by Henry James
“Oh you don’t know,” said Milly, “how much I’m really on her hands.”
He could but accept the appearance of wondering how much he might show he knew. “Ah she’s very masterful.”
“She’s great. Yet I don’t say she bullies me.”
“No—that’s not the way. At any rate it isn’t hers,” he smiled. He remembered, however, then that an undue acquaintance with Kate’s ways was just what he mustn’t show; and he pursued the subject no further than to remark with a good intention that had the further merit of representing a truth: “I don’t feel as if I knew her—really to call know.”
“Well, if you come to that, I don’t either!” she laughed. The words gave him, as soon as they were uttered, a sense of responsibility for his own; though during a silence that ensued for a minute he had time to recognise that his own contained after all no element of falsity. Strange enough therefore was it that he could go too far—if it WAS too far—without being false. His observation was one he would perfectly have made to Kate herself. And before he again spoke, and before Milly did, he took time for more still—for feeling how just here it was that he must break short off if his mind was really made up not to go further. It was as if he had been at a corner—and fairly put there by his last speech; so that it depended on him whether or no to turn it. The silence, if prolonged but an instant, might even have given him a sense of her waiting to see what he would do. It was filled for them the next thing by the sound, rather voluminous for the August afternoon, of the approach, in the street below them, of heavy carriage-wheels and of horses trained to “step.” A rumble, a great shake, a considerable effective clatter, had been apparently succeeded by a pause at the door of the hotel, which was in turn accompanied by a due display of diminished prancing and stamping. “You’ve a visitor,” Densher laughed, “and it must be at least an ambassador.”
“It’s only my own carriage; it does that—isn’t it wonderful?—every day. But we find it, Mrs. Stringham and I, in the innocence of our hearts, very amusing.” She had got up, as she spoke, to assure herself of what she said; and at the end of a few steps they were together on the balcony and looking down at her waiting chariot, which made indeed a brave show. “Is it very awful?”
It was to Densher’s eyes—save for its absurd heaviness—only pleasantly pompous. “It seems to me delightfully rococo. But how do I know? You’re mistress of these things, in contact with the highest wisdom. You occupy a position, moreover, thanks to which your carriage—well, by this time, in the eye of London, also occupies one.” But she was going out, and he mustn’t stand in her way. What had happened the next minute was first that she had denied she was going out, so that he might prolong his stay; and second that she had said she would go out with pleasure if he would like to drive—that in fact there were always things to do, that there had been a question for her to-day of several in particular, and that this in short was why the carriage had been ordered so early. They perceived, as she said these things, that an enquirer had presented himself, and, coming back, they found Milly’s servant announcing the carriage and prepared to accompany her. This appeared to have for her the effect of settling the matter—on the basis, that is, of Densher’s happy response. Densher’s happy response, however, had as yet hung fire, the process we have described in him operating by this time with extreme intensity. The system of not pulling up, not breaking off, had already brought him headlong, he seemed to feel, to where they actually stood; and just now it was, with a vengeance, that he must do either one thing or the other. He had been waiting for some moments, which probably seemed to him longer than they were; this was because he was anxiously watching himself wait. He couldn’t keep that up for ever; and since one thing or the other was what he must do, it was for the other that he presently became conscious of having decided. If he had been drifting it settled itself in the manner of a bump, of considerable violence, against a firm object in the stream. “Oh yes; I’ll go with you with pleasure. It’s a charming idea.”
She gave no look to thank him—she rather looked away; she only said at once to her servant, “In ten minutes”; and then to her visitor, as the man went out, “We’ll go somewhere—I shall like that. But I must ask of you time—as little as possible—to get ready.” She looked over the room to provide for him, keep him there. “There are books and things—plenty; and I dress very quickly.” He caught her eyes only as she went, on which he thought them pretty and touching.
