he remained where he had -paused, still on the ascent and exchanging with her a look to which -neither party was inspired, oddly enough, to contribute a word. It -struck him, without words, at all events, as enough, and he now took -his upward course at such a pace that he presently disappeared. She -listened awhile to his retreating tread; then her own, on the old flags -of the hall, became rapid, though, it may perhaps be added, directed -to no visible end. It conveyed her, in the great space, from point to -point, but she now for the first time moved there without attention and -without joy, her course determined by a series of such inward throbs as -might have been the suppressed beats of a speech. A real observer, had -such a monster been present, would have followed this tacit evolution -from sign to sign and from shade to shade. "Why didn't he tell me -_all_?--But it was none of my business!--What does he mean to do?--What -should he do but what he _has_ done?--And what _can_ he do, when he's -so deeply committed, when he's practically engaged, when he's just -the same as married--and buried?--The thing for _me_ to 'do' is -just to pull up short and bundle out: to remove from the scene they -encumber the numerous fragments--well, of what?" - -Her thought was plainly arrested by the sight of Cora Prodmore, who, -returning from the garden, reappeared first in the court and then in -the open doorway. Mrs. Gracedew's was a thought, however, that, even -when desperate, was never quite vanquished, and it found a presentable -public solution in the pieces of the vase smashed by Chivers and just -then, on the table where he had laid them, catching her eye. "Of -my old Chelsea pot!" Her gay, sad headshake as she took one of them -up pronounced for Cora's benefit its funeral oration. She laid the -morsel thoughtfully down, while her visitor seemed with simple dismay -to read the story. - - -VI - -"Has he been _breaking_----?" the girl asked in horror. - -Mrs. Gracedew laughingly tapped her heart. "Yes, we've had a -scene! He went up again to your father." - -Cora was disconcerted. "Papa's not there. He just came down to me -by the other way." - -"Then he can join you here," said Mrs. Gracedew with instant -resignation. "I'm going." - -"Just when I've come back to you--at the risk," Cora made bold to -throw off, "of again interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone, -your conversation with Captain Yule?" - -But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. "I've nothing to say to -Captain Yule." - -Cora picked it up for another toss. "You had a good deal to say a few -minutes ago!" - -"Well, I've said it, and it's over. I've nothing more to say -at all," Mrs. Gracedew insisted. But her announcement of departure -left her on this occasion, as each of its predecessors had done, with -a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. "What has become of my -delightful 'party'?" - -"They've been dismissed, through the grounds, by the other -door. But they mentioned," the girl pursued, "the probable arrival -of a fresh lot." - -Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival of interest as fairly -amounted to yearning. "Why, what times you have! _You_," she -nevertheless promptly decreed, "must take the fresh lot--since the -house is now practically yours!" - -Poor Cora looked blank. "Mine?" - -Her companion matched her stare. "Why, if you're going to marry -Captain Yule." - -Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. "I'm _not_ going to marry -Captain Yule!" - -Her friend as quickly paled again. "Why on earth then did you tell me -only ten minutes ago that you were?" - -Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. "I told you -nothing of the sort. I only told you"--she was almost indignantly -positive--"that he had been ordered me!" - -It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away to indulge an emotion that -presently put on the form of extravagant mirth. "Like a dose of -medicine or a course of baths?" - -The girl's gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. "As a remedy -for the single life." Oh, she had mastered the matter now! "But I -won't take him!" - -"Ah, then, why didn't you let me know?" Mrs. Gracedew panted. - -"I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted -us." Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not -stupid. "It's just to let you know that I'm here now." - -Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew, -suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion's fixed -eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. "Excuse me--I -misunderstood. I somehow took for granted----!" She stopped, a trifle -awkwardly--suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably -seen it. - -"You took for granted I'd jump at him? Well, you can take it for -granted I won't!" - -Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. "You -prefer the single life?" - -"No--but I don't prefer _him_!" Cora was crystal-bright. - -Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding; -it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish--which she then did, -however, with immense eagerness. "You prefer someone else?" -Cora's promptitude dropped at this, and, starting to hear it, as -you might well have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she -abruptly moved away. A minute's sense of her scruple was enough for -Mrs. Gracedew: this was proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and -high benevolence with which that lady went on. She had looked very -hard, first, at one of the old warriors hung on the old wall, and -almost spoke as if he represented their host. "He seems remarkably -clever." - -Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped about. "Then why -don't you marry him yourself?" - -Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. "Well, I've got fifty -reasons! I rather think one of them must be that he hasn't happened -to ask me." - -It was a speech, however, that her visitor could easily better. "I -haven't got fifty reasons, but I _have_ got one." - -Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a stroke of wit. "You mean -your case is one of those in which safety is _not_ in numbers?" And -then on Cora's visibly not understanding: "It _is_ when reasons are -bad that one needs so many!" - -The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the -simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. "My reason is -awfully good." - -Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. "I see. An older friend." - -Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time -practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew's extended -encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing -out. "I've been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice, -to tell you about him!" It came in a small clear torrent, a soft -tumble-out of sincerity. "After we parted--you and I--at the station, -he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him -which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in -a state of ignorance that I don't know whether to regard as desirable -or dreadful." - -Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the -old family solicitor. "You want me then to _inform_ your father?" -It was a wonderful intonation. - -Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly have become under this -touch the prodigal with a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look -out of a blurred office window-pane at a grey London sky; then she -broke away. "I really don't know _what_ I want. I think," she -honestly admitted, "I just want kindness." - -Mrs. Gracedew's expression might have hinted--but not for too -long--that Bedford Row was an odd place to apply for it; she appeared -for an instant to make the revolving office-chair creak. "What do you -mean by kindness?" - -Cora was a model client--she perfectly knew. "I mean help." - -Mrs. Gracedew closed an inkstand with a clap and locked a couple of -drawers. "What do you mean by help?" - -The client's inevitable answer seemed to perch on the girl's lips: -"A thousand pounds." But it came out in another, in a much more -charming form. "I mean that I love him." - -The family solicitor got up: it was a high figure. "And does he love -_you_?" - -Cora hesitated. "Ask _him_." - -Mrs. Gracedew weighed the necessity. "Where is he?" - -"Waiting." And the girl's glance, removed from her companion and -wandering aloft and through space, gave the scale of his patience. - -Her adviser, however, required the detail. "But _where_?" - -Cora briefly demurred again. "In that funny old grotto." - -Mrs. Gracedew thought. "Funny?" - -"Half-way from the park gate. It's very _nice_!" Cora more -eagerly added. - -Mrs. Gracedew continued to reflect. "Oh, I know it!" She spoke as -if she had known it most of her life. - -Her tone encouraged her client. "Then will you see him?" - -"No." This time it was almost dry. - -"No?" - -"No. If you want help----" Mrs. Gracedew, still musing, explained. - -"Yes?" - -"Well--you want a great deal." - -"Oh, so much!"