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

“Yes,” he discreetly indulged her; “I know perfectly what it makes you. It makes you, to begin with, a capital case.”

She sighed, though gratefully, as if again before the social scene. “Ah, there you are!”

“Oh, no; there ‘we’ aren’t at all. There I am only⁠—but as much as you like. I’ve no end of American friends: there they are, if you please, and it’s a fact that you couldn’t very well be in a better place than in their company. It puts you with plenty of others⁠—and that isn’t pure solitude.” Then he pursued: “I’m sure you’ve an excellent spirit; but don’t try to bear more things than you need.” Which after an instant he further explained. “Hard things have come to you in youth, but you mustn’t think life will be for you all hard things. You’ve the right to be happy. You must make up your mind to it. You must accept any form in which happiness may come.”

“Oh, I’ll accept any whatever!” she almost gaily returned. “And it seems to me, for that matter, that I’m accepting a new one every day. Now this!” she smiled.

“This is very well so far as it goes. You can depend on me,” the great man said, “for unlimited interest. But I’m only, after all, one element in fifty. We must gather in plenty of others. Don’t mind who knows. Knows, I mean, that you and I are friends.”

“Ah, you do want to see someone!” she broke out. “You want to get at someone who cares for me.” With which, however, as he simply met this spontaneity in a manner to show that he had often had it from young persons of her race, and that he was familiar even with the possibilities of their familiarity, she felt her freedom rendered vain by his silence, and she immediately tried to think of the most reasonable thing she could say. This would be, precisely, on the subject of that freedom, which she now quickly spoke of as complete. “That’s of course by itself a great boon; so please don’t think I don’t know it. I can do exactly what I like⁠—anything in all the wide world. I haven’t a creature to ask⁠—there’s not a finger to stop me. I can shake about till I’m black and blue. That perhaps isn’t all joy; but lots of people, I know, would like to try it.” He had appeared about to put a question, but then had let her go on, which she promptly did, for she understood him the next moment as having thus taken it from her that her means were as great as might be. She had simply given it to him so, and this was all that would ever pass between them on the odious head. Yet she couldn’t help also knowing that an important effect, for his judgment, or at least for his amusement⁠—which was his feeling, since, marvellously, he did have feeling⁠—was produced by it. All her little pieces had now then fallen together for him like the morsels of coloured glass that used to make combinations, under the hand, in the depths of one of the polygonal peepshows of childhood. “So that if it’s a question of my doing anything under the sun that will help⁠—!”

“You’ll do anything under the sun? Good.” He took that beautifully, ever so pleasantly, for what it was worth; but time was needed⁠—ten minutes or so were needed on the spot⁠—to deal even provisionally, with the substantive question. It was convenient, in its degree, that there was nothing she wouldn’t do; but it seemed also highly and agreeably vague that she should have to do anything. They thus appeared to be taking her, together, for the moment, and almost for sociability, as prepared to proceed to gratuitous extremities; the upshot of which was in turn, that after much interrogation, auscultation, exploration, much noting of his own sequences and neglecting of hers, had duly kept up the vagueness, they might have struck themselves, or may at least strike us, as coming back from an undeterred but useless voyage to the north pole. Milly was ready, under orders, for the north pole; which fact was doubtless what made a blinding anticlimax of her friend’s actual abstention from orders. “No,” she heard him again distinctly repeat it, “I don’t want you for the present to do anything at all; anything, that is, but obey a small prescription or two that will be made clear to you, and let me within a few days come to see you at home.”

It was at first heavenly. “Then you’ll see Mrs. Stringham.” But she didn’t mind a bit now.

“Well, I shan’t be afraid of Mrs. Stringham.” And he said it once more as she asked once more: “Absolutely not; I ‘send’ you nowhere. England’s all right⁠—anywhere that’s pleasant, convenient, decent, will be all right. You say you can do exactly as you like. Oblige me therefore by being so good as to do it. There’s only one thing: you ought of course, now, as soon as I’ve seen you again, to get out of London.”

Milly thought. “May I then go back to the continent?”

“By all means back to the continent. Do go back to the continent.”

“Then how will you keep seeing me? But perhaps,” she quickly added, “you won’t want to keep seeing me.”

He had it all ready; he had really everything all ready. “I shall follow you up; though if you mean that I don’t want you to keep seeing me⁠—”

“Well?” she asked.

It was only just here that he struck her the least bit as stumbling. “Well, see all you can. That’s what it comes to. Worry about nothing. You have at least no worries. It’s a great, rare chance.”

She had got up, for she had had from him both that he would send her something and would advise her promptly of the date of his coming to her, by which she was virtually dismissed. Yet, for herself, one or