He looked, while I waited, at the graves. “Well, you know what!” But he didn’t move, and he presently produced something that made me drop straight down on the stone slab,as if suddenly to rest. “Does my uncle think what _you_ think?”
I markedly rested. “How do you know what I think?”
“Ah, well, of course I don’t; for it strikes me you never tell me. But I mean does _he_ know?”
“Know what, Miles?”
“Why, the way I’m going on.”
I perceived quickly enough that I could make, to this inquiry,no answer that would not involve something of a sacrifice of my employer.Yet it appeared to me that we were all, at Bly, sufficiently sacrificed to make that venial. “I don’t think your uncle much cares.”
Miles, on this, stood looking at me. “Then don’t you think he can be made to?”
“In what way?”
“Why, by his coming down.”
“But who’ll get him to come down?”
“_I_ will!” the boy said with extraordinary brightness and emphasis.He gave me another look charged with that expression and then marched off alone into church.
XV
The business was practically settled from the moment I never followed him.It was a pitiful surrender to agitation,but my being aware of this had somehow no power to restore me.I only sat there on my tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning;by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for absence,the pretext that I was ashamed to offer my pupils and the rest of the congregation such an example of delay.What I said to myself above all was that Miles had got something out of me and that the proof of it,for him, would be just this awkward collapse.He had got out of me that there was something I was much afraid of and that he should probably be able to make use of my fear to gain,for his own purpose, more freedom. My fear was of having to deal with the intolerable question of the grounds of his dismissal from school,for that was really but the question of the horrors gathered behind.That his uncle should arrive to treat with me of these things was a solution that,strictly speaking, I ought now to have desired to bring on;but I could so little face the ugliness and the pain of it that I simply procrastinated and lived from hand to mouth.The boy, to my deep discomposure, was immensely in the right, was in a position to say to me:“Either you clear up with my guardian the mystery of this interruption of my studies,or you cease to expect me to lead with you a life that’s so unnatural for a boy.” What was so unnatural for the particular boy I was concerned with was this sudden revelation of a consciousness and a plan.
That was what really overcame me, what prevented my going in. I walked round the church, hesitating,hovering; I reflected that I had already, with him, hurt myself beyond repair.Therefore I could patch up nothing, and it was too extreme an effort to squeeze beside him into the pew:he would be so much more sure than ever to pass his arm into mine and make me sit there for an hour in close,silent contact with his commentary on our talk.For the first minute since his arrival I wanted to get away from him.As I paused beneath the high east window and listened to the sounds of worship,I was taken with an impulse that might master me, I felt,completely should I give it the least encouragement.I might easily put an end to my predicament by getting away altogether. Here was my chance;there was no one to stop me; I could give the whole thing up—turn my back and retreat.It was only a question of hurrying again, for a few preparations,to the house which the attendance at church of so many of the servants would practically have left unoccupied.No one, in short, could blame me if I should just drive desperately off.What was it to get away if I got away only till dinner?That would be in a couple of hours, at the end of which—I had the acute prevision—my little pupils would play at innocent wonder about my nonappearance in their train.
“What _did_ you do, you naughty, bad thing?Why in the world, to worry us so—and take our thoughts off, too, don’t you know?—did you desert us at the very door?” I couldn’t meet such questions nor, as they asked them, their false little lovely eyes;yet it was all so exactly what I should have to meet that, as the prospect grew sharp to me, I at last let myself go.
I got, so far as the immediate moment was concerned, away;I came straight out of the churchyard and, thinking hard, retraced my steps through the park.It seemed to me that by the time I reached the house I had made up my mind I would fly.The Sunday stillness both of the approaches and of the interior, in which I met no one,fairly excited me with a sense of opportunity. Were I to get off quickly, this way,I should get off without a scene, without a word. My quickness would have to be remarkable,however, and the question of a conveyance was the great one to settle. Tormented, in the hall,with difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then,with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before,in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things,I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women. At this I was able to straighten myself;I went the rest of the way up; I made, in my bewilderment, for the schoolroom,where there were objects belonging to me that I should have to take.But I opened the door to find again, in a flash, my eyes unsealed.In the presence of what I saw I reeled straight back upon my resistance.
