The Wings of the Dove, Henry James [thriller books to read .TXT] 📗

she was to thank him for, his having been so easy about her behaviour.

“You see I didn’t know that⁠—for the liberty I took⁠—I shouldn’t afterwards get a stiff note from him.”

So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. “Oh you’ll never get a stiff note from him in your life.”

She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her young friend’s question. “Why not, as well as anyone else who has played him a trick?”

“Well, because he doesn’t regard it as a trick. He could understand your action. It’s all right, you see.”

“Yes⁠—I do see. It is all right. He’s easier with me than with anyone else, because that’s the way to let me down. He’s only making believe, and I’m not worth hauling up.”

Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie grasped at her only advantage. “Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett of trifling with you?”

She couldn’t blind herself to the look her companion gave her⁠—a strange half-amused perception of what she made of it. “Well, so far as it’s trifling with me to pity me so much.”

“He doesn’t pity you,” Susie earnestly reasoned. “He just⁠—the same as anyone else⁠—likes you.”

“He has no business then to like me. He’s not the same as anyone else.”

“Why not, if he wants to work for you?”

Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. “Ah there you are!” Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But Milly let her off. “Work for me, all the same⁠—work for me! It’s of course what I want.” Then as usual she embraced her friend. “I’m not going to be as nasty as this to him.”

“I’m sure I hope not!”⁠—and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. “I’ve no doubt, however, he’d take it from you! It’s you, my dear, who are not the same as anyone else.”

Milly’s assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. “No, so that people can take anything from me.” And what Mrs. Stringham did indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between them of an odd independence⁠—an independence positively of action and custom⁠—on the subject of Milly’s future. They went their separate ways with the girl’s intense assent; this being really nothing but what she had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham’s first encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or was to have other encounters⁠—private pointed personal; she favoured every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would be her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing of it this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put her visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him how touched she had been by his good nature. That required little explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood he could but reply that it was all right.

“I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You’ve got good friends.”

“So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think,” Milly went on, “of all of them together. You’re excellent for each other. And it’s in that way, I dare say, that you’re best for me.”

There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her alarms⁠—the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not of value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt, rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn’t hate her, since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea that she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. He wouldn’t have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn’t possibly be she would assist also to make this right.

It wouldn’t have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician. What was he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety? She would leave the subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine that the inward success of these reflections flushed her for the minute, to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health; and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to the presumption. “Every little helps, no doubt!”⁠—he noticed good-humouredly her harmless sally. “But, help or no help, you’re looking, you know, remarkably well.”

“Oh I thought I was,” she answered; and it was as if already she saw his line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he had guessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. As