--Cora but too woefully took it in. "I want," she -quavered, "all there is!" - -"Well--you shall have it." - -"All there is?"--she convulsively held her to it. - -Mrs. Gracedew had finally mastered it. "I'll see your father." - -"You dear, delicious lady!" Her young friend had again encompassed -her; but, passive and preoccupied, she showed some of the chill of -apprehension. It was indeed as if to meet this that Cora went earnestly -on: "He's intensely sympathetic!" - -"Your father?" Mrs. Gracedew had her reserves. - -"Oh, no--the other person. I so believe in him!" Cora cried. - -Mrs. Gracedew looked at her a moment. "Then so do I--and I like him -for believing in _you_." - -"Oh, he does that," the girl hurried on, "far more than Captain -Yule--I could see just with one glance that _he_ doesn't at all. Papa -has of course seen the young man I mean, but we've been so sure -papa would hate it that we've had to be awfully careful. He's the -son of the richest man at Bellborough, he's Granny's godson, and -he'll inherit his father's business, which is simply immense. Oh, -from the point of view of the things he's _in_"--and Cora found -herself sharp on this--"he's quite as good as papa himself. He -has been away for three days, and if he met me at the station, where, -on his way back, he has to change, it was by the merest chance in the -world. I wouldn't love him," she brilliantly wound up, "if he -wasn't nice." - -"A man's always nice if you _will_ love him!" Mrs. Gracedew -laughed. - -Her young friend more than met it. "He's nicer still if he -'will' love _you_!" - -But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. "Nicer of course than if he -won't! But are you sure this gentleman _does_ love you?" - -"As sure as that the other one doesn't." - -"Ah, but the other one doesn't know you." - -"Yes, thank goodness--and never shall!" - -Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the girl's meeting her -eyes turned away with a quick laugh. "You mean of course till it's -too late." - -"Altogether!" Cora spoke as with quite the measure of the time. - -Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, appeared to accept her -showing. "Then what's the matter?" she impatiently asked. - -"The matter?" - -"Your father's objection to the gentleman in the grotto." - -Cora now for the first time faltered. "His name." - -This for a moment pulled up her friend, in whom, however, relief seemed -to contend with alarm. "Only his name?" - -"Yes, but----" Cora's eyes rolled. - -Her companion invitingly laughed. "But it's enough?" - -Her roll confessingly fixed itself. "_Not_ enough--that's just the -trouble!" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. "What then _is_ it?" - -Cora faced the music. "Pegg." - -Mrs. Gracedew stared. "Nothing else?" - -"Nothing to speak of." The girl was quite candid now. "Hall." - -"Nothing before----?" - -"Not a letter." - -"Hall Pegg?" Mrs. Gracedew had winced, but she quickly recovered -herself, and, for a further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to -form the sound only with her mind. The sound she formed with her lips -was, after an instant, simply "Oh!" - -It was to the combination of the spoken and the unspoken that Cora -desperately replied. "It sounds like a hat-rack!" - -"'Hall Pegg'? 'Hall Pegg'?" Mrs. Gracedew now made it, like -a questionable coin, ring upon the counter. But it lay there as lead -and without, for a moment, her taking it up again. "How many has your -father?" she inquired instead. - -"How many names?" Miss Prodmore seemed dimly to see that there was -no hope in that. "He somehow makes out five." - -"Oh, that's _too_ many!" Mrs. Gracedew jeeringly declared. - -"Papa unfortunately doesn't think so, when Captain Yule, I believe, -has six." - -"Six?" Mrs. Gracedew, alert, looked as if that might be different. - -"Papa, in the morning-room, told me them all." - -Mrs. Gracedew visibly considered, then for a moment dropped -Mr. Pegg. "And what _are_ they!" - -"Oh, all sorts. 'Marmaduke Clement----'" Cora tried to recall. - -Mrs. Gracedew, however, had already checked her. "I see--'Marmaduke -Clement' will do." She appeared for a minute intent, but, as with -an energetic stoop, she picked up Mr. Pegg. "But so will yours," -she said, with decision. - -"Mine?--you mean _his_!" - -"The same thing--what you'll _be_." - -"Mrs. Hall Pegg!"--Cora tried it, with resolution, loudly. - -It fell a little flat in the noble space, but Mrs. Gracedew's manner -quickly covered it. "It won't make you a bit less charming." - -Cora wondered--she hoped. "Only for papa." - -And what was _he_? Mrs. Gracedew by this time seemed assentingly to -ask. "Never for _me_!" she soothingly declared. - -Cora took this in with deep thanks that gripped and patted her -companion's hand. "You accept it more than gracefully. But if you -could only make _him_----!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. "'Him'? Mr. Pegg?" - -"No--he naturally _has_ to accept it. But papa." - -She looked harder still at this greater feat, then seemed to see -light. "Well, it will be difficult--but I will." - -Doubt paled before it. "Oh, you heavenly thing!" - -Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by this appreciation, went a -step further. "And I'll make him _say_ he does!" - -Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. "Oh, if I could only hear -him!" - -Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. "It will be enough if -_I_ do." - -Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt accommodation, gave the -comfortable measure of her faith. "Yes--I think it will." She was -quite ready to retire. "I'll give you time." - -"Thank you," said Mrs. Gracedew; "but before you give me time -give me something better." - -This pulled the girl up a little, as if in parting with her secret she -had parted with her all. "Something better?" - -"If I help you, you know," Mrs. Gracedew explained, "you must -help me." - -"But how?" - -"By a clear assurance." The charming woman's fine face now gave -the real example of clearness. "That if Captain Yule should propose -to you, you would unconditionally refuse him." - -Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only that. "With my dying -breath!" - -Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. "Will you make it even -a promise?" - -The girl looked about her in solid certainty. "Do you want me to -sign----?" - -Mrs. Gracedew was quick. "No, don't sign!" - -Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. "Then what shall I do?" - -Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few vague steps faced her -again. "Kiss me." - -Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had scarce been sealed -before the younger of the parties was already at the passage to the -front. "We meet of course at the station." - -Mrs. Gracedew thought. "If all goes well. But where shall you be -meanwhile?" - -Her confederate had no