Seated at my own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, without my previous experience,I should have taken at the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who,availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink,and paper, had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart.There was an effort in the way that, while her arms rested on the table,her hands with evident weariness supported her head;but at the moment I took this in I had already become aware that, in spite of my entrance,her attitude strangely persisted. Then it was—with the very act of its announcing itself—that her identity flared up in a change of posture.She rose, not as if she had heard me, but with an indescribable grand melancholy of indifference and detachment,and, within a dozen feet of me, stood there as my vile predecessor. Dishonored and tragic,she was all before me; but even as I fixed and, for memory, secured it,the awful image passed away. Dark as midnight in her black dress,her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe,she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers.While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder.It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her—“You terrible, miserable woman!”—I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door,rang through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard me,but I had recovered myself and cleared the air.There was nothing in the room the next minute but the sunshine and a sense that I must stay.
XVI
I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose’s odd face. I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes with her in the housekeeper’s room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the “put away”—of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy.
“Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them—so long as they were there—of course I promised. But what had happened to you?”
“I only went with you for the walk,” I said. “I had then to come back to meet a friend.”
She showed her surprise. “A friend—_you?_”
“Oh, yes, I have a couple!” I laughed. “But did the children give you a reason?”
“For not alluding to your leaving us?Yes; they said you would like it better. Do you like it better?”
My face had made her rueful. “No, I like it worse!” But after an instant I added: “Did they say why I should like it better?”
“No; Master Miles only said, ‘We must do nothing but what she likes!’”
“I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?”
“Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, ‘Oh, of course, of course!’—and I said the same.”
I thought a moment. “You were too sweet, too—I can hear you all. But nonetheless,between Miles and me, it’s now all out.”
“All out?” My companion stared. “But what, miss?”
“Everything. It doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind. I came home, my dear,” I went on, “for a talk with Miss Jessel.”
I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs.Grose literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now,as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. “A talk!Do you mean she spoke?”
“It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom.”
“And what did she say?” I can hear the good woman still, and the candor of her stupefaction.
“That she suffers the torments—!”
It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. “Do you mean, ” she faltered, “—of the lost?”
“Of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why,to share them—” I faltered myself with the horror of it.
But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. “To share them—?”
“She wants Flora.” Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her,fairly have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to show I was.“As I’ve told you, however, it doesn’t matter.”
“Because you’ve made up your mind?But to what?”
“To everything.”
“And what do you call ‘everything’?”
“Why, sending for their uncle.”
“Oh, miss, in pity do,” my friend broke out. “ah, but I will, I _will!_ I see it’s the only way. What’s ‘out,’ as I told you,with Miles is that if he thinks I’m afraid to—and has ideas of what he gains by that—he shall see he’s mistaken.Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on the spot (and before the boy himself,if necessary) that if I’m to be reproached with having done nothing again about more school—”
“Yes, miss—” my companion pressed me.
“Well, there’s that awful reason.”
There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was excusable for being vague. “But—a—which?”
“Why, the letter from his old place.”
“You’ll show it to the master?”
“I ought to have done so on the instant.”
“Oh, no!” said Mrs. Grose with decision.
“I’ll put it before him,” I went on inexorably,“that I can’t undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled—”
“For we’ve never in the least known what!” Mrs. Grose declared.
“For wickedness. For what else—when he’s so clever and beautiful and perfect?Is he stupid?Is he untidy?Is he infirm?Is he ill-natured?He’s exquisite—so it can be only _that_; and that would open up the whole thing. After all,” I said,“it’s their uncle’s fault. If he left here such people—!”
“He didn’t really in the least know them. The fault’s mine.” She had turned quite pale.
