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

happened the night before had not sharply reduced itself; but the complexity just mentioned was to be offered within the next few minutes another item to assimilate. Before Sir Luke’s house, when he reached it, a brougham was drawn up⁠—at the sight of which his heart had a lift that brought him for the instant to a stand. This pause wasn’t long, but it was long enough to flash upon him a revelation in the light of which he caught his breath. The carriage, so possibly at such an hour and on such a day Sir Luke’s own, had struck him as a sign that the great doctor was back. This would prove something else, in turn, still more intensely, and it was in the act of the double apprehension that Densher felt himself turn pale. His mind rebounded for the moment like a projectile that has suddenly been met by another: he stared at the strange truth that what he wanted more than to see Kate Croy was to see the witness who had just arrived from Venice. He wanted positively to be in his presence and to hear his voice⁠—which was the spasm of his consciousness that produced the flash. Fortunately for him, on the spot, there supervened something in which the flash went out. He became aware within this minute that the coachman on the box of the brougham had a face known to him, whereas he had never seen before, to his knowledge, the great doctor’s carriage. The carriage, as he came nearer, was simply Mrs. Lowder’s; the face on the box was just the face that, in coming and going at Lancaster Gate, he would vaguely have noticed, outside, in attendance. With this the rest came: the lady of Lancaster Gate had, on a prompting not wholly remote from his own, presented herself for news; and news, in the house, she was clearly getting, since her brougham had stayed. Sir Luke was then back⁠—only Mrs. Lowder was with him.

It was under the influence of this last reflection that Densher again delayed; and it was while he delayed that something else occurred to him. It was all round, visibly⁠—given his own new contribution⁠—a case of pressure; and in a case of pressure Kate, for quicker knowledge, might have come out with her aunt. The possibility that in this event she might be sitting in the carriage⁠—the thing most likely⁠—had had the effect, before he could check it, of bringing him within range of the window. It wasn’t there he had wished to see her; yet if she was there he couldn’t pretend not to. What he had however the next moment made out was that if someone was there it wasn’t Kate Croy. It was, with a sensible shock for him, the person who had last offered him a conscious face from behind the clear plate of a café in Venice. The great glass at Florian’s was a medium less obscure, even with the window down, than the air of the London Christmas; yet at present also, none the less, between the two men, an exchange of recognitions could occur. Densher felt his own look a gaping arrest⁠—which, he disgustedly remembered, his back as quickly turned, appeared to repeat itself as his special privilege. He mounted the steps of the house and touched the bell with a keen consciousness of being habitually looked at by Kate’s friend from positions of almost insolent vantage. He forgot for the time the moment when, in Venice, at the palace, the encouraged young man had in a manner assisted at the departure of the disconcerted, since Lord Mark was not looking disconcerted now any more than he had looked from his bench at his café. Densher was thinking that he seemed to show as vagrant while another was ensconced. He was thinking of the other as⁠—in spite of the difference of situation⁠—more ensconced than ever; he was thinking of him above all as the friend of the person with whom his recognition had, the minute previous, associated him. The man was seated in the very place in which, beside Mrs. Lowder’s, he had looked to find Kate, and that was a sufficient identity. Meanwhile at any rate the door of the house had opened and Mrs. Lowder stood before him. It was something at least that she wasn’t Kate. She was herself, on the spot, in all her affluence; with presence of mind both to decide at once that Lord Mark, in the brougham, didn’t matter and to prevent Sir Luke’s butler, by a firm word thrown over her shoulder, from standing there to listen to her passage with the gentleman who had rung. “I’ll tell Mr. Densher; you needn’t wait!” And the passage, promptly and richly, took place on the steps.

“He arrives, travelling straight, tomorrow early. I couldn’t not come to learn.”

“No more,” said Densher simply, “could I. On my way,” he added, “to Lancaster Gate.”

“Sweet of you.” She beamed on him dimly, and he saw her face was attuned. It made him, with what she had just before said, know all, and he took the thing in while he met the air of portentous, of almost functional, sympathy that had settled itself as her medium with him and that yet had now a fresh glow. “So you have had your message?”

He knew so well what she meant, and so equally with it what he “had had” no less than what he hadn’t, that, with but the smallest hesitation, he strained the point. “Yes⁠—my message.”

“Our dear dove then, as Kate calls her, has folded her wonderful wings.”

“Yes⁠—folded them.”

It rather racked him, but he tried to receive it as she intended, and she evidently took his formal assent for self-control. “Unless it’s more true,” she accordingly added, “that she has spread them the wider.”

He again but formally assented, though, strangely enough, the words fitted a figure deep in his own imagination. “Rather, yes⁠—spread them the wider.”

“For a flight, I trust, to some happiness greater⁠—!”

“Exactly. Greater,”