by Henry James
Kate Croy came straight to the hotel—came that evening shortly before dinner; specifically and publicly moreover, in a hansomthat, driven apparently very fast, pulled up beneath their windows almost with the clatter of an accident, a “smash.” Milly, alone, as happened, in the great garnished void of their sitting-room, where, a little, really, like a caged Byzantine, she had been pacing through the queer long-drawn almost sinister delay of night, an effect she yet liked—Milly, at the sound, one of the French windows standing open, passed out to the balcony that overhung, with pretensions, the general entrance, and so was in time for the look that Kate, alighting, paying her cabman, happened to send up to the front. The visitor moreover had a shilling back to wait for, during which Milly, from the balcony, looked down at her, and a mute exchange, but with smiles and nods, took place between them on what had occurred in the morning. It was what Kate had called for, and the tone was thus almost by accident determined for Milly before her friend came up. What was also, however, determined for her was, again, yet irrepressibly again, that the image presented to her, the splendid young woman who looked so particularly handsome in impatience, with the fine freedom of her signal, was the peculiar property of somebody else’s vision, that this fine freedom in short was the fine freedom she showed Mr. Densher. Just so was how she looked to him, and just so was how Milly was held by her—held as by the strange sense of seeing through that distant person’s eyes. It lasted, as usual, the strange sense, but fifty seconds; yet in so lasting it produced an effect. It produced in fact more than one, and we take them in their order. The first was that it struck our young woman as absurd to say that a girl’s looking so to a man could possibly be without connexions; and the second was that by the time Kate had got into the room Milly was in mental possession of the main connexion it must have for herself.
She produced this commodity on the spot—produced it in straight response to Kate’s frank “Well, what?” The enquiry bore of course, with Kate’s eagerness, on the issue of the morning’s scene, the great man’s latest wisdom, and it doubtless affected Milly a little as the cheerful demand for news is apt to affect troubled spirits when news is not, in one of the neater forms, prepared for delivery. She couldn’t have said what it was exactly that on the instant determined her; the nearest description of it would perhaps have been as the more vivid impression of all her friend took for granted. The contrast between this free quantity and the maze of possibilities through which, for hours, she had herself been picking her way, put on, in short, for the moment, a grossness that even friendly forms scarce lightened: it helped forward in fact the revelation to herself that she absolutely had nothing to tell. Besides which, certainly, there was something else—an influence at the particular juncture still more obscure. Kate had lost, on the way upstairs, the look—the look—that made her young hostess so subtly think and one of the signs of which was that she never kept it for many moments at once; yet she stood there, none the less, so in her bloom and in her strength, so completely again the “handsome girl” beyond all others, the “handsome girl” for whom Milly had at first gratefully taken her, that to meet her now with the note of the plaintive would amount somehow to a surrender, to a confession. She would never in her life be ill; the greatest doctor would keep her, at the worst, the fewest minutes; and it was as if she had asked just with all this practical impeccability for all that was most mortal in her friend. These things, for Milly, inwardly danced their dance; but the vibration produced and the dust kicked up had lasted less than our account of them. Almost before she knew it she was answering, and answering beautifully, with no consciousness of fraud, only as with a sudden flare of the famous “will-power” she had heard about, read about, and which was what her medical adviser had mainly thrown her back on. “Oh it’s all right. He’s lovely.”
Kate was splendid, and it would have been clear for Milly now, had the further presumption been needed, that she had said no word to Mrs. Stringham. “You mean you’ve been absurd?”
“Absurd.” It was a simple word to say, but the consequence of it, for our young woman, was that she felt it, as soon as spoken, to have done something for her safety.
And Kate really hung on her lips. “There’s nothing at all the matter?”
“Nothing to worry about. I shall need a little watching, but I shan’t have to do anything dreadful, or even in the least inconvenient. I can do in fact as I like.” It was wonderful for Milly how just to put it so made all its pieces fall at present quite properly into their places.
Yet even before the full effect came Kate had seized, kissed, blessed her. “My love, you’re too sweet! It’s too dear! But it’s as I was sure.” Then she grasped the full beauty. “You can do as you like?”
“Quite. Isn’t it charming?”
“Ah but catch you,” Kate triumphed with gaiety, “not doing—And what shall you do?”
“For the moment simply enjoy it. Enjoy”—Milly was completely luminous—“having got out of my scrape.”
“Learning, you mean, so easily, that you are well?”
It was as if Kate had but too conveniently put the words into her mouth. “Learning, I mean, so easily, that I am well.”
“Only no one’s of course well enough to stay in London now. He can’t,” Kate went on, “want this of you.”
“Mercy no—I’m to knock about. I’m to go to places.”
“But not beastly ‘climates’—Engadines, Rivieras, boredoms?”
“No; just, as I say, where I prefer. I’m to go in for pleasure.”
“Oh the duck!”—Kate, with her own shades of familiarity, abounded. “But what kind of pleasure?”
“The highest,” Milly smiled.
Her friend met it as nobly. “Which is the highest?”
“Well, it’s just our chance to find out. You must help me.”