need to think. "Can't you guess?" - -The bang of the house-door, the next minute, so helped the answer to -the riddle as fairly to force it, when she found herself alone, from -her lips. "At that funny old grotto? Well," she sighed, "I _like_ -funny old grottos!" She found herself alone, however, only for a -minute; Mr. Prodmore's formidable presence had darkened the door from -the court. - - -VII - -"My daughter's not here?" he demanded from the threshold. - -"Your daughter's not here." She had rapidly got under arms. -"But it's a convenience to me, Mr. Prodmore, that _you_ are, -for I've something very particular to ask you." - -Her interlocutor crossed straight to the morning-room. "I shall be -delighted to answer your question, but I must first put my hand on Miss -Prodmore." This hand the next instant stayed itself on the latch, and -he appealed to the amiable visitor. "Unless indeed she's occupied -in there with Captain Yule?" - -The amiable visitor met the appeal. "I don't think she's -occupied--anywhere--with Captain Yule." - -Mr. Prodmore came straight away from the door. "Then where the deuce -_is_ Captain Yule?" - -The amiable visitor turned a trifle less direct. "His absence, for -which I'm responsible, is just what renders the inquiry I speak of -to you possible." She had already assumed a most inquiring air, yet -it was soon clear that she needed every advantage her manner could give -her. "What will you take----? what will you take----?" - -It had the sound, as she faltered, of a general question, and -Mr. Prodmore raised his eyebrows. "Take? Nothing, thank you--I've -just had a cup of tea." Then suddenly, as if on the broad hint: -"Won't _you_ have one?" - -"Yes, with pleasure--but not yet." She looked about her again; she -was now at close quarters and, concentrated, anxious, pressed her hand -a moment to her brow. - -This struck her companion. "Don't you think you'd be better for -it immediately?" - -"No." She was positive. "No." Her eyes consciously wandered. -"I want to know how you'd value----" - -He took her, as his own followed them, more quickly up, expanding in -the presence of such a tribute from a real connoisseur. "One of these -charming old things that take your fancy?" - -She looked at him straight now. "They _all_ take my fancy!" - -"All?" He enjoyed it as the joke of a rich person--the kind of joke -he sometimes made himself. - -"Every single one!" said Mrs. Gracedew. Then with still a finer -shade of the familiar: "Should you be willing to treat, Mr. Prodmore, -for your interest in this property?" - -He threw back his head: she had scattered over the word "interest" -such a friendly, faded colour. She was either _not_ joking or was rich -indeed; and there was a place always kept in his conversation for the -arrival of money, as there is always a box in a well-appointed theatre -for that of royalty. "Am I to take it from you then that you _know_ -about my interest----?" - -"Everything!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a world of wit. - -"Excuse me, madam!"--he himself was now more reserved. "You -don't know everything if you don't know that my interest--considerable -as it might well have struck you--has just ceased to exist. -I've given it up"--Mr. Prodmore softened the blow--"for -a handsome equivalent." - -The blow fell indeed light enough. "You mean for a handsome -son-in-law?" - -"It will be by some such description as the term you use that I -shall doubtless, in the future, permit myself, in the common course, -to allude to Captain Yule. Unless indeed I call him----" But -Mr. Prodmore dropped the bolder thought. "It will depend on what he -calls _me_." - -Mrs. Gracedew covered him a moment with the largeness of her -charity. "Won't it depend a little on what your daughter herself -calls him?" - -Mr. Prodmore seriously considered. "No. That," he declared with -delicacy, "will be between the happy pair." - -"Am I to take it from you then--I adopt your excellent phrase," -Mrs. Gracedew said--"that Miss Prodmore has already accepted him?" - -Her companion, with his head still in the air, seemed to signify that -he simply put it down on the table and that she could take it or not -as she liked. "Her character--formed by my assiduous care--enables me -to locate her, I may say even to _time_ her, from moment to moment." -His massive watch, as he opened it, further sustained him in this -process. "It's my assured conviction that she's accepting him -while we stand here." - -Mrs. Gracedew was so affected by his assured conviction that, with -an odd, inarticulate sound, she forbore to stand longer--she rapidly -moved away, taking one of the brief excursions of step and sense that -had been for her, from the first, under the noble roof, so many dumb -but decisive communions. But it was soon over, and she floated back on -a wave that showed her to be, since she had let herself go, by this -time quite in the swing and describing a considerable curve. "Dear -Mr. Prodmore, why are you so imprudent as to make your daughter -afraid of you? You should have taught her to confide in you. She has -clearly shown me," she almost soothingly pursued, "that she _can_ -confide." - -Mr. Prodmore, however, suddenly starting, looked far from -soothed. "She confides in _you_?" - -"You may take it from me!" Mrs. Gracedew laughed. "Let me suggest -that, as fortune has thrown us together a minute, you follow her good -example." She put out a reassuring hand--she could perfectly show -him the way. "Tell me, for instance, the ground of your objection -to poor Mr. Pegg. I mean Mr. Pegg of Bellborough, Mr. Hall Pegg, the -godson of your daughter's grandmother and the associate of his father -in their flourishing house; to whom (as _he_ is to _it_ and to _her_) -Miss Prodmore's devotedly attached." - -Mr. Prodmore had in the course of this speech availed himself of the -support of the nearest chair, where, in spite of his subsidence, he -appeared in his amazement twice his natural size. "It has gone so far -as _that_?" - -She rose before him as if in triumph. "It has gone so far that you -had better let it go the rest of the way!" - -He had lost breath, but he had positively gained dignity. "It's too -monstrous, to have plotted to keep me in the dark!" - -"Why, it's only when you're kept in the dark that your daughter's -kept in the light!" She argued it with a candour that might -have served for brilliancy. "It's at her own earnest request -that I plead to you for her liberty of choice. She's an honest -girl--perhaps even a peculiar girl; and she's not a baby. You -over-do, I think, the nursing. She has a perfect right to her -preference." - -Poor Mr. Prodmore couldn't help taking it from her, and, this being -the case, he still took it in the most convenient way. "And pray -haven't I a perfect right to mine?" he asked from his chair. - -She fairly seemed to serve it up to him--to put down the dish with a -flourish. "Not at her expense. You expect her to give up too much." - -"And what has she," he appealed, "expected _me_ to give up? What -but the desire of my heart and the dream of my life? Captain Yule -announced to me but a few minutes since his intention to offer her his -hand." - -She faced him on it as over the table. "Well, if he does, I think -he'll simply find----" - -"Find what?" They looked at each other hard. - -"Why, that she won't have it." - -Oh, Mr. Prodmore now sprang up. "She _will_!" - -"She won't!" Mrs. Gracedew more distinctly repeated. - -"She _shall_!" returned her adversary, making for the staircase -with the evident sense of where reinforcement might be most required. - -Mrs. Gracedew, however, with a spring, was well before him. "She -shan't!" She spoke with positive passion and practically so barred -the way that he stood arrested and bewildered, and they faced each -other, for a flash, like enemies. But it all went out, on her part, in -a flash too--in a sudden wonderful smile. "Now tell me how much!" - -Mr. Prodmore continued to glare--the sweat was on his brow. But while -he slowly wiped it with