Why especially touching at that instant he could certainly scarce have said; it was involved, it was lost in the sense of her wishing to oblige him. Clearly what had occurred was her having wished it so that she had made him simply wish, in civil acknowledgement, to oblige HER; which he had now fully done by turning his corner. He was quite round it, his corner, by the time the door had closed upon her and he stood there alone. Alone he remained for three minutes more—remained with several very living little matters to think about. One of these was the phenomenon—typical, highly American, he would have said—of Milly’s extreme spontaneity. It was perhaps rather as if he had sought refuge—refuge from another question—in the almost exclusive contemplation of this. Yet this, in its way, led him nowhere; not even to a sound generalisation about American girls. It was spontaneous for his young friend to have asked him to drive with her alone—since she hadn’t mentioned her companion; but she struck him after all as no more advanced in doing it than Kate, for instance, who wasn’t an American girl, might have struck him in not doing it. Besides, Kate WOULD have done it, though Kate wasn’t at all, in the same sense as Milly, spontaneous. And then in addition Kate HAD done it—or things very like it. Furthermore he was engaged to Kate—even if his ostensibly not being put her public freedom on other grounds. On all grounds, at any rate, the relation between Kate and freedom, between freedom and Kate, was a different one from any he could associate or cultivate, as to anything, with the girl who had just left him to prepare to give herself up to him. It had never struck him before, and he moved about the room while he thought of it, touching none of the books placed at his disposal. Milly was forward, as might be said, but not advanced; whereas Kate was backward—backward still, comparatively, as an English girl—and yet advanced in a high degree. However—though this didn’t straighten it out—Kate was of course two or three years older; which at their time of life considerably counted.
Thus ingeniously discriminating, Densher continued slowly to wander; yet without keeping at bay for long the sense of having rounded his corner. He had so rounded it that he felt himself lose even the option of taking advantage of Milly’s absence to retrace his steps. If he might have turned tail, vulgarly speaking, five minutes before, he couldn’t turn tail now; he must simply wait there with his consciousness charged to the brim. Quickly enough moreover that issue was closed from without; in the course of three minutes more Miss Theale’s servant had returned. He preceded a visitor whom he had met, obviously, at the foot of the stairs and whom, throwing open the door, he loudly announced as Miss Croy. Kate, on following him in, stopped short at sight of Densher—only, after an instant, as the young man saw with free amusement, not from surprise and still less from discomfiture. Densher immediately gave his explanation—Miss Theale had gone to prepare to drive—on receipt of which the servant effaced himself.
“And you’re going with her?” Kate asked.
“Yes—with your approval; which I’ve taken, as you see, for granted.”
“0h,” she laughed, “my approval’s complete!” She was thoroughly consistent and handsome about it.
“What I mean is of course,” he went on—for he was sensibly affected by her gaiety—”at your so lively instigation.”
She had looked about the room—she might have been vaguely looking for signs of the duration, of the character of his visit, a momentary aid in taking a decision. “Well, instigation then, as much as you like.” She treated it as pleasant, the success of her plea with him; she made a fresh joke of this dir
ect impression of it. “So much so as that? Do you know I think I won’t wait?”
“Not to see her—after coming?”
“Well, with you in the field—! I came for news of her, but she must be all right. If she IS—”
But he took her straight up. “Ah how do I know?” He was moved to say more. “It’s not i who am responsible for her, my dear. It seems to me it’s you.” She struck him as making light of a matter that had been costing him sundry qualms; so that they couldn’t both be quite just. Either she was too easy or he had been too anxious. He didn’t want at all events to feel a fool for that. “I’m doing nothing—and shall not, I assure you, do anything but what I’m told.”
Their eyes met with some intensity over the emphasis he had given his words; and he had taken it from her the next moment that he really needn’t get into a state. What in the world was the matter? She asked it, with interest, for all answer. “Isn’t she better—if she’s able to see you?”
“She assures me she’s in perfect health.”
Kate’s interest grew. “I knew she would.” On which she added: “It won’t have been really for illness that she stayed away last night.”
“For what then?”
“Well—for nervousness.”
“Nervousness about what?”
“Oh you know!” She spoke with a hint of impatience, smiling however the next moment. “I’ve told you that.”
He looked at her to recover in her face what she had told him; then it was as if what he saw there prompted him to say: “What have you told HER?”
She gave him her controlled smile, and it was all as if they remembered where they were, liable to surprise, talking with softened voices, even stretching their opportunity, by such talk, beyond a quite right feeling. Milly’s room would be close at hand, and yet they were saying things—! For a moment, none the less, they kept it up. “Ask HER, if you like; you’re free—she’ll tell you. Act as you think best; don’t trouble about what you think I may or mayn’t have told. I’m all right with her,” said Kate. “So there you are.”
“If you mean HERE I am,” he answered, “it’s unmistakeable. If you also mean that her believing in you is all I have to do with you’re so far right as that she certainly does believe in you.”
“Well then take example by her.”
“She’s really doing it for you,” Densher continued. “She’s driving me out for you.”
“In that case,” said Kate with her soft tranquillity, “you can do it a little for HER. I’m not afraid,” she smiled.
He stood before her a moment, taking in again the face she put on it and affected again, as he had already so often been, by more things in this face and in her whole person and presence than he was, to his relief, obliged to find words for. It wasn’t, under such impressions, a question of words. “I do nothing for any one in the world but you. But for you I’ll do anything.”
