The Turn of the Screw
I felt that I didn’t know so well as Miles, and I took temporary
refuge. “You want to go to your uncle?”
Again, at this, with his sweet ironic face, he made a movement on the
pillow. “Ah, you can’t get off with that!”
I was silent a little, and it was I, now, I think, who changed color.
“My dear, I don’t want to get off!”
“You can’t, even if you do. You can’t, you can’t!”—he lay beautifully
staring. “My uncle must come down, and you must completely settle
things.”
“If we do,” I returned with some spirit, “you may be sure it will be to
take you quite away.”
“Well, don’t you understand that that’s exactly what I’m working for?
You’ll have to tell him—about the way you’ve let it all drop: you’ll
have to tell him a tremendous lot!”
The exultation with which he uttered this helped me somehow, for the
instant, to meet him rather more. “And how much will _you_, Miles, have
to tell him? There are things he’ll ask you!”
He turned it over. “Very likely. But what things?”
“The things you’ve never told me. To make up his mind what to do with
you. He can’t send you back—”
“Oh, I don’t want to go back!” he broke in. “I want a new field.”
He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety;
and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the
poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance
at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more
dishonor. It overwhelmed me now that I should never be able to bear
that, and it made me let myself go. I threw myself upon him and in the
tenderness of my pity I embraced him. “Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles—!”
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with
indulgent good humor. “Well, old lady?”
“Is there nothing—nothing at all that you want to tell me?”
He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding up his
hand to look at as one had seen sick children look. “I’ve told you—I
told you this morning.”
Oh, I was sorry for him! “That you just want me not to worry you?”
He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding
him; then ever so gently, “To let me alone,” he replied.
There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made me
release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him. God knows
I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this, to turn
my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him.
“I’ve just begun a letter to your uncle,” I said.
“Well, then, finish it!”
I waited a minute. “What happened before?”
He gazed up at me again. “Before what?”
“Before you came back. And before you went away.”
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes. “What
happened?”
It made me, the sound of the words, in which it seemed to me that I
caught for the very first time a small faint quaver of consenting
consciousness—it made me drop on my knees beside the bed and seize once
more the chance of possessing him. “Dear little Miles, dear little
Miles, if you _knew_ how I want to help you! It’s only that, it’s
nothing but that, and I’d rather die than give you a pain or do you a
wrong—I’d rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles”—oh, I
brought it out now even if I _should_ go too far—“I just want you to
help me to save you!” But I knew in a moment after this that I had gone
too far. The answer to my appeal was instantaneous, but it came in the
form of an extraordinary blast and chill, a gust of frozen air, and a
shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had
crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest
of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so
close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my
feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained,
while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred
and the window tight. “Why, the candle’s out!” I then cried.
“It was I who blew it, dear!” said Miles.
XVIII
The next day, after lessons, Mrs. Grose found a moment to say to me
quietly: “Have you written, miss?”
“Yes—I’ve written.” But I didn’t add—for the hour—that my letter,
sealed and directed, was still in my pocket. There would be time enough
to send it before the messenger should go to the village. Meanwhile
there had been, on the part of my pupils, no more brilliant, more
exemplary morning. It was exactly as if they had both had at heart to
gloss over any recent little friction. They performed the dizziest
feats of arithmetic, soaring quite out of _my_ feeble range, and
perpetrated, in higher spirits than ever, geographical and historical
jokes. It was conspicuous of course in Miles in particular that he
appeared to wish to show how easily he could let me down. This child,
to my memory, really lives in a setting of beauty and misery that no
words can translate; there was a distinction all his own in every
impulse he revealed; never was a small natural creature, to the
uninitiated eye all frankness and freedom, a more ingenious, a more
extraordinary little gentleman. I had perpetually to guard against the
wonder of contemplation into which my initiated view betrayed me; to
check the irrelevant gaze and discouraged sigh in which I constantly
both attacked and renounced the enigma of what such a little gentleman
could have done that deserved a penalty. Say that, by the dark prodigy
I knew, the imagination of all evil _had_ been opened up to him: all
the justice within me ached for the proof that it could ever have
flowered into an act.