a pocket-handkerchief of splendid scarlet -silk, he remained so silent that he would have had for a spectator the -effect of meeting in a manner her question. More formally to answer -it he had at last to turn away. "How can I tell you anything so -preposterous?" - -She was all ready to inform him. "Simply by computing the total -amount to which, for your benefit, this unhappy estate is burdened." -He listened with his back presented, but that appeared to strike her, -as she fixed this expanse, as an encouragement to proceed. "If -I've troubled you by showing you that your speculation is built on -the sand, let me atone for it by my eagerness to take off your hands an -investment from which you derive so little profit." - -He at last gave her his attention, but quite as if there were nothing -in it. "And pray what profit will _you_ derive----?" - -"Ah, that's my own secret!" She would show him as well no glimpse -of it--her laugh but rattled the box. "I want this house!" - -"So do I, damn me!" he roundly returned; "and that's why I've -practically paid for it!" He stuffed away his pocket-handkerchief. - -There was nevertheless something in her that could hold him, and it -came out, after an instant, quietly and reasonably enough. "I'll -practically pay for it, Mr. Prodmore--if you'll only tell me your -figure." - -"My figure?" - -"Your figure." - -Mr. Prodmore waited--then removed his eyes from her face. He appeared -to have waited on purpose to let her hope of a soft answer fall from a -greater height. "My figure would be quite my own!" - -"Then it will match, in that respect," Mrs. Gracedew laughed, -"this overture, which is quite _my_ own! As soon as you've let me -know it I cable to Missoura Top to have the money sent right out to -you." - -Mr. Prodmore surveyed in a superior manner this artless picture of a -stroke of business. "You imagine that having the money sent right out -to me will make you owner of this place?" - -She herself, with her head on one side, studied her sketch and seemed -to twirl her pencil. "No--not quite. But I'll settle the rest with -Captain Yule." - -Her companion looked, over his white waistcoat, at his large tense -shoes, the patent-leather shine of which so flashed propriety back at -him that he became, the next moment, doubly erect on it. "Captain -Yule has nothing to sell." - -She received the remark with surprise. "Then what have you been -trying to buy?" - -She had touched in himself even a sharper spring. "Do you mean to -say," he cried, "you want to buy _that_?" She stared at his -queer emphasis, which was intensified by a queer grimace; then she -turned from him with a change of colour and an ejaculation that led to -nothing more, after a few seconds, than a somewhat conscious silence--a -silence of which Mr. Prodmore made use to follow up his unanswered -question with another. "Is your proposal that I should transfer my -investment to you for the mere net amount of it your conception of a -fair bargain?" - -This second inquiry, however, she could, as she slowly came round, -substantially meet. "Pray, then, what is yours?" - -"Mine would be, not that I should simply get my money back, but that -I should get the effective value of the house." - -Mrs. Gracedew considered it. "But isn't the effective value of the -house just what your money expresses?" - -The lid of his hard left eye, the harder of the two, just dipped -with the effect of a wink. "No, madam. It's just what _yours_ -does. It's moreover just what your lips have already expressed so -distinctly!" - -She clearly did her best to follow him. "To those people--when I -showed the place off?" - -Mr. Prodmore laughed. "You seemed to be _taking_ bids then!" - -She was candid, but earnest. "Taking them?" - -"Oh, like an auctioneer! You ran it up high!" And Mr. Prodmore -laughed again. - -She turned a little pale, but it added to her brightness. "I -certainly did, if saying it was charming----" - -"Charming?" Mr. Prodmore broke in. "You said it was magnificent. -You said it was unique. That was your very word. You said -it was the _perfect_ specimen of its class in England." He was more -than accusatory, he was really crushing. "Oh, you got in deep!" - -It was indeed an indictment, and her smile was perhaps now rather -set. "Possibly. But taunting me with my absurd high spirits and -the dreadful liberties I took doesn't in the least tell me how deep -_you're_ in!" - -"For you, Mrs. Gracedew?" He took a few steps, looking at his -shoes again and as if to give her time to plead--since he wished to be -quite fair--that it was _not_ for her. "I'm in to the tune of fifty -thousand." - -She was silent, on this announcement, so long that he once more faced -her; but if what he showed her in doing so at last made her speak, it -also took the life from her tone. "That's a great deal of money, -Mr. Prodmore." - -The tone didn't matter, but only the truth it expressed, which he -so thoroughly liked to hear. "So I've often had occasion to say to -myself!" - -"If it's a large sum for you, then," said Mrs. Gracedew, -"it's a still larger one for me." She sank into a chair with -a vague melancholy; such a mass loomed huge, and she sat down before -it as a solitary herald, resigning himself with a sigh to wait, might -have leaned against a tree before a besieged city. "We women"--she -wished to conciliate--"have more modest ideas." - -But Mr. Prodmore would scarce condescend to parley. "Is it -as a 'modest idea' that you describe your extraordinary -intrusion----?" - -His question scarce reached her; she was so lost for the moment in the -sense of innocent community with her sex. "I mean I think we measure -things often rather more exactly." - -There would have been no doubt of Mr. Prodmore's very different -community as he rudely replied: "Then you measured _this_ thing -exactly half an hour ago!" - -It was a long way to go back, but Mrs. Gracedew, in her seat, musingly -made the journey, from which she then suddenly returned with a -harmless, indeed quite a happy, memento. "Was I _very_ grotesque?" - -He demurred. "Grotesque?" - -"I mean--_did_ I go on about it?" - -Mr. Prodmore would have no general descriptions; he was specific, he -was vivid. "You banged the desk. You raved. You shrieked." - -This was a note she appeared indulgently, almost tenderly, to -recognise. "We _do_ shriek at Missoura Top!" - -"I don't know what you do at Missoura Top, but I know what you did -at Covering End!" - -She warmed at last to his tone. "So do _I_ then! I surprised you. You -weren't at all prepared----" - -He took her briskly up. "No--and I'm not prepared yet!" - -Mrs. Gracedew could quite see it. "Yes, you're too astonished." - -"My astonishment's my own affair," he retorted--"not less so -than my memory!" - -"Oh, I yield to your memory," said the charming woman, "and I -confess my extravagance. But quite, you know, _as_ extravagance." - -"I don't at all know,"--Mr. Prodmore shook it off,--"nor what -you _call_ extravagance." - -"Why, banging the desk. Raving. Shrieking. I over-did it," she -exclaimed; "I wanted to please you!" - -She had too happy a beauty, as she sat in her high-backed chair, -to have been condemned to say that to any man without a certain -effect. The effect on Mr. Prodmore was striking. "So you said," he -sternly inquired, "what you didn't believe?" - -She flushed with the avowal. "Yes--for you." - -He looked at her hard. "For _me_?" - -Under his eye--for her flush continued--she slowly got up. "And for -those good people." - -"Oh!"--he sounded most sarcastic. "Should you like me to call -them back?" - -"No." She was still gay enough, but very decided. "I took them -in." - -"And now you want to take _me_?" - -"Oh, Mr. Prodmore!" she almost pitifully, but not quite adequately, -moaned. - -He appeared to feel he had gone a little far. "Well, if we're not -what you say----" - -"Yes?"