“Well, you shan’t suffer,” I answered.
“The children shan’t!” she emphatically returned.
I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. “Then what am I to tell him?”
“You needn’t tell him anything. _I’ll_ tell him.”
I measured this. “Do you mean you’ll write—?” Remembering she couldn’t, I caught myself up. “How do you communicate?”
“I tell the bailiff. _He_ writes.”
“And should you like him to write our story?”
My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made her, after a moment,inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her eyes. “Ah, miss, _you_ write!”
“Well—tonight,” I at last answered; and on this we separated.
XVII
I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed back,a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me,I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts.Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at Miles’s door.What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest,and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. “I say,you there—come in.” It was a gaiety in the gloom!
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very much at his ease. “Well, what are _you_ up to?” he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose,had she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was “out.”
I stood over him with my candle. “How did you know I was there?”
“Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise?You’re like a troop of cavalry!” he beautifully laughed.
“Then you weren’t asleep?”
“Not much!I lie awake and think.”
I had put my candle, designedly, a short way off, and then,as he held out his friendly old hand to me, had sat down on the edge of his bed. “What is it, ” I asked, “that you think of?”
“What in the world, my dear, but _you?_”
“Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn’t insist on that!I had so far rather you slept.”
“Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours.”
I marked the coolness of his firm little hand. “Of what queer business, Miles?”
“Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!”
I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow. “What do you mean by all the rest?”
“Oh, you know, you know!”
I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and our eyes continued to meet,that my silence had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation. “Certainly you shall go back to school,” I said, “if it be that that troubles you. But not to the old place—we must find another, a better. How could I know it did trouble you, this question, when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all?” His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness,made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful patient in a children’s hospital;and I would have given, as the resemblance came to me,all I possessed on earth really to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped to cure him.Well, even as it was, I perhaps might help!“Do you know you’ve never said a word to me about your school—I mean the old one; never mentioned it in any way?”
He seemed to wonder; he smiled with the same loveliness. But he clearly gained time; he waited, he called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It wasn’t for _me_ to help him—it was for the thing I had met!
Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from him,set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known;so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play,under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. “No,never—from the hour you came back. You’ve never mentioned to me one of your masters,one of your comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never,little Miles—no, never—have you given me an inkling of anything that _may_ have happened there.Therefore you can fancy how much I’m in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning,you had, since the first hour I saw you,scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life.You seemed so perfectly to accept the present.” It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an influence that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person—imposed him almost as an intellectual equal. “I thought you wanted to go on as you are.”
It struck me that at this he just faintly colored. He gave, at any rate,like a convalescent slightly fatigued, a languid shake of his head. “I don’t—I don’t. I want to get away.”
“You’re tired of Bly?”
“Oh, no, I like Bly.”
“Well, then—?”
“Oh, _you_ know what a boy wants!”
I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary refuge. “You want to go to your uncle?”
Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!”
I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color. “My dear, I don’t want to get off!”
“You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”—he lay beautifully staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle things.”
“If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to take you quite away.”
“Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for?You’ll have to tell him—about the way you’ve let it all drop:you’ll have to tell him a tremendous lot!”
The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the instant,to meet him rather more. “And how much will _you_, Miles, have to tell him?There are things he’ll ask you!”
He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?”
“The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with you. He can’t send you back—”
“Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.”
He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety;and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy,the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor.It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go.I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles—!”
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?”
“Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?”
He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look.“I’ve told you—I told you this morning.”
Oh, I was sorry for him!“That you just want me not to worry you?”
He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him; then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied.
There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me release him, yet,when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows I never wished to harass him,but I felt that merely, at this, to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly,to lose him. “I’ve just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said.
“Well, then, finish it!”
I waited a minute. “What happened before?”
He gazed up at me again. “Before what?”
“Before you came back. And before you went away.”
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What happened?”