“What have I wanted to do but help you,” Kate asked, “from the moment I first laid eyes on you?” Yet with this too Kate had her wonder. “I like your talking, though, about that. What help, with your luck all round, do you need?”
—V—
Milly indeed at last couldn’t say; so that she had really for the time brought it along to the point so oddly marked for her by her visitor’s arrival, the truth that she was enviably strong. She carried this out, from that evening, for each hour still left her, and the more easily perhaps that the hours were now narrowly numbered. All she actually waited for was Sir Luke Strett’s promised visit; as to her proceeding on which, however, her mind was quite made up. Since he wanted to get at Susie he should have the freest access, and then perhaps he would see how he liked it. What was between them they might settle as between them, and any pressure it should lift from her own spirit they were at liberty to convert to their use. If the dear man wished to fire Susan Shepherd with a still higher ideal, he would only after all, at the worst, have Susan on his hands. If devotion, in a word, was what it would come up for the interested pair to organise, she was herself ready to consume it as the dressed and served dish. He had talked to her of her “appetite,” her account of which, she felt, must have been vague. But for devotion, she could now see, this appetite would be of the best. Gross, greedy, ravenous—these were doubtless the proper names for her: she was at all events resigned in advance to the machinations of sympathy. The day that followed her lonely excursion was to be the last but two or three of their stay in London; and the evening of that day practically ranked for them as, in the matter of outside relations, the last of all. People were by this time quite scattered, and many of those who had so liberally manifested in calls, in cards, in evident sincerity about visits, later on, over the land, had positively passed in music out of sight; whether as members, these latter, more especially, of Mrs. Lowder’s immediate circle or as members of Lord Mark’s—our friends being by this time able to make the distinction. The general pitch had thus decidedly dropped, and the occasions still to be dealt with were special and few. One of these, for Milly, announced itself
as the doctor’s call already mentioned, as to which she had now had a note from him: the single other, of importance, was their appointed leave-taking—for the shortest separation—in respect to Mrs. Lowder and Kate. The aunt and the niece were to dine with them alone, intimately and easily—as easily as should be consistent with the question of their afterwards going on together to some absurdly belated party, at which they had had it from Aunt Maud that they would do well to show. Sir Luke was to make his appearance on the morrow of this, and in respect to that complication Milly had already her plan.
The night was at all events hot and stale, and it was late enough by the time the four ladies had been gathered in, for their small session, at the hotel, where the windows were still open to the high balconies and the flames of the candles, behind the pink shades—disposed as for the vigil of watchers—were motionless in the air in which the season lay dead. What was presently settled among them was that Milly, who betrayed on this occasion a preference more marked than usual, shouldn’t hold herself obliged to climb that evening the social stair, however it might stretch to meet her, and that, Mrs. Lowder and Mrs. Stringham facing the ordeal together, Kate Croy should remain with her and await their return. It was a pleasure to Milly, ever, to send Susan Shepherd forth; she saw her go with complacency, liked, as it were, to put people off with her, and noted with satisfaction, when she so moved to the carriage, the further denudation—a markedly ebbing tide—of her little benevolent back. If it wasn’t quite Aunt Maud’s ideal, moreover, to take out the new American girl’s funny friend instead of the new American girl herself, nothing could better indicate the range of that lady’s merit than the spirit in which—as at the present hour for instance—she made the best of the minor advantage. And she did this with a broad cheerful absence of illusion; she did it—confessing even as much to poor Susie—because, frankly, she was good-natured. When Mrs. Stringham observed that her own light was too abjectly borrowed and that it was as a link alone, fortunately not missing, that she was valued, Aunt Maud concurred to the extent of the remark: “Well, my dear, you’re better than nothing.” To-night furthermore it came up for Milly that Aunt Maud had something particular in mind. Mrs. Stringham, before adjourning with her, had gone off for some shawl or other accessory, and Kate, as if a little impatient for their withdrawal, had wandered out to the balcony, where she hovered for the time unseen, though with scarce more to look at than the dim London stars and the cruder glow, up the street, on a corner, of a small public-house in front of which a fagged cab-horse was thrown into relief. Mrs. Lowder made use of the moment: Milly felt as soon as she had spoken that what she was doing was somehow for use.
“Dear Susan tells me that you saw in America Mr. Densher—whom I’ve never till now, as you may have noticed, asked you about. But do you mind at last, in connexion with him, doing something for me?” She had lowered her fine voice to a depth, though speaking with all her rich glibness; and Milly, after a small sharpness of surprise, was already guessing the sense of her appeal. “Will you name him, in any way you like, to her”—and Aunt Maud gave a nod at the window; “so that you may perhaps find out whether he’s back?”
Ever so many things, for Milly, fell into line at this; it was a wonder, she afterwards thought, that she could be conscious of so many at once. She smiled hard, however, for them all. “But I don’t know that it’s important to me to ‘find out.’ ” The array of things was further swollen, however, even as she said this, by its striking her as too much to say. She therefore tried as quickly to say less. “Except you mean of course that it’s important to you.” She fancied Aunt Maud was looking at her almost as hard as she was herself smiling, and that gave her another impulse. “You know I never have yet named him to her; so that if I should break out now—”
“Well?”—Mrs. Lowder waited.