--she looked up askance at the stroke. - -"Why the devil do you want us?" The question rang out and was -truly for the poor lady, as the quick suffusion of her eyes showed, -a challenge it would take more time than he left her properly to pick -up. He left her in fact no time at all before he went on: "Why the -devil did you say you'd offer fifty?" - -She looked quite wan and seemed to wonder. "_Did_ I say that?" She -could only let his challenge lie. "It was a figure of speech!" - -"Then that's the kind of figure we're talking about!" Mr. -Prodmore's sharpness would have struck an auditor as the more -effective that, on the heels of this thrust, seeing the ancient butler -reappear, he dropped the victim of it as comparatively unimportant and -directed his fierceness instantly to Chivers, who mildly gaped at him -from the threshold of the court. "Have you seen Miss Prodmore? If you -haven't, find her!" - -Mrs. Gracedew addressed their visitor in a very different tone, though -with the full authority of her benevolence. "You won't, my dear -man." To Mr. Prodmore also she continued bland. "I happen to know -she has gone for a walk." - -"A walk--alone?" Mr. Prodmore gasped. - -"No--not alone." Mrs. Gracedew looked at Chivers with a vague -smile of appeal for help, but he could only give her, from under his -bent old brow, the blank decency of his wonder. It seemed to make her -feel afresh that she was, after all, alone--so that in her loneliness, -which had also its fine sad charm, she risked another brush with their -formidable friend. "Cora has gone with Mr. Pegg." - -"Pegg has _been_ here?" - -It was like a splash in a full basin, but she launched the whole -craft. "He walked with her from the station." - -"When she arrived?" Mr. Prodmore rose like outraged Neptune. -"That's why she was so late?" - -Mrs. Gracedew assented. "Why I got here first. I get everywhere -first!" she bravely laughed. - -Mr. Prodmore looked round him in purple dismay--it was so clearly a -question for him where _he_ should get, and what! "In which direction -did they go?" he imperiously asked. - -His rudeness was too evident to be more than lightly recognised. "I -think I must let you ascertain for yourself!" - -All he could do then was to shout it to Chivers. "Call my carriage, -you ass!" After which, as the old man melted into the vestibule, -he dashed about blindly for his hat, pounced upon it and seemed, -furious but helpless, on the point of hurling it at his contradictress -as a gage of battle. "So you abetted and protected this wicked, low -intrigue?" - -She had something in her face now that was indifferent to any -violence. "You're too disappointed to see your real interest: -oughtn't I therefore in common charity to point it out to you?" - -He faced her question so far as to treat it as one. "What do _you_ -know of my disappointment?" - -There was something in his very harshness that even helped her, for it -added at this moment to her sense of making out in his narrowed glare a -couple of tears of rage. "I know everything." - -"What do you know of my real interest?" he went on as if he had not -heard her. - -"I know enough for my purpose--which is to offer you a handsome -condition. I think it's not I who have protected the happy -understanding that you call by so ugly a name; it's the happy -understanding that has put me"--she gained confidence--"well, in a -position. Do drive after them, if you like--but catch up with them only -to forgive them. If you'll do that, I'll pay your price." - -The particular air with which, a minute after Mrs. Gracedew had spoken -these words, Mr. Prodmore achieved a transfer of his attention to the -inside of his hat--this special shade of majesty would have taxed -the descriptive resources of the most accomplished reporter. It is -none the less certain that he appeared for some time absorbed in that -receptacle--appeared at last to breathe into it hard. "What do you -call my price?" - -"Why, the sum you just mentioned--fifty thousand!" Mrs. Gracedew -feverishly quavered. - -He looked at her as if stupefied. "_That's_ not my price--and it -never for a moment was!" If derision can be dry, Mr. Prodmore's was -of the driest. "Besides," he rang out, "my price is up!" - -She caught it with a long wail. "Up?" - -Oh, he let her have it now! "Seventy thousand." - -She turned away overwhelmed, but still with voice for her -despair. "Oh, deary me!" - -Mr. Prodmore was already at the door, from which he launched his -ultimatum. "It's to take or to leave!" - -She would have had to leave it, perhaps, had not something happened -at this moment to nerve her for the effort of staying him with a -quick motion. Captain Yule had come into sight on the staircase and, -after just faltering at what he himself saw, had marched resolutely -enough down. She watched him arrive--watched him with an attention that -visibly and responsively excited his own; after which she passed nearer -to their companion. "Seventy thousand, then!"--it gleamed between -them, in her muffled hiss, as if she had planted a dagger. - -Mr. Prodmore, to do him justice, took his wound in front. "Seventy -thousand--done!" And, without another look at Yule, he was presently -heard to bang the outer door after him for a sign. - - -VIII - -The young man, meanwhile, had approached in surprise. "He's -gone? I've been looking for him!" - -Mrs. Gracedew was out of breath; there was a disturbed whiteness of -bosom in her which needed time to subside and which she might have -appeared to retreat before him on purpose to veil. "I don't think, -you know, that you need him--now." - -Clement Yule was mystified. "Now?" - -She recovered herself enough to explain--made an effort at least to -be plausible. "I mean that--if you don't mind--you must deal with -_me_. I've arranged with Mr. Prodmore to take it over." - -Oh, he gave her no help! "Take what over?" - -She looked all about as if not quite thinking what it could be called; -at last, however, she offered with a smile a sort of substitute for a -name. "Why, your debt." - -But he was only the more bewildered. "_Can_ you--without arranging -with _me_?" - -She turned it round, but as if merely to oblige him. "That's -precisely what I want to do." Then, more brightly, as she thought -further: "That is, I mean, I want you to arrange with _me_. Surely -you will," she said encouragingly. - -His own processes, in spite of a marked earnestness, were much less -rapid. "But if I arrange with anybody----" - -"Yes?" She cheerfully waited. - -"How do I perform my engagement?" - -"The one to Mr. Prodmore?" - -He looked surprised at her speaking as if he had half-a-dozen. -"Yes--that's the worst." - -"Certainly--the worst!" And she gave a happy laugh that made him -stare. - -He broke into quite a different one. "You speak as if its being the -worst made it the best!" - -"It does--for me. You don't," said Mrs. Gracedew, "perform any -engagement." - -He required a moment to take it in; then something extraordinary leaped -into his face. "He lets me off?" - -Ah, she could ring out now! "He lets you off." - -It lifted him high, but only to drop him with an audible thud. "Oh, -I see--I lose my house!" - -"Dear, no--_that_ doesn't follow!" She spoke as if the absurdity -he indicated were the last conceivable, but there was a certain want of -sharpness of edge in her expression of the alternative. "You arrange -with _me_ to keep it." - -There was quite a corresponding want, clearly, in the image presented -to the Captain--of which, for a moment, he seemed with difficulty to -follow the contour. "How do I arrange?" - -"Well, we must think," said Mrs. Gracedew; "we must wait." -She spoke as if this were a detail for which she had not yet had -much attention; only bringing out, however, the next instant in an -encouraging cry and as if it were by itself almost a solution: "We -must find some way!" She might have been talking to a reasonable -child. - -But even reasonable children ask too many questions. "Yes--and what -way _can_ we find?" Clement Yule, glancing about him, was so struck -with the absence of ways that he appeared to remember with something of -regret how different it had been before. "With Prodmore it was simple -enough. You see I