“Good, good,” said Kate. “That’s how I like you.”
He waited again an instant. “Then you swear to it?”
“To ‘it’? To what?”
“Why that you do ‘like’ me. Since it’s all for that, you know, that I’m letting you do—well, God knows what with me.”
She gave at this, with a stare, a disheartened gesture—the sense of which she immediately further expressed. “If you don’t believe in me then, after all, hadn’t you better break off before you’ve gone further?”
“Break off with you?”
“Break off with Milly. You might go now,” she said, “and I’ll stay and explain to her why it is.”
He wondered—as if it struck him. “What would you say?”
“Why that you find you can’t stand her, and that there’s nothing for me but to bear with you as I best may.”
He considered of this. “How much do you abuse me to her?”
“Exactly enough. As much as you see by her attitude.”
Again he thought. “It doesn’t seem to me I ought to mind her attitude.”
“Well then, just as you like. I’ll stay and do my best for you.”
He saw she was sincere, was really giving him a chance; and that of itself made things clearer. The feeling of how far he had gone came back to him not in repentance, but in this very vision of an escape; and it was not of what he had done, but of what Kate offered, that he now weighed the consequence. “Won’t it make her—her not finding me here—be rather more sure there’s something between us?”
Kate thought. “Oh I don’t know. It will of course greatly upset her. But you needn’t trouble about that. She won’t die of it.”
“Do you mean she WILL?” Densher presently asked.
“Don’t put me questions when you don’t believe what I say. You make too many conditions.”
She spoke now with a shade of rational weariness that made the want of pliancy, the failure to oblige her, look poor and ugly; so that what it suddenly came back to for him was his deficiency in the things a man of any taste, so engaged, so enlisted, would have liked to make sure of being able to show—imagination, tact, positively even humour. The circumstance is doubtless odd, but the truth is none the less that the speculation uppermost with him at this juncture was: “What if I should begin to bore this creature?” And that, within a few seconds, had translated itself. “If you’ll swear again you love me—!”
She looked about, at door and window, as if he were asking for more than he said. “Here? There’s nothing between us here,” Kate smiled.
“Oh ISN’T there?” Her smile itself, with this, had so settled something for him that he had come to her pleadingly and holding out his hands, which she immediately seized with her own as if both to check him and to keep him. It was by keeping him thus for a minute that she did check him; she held him long enough, while, with their eyes deeply meeting, they waited in silence for him to recover himself and renew his discretion. He coloured as with a return of the sense of where they were, and that gave her precisely one of her usual victories, which immediately took further form. By the time he had dropped her hands he had again taken hold, as it were, of Milly’s. It was not at any rate with Milly he had broken. “I’ll do all you wish,” he declared as if to acknowledge the acceptance of his condition that he had practically, after all, drawn from her—a declaration on which she then, recurring to her first idea, promptly acted.
“If you ARE as good as that I go. You’ll tell her that, finding you with her, I wouldn’t wait. Say that, you know, from yourself. She’ll understand.”
She had reached the door with it—she was full of decision; but he had before she left him one more doubt. “I don’t see how she can understand enough, you know, without understanding too much.”
“You don’t need to see.”
He required then a last injunction. “I must simply go it blind?”
“You must simply be kind to her.”
“And leave the rest to you?”
“Leave the rest to HER,” said Kate disappearing.
It came back then afresh to that, as it had come before. Milly, three minutes after Kate had gone, returned in her array—her big black hat, so little superstitiously in the fashion, her fine black garments throughout, the swathing of her throat, which Densher vaguely took for an infinite number of yards of priceless lace, and which, its folded fabric kept in place by heavy rows of pearls, hung down to her feet like the stole of a priestess. He spoke to her at once of their friend’s visit and flight. “She hadn’t known she’d find me,” he said—and said at present without difficulty. He had so rounded his corner that it wasn’t a question of a word more or less.
She took this account of the matter as quite sufficient; she glossed over whatever might be awkward. “I’m sorry—but I of course often see HER.” He felt the discrimination in his favour and how it justified Kate. This was Milly’s tone when the matter was left to her. Well, it should now be wholly left.
Book Seventh, Chapter 1
When Kate and Densher abandon
ed her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which the warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again feeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to the quarter of his courage. She laid hers firmly on her heart, and the two women stood there showing each other a strange front. Susan Shepherd had received their great doctor’s visit, which had been clearly no small affair for her; but Milly had since then, with insistence, kept in place, against communication and betrayal, as she now practically confessed, the barrier of their invited guests. “You’ve been too dear. With what I see you’re full of you treated them beautifully. ISN’T Kate charming when she wants to be?”