He had never, at any rate, been such a little gentleman as when, after
our early dinner on this dreadful day, he came round to me and asked if
I shouldn’t like him, for half an hour, to play to me. David playing to
Saul could never have shown a finer sense of the occasion. It was
literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite
tantamount to his saying outright: “The true knights we love to read
about never push an advantage too far. I know what you mean now: you
mean that—to be let alone yourself and not followed up—you’ll cease to
worry and spy upon me, won’t keep me so close to you, will let me go
and come. Well, I ‘come,’ you see—but I don’t go! There’ll be plenty of
time for that. I do really delight in your society, and I only want to
show you that I contended for a principle.” It may be imagined whether
I resisted this appeal or failed to accompany him again, hand in hand,
to the schoolroom. He sat down at the old piano and played as he had
never played; and if there are those who think he had better have been
kicking a football I can only say that I wholly agree with them. For at
the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to
measure, I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at
my post. It was after luncheon, and by the schoolroom fire, and yet I
hadn’t really, in the least, slept: I had only done something much
worse—I had forgotten. Where, all this time, was Flora? When I put the
question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then
could only say: “Why, my dear, how do _I_ know?”—breaking moreover into
a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal
accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song.
I went straight to my room, but his sister was not there; then, before
going downstairs, I looked into several others. As she was nowhere
about she would surely be with Mrs. Grose, whom, in the comfort of that
theory, I accordingly proceeded in quest of. I found her where I had
found her the evening before, but she met my quick challenge with
blank, scared ignorance. She had only supposed that, after the repast,
I had carried off both the children; as to which she was quite in her
right, for it was the very first time I had allowed the little girl out
of my sight without some special provision. Of course now indeed she
might be with the maids, so that the immediate thing was to look for
her without an air of alarm. This we promptly arranged between us; but
when, ten minutes later and in pursuance of our arrangement, we met in
the hall, it was only to report on either side that after guarded
inquiries we had altogether failed to trace her. For a minute there,
apart from observation, we exchanged mute alarms, and I could feel with
what high interest my friend returned me all those I had from the first
given her.
“She’ll be above,” she presently said—“in one of the rooms you haven’t
searched.”
“No; she’s at a distance.” I had made up my mind. “She has gone out.”
Mrs. Grose stared. “Without a hat?”
I naturally also looked volumes. “Isn’t that woman always without one?”
“She’s with _her?_”
“She’s with _her!_” I declared. “We must find them.”
My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment,
confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my
pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her
uneasiness. “And where’s Master Miles?”
“Oh, _he’s_ with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.”
“Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I suppose my
tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance.
“The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their
plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she
went off.”
“‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed.
“Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for
himself as well. But come!”
She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him—?”
“So long with Quint? Yes—I don’t mind that now.”
She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand,
and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after
gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?”
she eagerly brought out.
I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it
up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table.
“Luke will take it,” I said as I came back. I reached the house door
and opened it; I was already on the steps.
My companion still demurred: the storm of the night and the early
morning had dropped, but the afternoon was damp and gray. I came down
to the drive while she stood in the doorway. “You go with nothing on?”
“What do I care when the child has nothing? I can’t wait to dress,” I
cried, “and if you must do so, I leave you. Try meanwhile, yourself,
upstairs.”
“With _them?_” Oh, on this, the poor woman promptly joined me!
XIX
We went straight to the lake, as it was called at Bly, and I daresay
rightly called, though I reflect that it may in fact have been a sheet
of water less remarkable than it appeared to my untraveled eyes. My
acquaintance with sheets of water was small, and the pool of Bly, at
all events on the few occasions of my consenting, under the protection
of my pupils, to affront its surface in the old flat-bottomed boat
moored there for our use, had impressed me both with its extent and its
agitation. The usual place of embarkation was half a mile from the
house, but I had an intimate conviction that, wherever Flora might be,
she was not near home. She had not given me the slip for any small
adventure, and, since the day of the very great one that I had shared
with her by the pond, I had been aware, in our walks, of the quarter to
which she most inclined. This was why I had now given to Mrs. Grose’s
steps so marked a direction—a direction that made her, when she
perceived it, oppose a resistance that showed me she was freshly
mystified. “You’re going to the water, Miss?—you think she’s _in_—?”
“She may be, though the depth is, I believe, nowhere very great. But