could marry his daughter." - -Mrs. Gracedew was silent just long enough for her soft ironic smile to -fill the cup of the pause. "_Could_ you?" - -It was as if he had tasted in the words the wine at the brim; for he -gave, under the effect of them, a sudden headshake and an awkward -laugh. "Well, never perhaps _that_ exactly--when it came to the -point. But I had to, you see----" It was difficult to say just what. - -She took advantage of it, looking hard, but not seeing at all. "You -had to----?" - -"Well," he repeated ruefully, "think a lot about it. You didn't -suspect that?" - -Oh, if he came to suspicions she could only break off! "Don't ask -me too many questions." - -He looked an instant as if he wondered why. "But isn't this just -the moment for them?" He fronted her, with a quickness he tried to -dissimulate, from the other side. "What _did_ you suppose?" - -She looked everywhere but into his face. "Why, I supposed you were -in distress." - -He was very grave. "About his terms?" - -"About his terms of course!" she laughed. "Not about his -religious opinions." - -His gratitude was too great for gaiety. "You really, in your -beautiful sympathy, _guessed_ my fix?" - -But she declined to be too solemn. "Dear Captain Yule, it all quite -stuck out of you!" - -"You mean I floundered like a drowning man----?" - -Well, she consented to have meant that. "Till I plunged in!" - -He appeared there for a few seconds, to see her again take the jump -and to listen again to the splash; then, with an odd, sharp impulse, -he turned his back. "You saved me." - -She wouldn't deny it--on the contrary. "What a pity, now, _I_ -haven't a daughter!" - -On this he slowly came round again. "What should I do with her?" - -"You'd treat her, I hope, better than you've treated Miss -Prodmore." - -The young man positively coloured. "But I haven't been bad----?" - -The sight of this effect of her small joke produced on Mrs. -Gracedew's part an emotion less controllable than any she had -yet felt. "Oh, you delightful goose!" she irrepressibly dropped. - -She made his blush deepen, but the aggravation was a relief. "Of -course--I'm all right, and there's only one pity in the -matter. I've nothing--nothing whatever, not a scrap of service nor a -thing you'd care for--to offer you in compensation." - -She looked at him ever so kindly. "I'm not, as they say, 'on -the make.'" Never had he been put right with a lighter hand. "I -didn't do it for payment." - -"Then what did you do it for?" - -For something, it might have seemed, as her eyes dropped and strayed, -that had got brushed into a crevice of the old pavement. "Because I -hated Mr. Prodmore." - -He conscientiously demurred. "So much as all that?" - -"Oh, well," she replied impatiently, "of course you also know how -much I like the house. My hates and my likes," she subtly explained, -"can never live together. I get one of them out. The one this time -was that man." - -He showed a candour of interest. "Yes--you got him out. Yes--I saw -him go." And his inner vision appeared to attend for some moments -Mr. Prodmore's departure. "But how did you do it?" - -"Oh, I don't know. Women----!" Mrs. Gracedew but vaguely sketched -it. - -A touch or two, however, for that subject, could of course almost -always suffice. "Precisely--women. May I smoke again?" Clement Yule -abruptly asked. - -"Certainly. But I managed Mr. Prodmore," she laughed as he -re-lighted, "without cigarettes." - -Her companion puffed. "_I_ couldn't manage him." - -"So I saw!" - -"_I_ couldn't get him out." - -"So _he_ saw!" - -Captain Yule, for a little, lost himself in his smoke. "Where is he -gone?" - -"I haven't the least idea. But I meet him again," she hastened to -add--"very soon." - -"And when do you meet _me_?" - -"Why, whenever you'll come to see me." For the twentieth time -she gathered herself as if the words she had just spoken were quite her -last hand. "At present, you see, I _have_ a train to catch." - -Absorbed in the trivial act that engaged him, he gave her no help. "A -train?" - -"Surely. I didn't walk." - -"No; but even trains----!" His eyes clung to her now. "You -fly?" - -"I try to. Good-bye." - -He had got between her and the door of departure quite as, on her -attempt to quit him half an hour before, he had anticipated her -approach to the stairs; and in this position he took no notice of her -farewell. "I said just now that I had nothing to offer you. But of -course I've the house itself." - -"The house?" She stared. "Why, I've _got_ it?" - -"Got it?" - -"All in my head, I mean. That's all I want." She had not yet, -save to Mr. Prodmore, made quite so light of it. - -This had its action in his markedly longer face. "Why, I thought you -loved it so!" - -Ah, she was perfectly consistent. "I love it far too much to deprive -_you_ of it." - -Yet Clement Yule could in a fashion meet her. "Oh, it wouldn't be -depriving----!" - -She altogether protested. "Not to turn you out----?" - -"Dear lady, I've never been _in_!" - -Oh, she was none the less downright. "You're in _now_--I've put -you, and you must stay." He looked round so woefully, however, that -she presently attenuated. "I don't mean _all_ the while, but long -enough----!" - -"Long enough for what?" - -"For me to feel you're here." - -"And how long will that take?" - -"Well, you think me very fast--but sometimes I'm slow. I told -you just now, at any rate," she went on, "that I had arranged you -should lose nothing. Is the very next thing I do, then, to make you -lose everything?" - -"It isn't a question of what I lose," the young man anxiously -cried; "it's a question of what I _do_! What _have_ I done to -find it all so plain?" Fate was really--fate reversed, improved, and -unnatural--too much for him, and his heated young face showed honest -stupefaction. "I haven't lifted a finger. It's you who have done -all." - -"Yes, but if you're just where you were before, how in the world -are you saved?" She put it to him with still superior lucidity. - -"By my life's being my own again--to do what I want." - -"What you 'want'"--Mrs. Gracedew's handsome uplifted head had -it all there, every inch of it--"is to keep your house." - -"Ah, but only," he perfectly assented, "if, as you said, you find -a way!" - -"I _have_ found a way--and there the way is: for _me_ just simply not -to touch the place. What you 'want,'" she argued more closely, -"is what made you give in to Prodmore. What you 'want' is these -walls and these acres. What you 'want' is to take the way I first -showed you." - -Her companion's eyes, quitting for the purpose her face, looked -to the quarter marked by her last words as at an horizon now -remote. "Why, the way you first showed me was to marry Cora!" - -She had to admit it, but as little as possible. "Practically--yes." - -"Well, it's just 'practically' that I can't!" - -"I didn't know that then," said Mrs. Gracedew. "You didn't -tell me." - -He passed, with an approach to a grimace, his hand over the back of his -head. "I felt a delicacy!" - -"I didn't even know _that_." She spoke it almost sadly. - -"It didn't strike you that I might?" - -She thought a moment. "No." She thought again. "No. But don't -quarrel with me about it _now_!" - -"Quarrel with you?" he looked amazement. - -She laughed, but she had changed colour. "Cora, at any rate, felt no -delicacy. Cora told me." - -Clement Yule fairly gaped. "Then she did know----?" - -"She knew all; and if her father said she didn't, he simply -told you what was not." She frankly gave him this, but the next -minute, as if she had startled him more than she meant, she jumped -to reassurance. "It was quite right of her. She would have refused -you." - -The young man stared. "Oh!" He was quick, however, to show--by -an amusement perhaps a trifle over-done--that he felt no personal -wound. "Do you call that quite right?" - -Mrs. Gracedew looked at it again. "For _her_--yes; and for -Prodmore." - -"Oh, for Prodmore"--his laugh grew more grim--"with all my -heart!" - -This, then,--her kind eyes seemed to drop it upon him,--was all