It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting consciousness—it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once more the chance of possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you _knew_ how I want to help you!It’s only that, it’s nothing but that, and I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—I’d rather die than hurt a hair of you.Dear little Miles”—oh, I brought it out now even if I _should_ go too far—“I just want you to help me to save you!” But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone too far.The answer to my appeal was instantaneous,but it came in the form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air,and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in.The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have seemed,indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror.I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained,while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. “Why, the candle’s out!” I then cried.
“It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles.
XVIII
The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me quietly: “Have you written, miss?”
“Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for the hour—that my letter, sealed and directed,was still in my pocket. There would be time enough to send it before the messenger should go to the village.Meanwhile there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more exemplary morning.It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to gloss over any recent little friction.They performed the dizziest feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of _my_ feeble range,and perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical jokes.It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down.This child, to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no words can translate;there was a distinction all his own in every impulse he revealed;never was a small natural creature, to the uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom,a more ingenious, a more extraordinary little gentleman.I had perpetually to guard against the wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me;to check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy I knew, the imagination of all evil _had_ been opened up to him: all the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have flowered into an act.
He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when,after our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if I shouldn’t like him,for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion.It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity,and quite tantamount to his saying outright:“The true knights we love to read about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now:you mean that—to be let alone yourself and not followed up—you’ll cease to worry and spy upon me,won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go and come. Well, I ‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go!There’ll be plenty of time for that. I do really delight in your society,and I only want to show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand,to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had never played;and if there are those who think he had better have been kicking a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them.For at the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to measure,I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at my post. It was after luncheon,and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I hadn’t really, in the least, slept:I had only done something much worse—I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora?When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: “Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?”—breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately after,as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song.
I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before going downstairs,I looked into several others. As she was nowhere about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom,in the comfort of that theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of.I found her where I had found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with blank,scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast,I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her right,for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out of my sight without some special provision.Of course now indeed she might be with the maids,so that the immediate thing was to look for her without an air of alarm.This we promptly arranged between us; but when,ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in the hall,it was only to report on either side that after guarded inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her.For a minute there, apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms,and I could feel with what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first given her.
“She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of the rooms you haven’t searched.”
“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She has gone out.”
Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?”
I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without one?”
“She’s with _her?_”
“She’s with _her!_” I declared. “We must find them.”
My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment,confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. She communed,on the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. “And where’s Master Miles?”
“Oh, _he’s_ with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.”
“Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I suppose my tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance.
“The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their plan.He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off.”
“‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed.
“Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for himself as well. But come!”
She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him—?”
“So long with Quint?Yes—I don’t mind that now.”
She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand,and in this manner she could at present still stay me.But after gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” she eagerly brought out.
I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, and then,freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table. “Luke will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door and opened it; I was already on the steps.
My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early morning had dropped,but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down to the drive while she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?”
“What do I care when the child has nothing?I can’t wait to dress,” I cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself, upstairs.”
“With _them?_” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me!
XIX
We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay rightly called,though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes.My acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly,at all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection of my pupils,to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat moored there for our use,had impressed me both with its extent and its agitation.The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the house,but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be, she was not near home.She had not given me the slip for any small adventure, and,since the day of the very great one that I had shared with her by the pond, I had been aware,in our walks, of the quarter to which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs.Grose’s steps so marked a direction—a direction that made her, when she perceived it,oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly mystified. “You’re going to the water, Miss?—you think she’s _in_—?”
“She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great.But what I judge most likely is that she’s on the spot from which, the other day, we saw together what I told you.”
“When she pretended not to see—?”
“With that astounding self-possession?I’ve always been sure she wanted to go back alone. And now her brother has managed it for her.”
Mrs. Grose still stood where she had stopped. “You suppose they really _talk_ of them?”
I could meet this with a confidence!“They say things that, if we heard them, would simply appall us.”
“And if she _is_ there—”
“Yes?”
“Then Miss Jessel is?”
“Beyond a doubt. You shall see.”