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

horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Of this he had had so sore a fear that its being dispelled was in itself of the nature of bliss. The danger had dropped⁠—it was behind him there in the great sunny space. So far she was good for what he wanted. III

She was good enough, as it proved, for him to put to her that evening, and with further ground for it, the next sharpest question that had been on his lips in the morning⁠—which his other preoccupation had then, to his consciousness, crowded out. His opportunity was again made, as befell, by his learning from Mrs. Stringham, on arriving, as usual, with the close of day, at the palace, that Milly must fail them again at dinner, but would to all appearance be able to come down later. He had found Susan Shepherd alone in the great saloon, where even more candles than their friend’s large common allowance⁠—she grew daily more splendid; they were all struck with it and chaffed her about it⁠—lighted up the pervasive mystery of Style. He had thus five minutes with the good lady before Mrs. Lowder and Kate appeared⁠—minutes illumined indeed to a longer reach than by the number of Milly’s candles.

“May she come down⁠—ought she if she isn’t really up to it?”

He had asked that in the wonderment always stirred in him by glimpses⁠—rare as were these⁠—of the inner truth about the girl. There was of course a question of health⁠—it was in the air, it was in the ground he trod, in the food he tasted, in the sounds he heard, it was everywhere. But it was everywhere with the effect of a request to him⁠—to his very delicacy, to the common discretion of others as well as his own⁠—that no allusion to it should be made. There had practically been none, that morning, on her explained nonappearance⁠—the absence of it, as we know, quite monstrous and awkward; and this passage with Mrs. Stringham offered him his first licence to open his eyes. He had gladly enough held them closed; all the more that his doing so performed for his own spirit a useful function. If he positively wanted not to be brought up with his nose against Milly’s facts, what better proof could he have that his conduct was marked by straightness? It was perhaps pathetic for her, and for himself was perhaps even ridiculous; but he hadn’t even the amount of curiosity that he would have had about an ordinary friend. He might have shaken himself at moments to try, for a sort of dry decency, to have it; but that too, it appeared, wouldn’t come. In what therefore was the duplicity? He was at least sure about his feelings⁠—it being so established that he had none at all. They were all for Kate, without a feather’s weight to spare. He was acting for Kate⁠—not, by the deviation of an inch, for her friend. He was accordingly not interested, for had he been interested he would have cared, and had he cared he would have wanted to know. Had he wanted to know he wouldn’t have been purely passive, and it was his pure passivity that had to represent his dignity and his honour. His dignity and his honour, at the same time, let us add, fortunately fell short tonight of spoiling his little talk with Susan Shepherd. One glimpse⁠—it was as if she had wished to give him that; and it was as if, for himself, on current terms, he could oblige her by accepting it. She not only permitted, she fairly invited him to open his eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here.” It was no answer to his question, but it had for the moment to serve. And the rest was fully to come.

He smiled at her and presently found himself, as a kind of consequence of communion with her, talking her own language. “It’s a very wonderful experience.”

“Well”⁠—and her raised face shone up at him⁠—“that’s all I want you to feel about it. If I weren’t afraid,” she added, “there are things I should like to say to you.”

“And what are you afraid of, please?” he encouragingly asked.

“Of other things that I may possibly spoil. Besides, I don’t, you know, seem to have the chance. You’re always, you know, with her.”

He was strangely supported, it struck him, in his fixed smile; which was the more fixed as he felt in these last words an exact description of his course. It was an odd thing to have come to, but he was always with her. “Ah,” he none the less smiled, “I’m not with her now.”

“No⁠—and I’m so glad, since I get this from it. She’s ever so much better.”

“Better? Then she has been worse?”

Mrs. Stringham waited. “She has been marvellous⁠—that’s what she has been. She is marvellous. But she’s really better.”

“Oh then if she’s really better⁠—!” But he checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to the point of mystification. “We shall miss her the more at dinner.”

Susan Shepherd, however, was all there for him. “She’s keeping herself. You’ll see. You’ll not really need to miss anything. There’s to be a little party.”

“Ah I do see⁠—by this aggravated grandeur.”

“Well, it is lovely, isn’t it? I want the whole thing. She’s lodged for the first time as she ought, from her type, to be; and doing it⁠—I mean bringing out all the glory of the place⁠—makes her really happy. It’s a Veronese picture, as near as can be⁠—with me as the inevitable dwarf, the small blackamoor, put into a corner of the foreground for effect. If I only had a hawk or a hound or something of that sort I should do the scene more honour. The old housekeeper, the woman in charge here, has a big red cockatoo that I might borrow and perch on my thumb for the evening.” These explanations and sundry others Mrs. Stringham gave, though not all with the