she -meant. "To stay at your post--_that_ was the way I showed you." - -He had come round to it now, as mechanically, in intenser thought, he -smoothed down the thick hair he had rubbed up; but his face soon enough -gave out, in wonder and pain, that his freedom was somehow only a new -predicament. "How can I take any way at all, dear lady----?" - -"If I only stick here in your path?" She had taken him straight up, -and with spirit; and the same spirit bore her to the end. "I won't -stick a moment more! Haven't I been trying this age to leave you?" - -Clement Yule, for all answer, caught her sharply, in her passage, by -the arm. "You surrender your rights?" He was for an instant almost -terrible. - -She quite turned pale with it. "Weren't you ready to surrender -_yours_?" - -"I hadn't any, so it was deuced easy. I hadn't paid for them." - -Oh that, she let him see,--even though with his continued grasp he -might hurt her,--had nothing in it! "Your ancestors had paid: it's -the same thing." Erect there in the brightness of her triumph and -the force of her logic, she must yet, to anticipate his return, take a -stride--like a sudden dip into a gully and the scramble up on the other -bank--that put her dignity to the test. "You're just, in a manner, -my tenant." - -"But how can I treat that as such a mere detail? I'm your tenant on -what terms?" - -"Oh, _any_ terms--choose them for yourself!" She made an attempt to -free her arm--gave it a small vain shake. Then, as if to bribe him to -let her go: "You can write me about them." - -He appeared to consider it. "To Missoura Top?" - -She fully assented. "I go right back." As if it had put him off his -guard she broke away. "Farewell!" - -She broke away, but he broke faster, and once more, nearer the door, -he had barred her escape. "Just one little moment, please. If -you won't tell me your own terms, you must at least tell me -Prodmore's." - -Ah, the fiend--she could never squeeze past _that_! All she could do, -for the instant, was to reverberate foolishly "Prodmore's?" - -But there was nothing foolish, at last, about _him_. "How you did -it--how you managed him." His feet were firm while he waited, though -he had to wait some time. "You bought him out?" - -She made less of it than, clearly, he had ever heard made of a stroke -of business; it might have been a case of his owing her ninepence. "I -bought him out." - -He wanted at least the exact sum. "For how much?" Her silence -seemed to say that she had made no note of it, but his pressure only -increased. "I really must know." - -She continued to try to treat it as if she had merely paid for his -cab--she put even what she could of that suggestion into a tender, -helpless, obstinate headshake. "You shall never know!" - -The only thing his own manner met was the obstinacy. "I'll get it -from _him_!" - -She repeated her headshake, but with a world of sadness added, "Get -it if you can!" - -He looked into her eyes now as if it was the sadness that struck him -most. "He won't say, because he _did_ you?" - -They showed each other, on this, the least separated faces -yet. "He'll never, never say." - -The confidence in it was so tender that it sounded almost like pity, -and the young man took it up with all the flush of the sense that -pity could be but for _him_. This sense broke full in her face. "The -scoundrel!" - -"Not a bit!" she returned, with equal passion--"I was only too -clever for him!" The thought of it was again an exaltation in which -she pushed her friend aside. "So let me go!" - -The push was like a jar that made the vessel overflow, and he was -before her now as if he stretched across the hall. "With the heroic -view of your power and the barren beauty of your sacrifice? You -pour out money, you move a mountain, and to let you 'go,' to -close the door fast behind you, is all I can figure out to do for -you?" His emotion trembled out of him with the stammer of a new -language, but it was as if in a minute or two he had thrown over all -consciousness. "You're the most generous--you're the noblest of -women! The wonderful chance that brought you here----!" - -His own arm was grasped now--she knew better than he about the -wonderful chance. "It brought _you_ at the same happy hour! I've -done what I liked," she went on very simply; "and the only way to -thank me is to believe it." - -"You've done it for a proud, poor man"--his answer was quite -as direct. "He has nothing--in the light of such a magic as -yours--either to give or to hope; but you've made him, in a little -miraculous hour, think of you----" - -He stumbled with the rush of things, and if silence can, in its way, -be active, there was a collapse too, for an instant, on her closed -lips. These lips, however, she at last opened. "How have I made him -think of me?" - -"As he has thought of no other woman!" He had personal possession -of her now, and it broke, as he pressed her, as he pleaded, the -helpless fall of his eloquence. "Mrs. Gracedew--don't leave me." -He jerked his head passionately at the whole place and the yellow -afternoon. "If you made me care----" - -"It was surely that you had made _me_ first!" She laughed, and her -laugh disengaged her, so that before he could reply she had again put -space between them. - -He accepted the space now--he appeared so sure of his point. "Then -let me go on caring. When I asked you awhile back for some possible -adjustment to my new source of credit, you simply put off the -question--told me I must trust to time for it. Well," said Clement -Yule, "I've trusted to time so effectually that ten little minutes -have made me find it. I've found it because I've so quickly found -_you_. May I, Mrs. Gracedew, keep _all_ that I've found? I offer -you in return the only thing I have to give--I offer you my hand and -my life." - -She held him off, across the hall, for a time almost out of proportion -to the previous wait he had just made so little of. Then at last -also, when she answered, it might have passed for a plea for further -postponement, even for a plea for mercy. "Ah, Captain Yule----!" -But she turned suddenly off: the flower had been nipped in the bud by -the re-entrance of Chivers, at whom his master veritably glowered. - -"What the devil is it?" - -The old man showed the shock, but he had his duty. "Another party." - -Mrs. Gracedew, at this, wheeled round. "The 'party up'!" It -brought back her voice--indeed, all her gaiety. And her gaiety was -always determinant. "Show them in." - -Clement Yule's face fell while Chivers proceeded to obey. "You'll -_have_ them?" he wailed across the hall. - -"Ah! mayn't I be proud of my house?" she tossed back at him. - -At this, radiant, he had rushed at her. "Then you accept----?" - -Her raised hand checked him. "Hush!" - -He fell back--the party was there. Chivers ushered it as he had ushered -the other, making the most, this time, of more scanty material--four -persons so spectacled, satchelled, shawled, and handbooked that they -testified on the spot to a particular foreign origin and presented -themselves indeed very much as tourists who, at an hotel, casting up -the promise of comfort or the portent of cost, take possession, while -they wait for their keys, with expert looks and free sounds. Clement -Yule, who had receded, effacing himself, to the quarter opposed -to that of his companion, addressed to their visitors a covert but -dismayed stare and then, edging round, in his agitation, to the rear, -instinctively sought relief by escape through the open passage. One of -the invaders meanwhile--a broad-faced gentleman with long hair tucked -behind his ears and a ring on each forefinger--had lost no time in -showing he knew where to begin. He began at the top--the proper place, -and took in the dark pictures ranged above the tapestry. "Olt vamily -bortraits?"