“Why she may wonder what I’ve been making a mystery of. She hasn’t mentioned him, you know,” Milly went on, “herself.”
“No”—her friend a little heavily weighed it—“she wouldn’t. So it’s she, you see then, who has made the mystery.”
Yes, Milly but wanted to see; only there was so much. “There has been of course no particular reason.” Yet that indeed was neither here nor there. “Do you think,” she asked, “he is back?”
“It will be about his time, I gather, and rather a comfort to me definitely to know.”
“Then can’t you ask her yourself?”
“Ah we never speak of him!”
It helped Milly for the moment to the convenience of a puzzled pause. “Do you mean he’s an acquaintance of whom you disapprove for her?”
Aunt Maud, as well, just hung fire. “I disapprove of her for the poor young man. She doesn’t care for him.”
“And he cares so much—?”
“Too much, too much. And my fear is,” said Mrs. Lowder, “that he privately besets her. She keeps it to herself, but I don’t want her worried. Neither, in truth,” she both generously and confidentially concluded, “do I want him.”
Milly showed all her own effort to meet the case. “But what can I do?”
“You can find out where they are. If I myself try,” Mrs. Lowder explained, “I shall appear to treat them as if I supposed them deceiving me.”
“And you don’t. You don’t,” Milly mused for her, “suppose them deceiving you.”
“Well,” said Aunt Maud, whose fine onyx eyes failed to blink even though Milly’s questions might have been taken as drawing her rather further than she had originally meant to go—“well, Kate’s thoroughly aware of my views for her, and that I take her being with me at present, in the way she is with me, if you know what I mean, for a loyal assent to them. Therefore as my views don’t happen to provide a place at all for Mr. Densher, much, in a manner, as I like him”—therefore in short she had been prompted to this step, though she completed her sense, but sketchily, with the rattle of her large fan.
It assisted them for the moment perhaps, however, that Milly was able to pick out of her sense what might serve as the clearest part of it. “You do like him then?”
“Oh dear yes. Don’t you?”
Milly waited, for the question was somehow as the sudden point of something sharp on a nerve that winced. She just caught her breath, but she had ground for joy afterwards, she felt, in not really having failed to choose with quickness sufficient, out of fifteen possible answers, the one that would best serve her. She was then almost proud, as well, that she had cheerfully smiled. “I did—three times—in New York.” So came and went, in these simple words, the speech that was to figure for her later on, that night, as the one she had ever uttered that cost her most. She was to lie awake for the gladness of not having taken any line so really inferior as the denial of a happy impression.
For Mrs. Lowder also moreover her simple words were the right ones; they were at any rate, that lady’s laugh showed, in the natural note of the racy. “You dear American thing! But people may be very good and yet not good for what one wants.”
“Yes,” the girl assented, “even I suppose when what one wants is something very good.”
“Oh my child, it would take too long just now to tell you all I want! I want everything at once and together—and ever so much for you too, you know. But you’ve seen us,” Aunt Maud continued; “you’ll have made out.”
“Ah,” said Milly, “I don’t make out;” for again—it came that way in rushes—she felt an obscurity in things. “Why, if our friend here doesn’t like him—”
“Should I conceive her interested in keeping things from me?” Mrs. Lowder did justice to the question. “My dear, how can you ask? Put yourself in her place. She meets me, but on her terms. Proud young women are proud young women. And proud old ones are—well, what I am. Fond of you as we both are, you can help us.”
Milly tried to be inspired. “Does it come back then to my asking her straight?”
At this, however, finally, Aunt Maud threw her up. “Oh if you’ve so many reasons
not—!”
“I’ve not so many,” Milly smiled—“but I’ve one. If I break out so suddenly on my knowing him, what will she make of my not having spoken before?”
Mrs. Lowder looked blank at it. “Why should you care what she makes? You may have only been decently discreet.”
“Ah I have been,” the girl made haste to say.
“Besides,” her friend went on, “I suggested to you, through Susan, your line.”
“Yes, that reason’s a reason for me.”
“And for me,” Mrs. Lowder insisted. “She’s not therefore so stupid as not to do justice to grounds so marked. You can tell her perfectly that I had asked you to say nothing.”
“And may I tell her that you’ve asked me now to speak?”
Mrs. Lowder might well have thought, yet, oddly, this pulled her up. “You can’t do it without—?”
Milly was almost ashamed to be raising so many difficulties. “I’ll do what I can if you’ll kindly tell me one thing more.” She faltered a little—it was so prying; but she brought it out. “Will he have been writing to her?”
“It’s exactly, my dear, what I should like to know!” Mrs. Lowder was at last impatient. “Push in for yourself and I dare say she’ll tell you.”
Even now, all the same, Milly had not quite fallen back. “It will be pushing in,” she continued to smile, “for you.” She allowed her companion, however, no time to take this up. “The point will be that if he has been writing she may have answered.”
“But what point, you subtle thing, is that?”
“It isn’t subtle, it seems to me, but quite simple,” Milly said, “that if she has answered she has very possibly spoken of me.”
“Very certainly indeed. But what difference will it make?”