--he appealed to Chivers and spoke very loud. - -Chivers rose to the occasion and, gracefully pawing the air, began -also at the beginning. "Dame Dorothy Yule--who lived to a hundred -and one." - -"A hundred and one--ach _so_!" broke, with a resigned absence of -criticism, from each of the interested group; another member of which, -however, indicated with a somewhat fatigued skip the central figure of -the series, the personage with the long white legs that Mrs. Gracedew -had invited the previous inquirers to remark. "Who's dis?" the -present inquirer asked. - -The question affected the lovely lady over by the fireplace as the -trumpet of battle affects a generous steed. She flashed on the instant -into the middle of the hall and into the friendliest and most familiar -relation with everyone and with everything. "John Anthony Yule, -sir,--who passed away, poor duck, in his flower!" - -They met her with low salutations, a sweep of ugly shawls, and a brush -of queer German hats: she had issued, to their glazed convergence, -from the dusk of the Middle Ages and the shade of high pieces, and -now stood there, beautiful and human and happy, in a light that, -whatever it was for themselves, the very breadth of their attention, -the expression of their serious faces, converted straightway for her -into a new, and oh! into the right, one. To a detached observer of -the whole it would have been promptly clear that she found herself -striking these good people very much as the lawful heir had, half an -hour before, struck another stranger--that she produced in them, in -her setting of assured antiquity, quite the romantic vibration that -she had responded to in the presence of that personage. They read -her as she read _him_, and a bright and deepening cheer, reflected -dimly in their thick thoroughness, went out from her as she accepted -their reading. An impression was exchanged, for the minute, from side -to side--their grave admiration of the finest feature of the curious -house and the deep free radiance of her silent, grateful "Why not?" -It made a passage of some intensity and some duration, of which the -effect, indeed, the next minute, was to cause the only lady of the -party--a matron of rich Jewish type, with small nippers on a huge nose -and a face out of proportion to her little Freischuetz hat--to break -the spell by an uneasy turn and a stray glance at one of the other -pictures. "Who's _dat_?" - -"That?" The picture chanced to be a portrait over the wide arch, -and something happened, at the very moment, to arrest Mrs. Gracedew's -eyes rather above than below. What took place, in a word, was that -Clement Yule, already fidgeting in his impatience back from the -front, just occupied the arch, completed her thought, and filled her -vision. "Oh, that's my future husband!" He caught the words, -but answered them only by a long look at her as he moved, with a -checked wildness of which she alone, of all the spectators, had a -sense, straight across the hall again and to the other opening. He -paused there as he had done before, then with a last dumb appeal to -her dropped into the court and passed into the garden. Mrs. Gracedew, -already so wonderful to their visitors, was, before she followed him, -wonderful with a greater wonder to poor Chivers. "You dear old -thing--I give it all back to you!" - - - - -WORKS BY HENRY JAMES. - - -EMBARRASSMENTS. - -12mo, cloth, $1.50. - -"Mr. Henry James has produced no more clever and subtle work than is -to be found in his latest volume.... There are in these tales passages -of splendid realism. The portrait of Geoffrey Dowling is a masterpiece -of characterization. And there are sentences, unobtrusive asides, which -flash with the brilliancy of true wit."--_New York Tribune._ - -"Mr. James's writings are distinctively works of art. One and all -of them appeal most strongly to cultivated minds. In no instance does -he descend from his transcendent ideals of literature. An acquaintance -with Henry James means an appreciation of the finer style of written -English, and an inhalation of the atmosphere of purest English -literature. No list of books for the summer will be complete without -'=Embarrassments=.'"--_Cambridge Press._ - - -THE OTHER HOUSE. - -12mo, cloth, $1.50. - -"The characters are original and well drawn. The incidents are -natural and clearly described. The dialogues are crisp and to the -point. Neither of 'padding' nor a vulgar sensationalism is there -any trace. A most meritorious work, then, and one which can hardly fail -to add to the author's reputation."--_New York Herald._ - -"'The Other House' shows Henry James at his best. That best -is a putting into words of an exquisite comprehension of motives and -shades of thought, a magic grasp of character variations, a bringing -to the surface of hidden nerve fibres ever unsuspected yet tremendously -potent."--_Chicago Daily News._ - - -THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA. - -12mo, $1.25. - -We find no fault with Mr. Henry James's "Princess Casamassima." -It is a great novel; it is his greatest, and it is incomparably the -greatest novel of the year in our language.... From first to last we -find no weakness in the book; the drama works simply and naturally; the -causes and effects are logically related; the theme is made literature -without ceasing to be life.--_Harper's New Monthly Magazine, -Editor's Study._ - - -THE REVERBERATOR. - -12mo, $1.00. - -The public will be glad to find Mr. James in his best vein. One is -thankful again that there is so brilliant an American author to give us -entertaining sketches of life.--_Boston Herald._ - - -THE ASPERN PAPERS, AND OTHER STORIES. - -12mo, $1.00. - -The stories are told with that mastery of the art of story-telling -which their writer possesses in a conspicuous degree.--_Literary -World._ - -It is as a short story writer that we think Mr. James appears at his -best, and in this volume he may be read in his most attractive and most -artistic vein.--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._ - -Mr. Henry James is at his best in "The Aspern Papers." ... For -careful finish, minute analysis, and vivid description of both the -scenes and the characters, "The Aspern Papers" may take high rank -among Mr. James's stories.--_Guardian._ - - -PARTIAL PORTRAITS. - -12mo, $1.75. - -Henry James has never appeared to better advantage as an author than -in this delightful volume of critical essays.... No one can fail to -acknowledge the exquisite charm of style which pervades the book, -and the kind appreciation the author evinces of the finer and subtler -qualities of the authors with whom he deals.--_Boston Saturday Evening -Gazette._ - - -THE BOSTONIANS. - -12mo, $1.25. - -Unquestionably "The Bostonians" is not only the most brilliant and -remarkable of Mr. James's novels, but it is one of the most important -of recent contributions to literature.--_Boston Courier._ - - -A LONDON LIFE, AND OTHER STORIES. - -12mo, $1.00. - -His short stories, which are always bright and sparkling, are -delightful.... Will bear reading again and again.--_Mail and Express._ - - -FRENCH POETS AND NOVELISTS. - -12mo, $1.50. - - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, - 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. - - - - - [ Transcriber's Note: - - The following changes have been made to the original text. The first - line presents the text as printed in the original, the second the - amended text. - - with regard to certain matters. the question of how long they - with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they - - at random, to the noble spring of the roof. Just look at those - at random, to the noble spring of the roof. "Just look at those - - self as circumstances and experience have made one, and its not my - self as circumstances and experience have made one, and it's not my - - ] - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Magics, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO MAGICS *** - -***** This file should be named 42486.txt or 42486.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/8/42486/ - -Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -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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